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A chorus of squeaks, buzzes, and clanks fills the medical ward onboard the Starfinder starship Master of Stars, as three tiny ysoki children bounce around on inflatable exercise balls and climb the automated arms of an operating drone like a jungle gym. Fitch, the Wayfinders faction leader, stands at the far computer terminal as it prints a long strip of paper with multiple lines of densely packed text. Kirkath, so help me Weydan, if you cut yourself on that drone and get sick, you’re gonna have to find someone else to feel sorry for you! Put those things back in the P.T. room now!
She sighs and tears the paper from the printer. Agents, as you may already know, the Pact Worlds colonies are in the midst of a health crisis. People across several planets are coming down with virulent diseases, and the companies of ‘Big Potion’ are moving so slowly with their intervention that medicine prices are skyrocketing. Folks are getting desperate.
Lucky for us, we have an ace in the hole: the Starfinder Society has a strong relationship with the izalguuns, a people out in the Vast whose identities we kept secret per their request. They helped us drive back the jinsul threat during the events of the Scoured Stars, and I’ve maintained discreet communication with some of their elders ever since. The izalguuns mostly lead hunter-gatherer lifestyles these days, but their medicinals are sophisticated. One of their elders, Naarma, has agreed to help us out by synthesizing new medicinal goods that we can provide Pact Worlds colonies to help improve the Society’s image.
Fitch folds the paper and slides it into an envelope. I need you to bring this list of contagion patterns, symptoms, and existing treatments to Naarma on Izalraan so she can work her magic. Naarma also mentioned that she might need our help with a problem of her own, something about radiation if my memory serves. Do what she asks so she can get us ahead of this outbreak and ensure that others see the Society for the noble institution we are. Any questions?
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A deeply red skinned man in a long-sleeved white shirt and a set of armor that leans heavily on romanticized images of freebooter captain. He carries what only seems to be a baton for a weapon. He picks one of the kids off the highest arm of the robot before joinging everyone around Fitch giving them an easy smile.
"We're travelling back to Izalraan? Feels like I just got back from my last mission there. The finally get the weather around that research base under control? It was certainly causing some heavy snow fall."
"Anyways, I'm sure we should be keeping the real reason we're going there under wraps, given the wishes of the izalguun in regards to their technologies?"
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The woman, dressed in tight black latex and leather, takes a deep drag on her cigarette and blows a smoke ring into the air, throwing her head back. Her milky white hair, pale purple skin and pointed ears indicate her as a half-elf from the Apostae.
- Name's Yarameh. Hi everyone. - half-drow flicks the ash from her cigarette on the floor. - For now everything looks very simple and clear. All the surprises are waiting for us already in place. And it is good that akitonian guy already been among the natives. He will tell us what we can and can't do so as not to upset them more than necessary.
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A little bot runs out and sucks up the ash that Yarameh dropped, squeaking in annoyance.
Fitch replies as best she can. These outbreaks?.. Fairly standard colonization risk; Pact Worlds and Veskarium settlements finding some new strain of disease that manages to affect the colonists after someone breaks standard procedures. It happens infrequently, but lately a rash of expansion has just led to us seeing more outbreaks than we’re used to seeing. I know the growing concern is about the people on Zeyther-3, an icy world currently reporting a mounting epidemic. So no, you're not going to get infected cause you're not going there.
Izalguuns largely don’t use advanced technology anymore, with the exception of medicine. All of our communications with Naarma have been in person because they don’t receive electronic messages. Even if they could, though, we suspect some bad actors have been intercepting our comms, so we’d like to keep any work involving the izalguuns or the pandemic on the down low, especially to keep protecting those izalguuns not interested in being exploited by other starfaring species. Sending a team to an uninteresting planet in the Vast is pretty on-brand for us, so this mission shouldn’t raise any red flags.
As for the radiation, you'll have to ask Naarma for specifics, but she mentioned something about a radiation leak or radiation poisoning of some sort near an izalguun village. I’d plan accordingly, you won’t have many high-tech shopping options once you land on Izalraan.
Please roll Culture to Recall Knowledge about the Izalguuns and their adopted planet.
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Dr. Creed Morvius enters the briefing, and he simply doesn't look like himself. Though known around the Lorespire complex for his rugged good looks, he appears disheveled, unshaven, and distracted.
