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Hey guys. Just wanted to throw an idea out there for others to use or if people have suggestions.
So I am thinking of having Zo! (From the SFS) be at the meeting with Ambassador Norr. That way, going to explore the ship and drift rock will be both for investigating for the ambassador and it won't seem like a betrayal when they get back to the station and everyone has seen the video of them exploring.
The premise is that them being recorded is a "pilot episode" for "Live Exploration Extreme". When this goes well, it will get Zo!to invest in the society and make his show.
Thoughts?
I don't think you're missing anything. There aren't really any 'salvage' rules, so it's like the Devs never thought a player would try to do that and just glossed over what happened to it. Just short cut your player and say that Clara-247 self destructed whatever was left before she abandoned ship. Or you can use that as an excuse later when you give them the automagical build points that ships get at every level.
Hey guys. Just wanted to throw an idea out there for others to use or if people have suggestions.
So I am thinking of having Zo! (From the SFS) be at the meeting with Ambassador Norr. That way, going to explore the ship and drift rock will be both for investigating for the ambassador and it won't seem like a betrayal when they get back to the station and everyone has seen the video of them exploring.
The premise is that them being recorded is a "pilot episode" for "Live Exploration Extreme". When this goes well, it will get Zo!to invest in the society and make his show.
Thoughts?
This is awesome. I wish I had heard of Zo! before I ran IoAS.
This is awesome. I wish I had heard of Zo! before I ran IoAS.Hey guys. Just wanted to throw an idea out there for others to use or if people have suggestions.
So I am thinking of having Zo! (From the SFS) be at the meeting with Ambassador Norr. That way, going to explore the ship and drift rock will be both for investigating for the ambassador and it won't seem like a betrayal when they get back to the station and everyone has seen the video of them exploring.
The premise is that them being recorded is a "pilot episode" for "Live Exploration Extreme". When this goes well, it will get Zo!to invest in the society and make his show.
Thoughts?
+1 My group have just entered The Fusion Queen so Norr has yet to enter the equation. Love the notion of Zo! being part of proceedings - makes perfect sense why they are then recorded whilst on Drift Rock.
And if they are smart, their new found fame will also stymie any reprisals from AE.. at least while their 15 parsecs of fame lasts :)
Could also come back into play when they visit Eox in Splintered Worlds? Macabre souvenir hunters looking for body parts of our erstwhile vid-stars...
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I don't think you're missing anything. There aren't really any 'salvage' rules, so it's like the Devs never thought a player would try to do that and just glossed over what happened to it. Just shortcut your player and say that Clara-247 self-destructed whatever was left before she abandoned ship. Or you can use that as an excuse later when you give them the automagical build points that ships get at every level.
That was my plan if there wasn't anything specific. He keeps mentioning a 'fleet of ships' when speaking about the future. That's just...no thanks. It took them 4 assaults on the Fusion Queen to get things done, and even then I kinda forced their hand on the final attempt. Really don't think a fleet of ships is going to do them any good.
Players get a fixed amount of BP depending on their level. If they have 100 BP and want to use it in 4 different crappy ships, I'm ok with that.
If the idea is that they'll have 4 (or potentially, dozens) of ships and have 100bp in each, they should learn the harsh reality as soon as possible.
It will make your Starship combats super difficult to run/manage, I think. Like, I don't know if they'd be better or worse at it, but I think it would take forever to run through one in real life if you had 6 or 7 ships on the board.
He's mentioned in the Pact Worlds book, page 94, "Halls of the Living", and seems to be a key NPC in Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Scenario #1-09: Live Exploration Extreme!.
Zo! was also introduced in Starfinder Society RPG Scenario #1-05: The First Mandate.
Hey guys. Just wanted to throw an idea out there for others to use or if people have suggestions.
So I am thinking of having Zo! (From the SFS) be at the meeting with Ambassador Norr. That way, going to explore the ship and drift rock will be both for investigating for the ambassador and it won't seem like a betrayal when they get back to the station and everyone has seen the video of them exploring.
The premise is that them being recorded is a "pilot episode" for "Live Exploration Extreme". When this goes well, it will get Zo!to invest in the society and make his show.
