In the latest episode of their cotton candy podcast, Ken and Robin talk encouraging player independence, the discovery of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, a fluffy planet, and Florida nephilim.
Category Archives: Ashen Stars
Various Pelgranes have written mini-posts inspired by a different filtered image of a mysterious man in a suit of nails. Robin’s contribution is a scenario hook for Ashen Stars. The lasers accept a contract from the vas mal Institute for Temporal Folklore to investigate reported appearances of the Time Sentinel on a hypergas extraction rig […]
Uqbar Formerly military, currently militant History Uqbar’s lifeless – for the most part. Some of the planet’s spectacular ravines have been roofed over and pressurised, creating a few habitable zones. The planet’s atmosphere is thin and unbreathable – it’s mostly argon – and lights up with astounding flares and aurorae as radiation from the collapsed […]
Themis Prime Heavily Populated, Bitterly Divided History Many worlds can support life; few allow it to thrive. Themis Prime was one of the rare eden of the Bleed, a world with a biosphere requiring only minor tweaks compatible with most of the major Combine species. Humans, Balla and Tavak all settled on this world, united […]
Goliath Gas giant with many secrets Sullen, mighty Goliath dominates the outer reaches of the Themis System. The gas giant’s many moons are uninhabited apart from a few research, refuelling or prospecting outposts, although there are likely secret weapons dumps left by General Gatar’s forces hidden here too, concealed by the electromagnetic flux. Only Goliath-C […]
The Campaign The key to any Station Duty campaign: layers. Everything – every character, every faction, every location – should have a surface layer that’s immediately obvious, and hidden depths that must be uncovered. These don’t all have to be dark secrets or criminal schemes – it’s fine, say, to have the Lasers discover that […]
Ashen Stars uses the episodic ‘planet-of-the-week’ or ‘case-of-the-week’ approach to adventures – the Lasers get an assignment, show up, solve the mystery, and move on to some other part of the Bleed. It’s Have Starship, Will Travel.In a Station Duty campaign, the Lasers are on permanent assignment to a particularly troubled system or sector, a […]
A scenario hook for Ashen Stars The lasers take a contract from the Combine Xenoarchaelogical Foundation to protect the ruins on Delaney. This largely uninhabited world contains remnant structures from the dimly-known ancient civilization known to Combine scholars as CIVA-3. This enigmatic culture left ruins across the worlds of the Bleed. On Delaney the most […]
When your Ashen Stars characters next seek a person, piece of information, or illicit technology, place the object of their search in the fleet of the Asteroid Pirates. These rough-edged survivors of the post-War Bleed seek their fortunes in ships whose hulls are part alloy, part hollowed-out microplanetoid. Arrayed together, aided by sophisticated wavelength spoofers, […]
In the latest episode of their anomaly-detecting podcast, Ken and Robin talk science mystery scenarios, a cannibal fugitive, hardboiled 30s Mutant City Blues, and changing the condiment timestream.