He does, however, pay close attention to the briefing once it begins, taking notes on a comm device. He is already well-versed in this new contagion (he IS a doctor, afterall...), but he is careful to document the list of symptoms and information about the disease and those it's affecting.
"I have already spent some time with the Izalguuns, and I believe I formed some positive relationships. I think I can help Naarma come up with a solution for us, and I'm of course willing to do all I can to assist her."
Dr. Morvius will buy a radiation buffer and add it to his armor (swapping it out with his infrared sensors).
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Ceolor pops out a small data pad and plugs a device into it as he spends a moment in quiet meditation. After a moment a small band of light wavers through his hair as he taps around on the pad before bringing up some data on the izalguuns.
He then flashes the information, along with a few pictures of the place he took on his last mission there. "As you can see..."
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Izalguuns are native to the Vast world of Icefront, which they call Izalraan. They live agrarian lifestyles.
Izalguuns have mastered living off the land, adapting to their planet’s long, extreme seasonal climate and respectfully coexisting with the native megafauna. Elder Naarma’s community should be entering Izalraan’s temperate spring season around now.
Izalguuns originally hail from the Scoured Stars, having fled when their ancestral god Kadrical went into slumber ages ago. They once possessed extremely advanced technology, but they abandoned it in order to lead more sustainable, peaceful lives on their adopted homeworld.
The Starfinder Society discovered the izalguuns’ history and technological aptitude, but did not share the information with the Pact Worlds out of respect for Elder Naarma’s request that her people be left in peace. Thanks to this decision, some izalguun trailblazers have left Izalraan to become Starfinders themselves, and some izalguuns briefly revisited their technology—notably their long-inactive starships—to help defeat the jinsul menace during the Society’s final push into the Scoured Stars.
Most of the izalguuns’ starships and pre-Izalraan buildings were fueled by nuclear power, managed with sophisticated containment mechanisms overseen by artificial intelligence. During their many storied conflicts with the jinsuls, a common jinsul terrorist tactic was to attack these reactors to create radioactive fallout. This might be how Naarma recognizes the effects of radiation poisoning.
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It takes this long to get to Icefront on board a chartered freighter. The trip is mostly uneventful. On landing, you are greeted by the izalguun and taken to Elder Naarma’s ziggurat, which is in the medical ward of a larger, buried starship. Naarma welcomes you and wastes no time asking for Fitch’s data. She looks over the document for a few moments to process its contents before addressing you.
The izalguun slowly nods her head as she skims the medical data. Yes. This should be doable. Very doable, in fact. I may have some questions, but they are not pertinent at the moment. As Fitch hopefully told you, I have a favour to ask in return for my service.
Some izalguuns from a neighbouring village have recently been coming to me for treatments. I thought it might be sunburn at first, but it is too harsh and consistent for this season, plus some of our hunters began returning from the same region with animals that were dead or...changed. Radiation poisoning is almost certainly the problem, probably from a power core leak from one of our ancestral starships like the one we presently occupy. I do not know why the containment mechanisms failed, but the leak must be stopped before the radiation spreads. My people no longer possess the armour technology or wherewithal to safely approach this threat, but for you the task should be trivial. Will you do this for us?
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Ceolor, warmed against the lingering chill of the late winter air in his now upgraded armor, gives a nod at the elder's request. "We don't have anything else to be doing while you make the medications and you're doing us a favor making them in the first place. The least we could do is take a look at something like that!"
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The briefing over, Second-1 finally introduces himself "Maybe a little sparse on the details but been a lot of that lately..." awkward head scratch "Anyway, nice to be on mission with you all. I'm Second-1."
Second-1 spends the remainder of the trip harassing the crew about their systems and how a lot of the software could use some updating.
Finally at their destination, the android is happy to have something else to do, and is eager to get moving.
"A pleasure to meet you, Elder, and of course we will uphold the Society's end of the deal. Is there anything you can tell us about the area or the ship we'll be looking into?"
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Naama nods at that. She then gives you directions to an abandoned hamlet where the starship is buried, along with an etched metal panel with some translations of common Izalguun words and the foundational code for izalguun software.
You can buy analog items and medicinals of any appropriate item level from the izalguuns before departing, but technological and magic items are almost nonexistent.
I do not know what caused the leak. Our nuclear containment technology has always been reliable and self-sustaining. We have inhabited this planet for generations and this is the first I have heard of this happening. I suppose all artificial things break down eventually, but at least it should be easy to fix.