Thoughts?
Absolutely brilliant!
I'm wondering, is there any reason that the crew of the Acreon distributed the akata cocoons all over their ship? Why keep some on the bridge and some in engineering when they have three perfectly good cargo bays on board?
Splitting the loot, I'd guess. Greedy miners!
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^That. IIRC, there's one Akata egg per original miner/crew on the ship (or something close to that). They probably each got one as a 'bonus' and had it with them or near their favorite place(s) on the ship when they hatched and all hell broke loose. At least, that's how I'm playing it when I do the rundown in the ship's log of what happened.
Sounds good enough to me.
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Put some scrimshaw on the eggs. "To My dear mo *splatter*"
For my group, they beat the first star ship fight, it was a learning curve for all of us. but after they decided to catch the Stiletto and i let them have land it in the cargo bay of the Hippocampus, looking at the rules it says that a star ship at 0 or less hp drifts at half its speed in a given direction, with the Stiletto being 12 speed as a base line, going to half making it 6 matching the speed of the Hippocampus. the party just boosted its speed to 8 and got in front of it and caught it. then i had clara pop up from the cockpit with her holographic clone already up. they took her down but left her alive. She was taken away by the guards i had in the armada that the party called and it took a half hour for them to show up.
For other dms this could still play out with players catching the Stilletto, just being outside of the ship and a zero g fight.
My party had a hard time with the akata, and from the way they interpreted the logs on the ship, they think the drift rock might have over 100 akatas on it. So they thought of calling backup. now as it was hard to deny them that, i did the best i could in the moment. letting them contact who hired them Eox’s ambassador and had him tell them back up was on its way but will take some time to get there, and to go down to the drift rock and if things get too bad down there to get on the ship and wait for backup to arrive. thus making me skip the part where the ship leaves them stranded.
players have seen enough scifi horror to know not to explore more when they can call for back up.
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Hey, Folks!
I put together shipsheets for the ships used in the campaign. I'll add pages to it when parts 5 and 6 come out, as well. The stats and DCs for some of the offensive actions on the enemy ships' sheets are based on fighting the Sunrise Maiden as she is presented in the first book.
Enjoy!
Paris, this is a life saver!
Paris, this is a life saver!Hey, Folks!
I put together shipsheets for the ships used in the campaign. I'll add pages to it when parts 5 and 6 come out, as well. The stats and DCs for some of the offensive actions on the enemy ships' sheets are based on fighting the Sunrise Maiden as she is presented in the first book.
Enjoy!
Indeed, thanks a lot for these!
Contributor
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Indeed, thanks a lot for these!Paris, this is a life saver!Hey, Folks!
I put together shipsheets for the ships used in the campaign. I'll add pages to it when parts 5 and 6 come out, as well. The stats and DCs for some of the offensive actions on the enemy ships' sheets are based on fighting the Sunrise Maiden as she is presented in the first book.
Enjoy!
I'm glad folks are finding them helpful. I am about to update the file to add the ship sheets for books 5 and 6. How would you like me to present the DCs? Should I assume that the PCs' ship tier is the same as the the proposed level for the portion of the AP in which the ship combat takes place? Or should I just leave those blank?
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Contributor
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Indeed, thanks a lot for these!Paris, this is a life saver!Hey, Folks!
I put together shipsheets for the ships used in the campaign. I'll add pages to it when parts 5 and 6 come out, as well. The stats and DCs for some of the offensive actions on the enemy ships' sheets are based on fighting the Sunrise Maiden as she is presented in the first book.
Enjoy!
I'm glad folks are finding them helpful. I am about to update the file to add the ship sheets for books 5 and 6. How would you like me to present the DCs? Should I assume that the PCs' ship tier is the same as the the proposed level for the portion of the AP in which the ship combat takes place? Or should I just leave those blank?
I went ahead and made a command decision. The sheets below include every ship involved in combat presented throughout the AP. The DCs are calculated based on the premise that the PCs' ship's tier will be equivalent to the APL recommended at that part of the campaign.
Dead Suns Shipsheets (DS 1-6).PDF
There are lots of numbers to juggle, here, so I may have made some errors. Please let me know if you find any mistakes.
