[Campaign Journal] Nullpunkt's The Chimera Mystery


The Threefold Conspiracy


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

We had our first session of The Chimera Mystery last Monday. I am running this in German for a group of four via roll20. It's our first Starfinder campaign after finishing Jade Regent last week. We dipped our toes into the system when it came out, but this is the first serious attempt to go through more then just a level or two.

I'm going to keep my notes here. Maybe someone comes across this while preparing their own game and finds any of it useful.

The PCs (background):
Alyssa - female damaya lashunta solarian (???)
Eeree - male strix technomancer (visionary)
Sokka - female ysoki mechanic (???)
Stardust - SRO Operative (traveller)

The player have decided to root all their characters in a common backstory with ties to the underworld. But other than the fact that they all know each other at the beginning of the book and have worked together in the past, no details were worked out.

This will of course turn out to be just a controlled parameter in the Gray's experiment: does an existing bond between the clones improve their performance? I plan to drop a hint at that some time in book 2. Later, they will find out that none of their alleged underworld contacts actually exist.

I kicked off the book with a lengthy narration of the first scene at the airlock, describing the other passengers as they board. After boarding, each PC settles into their cabin and is presented with the holovid I posted in another thread, which introduces the crew and the ship.

After this lore dump, I went around the table asking how their character would spend the first afternoon on board (I decided they left Legacy Station right after noon). Eeree went to stretch his wings in the gym, Stardust explored the middle deck, Sokka went to check out the dining hall, and Alyssa settled into her room.

Fast forward to just before dinner and Event 1. Everyone is present when the asteroid lice break free and combat ensues. To my surprise, all players said that their character's would be unarmed, since nobody brought a pistol, everyone is wielding longarms. We had discussed earlier that it would probably be fine to wear a holstered blaster around the ship, but everyonr agreed that you wouldn't bring a laser rifle to the dinner table.

This made the combat a lot longer and dangerous than expected. The only one who had a weapon at all was the solarian, but her low strength meant lots of misses and low damage. Only thanks to the technomancer's overheat spells did the asteroid lice finally go down.

After a few rounds of the PCs failing miserably to do damage, I started to bring in Algiada, but she arrived just when the last lice went down from a well-placed overheat.

Song enters and has a meltdown, orders Kiiv to clean up the mess. Alyssa offers to help and they match off to the incinerator as written in the book.

We then ended the session with apologies from the professor.

After the session, I texted Alyssa a cutscenes of the scene that follows in engineering as described in the book.

Conclusions
Overall, I think the session went well and everything served its purpose well: the players know the entire cast (at least by name and holovid image) and the general layout of the ship. They have also earned the professor's respect, which will become important later, when he asks them to look for Algiada. Since Algiada provided some medical aid to Eeree after the battle, there may even be intrinsic motivation to look for her when she disappears.

Dealing with the overheard conversation in a cutscene off-stage also worked well, because that scene may otherwise go seriously off the rails, I think. But of course, it's not everyone's cup of tea to be railroaded like that.

Anyway, we had fun and I'm looking forward to run the next session, when the mystery will actually start to unfold!


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Things I haven't figured out, yet:

Who are the PCs' clones/copy?
What is the nature of Eeree's vision?


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

I'm considering making Eeree's vision not actually a vision, but remnants of not properly erased memories from previous tests. Maybe there was a training scenario set on a fake Absalom Station and he remembers glimpses of it that he experiences as a vision.

Not sure on the details yet and how and when to reveal this, though.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

"The light. You mostly remember the light. Bright white, burning in your eyes. It was all around you, above, left, right, below, as if you were suspended in it.

And the whispers. Just at the edge of hearing, as if coming from within your own skull, in a language you couldn't understand. Except for two words: Absalom Station.

And the shape. That strange, oblong dark shape, slowly getting bigger and blocking out the light, until there's only darkness.

The vision haunts you. What does it mean? Is someone trying to tell you something? Is it a cry for help? Or a trap?

Whatever it is, you have only one destination if you want to find answers. Absalom Station."

This is what I have in mind. Maybe it's a little too obvious? But maybe that makes it even more fun?

Not sure yet.


This is great so far thanks for the journal updates! Keep it up.
In my experience so far there is no such thing as too obvious until that final scene of book1!


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Thanks for chiming in! Great for motivation to see that someone is reading this.

And yeah, I find it so hard to gauge what is obvious as a GM. And, in this particular case, it's actually a no-lose situation: If the player realizes immediately what the "vision" actually is, I can easily respond with: Or is that what they want you to think?

Isn't paranoia great.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

I have relayed the "vision" to Eeree's player, who has so far not made any comments on it. We'll see how it develops.

Had our second session on Monday. Another fun one.

We picked up right were we left off after Event 1. Alyssa, returning from The Argument, did not immediately want to share what she saw with the rest of the group, so we instead played through dinner (another cutscene where I made sure to point out the chaotic mess the goblins are causing).

The next morning, all but Alyssa are already at breakfast, when Event 2: The Standoff happens. Alyssa hears the commotion outside and quickly comes to investigate. A high Diplomacy roll with the bonus for offering to help clean up convince Song to allow the goblins inside. Right after, Lozu steps up, asks Song and Alyssa about Algiada, and the power dip happens.

After the captain's reassuring announcement and dinner, the professor requests the group's help. They are immediately suspicious of the relic, but don't push him on it. They agree to look into the disappearance of the security chief.

The group then decided to split up (always a great idea) and ask around.

