Hello folks,

I'm hung up on the conclusion for an episode and I'm hoping the community can help me out. The first half of the adventure is worked out. A very striped down outline of events is as follows:

1. The heroes have just transported passengers to Duro. One of the passengers left a sealed case in her stateroom. She is arrested by the ISB as soon as the heroes disembark.

2. The heroes take the case to the original owner's contact. The duro contact reveals that the case contains the schematics to a lost starbase from the era when the Rakata Infinite Empire ruled over Duro.

3. The technology there could make them all rich. If the heroes don't go for credits the Duro indicates that the Empire is also looking for the starbase and must be denied any technology buried there at all costs. One way or another the heroes need to escort the Duro contact.

4. The heroes must evade security droids locking down the planet (Sons of Fortune pg. 61), Imperial pursuit, and an infestation of Fefze Beetles at the location of the starbase ruins.

Here's where I'm hung. I don't want to do the typical dungeon crawl through the starbase ruins. I want a hook, like the heroes find a hidden Rakatan community who stayed to avoid the plague that destroyed the Infinite Empire. Or the heroes face some kind of moral dilemma where whatever they find is best left lost. Or they find something that could threaten the nearby city of Ranadaast.

My players like action but they love rich plot even more. Please help me deliver something special involving the starbase.

well there needs to be a reason this Starbase hasn't been found before or if it has, a reason why no one would escape. So with that in mind i'd go down the path of outlining defenses are powerful but have to be bypassed by going through the mentioned Fefze Beetle tunnels beneath it. That will allow for action and a reason why people haven't approached or infiltrated the base. Once inside the base, I think instead of Rakata being found there, just slave races other than just Duro being found there. They worship the Rakata and have some of their weapons. They also have a superweapon that wipes out all life on a planet except those that are Rakata-related or just straight Rakatan. Name it some big scary thing like The Infernal Detonator or something. The worshipers worry that the intrusion of the party is a sign of the end times and they must turn on the Infernal Detonator to ensure the return of their masters. The party then has the options of: convince the worshippers they are crazy and must not turn it on, kill them and prevent them that way or find some other way to not allow the Infernal Detonator.

The mmo has a base with still living Rakata if I recall properly that one simply had the PC help counter one side that wanted to reveal themselves by helping the one who wanted to maintain their anonymity.

Another base revealed the Twileks were bio engineered to be more force capable however there's an actual play based on Saga involving a base hidden beyond chiss space by Gamers table I believe based around a variation of the Apocalypse Now movie that deserves more attention than its had so far!

As for suggestions maybe anyone entering who isn't Rakata loses their memory upon leaving after all its supposed to be a secret and would the Rakata really want non-Rakata knowing about it?

Remind me of a next gen episode where they didn't cover up the excuse to prevent them immediately suspecting something was wrong.

Hmm what if the entry point changes as the base isn't on world but hidden deep within another world or even in another system... how long would it take to find a base say hidden inside an otherwise uninhabitable area because the world you accessed is only open for a short time so your PCs start off say on Duro and leave the base to find themselves say on Onderon or even Taris for that matter?

Maybe have some evil ancient Rakatan Force Ghost hanging around the place, and the arrival of the Heroes has given him the opportunity to upload his consciousness into a droid body of some kind(something powerful, similar to a Basilisk droid) that would still allow him to use his force powers. And activate an army of these droids which are also buried and help him rebuild the Raktan empire.

The PCs have to stop him somehow. Destroy/deactivate his new droid body, blow up the powerplant, unleash an EMP which wipes all the electronics in the area, etc...

This my be my real-world experience with long lost treasure talking, but I'd go the exact opposite way of everyone else.

There is no treasure. Never was.

The place where I work has a lost gold myth that a scoundrel cooked up decades ago with the whole evil plot being not to actually recover any gold, but to con people out of "investment" money in exchange for a "share" of the gold. They tore the mountain and surrounding area apart (including some actually valuable ancient native petroglyphs) looking for it with the gold always "just a few more feet down." To this day we still get nutters showing up every couple years that if we'd just "let them go in with a five man team for four days" they'd totally find the gold. It's worth noting that these nutters aren't all wack jobs, they include local movers and shakers form time to time.

You could translate this concept into the game. The players get to the mine site on Duro, with the nearest safe landing spot being some kind of corporate outpost. The Corps are busy with their real work and let the players land so long as they pay the fees to do so. If the players get talking with the Corps about the long lost spaceport, the Corps can laugh it off.

When the players get there, they duke it out with the local bugs and have a little time to poke around (and see there really is nothing here but an empty artificial cavern bordering a contaminate reservoir) before an ISB dig team shows up. Of course they totally know where the hidden spaceport is because.... "aliens."

The players can hash it out with the ISB for a little while, be eventually they tell the digger machine to start digging, breaching the wall between them and the reservoir, and filling the cavern with nastyness while the players exercise soem daring heroics and escape...

Dueling a villain on the back of a giant digger machine that's being eaten away by acid in a cave a mile underground? Oh yes....