Thanks!
My party had a hard time with the akata, and from the way they interpreted the logs on the ship, they think the drift rock might have over 100 akatas on it. So they thought of calling backup. now as it was hard to deny them that, i did the best i could in the moment. letting them contact who hired them Eox’s ambassador and had him tell them back up was on its way but will take some time to get there, and to go down to the drift rock and if things get too bad down there to get on the ship and wait for backup to arrive. thus making me skip the part where the ship leaves them stranded.
players have seen enough scifi horror to know not to explore more when they can call for back up.
It sounds like you handled it well. And even with backup, the Ambassador can ask to PCs to explore the "constructed" sections once others have secured the other portions of the asteroid. If the PCs completely chicken out, others can find the strange language and get the glory, and the Starfinder society can impart to the PCs that it would be good for their reputation to follow-up on Castrovel.
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For those wondering about the Ambassador's package, Empire of Bones gives some additional information.
The officer is a double agent from the Corpse Fleet. Motivation and true loyalties are not specified, but given the Ambassador's loyalty to the Pact Worlds, it's likely an informant against the Corpse Fleet.
So my Dead Suns game is finally restarting after finishing Strange Aeons.
Rereading this adventure it actually seems to be written in such a way that it removes as much agency from the player's as possible. What I mean is that it doesn't really matter which gang they end up defeating, the outcome is largely the same. It doesn't matter whether they side with the Hardscrabble Collective or if they side with Astral Extractions, they still have the mercenary fight and the mercenary still acts in largely the same way. It doesn't matter whether they win or lose the mercenary fight, they still make it to the Drift Rock and the adventure continues along. It doesn't matter whether they pry open the sarcophagus or leave it shut, that NPC has zero impact on the rest of the campaign and no actual repercussions occur to the PCs regardless of what they do.
It's likely that this is a particularly sore point for me because throughout Strange Aeons we continuously had zero agency as to what occurred or how it occurred (right up to the climax where we had to deliberately ignore all GM hints to avoid killing ourselves). But it's something that's going to stick out like a sore thumb to my group given the campaign we just finished so I need to fix it.
What's happened so far
The PCs attacked only the Downside Kings which resulted in the Level 21 Crew somewhat being befriended by them (it's been a long time now so I don't remember if there was any actual contact with the Level 21 Crew). When they spoke with Nor they agreed to the mission to check out Drift Rock as a neutral party. They were then approached by Astral Extractions and shmoozed with a powerpoint presentation and dinner as to why Astral Extractions was such a good organisation. They then reached out to the Hardscrabble Collective to arrange breakfast with them the next day.
What's going to happen
The Hardscrabble is going to give the PC's a USB stick that when inserted into the drone will result in the broadcast being sent by the drone to become unencrypted, allowing all of the local media outlets to show the broadcast of what the PC's are doing, LIVE.
It is up to the PC's whether or not they actually do this.
If the PC's choose to insert the USB which decrypts the broadcast while enroute to Drift Rock, then Astral Extractions will call off the mercenary and get her to land on Drift Rock and instead snipe attack the drone from cover before attacking the PC's. Otherwise the mercenary acts as scripted.
If the PC's open the port cargo and see the Eoxian she claims diplomatic immunity in front of the drone, otherwise she tells the PC's she knows nothing and is currently enroute to the embassy on important business unrelated to whatever is occurring on Drift Rock (this is all true).
If the PC's put the cargo onto the ship in full view of the drone when it is being broadcast over an unsecure network, Ambassador Nor remotely directs the ship to return to Absalom Station once the PC's are on Drift Rock. Otherwise he chooses to leave the ship on Drift Rock until it becomes clear that the PC's are likely to die while on Drift Rock.
If the PC's show the cargo over the unsecure network, the Corpse Fleet decide to attack the PC's when they're enroute back to Absalom Station (either because they have the cargo on board or because they want to question the PC's to find out what they knew about the cargo). Otherwise they do not attack the PC's at all.
