Starfinder Society Scenario #2-13: Storm of the End Times

The backstory to Storm of the End Times connects all the way back to Starfinder Society Quest: Into the Unknown, a scenario that was in the first batch ever released for Starfinder Society! In that adventure, the PCs salvaged the logs from a derelict exploration ship and learned of a stormy oceanic world named Wealdriad far out in the Vast. Now, a few years later and with the Scoured Stars behind it, the SFS has the time and resources to send a team out to Wealdriad to investigate what unmanned probes have discovered is a once-in-a-lifetime atmospheric event: an aurora tied to strange basalt columns that thrust out from a particular location on the watery world. The SFS has invited several other groups to attend and take their own astronomical readings as well, but what it doesn't know is that cultists of Groetus have decided to crash the party and blow up the basalt columns! (I think maybe the scenario should have used cultists of The Devourer instead, but why quibble?).

When the PCs' starship exits the Drift, they immediately receive a distress call from the halfling captain of a Church of Ibran explorer vessel called the Whispered Wish. Captain Jinnra explains that her vessel's astronomical recording equipment started malfunctioning as soon as the ship entered orbit, and she's worried they're going to miss out on the big show. She asks the PCs to help investigate. If they say yes, they have an encounter with some ferrofluid oozes (apparently the recording equipment was stabilized with a "ferrofluid suspension") and receive some thank-you gifts, but it also means they miss out on the best available spot on the planet to watch the aurora. If they say no, they get that spot but will receive no cooperation from the Ibrans in the events that occur later. It's a reasonable array of consequences (though I imagine most groups will assume they have to help).

The bulk of the adventure takes place planetside among the basalt columns. In an inexplicable coincidence, the PCs and all the other groups (except for one) that have come to see the aurora have emerged from the 5d6 days of Drift travel with less than 12 hours to spare. The groups need to scramble to get their recording equipment set up on one of the columns, but the columns have various topographical and other features that make some more desirable than other. In-game, this scramble is represented by the PCs needing to explore the sites and negotiate with the other groups for a certain number of Recordings, Favors, and Findings. Recordings are from the PCs' own observation equipment and those of the other groups, Favors are essentially goodwill from the other groups, and Findings are interesting discoveries the PCs make from exploring the columns (such as links to Morlamaws and a Great Old One named Ghatanothoa!).

It's a lot for the GM to keep on top of, but fortunately the scenario does provide a secret timeline sheet and a separate tracking sheet. The various groups are mostly described succinctly and with just enough information (a named NPC leader with a line about their personality) to enable some role-playing, but a good GM will add some improv. An exception to that is for one group that arrived on Wealdriad days ago and set up shop at the best location: a group of "shatoris" (a race I'm not familiar with from Alien Archive 3) from the Aeon Empire. The scenario provides a great deal of setting lore about shatoris, and they do sound like an interesting species to continue developing.

There's a possible (and rather forgettable) fight between the PCs and some leaping fish ("sailpikes"), but the only mandatory combat in the scenario is the big end sequence when the PCs learn that Groetans have arrived on planet and are attaching explosives to the columns. This fight is pretty cinematic in that it features the PCs on a hovercraft versus the cultists on hovertrikes as all parties skim just above the stormy waves (one could imagine the beautifully-atmospheric Jango Fett/Obi-Wan battle in Attack of the Clones). As the GM, I wasn't able to pull off as much excitement as I would've liked (vehicles are challenging!), but I think it was still pretty fun and everyone seemed satisfied at the end.

In sum, Storm of the End Times turned out to be a well-written, well-designed, and solid gaming experience. But hey, next time you see a Groetan on the street corner proclaiming "The End is Nigh", toss them a credit! If the world doesn't end, it means they've had a bad day.

Two of them are absolutely perfunctory. The fight with the ferrofluid ooze is both a little disappointing - you literally fight a ferrofluid ooze in another year 2 1-4 adventure - it can be VERY hard if the party lacks certain offensive options.

The fight with the hostile fish is fun and funny. The scenario recommends placing it right before the climax but I think this creates unnecessary separation between players and their goals at the end. Instead I recommend placing this at a point during investigation and diplomacy where things have gotten a little repetitive and the players attention is starting to drag.

The last combat is very fun. Consider having the cultists play a bit of keep away so you get a chance to trigger your black hole ability to drag people off of boats - this was a highly memorable combat.

For starters, one of the NPCs is of a race that doesn't appear in any published source (rather, it appears in a previous adventure; see the GM thread). The race isn't described or explained in the scenario, unfortunately.

The scenario asks you to chat up a number of different factions and make friends with them. (Gain their favor.) There's a handy handout to help you with this, which I'll mention a little later. The scenario forgot to mention what task you need to perform to make friends with certain factions, though, or you can't make friends with them all and that fact wasn't described in the text. At least one other faction only "favors" PCs with a certain scenario boons. This is an unfortunate complication because the players can only explore a faction's location if they have gained favor from that faction. That isn't necessarily a problem, but the handout seems to indicate that you can gain favor with every (normal) faction. That, combined with the problem that there's no note saying which factions you can't gain favor with, suggests that a mistake was made somewhere in authoring or development here and some information was cut or was never written.

The handout hints at another potential issue--a final faction, the cultists, is noted in the handout as landing at a certain stage, but their appearance isn't noted anywhere else in the text! They just sort of magically appear without further comment when they blow up a pillar. Again, it can be worked around if you prepare, but it really made me think that the whole "cultists show up" event was missing.

Finally, the final combat encounter was very strange. The stat blocks were fine (not that I deconstructed them in any detail) but the setting is a ledge on a pillar that has been rigged to explode--and the explosives have gone missing! The players are strongly hinted to go defuse the bombs but there's no mention of how to do that, or where they are on the map. Again, a GM can improvise this bit and it's generally fine, but it would have been helpful to have a couple of markers on the map with an Engineering DC at least.

The various factions (except for the cultists, whose entry got deleted or was never written or something) are all detailed enough to give a GM something to work with to really bring out the different personalities and make life interesting. And the astronomers are a very nice callout to a race in an Alien Archive that has some serious potential.

The setting is a great one--maybe a little reminiscent of the Gloomspires in a way, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There are a lot of little callbacks to our friend Morlamaws that I appreciated.

Finally, with enough prep, I was able to work around all of the issues mentioned above. It wasn't perfect, but it worked. Everyone at the table had a good time, which in the end is the metric by which we should measure ourselves.