Alright, so I'm in the third mission of my campaign. My group is on it's way to scintilla, but ends up crash landing their freighter on Luggnum. For good reason, the mining station 30 miles from the crash site is empty. No one to be seen. But no damage done to the facility. There is still a small emergency spacecraft big enough to fit 4 comfortably. Only problem is, it's powercells are useless due to lack of use.

My inspiration for this mission is coming from the first Riddick movie.

I've written enough to get through the emergency landing. But now I am just drawing blanks left and right.

I can't seem to get the conversation between npc's laid out, to bring up the objectives or anything.

Can anyone help me out here?

Cameron said:

Very cool movie inspiration. My question then: "For good reason, the mining station... is empty" WHY?

Answer this and I suspect alot of your gaps will be much easier to be filled in. Since you are having them crash 30 miles (not km?) from this station the obvious start would be to design some challenging cross the wilderness under less than ideal circumstances type plot points, possibly with some creepy foreshadowing as to what might be wrong with the abandoned mining station. Make sure if you have any NPCs on board the ship when it crashes to have at least 1-2 of them be severely wounded and require special care and attention during their dangerous trek through the wilderness. Even better if the players actually care for the NPC. If they are cold, indifferent bastards then perhaps roll some dice behind your GM screen while describing the crash scene, then pick a deserving player and inflict some "crash injuries" on them instead. Might want to give the player you inflict this on a "cookie" later on if they put up with their story-driven abuse reasonably well.

Figure out just why the mining station is abandoned. It might just be a played-out mine that is not cost effective to work any longer, but that is pretty darn lame for Inquisitorial acolytes to stumble into.... Unless something is taking advantage of the now-empty mines for their nefarious plans/xenos weirdness.

One other item of note: My players include a Techpriest. If your group has one I might suggest adding a further "something is wrong" complication for the emergency shuttle besides just the drained powercell. This adds to the drama and gives the Techpriest something of (presumably) critical importance to do and avoids the serious anti-climax of them simply deciding to use their potentia coil to recharge or "jump start" the ship. Make them figure out what is wrong, make emergency repairs while appologising profusely to the machine spirit about the lack of propper ritual observances, THEN let them juice the batteries! If your group does not have a Techpriest but does have someone with Tech Use skill then perhaps slip in a clue or two (an old supply manifest or something like that) about some emergency generators stored somewhere in the facility, fuel of course stored in a separate location per standard protocol EPS-0032692-047-23B sub 43 part C.

Add some "innocent bystanders" like the sad remnants of the imperial settlement that once worked the mine. The trading ships stopped coming for the ore, (probably some bookkeeping error...) and the settlement died off over a few generations (at least this is what the "survivors" claim). Have them view the players as their saviours and beg them for mercy to get off this emperorforsaken piece of rock. Then make the shuttle have room for the players and two, or maybe three of the remaining people. Then hint that the ex-settlers might be infested with genestealers, and have them start to dissapear one by one while the rest clump up aound the characters. Who to trust? Hand your players small notes with nasty precognitions, indicating that they might be going insane/getting infested by stealers/are being corrupted by chaos. Maybe hand one of them only messages like "everything is fine". Hand out empty notes now and then, just to keep them on their toes. Create fear and distrust. And have everyone blindly trust the characters to save their lives, including giving away precious gifts to the players.

Cameron said:

If the mining station is empty, then where are these NPC's coming from? On the plus side, there's no need to lay out the conversations if there's nobody to talk to.

Okay, to answer yalls questions.

In the process of the ship coming down, and making its crash, there are a number of tests the group is going through, to see if thet get hurt or not. For instance, they can hear the freighter being torn apart from it's rear, coming closr and closer to where they are resting. They are strapped against the wall (because the ship has no sleeping quarters) to keep them from floating off while in 0 gravity. Well, the ships systems are going out, so they cant release themselves. So I put them through a strength test to see if they can tear the straps off, so that they an try to move their way up to the ships flight deck. But, the doors wont open (BIG SUPRISE). Well, soon after, the ship just tears open right behind them, revealing the bright sandy world. Crates and supplies begin to fly out, and the members have to make an difficult agility test to grab the remaining hull, and then a strength test to hold on. Those who fail, will go through another set of die rolls that I will preform to see what types of damage and situation they get stuck into. (So this covers those who are injured)

The NPC's are three surviving crew members, which i am portraying similar to the members in the movie. The female pilot, the "cop" who turns out to be in it for himself, rather than to protect and serve. And then the religious man who believes that the God Emperor is with them at all times. But in reality, death seems to follow the group everywhere. And the conversation is pretty much going through things like, finding the mining station, water (because the water supply on the ship is lost in the crash), and burrying the dead crew members. (This will fill the conversation)

My campaign is going to be filled with many demons along the way. In the end, it's going to be just horrible because the Inquisitor ends up falling into the perverse nature of the Chaos Gods, and subjecting his will to them. So, in this part of the campaign, I'm bringing in swarms of Furies. Reason being, they have Dark Sight, and I wanted to have them attack at night, to add a bit more of the fear factor. These are what killed the miners, an d what the members and NPC's will have to avoid in the coarse of the mission.

I know it sounds like the movie Riddick, but I dont want to copy it. I just like the idea.

- It's always nice to have the escape pod or wreck sink into the muck/sand/water. The PC only have a couple of rounds to get out with their gear.

-What is the wild life like? Wild beasts stalking them.

-Abandoned buildings are always fun to explore

-Strange tracks

-Lot of rolls for navigation should be required

Remember you don't have to spell things out for the PC's. If you come up with a detailed enough setting a simple "what do you do next?" should be enough.

Hi:

Don't forget to add in the Terrible Alien Threat (or the Space Pirates/slavers)!*

L

*Just add water.