If the PC's stream the drone broadcast unsecurely and end up providing evidence that proves the Hardscrabble Collective's claim then the collective comes to a settlement with Astral Extractions which include a cash payout for the families and more favourable terms for miner's who do work for Astral Extractions. When the PC's go to do repairs on the Sunrise Maiden they find that the Hardscrabble Collective have called in some favors and they get some free labor for work done on their ship which effectively gives them an extra 1,000 credits per PC that they can spend on buying equipment.
If they simply do their job but without sending the broadcast out unsecurely then the matter continues for months and months in the courts before the Hardscrabble Collective finally come to a settlement for some cash and court costs.
If they withhold evidence or falsify evidence to assist Astral Extractions then they gain access to purchase level 5 equipment.
If the PC's are discrete with the Eoxian spy then Nor will have a positive relationship with them and will assist them in the Eox book, with the double agent able to be smuggled back into operations which will allow her to directly assist the player's when they have to face off against the Corpse Fleet. If the PC's are completely indiscrete then they don't get these benefits.
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What do people think? Running things this way can result in the PC's completing book 1/starting book 2 without a single starship battle. But it does result in consequences for the PC's actions and allows their actions to directly impact how small details of the campaign plays out.
The rewards are also different depending on how the PC's conduct themselves.
Something I'm deliberately working on is not having Ambassador Nor and Eox be the bad guys. My group will already be predisposed to seeing them as the bad guys and the AP really does a good job at making them think that. While it's fine to have a red herring, having the red herring be an NPC that they have to deal with in order to engage in the rest of the campaign isn't going to sit well with my group (especially after the last campaign we had). So I am deliberately working to remove the red herring (and will actually change which planet the mercenary's ship is from) to avoid resentment toward Ambassador Nor and all Eoxians.
[EDIT]: I just remembered another thought I had regarding Astral Extractions. Which is that they were deliberately sent to the Drift Rock because they wanted the Garragkhal brought back (ala Alien) so they could turn it into a bioweapon. That would make sense on getting the mercenary to go to the Drift Rock to make sure she finishes off the PC's (get a working ship onto Drift Rock so that Garragkhal can sneak back aboard). This only works if the mercenary really was hired by Astral Extractions.
There should be evidence of this in the recordings that the Acreon Crew made.
Hey guys. Just wanted to throw an idea out there for others to use or if people have suggestions.
So I am thinking of having Zo! (From the SFS) be at the meeting with Ambassador Norr. That way, going to explore the ship and drift rock will be both for investigating for the ambassador and it won't seem like a betrayal when they get back to the station and everyone has seen the video of them exploring.
The premise is that them being recorded is a "pilot episode" for "Live Exploration Extreme". When this goes well, it will get Zo!to invest in the society and make his show.
Thoughts?
HA! I didn't have this setup. But I can definitely have the news announce a new tv show format by Zo! following the broadcast of the PC's actions called "Live Exploration Extreme". I like it.
What about Vor's package? I mean Zo! strikes me as a everything is content sort of guy. I suppose he could be in on it I guess, at least enough to agree to some executive oversight.
Are you talking to me? If so, the initial broadcast wouldn't be part of the television show (although it would get rebroadcast with interviews interspersed explaining the PC's thoughts at the time, or at least scripted versions of those thoughts). If the PC's open Vor's package in full view of the drone (and the drone is broadcasting an unencrypted signal) then the contents of that package would most definitely be fodder for speculation on the television show, otherwise the package wouldn't really be explored because it's a boring detail and the rest of the footage would be filled with laser fights and explosions.
Rereading this adventure it actually seems to be written in such a way that it removes as much agency from the player's as possible. What I mean is that it doesn't really matter which gang they end up defeating, the outcome is largely the same. It doesn't matter whether they side with the Hardscrabble Collective or if they side with Astral Extractions, they still have the mercenary fight and the mercenary still acts in largely the same way. It doesn't matter whether they win or lose the mercenary fight, they still make it to the Drift Rock and the adventure continues along. It doesn't matter whether they pry open the sarcophagus or leave it shut, that NPC has zero impact on the rest of the campaign and no actual repercussions occur to the PCs regardless of what they do.
Unless the GM tells the players after the book is done, how would they know any of this?
I guess it's a different philosophy in DMing. You might not mind Schroidinger's Troll (whether they go left or right they get the troll), I'm not a fan.
