The Volturnus Trilogy (part II) (spoilers)

Art by Jim Burns

Lawrence Schick, in his Heroic Worlds, says the following about the second installment of the initial offering of three Star Frontiers adventure modules:

Scenario, sequel to “SF-0”: the adventurers, still marooned on Volturnus, must make their way across the planet to a forest.  Once there, the alien Kurabanda may be able to put them in touch with other offworlders who can rescue them.  Unfortunately, the offworlders turn out to be Sathar pirates.  Includes two new intelligent races and six new creatures.

This statement is wrong in several ways. The journey “across the planet” is only about a hundred miles.  The “other offworlders who can rescue them” are instead presented as “Demons from the Sky” who take prisoners.  In these circumstances, expectations of rescue might be optimistic.  In the previous post, I discussed how the so-called pirates do not conform to common definitions of pirates but since the module refers to them as pirates, I will give this a pass.  The pirates, however, are not Sathar nor are they associated with Sathar.  There are briefings for three intelligent races, not two.  Technically, one of the races, the Eorna, is briefly mentioned in the first module.  However, that first module admonishes the referee, “It is very important that no hint of the Eorna be given to the characters.”  The alien creature update file describes twelve new creatures, not six.  One can quibble that a couple of the “creatures” are plants, but there are certainly more than six non-plant creatures presented in the module.  On the other hand, the marooned part is totally accurate.  Schick should have merely summarized the back cover copy.

There is a half-page summary of the events of the prior adventure if the players did not participate in it.  Given that the first adventure is bundled with the Star Frontiers rules, there's no reason not to have played it.  Regardless, the Ul-Mor inform the party there are people like the player characters “living with the Kurabanda, a foolish tree-dwelling race.”  The presumption is that these others are survivors from the first expedition.  An Ul-Mor guide leads the characters part of the way to the Kurabanda, but they must travel the final leg of the journey themselves.  Upon reaching the bachanda tree forest, they find “a raging battle between ten of the Star Devil's men and the Kurabanda.”  The “pirates” will attack the player characters even if they don't come to the aid of Kurabanda.  When five pirates have died, the remainder will attempt to escape; they “will not allow themselves to be captured alive, as they know the Kurabanda would torture them to death.”  I suppose its possible for a pirate to be knocked out.

According to the briefing update, “A Kurabanda stands 1.2 meters tall and looks somewhat like a tarsier monkey.”  We learn that “Kurabanda are also natural practical jokers.”  A paragraph is spent describing four typical practical jokes:  The Fake Vine Joke, Snipe Hunting, The Fire Joke, and the Flea Joke.  After the battle, the characters are taken to the Kurabanda village and, eventually, presented to the chief.  Because the party (presumably) helped in the fight against the pirates, the chief “will be favorably impressed” but the players don't know this.  After conversing with the party, the actions of the chief depends upon the extent to which he trusts the characters.  Their are five possible reactions:  Complete trust, Partial trust, Insulted, Greatly insulted, and Distrusted.  The last two reactions result in the death of the characters.  With the most favorable reaction, the chief conveys information necessary for the continuation of the adventure.  With the partial trust reaction, the characters are given an opportunity to improve their standing.  If the chief is insulted, “he will offer the party many, many gifts of furs, arrows, and wives.”  These must be accepted or the characters will be killed.

Anyway, two members of the first expedition stayed with the Kurabanda (which is how the Kurabanda learned to converse in Pan Galactic).  The two explorers were taken by the space pirates and the Kurabanda can direct the player characters to a pirate outpost.  The party is expected to raid the outpost and defeat four Humans and two combat robots.  From the outpost computer, the player characters...

...can learn that the pirates have discovered rich deposits of vibrillium and tomarillium in the hills of Volturnus.  They have discovered an intelligent race, the Edestekai, living in the hills and have taken advantage of their religious beliefs to enslave them.  They accomplish this by capturing priests, planting radio receivers in their brains, and convincing them that the voices they then hear are the voices of the gods.  Of course, the voices are the pirates, telling them they must serve and obey the Star Devil and his men.

Also in the computer is information that the expedition members have been taken to the pirate mining town awesomely named Slave City One.  Other than information, the players can gain equipment from the outpost; they can also obtain a jetcopter.

In the middle of the module, a briefing update describes the enslaved race:

          The Edestekai are an intelligent race descended from Volturnian arthropods.  They are trilaterally symetrical,  That is, if their bodies were divided lengthwise into three equal parts, the parts would be mirror images of each other.
          The body of an Edestekai is shaped like a giant peanut with three bulbous lobes on top.  Three eyes are arranged in a circle around the narrowest part of the body, the midpoint or waist.  The eyes are arranged in such a way that the Edestekai have a 360 degree field of vision.
          Edestekai have three lower limbs arranged like a tripod.  The first and largest joint on each of these limbs is covered with a hard extension of shell and serves as a foot.  The limb continues to a second and third joints which are roughly analogous to a Human elbow and wrist.  Below the third joint are three tentacles which are used for grasping and manipulating objects.
          Underneath their bodies, Edestekai have a number of special thick cilia, or hair-like filaments.  These cilia are used as a base to support the body when the limbs are extended completely straight.  Except for their tentacles, cilia, and eyes, Edestekai bodies and limbs are encased in an exoskeleton made of chitin, a hard shell-like material.
          The mouth of an Edestekai is located near the base of the body and is hidden by the special cilia.  The Edestekai communicate by means of a language composed of shrieks, whistles, groans, and other sounds combined with clicks of the limbs and signs with the grasping tentacles.