As for stopping it, make your way to the ship’s power core, containment protocols should be intuitive from there. If there is a problem getting there, go to the bridge and use the master computer to find a new route. I would provide a ship schematic if I had one, but it appears the leak is coming from a grand transport from our exodus centuries ago; no izalguun living today has seen the interior of a ship like this.
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For most of the flight, Yarameh listened black metal in her cabin, loud enough to be heard throughout the ship. Moreover, she played the electric guitar herself, and quite passably. The dark and heavy musical style, strange singing, alternating growls and demonic themes in the lyrics might not appeal to everyone, but this clearly did not stop her.
During the conversation with the Elder, Yarameh hardly listens to her. She still has an earpiece in one ear, which is clearly playing the same music, which makes her speak a little louder than normal.
- I see. We will shoot and solve technical gaps. Why am I sure we're going to shoot? And we wouldn't be here otherwise. Nothing new. Let's go.
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So, taking Yarameh's lead, you go. Because of the rough terrain, it is easier to go by foot - taking you hours to get there.
As you approach your destination, the snow gradually disappears and any devices you may possess that detect radiation slowly come to life, indicating a minor radiation leak. You eventually find a vast, strangely angular hillock upon which a small hamlet—its buildings long abandoned—stands, encircling a tall ziggurat like the ones in Naarma’s village. The radiation in this area functions as low radiation that affects creatures only once every hour. This effect is harmless to anyone in any kind of armour, but dangerous to wildlife with prolonged exposure.
Unfortunately, the abandoned izalguun hamlet became home for a family of grazing herbivores called ovibovos. These creatures resemble massive musk oxen with blunt, stubby horns and bodies covered by long hair, causing them to resemble giant mop heads. The radiation wasted away most of the ovibovos, but some became horribly mutated instead.
Several dirt paths lead through the budding undergrowth surrounding this dilapidated village. The roads and empty building frames converge at a towering ziggurat, its basic geometry enhanced by its tarnished metallic composition: a simple structure made from advanced materials long ago. Clumps of long brown hair lie scattered about the area, haphazardly tangled into matted carpets or hanging in bundles from the walls of the crumbling houses. Some hair is dark with blood, some is mottled with rotting flesh, and some still clings to several gigantic bovine corpses strewn about the settlement.
The remaining ovibovos inhabit the territory at the base of the ziggurat, painfully mutated by the radiation such that they spontaneously shed clumps of their hair—as well as autonomous tumours—from their polluted flesh. The ovibovos are distressed and irate.
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Ceolor gives the creatures a long look. "I'm not one for communicating with animals, but people do say I have a way with words... But I feel that those mutations must be painful, and not necessarily good for the rest of the environment at large if they were to reproduce with healthy individuals. I'm okay with climbing a hovel or two and giving them some mercy."
Dr. Morvius wonders if we can go around them. Or scare them off?
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- Okay, I'll try. Rrrr! Go away! Rrrr! See? Does not work.
She raises her heavy bolter and fires at the nearest one, having previously retreated so as not to be in the first line.
At the moment of firing, her weapon flashes a bright red light! The mutant that was hit by the flash shot also glowed red. And, just in case that wasn't enough, black metal music starts playing loudly from the speaker on her shoulder...
- I said go away! OBEY ME!!!
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- Loud and Proud: Any weapon you wield that has the powered weapon special property or that uses ammunition gains the bright weapon special property; you can activate or deactivate this ability as a swift or move action. Bright weapons you wield gain the blind critical hit effect or the deafen critical hit effect.
- As a full action, you can make a single attack using a weapon that deals sonic damage or has the bright special property. After resolving the attack, as part of the full action you can attempt an Intimidate check to demoralize any one creature within 60 feet of you that the attack hit or damaged.
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Yarameh turns the bolter in the other direction and happily and loudly laughing while shooting from the hip at the not yet wounded creature. The heavy metal music gets louder, the flashes start to look like a light show at a concert, and you realize that she's also turned on the camera on her suit.
- It will be a great clip for a new song... Die, you radioactive freak! Hahah!
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Ceolor gives a snap of his fingers as a pure black gun modeled after a 254 AR Azimuth Laser Rifle appears in his hands and a slow orange glow lifts from his eyes. He takes a second to will the glow to extend to his weapon as he takes aim at the beast. "Sure hope the radiation here doesn't give this thing a resistance to heat!"