Also I just finished a game where none of our choices mattered. It was obvious and not enjoyable. Why would I want to repeat that experience?
I'm just not seeing it.
The main plot points have to occur to move the plot along, the path the players take to get there is their choice. It's pretty much the structure of adventure paths: players schenenigans > plot point is achieved > more players scheneningans > second plot is acquired > last player schenenigans > boss fight.
Unless the GM is improvising an adventure on the fly, and in this case he's wasting money on APs, there's a structure to follow. Or if it's a complete sandbox adventure, and even those usually have an ending planned.
Considering how loose the first part of AP01 is, I haven't seen anyone else complaining about it being a railroad. Second and third part are just a dungeon crawl, and if the GM set it up properly during part one, the players will want to go there.
Considering how loose the first part of AP01 is, I haven't seen anyone else complaining about it being a railroad. Second and third part are just a dungeon crawl, and if the GM set it up properly during part one, the players will want to go there.
Then you've completely missed my point.
The whole gang war, seems to have little to no impact on the rest of the game. What occurs with the PCs during the gang war is completely immaterial to the rest of the adventure path. It's just filler. The PC's can act in any way they want here and their actions won't be undone, but only because their actions are completely meaningless and have no impact on the rest of the campaign.
The mercenary fight happens irregardless of which group the PC's side with. If they side with neither group, they still only have 1 fight because the mercenary is a Schrodinger's Troll which means that the PC's will have that fight no matter what they do. So they might as well not do anything because the game will force them to the fight no matter what. Why write that into the adventure? Why not say "if the PC's side with Astral Extractions the mercenary isn't hired and they have no fight on their way to the Drift Rock."
The mercenary fight is even more egregious. Because regardless of whether they win or lose the PC's end up getting to Drift Rock. The PC's might as well not bother performing any evasive action or even firing a single shot against the mercenary, because the worst case scenario is their rental ship that they have no ties to is going to be injured and still make it to Drift Rock. What is the motive of the mercenary to attack the ship? Either she's completely inept or she's just wasting bullets. Because there is zero impact on the adventure as to whether or not the PC's actually win that combat.
I get that adventure paths do have a certain amount of rail road involved. But they're nowhere near this bad typically. Carrion Crown Book 1 for example had quite a bit of agency as to what the player's could do. Failure to act in certain ways in a certain timeframe had serious repercussions on the PC's. That isn't the case in this adventure.
It's fine, I can fix it. But it is something that stood out to me.
What occurs with the PCs during the gang war is completely immaterial to the rest of the adventure path.
It allows the PCs to start making a name for themselves, and gets Gevalarsk Nor to notice them. How they go about it is entirely up to them - I don't see a problem.
Their actions on part 2 also have no influence on the main plot. They could actually skip the Acreon and go straight to the rock, but would be lacking in firepower.
Yes, they could skip Acreon. Although doing so would mean breaking their contract (which means penalty clauses being brought to bare), not finding evidence that the Hardscrabble Collective is in the right with their claim And potentially failing to bring closure to the miner families. But you are right in saying that they could choose to skip Acreon. That's a good thing in my opinion.
There's a lot of great information in this thread, but it's gotten pretty long. I've read the first two and last page of this thread. I'll go back and browse through it all, but it would be nice if this was was further divided into separate threads, by books and area, as well as issues/suggestions with NPCs/skills/story that a party could run into and finally, contributed resources to make the GMs life easier (like the premade Starship forms).
Maybe this forum thread could be the source material for a more organized and concise wiki-type page of community solutions. Special highlights should include clarifications and comments by the game and adventure path authors.
If someone has already made such a condensed resource, please set me straight.
For context, I'm a new Starfinder GM and this is our first Starfinder adventure for a party of 4 players, but all of us are experienced Pathfinder players. We use Roll20 for our in-person games to project the map onto a tabletop with a mini projector suspended over the table with a microphone boom. We use real minis, pawns, little plastic toys and some old cardboard heroes on the map.