It is assumed that the party will travel to Slave City One.  On the way, they encounter an air whale.  Part plant and part animal, an air whale generates hydrogen as a by-product of its diet (which includes “floating plankton”).  This hydrogen, “stored in hundreds of inner membrane sacs,” allows the air whale to float.  There are crystal-based life forms that live symbiotically with air whales.  “These crystals focus sunlight into a beam,” the description states, “much like a laser.”  The concept of air whales may be risible, but it has precedent in science fiction:  Quest of the Three Worlds by Cordwainer Smith, The Wind Whales of Ishmael by Philip José Farmer, and that one episode of Blackstar.

If the party attempts to attack Slave City One without assistance from the Edestekai, “they will probably be destroyed by superior numbers.”  So, once again, the player characters must gain the trust of alien beings.  According to the module, “a persistent party should be able to slowly convince the Edestekai priests using demonstrations of how radio works, perhaps even a demonstration of minor surgery.”  Apparently, this convincing must be accomplished without attracting the attention of the pirates.  The actual Star Devil is not encountered in the module but the Star Devil's personal quarters are described:

This lavishly furnished small one-room building contains a bed, bath, bar, holovision projector, several art objects (worth a total of 5,000 Credits), and numerous cheap books, mainly adventure novels.  There is a shield mounted over the bed with the Star Devil's personal insignia on it.

In the punishment/torture cells, player characters find the corpse of one of the original expedition members and strips of cloth with the name tag of another member.  If the party is victorious against the pirates, the referee is supposed to read the following description:

As you stand amid the ruins of Slave City One, you see in the distant desert a solitary figure surveying the wreckage of the pirate town.  This creature is a tall fur-covered animal with a large tail, large hind legs, and small forelimbs or arms.  The creature has a long, slender neck and a small head with large eyes.  In its arms, the creature is carrying the unconscious Lieutenant Colonel Louis V. Jameson.

Jameson was the leader of the first expedition and it was his name tag that was found in the cells.  Although the creature is in the “distant desert,”  the characters can recognize Jameson (and there's no indication that they have ever seen him previously) and can tell he is unconscious rather than dead.  The Edestekai explain “that this creature is one of the messengers of the gods” and they reside under ruins near the center of the southern edge of the planetary map.  “The purpose of this encounter,” the module states, “is to cause the party to go and explore the ruins in hopes of finding Jameson alive.”

The “messengers of the gods” are actually the Eorna, “a race of intelligent dinosaurs” nearly extinct due to the “Day of Death” inflicted by the Sathar.

          Less than 150 Eorna survived the Day of Death.  They soon realized they were doomed as a race, for they knew that their numbers were not large enough to provide a viable gene pool.  The survivors chose to dedicate what remained of their lives to the evolution of other intelligent races on Volturnus.  The Eorna hoped to prepare these races to meet and defeat the Sathar.
          The Eorna are using a subtle process of hypnotic indoctrination and DNA manipulation to accelerate the development of three races toward intelligence.  Most of the Eorna survivors have undergone cryogenic sleep, waiting to be awakened until they are needed to continue the project.  Despite the fact that most of their young are born physically or mentally deficient because of the limited gene pool, the Eorna continue to breed, relying upon the few normal children to help continue the project.

The underground complex of the Eorna is another sci-fi dungeon.  Within the complex is the Asylum Storeroom, a trapped location.  We read, “The player characters will not be able to detect the trap in this room.”  [original emphasis]  This trap is a “challenge to the ingenuity of the players.”  While “air is pumped out slowly from the room,” the characters can use the contents of the storeroom in an attempt to survive.  We are informed, “There are at least four ways the player characters can get out of the room alive.”  One way is to electrolyze water.  Another way is to create gunpowder from available chemicals.  Since this is a challenge of player ingenuity, the characters do not need to possess Demolition skills to employ gunpowder.  (“These are special conditions of this encounter and do not apply to other situations where gunpowder or other explosives may be used.”)  Evidently, for this to work, the players must know how to formulate gunpowder.

Once the characters have traversed five levels of the complex, they locate Jameson and the Eorna “attempt to make friendly contact.”  An exposition dump follows.  There is one more section to the Planet of Mystery module, but I associate it thematically with the final module and feel it is best discussed in conjunction with that module.