** GAME MASTER NOTES – SPOILERS! **
(Set in the Spinward main in Rhylanor, sometime after 300-1106 but before the start of the Fifth Frontier War)
The adventure is based on the PCs hearing and following up on two rumors:
1.) TWILIGHT’S PEAK: The PCs overhear a scout and a navy captain arguing in a bar about whether or not the “Epic of Twilight’s Peak” was authentic. The argument ends in a brawl.
Later research on this epic reveals it to be an amateur poet’s first-person account of the ill-fated Gyro Cadiz task force which was sent from Vanejen to the besieged system of Regina on 101-984, the time of the Third Frontier War. While pausing between jumps to refuel, the subsidized merchant Gyro Cadiz and its three scout ships – Blatant Lie, Carlisle, and Black Gold – were damaged by an ion storm and forced to land on an unnamed planet.
Once there, the crew of the Black Gold turned on their companions and attacked the other three crippled ships. Although the traitors were all slain in the counterattack, all starships were left wholly disabled following the battle.
After several months, the survivors found an abandoned structure where weird, almost magical occurrance saved their lives from hostile “wolves.” (Exactly what these “wolves” were is unclear.)
In the following spring, survivors patched together parts from the other ships to get one into space for a rescue. The ship misjumped into a Zhodani-Imperial battle and was again disabled, this time fatally lost in space.
2.) THE OCTAGON BOOK: The PCs find a musty old book marked with a metal octagon on its leather cover. The book details the history of the Octagon Society, a group which sought to built relief shelters throughout the then-unsettled Spinward Marches from the mid-300s to late 400s.
WHAT’S GOING ON: The Black Gold traitors were Zhodani plants. Today, the Zhodani plot with planted agents on Fulacin, a corporate world run by Magneto Dynamics. The Octagon on Fulacin caps the top of an Ancients site where some of the original Ancients (Droyne) have recently awakened. A fight there with Zhodani troops reveals their presence and the fate of the Gyro Cadiz task force.