Also: did anyone ever come across a photo of Duravor Kreel? Seems like an odd omission!
some time ago on page 5 of this thread, but in case it's still of use:
I wanted to add some color to the game, so I looked for an image online. All the high tech dwarves I found with a google search were decked out in rather impressive battle armor, not the stained coveralls required by the storyline. In the end I decided to throw together some images to create a Duravor Kreel (you might recognize the sources). I thought giving him a face may help give the players some empathy toward the Starfinder Society (and the Hardscrabble Collective he sympathized with).
I also Created a welcome letter with Duravor's contact info as a hint for the players that there were other Starfinder Society recruits on the Okimoro shuttle, providing a touch of backstory on why they might introduce themselves to each other and coalesce into an adventuring party.
See this Google Drive folder of Starfinder resources you can copy for your own use.
Indeed, thanks a lot for these!Paris, this is a life saver!Hey, Folks!
I put together shipsheets for the ships used in the campaign. I'll add pages to it when parts 5 and 6 come out, as well. The stats and DCs for some of the offensive actions on the enemy ships' sheets are based on fighting the Sunrise Maiden as she is presented in the first book.
Enjoy!
I'm glad folks are finding them helpful. I am about to update the file to add the ship sheets for books 5 and 6. How would you like me to present the DCs? Should I assume that the PCs' ship tier is the same as the the proposed level for the portion of the AP in which the ship combat takes place? Or should I just leave those blank?
I went ahead and made a command decision. The sheets below include every ship involved in combat presented throughout the AP. The DCs are calculated based on the premise that the PCs' ship's tier will be equivalent to the APL recommended at that part of the campaign.
Dead Suns Shipsheets (DS 1-6).PDF
There are lots of numbers to juggle, here, so I may have made some errors. Please let me know if you find any mistakes.
Thanks!
I'm greatly enjoying the ship sheets you put together. I have a correction to suggest. The Sunrise Maiden's turret has a light particle beam. The damage listed should be 3d6 instead of 2d4.
When my players pointed it out to me (they noticed right after their first combat with it), all I could say was "I was wondering why you didn't turn off BOTH safety switches!" ;-)
There's an image of Duravor Kreel in the Dead Suns Pawn Collection. The collection also has images for the different gang members and some others that didn't get images in the book itself.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by separating this thread out by book, since this thread is only for the first book in the series. There are other threads for the other books in the series.
It doesn't matter whether they pry open the sarcophagus or leave it shut, that NPC has zero impact on the rest of the campaign and no actual repercussions occur to the PCs regardless of what they do.
This isn't correct. Whether or not they open the sarcophagus does have a pretty big impact on how part of book three plays out. If they end this book on good terms with Ambassador Nor, they get a lot of help from him in Splintered Worlds (extra cash, intel, fewer skill checks, et al).
Something I'm deliberately working on is not having Ambassador Nor and Eox be the bad guys. My group will already be predisposed to seeing them as the bad guys and the AP really does a good job at making them think that. While it's fine to have a red herring, having the red herring be an NPC that they have to deal with in order to engage in the rest of the campaign isn't going to sit well with my group (especially after the last campaign we had). So I am deliberately working to remove the red herring (and will actually change which planet the mercenary's ship is from) to avoid resentment toward Ambassador Nor and all Eoxians.
I don't think Ambassador Nor is meant to be the bad guy, or even necessarily look like one. One of my biggest problems with this first book is that Rob gave Nor a LE alignment, but then wrote him without him ever actually doing anything that warranted that. What 'side' Nor is on, and whether or not the CF agent in the sarcophagus is a double-agent or Nor's back channel to the CF who he's helping, or whatever, is all left up to the GM.
Personally, given his behavior throughout the rest of the books (rewarding PC's for destroying the CF vessels, helping them figure out the origins of the alien script, providing them with needed intel on the CF agents, et al), I think Nor is actually LN or maybe even LG, and is genuinely attempting to work for the betterment of the Pact. I even played him as being in the delegation from Eox that signed the Pact, and a 'true believer' of the 'together is better' faction of the Eoxian Government.
Nor is perfectly fine being LE (ignoring the extent that alignments are kinda dumb, anyway). Lawful Evil is a belief in using society to your best self interest. Rewarding people who do your dirty work for you is just how society works for LE people.
