I'm trying to find space anomalies in Star Wars, like an ion storm or a gas cloud that envelopes a planet or a substance that survives amidst asteroids that may cause dysfunction of a passing ship, or even cut communications for those in the system or something. Anything like that. Does anyone have any ideas for space anomalies or can reference any in any books or anything? I've read a good portion of books but unless it's the whole plot to finding Vergere which isn't exactly a space anomaly, does anyone else recall anything? I know in SW:TCW, the planet Iego had an abandoned construct above their atmosphere that destroyed ships or pulled them through the field of energy that disrupted ships causing them to crash onto the planet. Also any space anomalies that are similar in keeping a ship onto a planet that could be a sort of puzzle that needs to be solved using skills or something. Looking for a little more Sci-Fi little less Star Wars but still within the realm of Star Wars.

1. Something like a white dwarf star orbiting a red giant star. The atmosphere from the red giant gets sucked over to the white dwarf and builds up. On a regular schedule this build up explodes in a Nova. If the PC's are on a planet orbiting the original star then they would be grounded for the duration of the event. (Bit science bit sci-fi)

2. Planet could orbit inside a Planitary disk (the disk of gas and dust planets form from). And only during small windows of time can the planet be landed on or left.

3. The PC's are on a moon orbiting a gas giant which is having a massive magnetic storm

A Space Stations stabilisers inexplicably fail, the Station starts spinning in a way to prevent ships launching without colliding with the interior of the hangers. Is it sabotage? Poor maintenance? An assassination attempt? PC's need to find out before the Station spins so fast it tears itself apart.

Monsters seem to be a staple, from Mynoks to the giant space slug to the whale-like leviathans living in a nebula in SW:TCW. They have to eat something, possibly a form of space-plankton that leaches ion energy from passing ships.

A pulsar could certainly damage a ship in flight, possibly frying systems to uselessness. Perhaps include a situation where a pilot has to time it properly to get past the beam of destructive energy.

A neutron star could send out a frequency that shorts certain types of computers, or causes ongoing system strain that the PCs have to account for.

Extreme solar flares could do the job, especially on a binary star system. Double this if the PCs have to fly between the stars for some reason.

I think this is a really exciting aspect to being to space travel and space combat scenes.

How about a space station in a system with an unstable star? The thing is about to blow up any day now, but the system contains highly valuable resources that warrant a risky mining operation.

If you want to ground a ship, one could surmise a planet with a shifting magnetic field that plays havoc with a ship's repulsors so while everything technically functions, they can't actually take off until the field changes, which could be like a tide.

Seems like I've seen enough space programs that I should be able to spout out a list of "interesting space scenes" but I must not be caffeinated enough yet.

You could use the "thread" from the Pern novels. Thin silver filaments of space-born mychorrizoid spores that destroys organic material. As it happens on Pern that this threadfall occurs only 50 sequential years out of 250, it would be very mysterious. There might be legends, but figuring out what is causing the damage that looks like rain could be difficult at first. Spaceships should be mostly immune to this, but passengers and locals would not be. Even if they saw it in space and wondered what it was, they probably would not figure on how destructive it would be when it hit atmosphere and living things. Try not to show any expression if they take a sample in outer space and bring it in to the ship...

This is awesome so far! I may as well be swimming in ideas!! Would love to hear more, I love the aspect of a puzzle in space, or a plot line from something astronomical and not simply a connect A to B standpoints. These are seriously so cool!!

Watch pretty much any episode of Star Trek TNG or Voyager for ideas

Watch pretty much any episode of Star Trek TNG or Voyager for ideas

Yeah, the problem is that you’ve got to be careful with your language and how you translate things, otherwise the game starts sounding like “Star Trek Wars” and you start wondering when the Promelian Battle Cruiser plot device will be brought out.

As with most things, I think moderation is the key.

Onslaught at Arda 1 has a part of it that talks about that stuff: Episode III