Thanks everyone for the wonderful hook ideas. I think it speaks to how generous and creative this community is. Please keep the ideas coming coming because these hooks are all possible for numerous adventures.

I don't know much about these beetles but I'm guessing they are hostile. The mysterious nature and ancient technologies of the Rakata have always been of interst to me since Knights of the Old Republic games.

As the players pass thru the 1st area/level of the base, they begin to notice and slow low pitch hum. Desending deeper into the base reveals an ancient energy source still relatively active. Before reaching the core, I see a large chamber full of beetles, attracted to the energy core but held at bay my an unseen force. A force field repels all that try to enter the area surrounding the core. A ancient terminal stands silence after years of none use. Rigging a alternate energy source to power the terminal would take time and a lot of know how.

Once activated and understood, the players can control the force field(deactivation, activation as well as expansion/contraction of the field). Little do the players know is that beyond the force field, held in place by the field is an airborne toxin. Many dice roll results could give the players hints to the toxins presence. Contracting the field a few meters will reveal the remains of the last Rakata who died in the process of setting up the field to control the toxin from spreading. The toxin is a product from the slow melt down of the core. Player should put it together with given details(corpses in the painful positions on the floor beyond the field, info found thru advantages on a slicing roll,...).

The deactivation of the field would cause the toxin to spread, killing much of the near by life on the planets surface. A good slicer could devise way to rig the terminal to reset the force field, expanding it to encompass the entire base(protecting the base from future visitors). This plan would require a timer set to the reset to give the players time to escape the base or be trapped inside with the toxin. The beetles could be unaffected by the toxin. In fact they will be driven to consume the core if lelf to their own devices. The dead bodies could have small recoverable but dead tech that could be sold for credits to a collector, ie. player rewards.

I hope this idea works for you or at least sparks another idea for you.

Makes me wonder what would happen if you have your players run through the game after one of them botched a roll deciphering the map and with the Imperials and Crime Syndicate chasing them they barely escape offworld and finally... finally someone decides to double check the map and the translation and realise they were holding the map upside down...

No that might be a little cruel after all how many threat do they need to roll to have that explanation?

Liked the idea above about the faulty generator, made me wonder what if the artefact they find is a pseudo Devastator which the Rakata deliberately hid because they didn't want it running amok which is what it will do when activated... how do you explain to your players that the secret treasure was actually Unicron and now that you've activated it you have no idea where the off switch is and they're stuck inside an omnicidal weapon of mass destruction that makes the Death Star look like a toothpick?

Now if I ran that my immediate idea for the following campaign is their efforts to find a way to stop the Unicron wannabe and hoping noone realises they're the ones that released it because can you imagine the reaction when the Imperials claim they built the Death Star II and their Devastators to stop that Rakatan Devastator?!

So with that in mind i'd go down the path of outlining defenses are powerful but have to be bypassed by going through the mentioned Fefze Beetle tunnels beneath it.........They worship the Rakata and have some of their weapons. They also have a superweapon that wipes out all life on a planet except those that are Rakata-related or just straight Rakatan. Name it some big scary thing like The Infernal Detonator or something. The worshipers worry that the intrusion of the party is a sign of the end times and they must turn on the Infernal Detonator to ensure the return of their masters. The party then has the options of: convince the worshippers they are crazy and must not turn it on, kill them and prevent them that way or find some other way to not allow the Infernal Detonator.

Make sure to have some creepy organ music playing in the background as the Infernal Detonator is being activated.

So with that in mind i'd go down the path of outlining defenses are powerful but have to be bypassed by going through the mentioned Fefze Beetle tunnels beneath it.........They worship the Rakata and have some of their weapons. They also have a superweapon that wipes out all life on a planet except those that are Rakata-related or just straight Rakatan. Name it some big scary thing like The Infernal Detonator or something. The worshipers worry that the intrusion of the party is a sign of the end times and they must turn on the Infernal Detonator to ensure the return of their masters. The party then has the options of: convince the worshippers they are crazy and must not turn it on, kill them and prevent them that way or find some other way to not allow the Infernal Detonator.

Make sure to have some creepy organ music playing in the background as the Infernal Detonator is being activated.

indeed: http://vimeo.com/47069867

Thanks for all the ideas. Using some of your feedback, I'm going with a Duro community underground who are the decedents of fanatical slaves who worship the Rakata. When the heroes show up they take it as a sign of the end times as their lair has been found. With a code phrase the Duro's leader unleashes the Infernal Devastator, a massive (Rancor sized) machine with two mighty pistons as arms and a light repeating blaster fastened to its shoulder.

The Duros announce that this is their doomsday weapon, a machine so lethal that it will cleanse the entire planet so the Rakata can start again!

The heroes try to engage it but it's obvious this droid is very strong, designed to stamp cities into rubble.. Only the leader of the Duro knows the code phrase to stop it. The heroes must choose: Try to wear down the Infernal Devastator's defenses or try to convince the Duro that the Rakata are no more. Both options are possible and I hope they go with the later option for good roleplay opportunities.

I WIN!!!

I WIN!!!

You sir get a +1 in recognition of your deed to be delivered any minute!

*kryss recovers 1 strain.