Nor has a vested self interest in rewarding (and being seen as rewarding) those who take on the Corpse Fleet. Whether he is sympathetic or not, his position requires that he make a show of paying people who "take out the trash."
If he's sympathetic to the fleet, he might be of the opinion that the PCs will probably die before they interfere with the fleet's plans too extensively (and they very well might).
Even if he's not sympathetic to the fleet AND not engaging in funny business, helping the PCs might not be out of the goodness of his heart but simply a job that he is doing for Eox. Plenty of bad people are still patriots.
There's an image of Duravor Kreel in the Dead Suns Pawn Collection. The collection also has images for the different gang members and some others that didn't get images in the book itself.
I just had the first two of the Dead Suns books and I tried an image search on the internet for "starfinder duravor kreel" and came up empty. After I made my own image of Duravor I discovered that there was a Dead Suns Pawn collection and promptly purchased it (good investment by the way). It was then that I realized that there was indeed a Duravor Kreel image already in existence.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by separating this thread out by book, since this thread is only for the first book in the series. There are other threads for the other books in the series.
I was asking if there was a consolidated resource that boiled down the multiple pages of the forum into a more concise resource. Keeping the books grouping (as the forum already does) and also putting the material in chronological order by encounter area (as the forum doesn't--the discussion jumps around within a book as people think of topics, but it hasn't been kept arranged by encounter area as the players will encounter it).
I hoped for a set of companion wiki pages for the Adventure Path that could be updated and refined. The forum is still valuable as the original source of ideas, but it's more like a stream of consciousness. What goes into the wiki page would be a bit subjective, based on the judgement of the contributors, but at least all the gems that have earned a number of "favorite" ratings should be included. And then it would be easier to search, for example, all the good ideas for roleplaying Gevalarsk Nor could be collected together, including the nice resources contributed around this character such as the initial invitation to the Eoxian embassy and follow up communications.
Likewise, if you wanted all the ideas related to playing out the Garaggakal encounter, those ideas would natrually be all together near the end of the Incident at Absalom Station page. All the key points could be gathered into a concise bullet list so a GM can easily review it the night before leading their players through this encounter, including tips on keeping the challenge from being too hard or too easy. Ideally it would be nice to link back to the forum periodically so you could delve into the full discussion as desired.
An appendix at the end would collect all the contributed material such as artwork, ship and npc sheets, audio or video contributions, GM tally and cheat sheets, communications and handouts like the Astral Extractions meeting presentation.
Nor is perfectly fine being LE (ignoring the extent that alignments are kinda dumb, anyway). Lawful Evil is a belief in using society to your best self interest. Rewarding people who do your dirty work for you is just how society works for LE people.
I find Nor a very interesting NPC. The way I've presented him to my players he could be mistaken for Lawful Good. But in the back of my GM mind, I know he could kill and destroy if necessary to advance the needs of Eox and the Pact Worlds. And what would he do if he had to choose, and just how far could the PCs trust him?
At first level the players really don't have a chance to judge his true character, Nor is such a refined diplomat and quite powerful. Suppose Nor gets "Bad news," and the glow in his eye sockets flashes a bit redder and brighter while the water-vapor condenses out of the air around him for a moment--was he really angered by this news, or was it all just for show? The players will have to stay in touch with Nor, observe him carefully, read between the lines, investigate him and go up a few levels and then, and only then, will they have enough experience to know what he truly stands for and is fully capable of.
He's a great ally, but can you trust him? I plan to keep him around for a while as a recurring NPC, and keep his true allegiances a little bit ambiguous for as long as possible.
I am gearing up to run Dead Suns for my group, and I just wanted to say that Paris Crenshaw, ThermalCat, and Myles C., you guys (gals?) all rule! Thanks so much for all the resources you have shared. Shoutouts to all the other thread contributors as well (including/especially the authors and other Paizo staff). Cheers!
Whipped up a corporate logo for Astral Extractions for my campaign; posting it just in case anyone else wants one.
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Poked my nose in the Dead Suns compilation and, for the record, it greatly clarifies Commander Eskolar's (and by extension Gevalarsk Nor's) actual intentions in this adventure.