Skip to main content

Stars Without Number Campaign: The Prophecy of Thamau (Session 8)



Growing more hungry by the hour, the former Terminators concentrate on disinfecting the shuttle en route to the planet below. They detect no electronic communications or evidence of space travel as they approach. Once in orbit, they see that most of the surface of the planet below is covered with water and there are two main island chains that show signs of habitation, one just north of the equator, and the other just south. They decide to make for the southern island chain.

As they approached the largest island in the chain, they saw what appeared to be a palace on the west coast. They decided to set down a mile from a small coastal village about ten miles south of the palace. High altitude camera views of the village showed that it was at an early Iron Age technology level. They quickly determined that the air was breathable and disembarked. They were immediately set upon by what turned out to be small, insect-sized, reptiles. After discovering that these were a nuisance rather than a danger, they set about solving their urgent food problem. 

Pope, GB, and Tom Major decided to go hunting in the forest between their landing place and the village, while Leon took Lupe (GB's henchwoman) into town to look for food and information. Dr. Darius decided to wait in the ship.

Pope cam across three dog-sized lizards sunning themselves. He carefully crept through the forest and killed one of them. He, GB, and Tom started preparing it to eat. 

Meanwhile, Lupe and Leon saw a young girl fishing from a bridge over a stream outside of the village. As they walked up, the girl seemed to be talking to an imaginary friend, Chi'ichi. They introduced themselves and the girl, Adhuchi, offered to take them to her house in the village to get something to eat. She led them through the small village of raised houses to her mother's home. After they introduced themselves to Ora, the mother, as being from a village to the south, she made them a meal and explained that the palace was the home of the god king of Thamau. Adhuchi, bored of the history lesson, left to keep fishing with "Chi'ichi".

GB, Tom, and Pope finished eating and started walking towards the village. As the crossed the bridge, Pope noticed a massive snake-like creature submerged beneath the bridge. Unable to risk a prize like this, Pope jumped into the water and stabbed it in its seven-foot-long head. The snake-thing reared up out of the water to fight. GB holds back, but Tom Major joins in the fight with his laser rifle. 

As they were fighting, Adhuchi walked into view and started screaming. The snake-thing proved to be a tough foe, but Pope and Tom managed to take it down. As Adhuchi cried out for Chi'ichi, GB rushed to keep the snake from bleeding out. Lupe and Leon arrived during this chaos.

GB managed to keep Chi'ichi from dying and applied stim paks to help revive him. After recovering for a bit, Chi'ich calmed Adhuchi down explaining that he thought the characters were probably from very far away and had never seen a Zafar before. 

Chi'ichi went on to explain that he was a Zafar and that his people had lived in harmony with the humans for 500 years since a group called the Ve'loi landed in Thamau and made the king a god. This was doubly fortuitous since there was a terrible plague shortly after the arrival of the Ve'loi and the two species only survived by working together. He also shows that he has strong psychic powers by summoning a fire ball. While he was not yet born when the Ve'loi arrived, Chi'ichi suggests that they travel to the palace and meet Quachon, the emperor's Zafar.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Traveller: Session 33

  This session was run on June 15, 2023.   130-2108   They confronted Reverend Kavanaugh about the wrench and the explosive bolts and he changed his story again. He now claimed that, even in his revised story, he had still tried to protect Dieter and his memory. Dieter had not just surrendered to fate and drawn straws after his failed attempt to poison Kavanaugh at breakfast. As soon as it was clear that the paralytic was not working, he attempted to choke Kavanaugh. As the two wrestled, Kavanaugh grabbed a wrench from the toolbox, left in the common room during their repair efforts, and bashed Dieter over the head. He had then flushed Dieter’s body, along with the wrench, out of the airlock. He claimed not to have known about the explosive bolts and said that, because there were only two of them aboard, there were sixteen hours each day where only one of them was awake.   Unable to determine if this latest story was true, they informed him that they stil

Wilderlands: Session 32

  This session was run on February 13, 2023. Determined to find Uggmar, the party, now accompanied by Rasaz, headed back into the dungeon beneath the barrow mounds using the northeast entrance. They decided that they were unlikely to find him on the first level and, rather than risk getting swarmed by skeletons again,they headed directly down the stairs they found on their last expedition. After a hundred foot descent, they found themselves in a large cavern that contained what appeared to be an underground city. The architecture of the buildings they could see seemed to be from an earlier era, perhaps before man learned to work iron. As they began searching the streets, they noticed a woman standing very still in a doorway. They approched her to find that she seemed to be frozen in time, surrounded by a strange red glow. Nothing they did seemed to affect her. She could not be moved, nor could her clothes or body be disturbed. As they were examining the woman, Stranger th

Traveller: Campaign Overview

    This Traveller campaign is intended to be kind of a history of the Traveller universe (or at least my version of it). The framing device for the campaign is the start of The Rebellion in 1116 with the assassination of Emperor Strephon. The players took the roles of imperial archdukes that were present at the assassination and through them help define the fate of the Third Imperium. The archdukes will be the constant backbone of the campaign, providing context for everything else. We will return to them between arcs spent with other characters in which we explore different parts, and different eras, of the universe. I hope to visit many different times throughout the history of the Traveller universe and to tie events in those times to the fate of the empire in the future.   This page will be useful for figuring out which arcs were covered in which sessions. I hope this will make it easier to keep all of the different characters straight and to refer back when