Eeree tries to hack into the ship's communication network from his personal entertainment console in his cabin. This caught me a little bit by surprise because it was not an option in the book. I told him that he finds out that the guest terminals are on their own network that has not outgoing connections whatsoever, which is strange, because it claims to offer infosphere access. He then learns essentially what is in the Drift Infosphere box, that the infosphere data is just a very limited subset of what would be available with full access. I added that the terminal attempts to fool the user into thinking they are on the actual infosphere, loading delays, buffering and all.

Alyssa helps Song and learns about his heated relationship with Algiada, but does not push him on it or make any accusations. She also learns about the captain's and Trostinek's late night meeting.

Eeree and Sokka go to check out the engineering deck, where Event 5 happens. They both get pretty badly burnt and when Kiiv calls Lozu to ask for help, they notice Lozu's affection for Kiiv when she answers the call thinking that he would be by himself. They also learn that only the captain, Kiiv, or maybe Grath could have sabotaged the valve. They walk away seemingly not suspicious of Kiiv, but also fail to interview him further.

Since the captain remains inaccessible to the party, they decide to look for Trostinek and soon learn that he is in the cargo hold. After explaining the situation to Lozu, they get her to open the cargo hold door for her and Event 4 happens.

The session ends when the fire extinguishers come on in the cargo hold, putting out the flaming remains of the incapacitor robot and waking up Trostinek in the process.

Conclusions
Good session with lots of ground covered. I was surprised that the players chose to split up, but it worked out pretty well. As long as you make sure that the group is together when an actually fight happens, a GM maybe should even encourage splitting up, although that will most certainly meet with suspicions by the players.

I was a little disappointed how little the players were interested in talking to the NPCs. Most conversations were very short and to the point, only getting an answer to an immediate question like "Have you seen Trostinek?" or "Do you need help fixing the ship?" Maybe once they hit a lull after "tapping" each NPC once, they will make another round and ask deeper. If they seem to be at a loss on how to proceed, I might send them the article on Mystery Adventures from the book's backmatter, maybe that will inspire them. We'll see.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Session 3

The Mysterium is now really taking off.

The PCs talked to Trostinek a little bit and learned that he was ambushed by his own machine, but (once again) made no attempt to interrogate him regarding the disappearance of Algiada, the conversation Alyssa overheard, or the late-night visit with the captain that they learned about from Kiiv. I am very underwhelmed by my players' sleuthing abilities. I guess, I should have sent out the article on Mystery Adventures from the backmatter ahead of time. It's a bit late now, but I will send it out now anyway, maybe it will help.

Since they really showed no interest at all in Trostinek, I did not even drop the hint to the suspicious behavior of Kiiv, because that would have just been very weird. Maybe I should have, since "Trostinek" is actively trying to mislead the PCs.

The party then moved on to the gym to inspect the wall it shares with the kitchen, remembering Song's story about Algiada trying to annoy him by banging against the wall. They missed the Perception check to find the ring and did not bother taking 20, so that is still out there.

They then do some detective thinking (for the first time, really) and decide to go to Algiada's room. The trap goes off and one-shots Stardust. Thanks to the Starfinder dying rules and plenty of Resolve Points, he does not stay down long, though. They then proceed to search the room thoroughly (taking 20) and find everything there is to find. They succeed at the first Computers check to unlock the datapad and know there is a suspicious folder, but fail at the second one to hack the folder. I told them a message box pops up and lets them know they only have one attempt left and they decide to try again later.

They also find the holopic and decide to talk to the professor who spills the beans on his past. They believe him and do not seem to be suspicious of him.

They also immediately draw the line from LP to Lozu and talk to her, as well. With a little bit of pressure, the first mate admits to her debt and tells the story of how Algiada lent her the money she gambled away. They seem to believe her, too, and don't suspect her of anything.

Since they found the small ventilation shaft with the strange residue (which they successfully identified to the fullest extent), they then tried to connect all the sites where bad stuff has happened so far with that, assuming that something was maneuvering around the ship that way. They check the cargo holds and find the grates still in place in front of the vents and then move to the engineering deck to check out the "third cargo hold", which they saw on the deck plan. This is of course the smuggler compartment that would not be included in the ship's deck plan on their cabin's computers (which is how I explained the characters obtained the map). I told them their characters would not know there is a cargo hold, because it's not on the map. But they would be suspicious of this part of the ship because there is some negative space when comparing the insides of the ship with the outside view as seen in the introductory holovid. This is of course a huge handout to just give them this information, but I don't think it is ruining anyone's fun and it kind of plays into the "mysteriously convenient" angle that the adventure should have every now and then.

They try to find a secret door but fail. Kiiv then runs into them and the PCs ask them to show them where the ventilation shafts are running on the engineering deck. Kiiv happily shows them around and that is when they happen across the incinerator, where Alyssa notices a flashing red light indicating the not properly sealed door. They find the statue, notice the blood, and the session ends with Kiiv pointing out that it belongs to the captain. I did not give away the detail on the blood's origin because I don't see how that would be possible just by a high roll and no one had a chemalyzer to help with the analysis.

Another fun session with lots of grounds covered. Again, I was surprised by how little the group is interested in talking to the NPCs and instead relies on skill checks and scripted events to take them through the story. Their approach is slowly starting to change, though, and they have been trying to talk to the captain several times and are getting suspicious that he keeps himself out of reach. Now that they have found his statue with blood on it, they are dead-set on confronting him.

Conclusion: I hope I don't sound annoyed at my players' meandering playstyle. Suprised is probably the better word, because they really seemed to just wander around looking for stuff to happen to them instead of taking initiative and truly investigating. But things do seem to change now as they are picking up the thread and are beginning to unravel it (or getting themselves tied up in it). Still, I will send out the Mystery Adventures article and see if anything sticks.

Next session will kick off with the Attempted Takeover. The players have discussed getting a night's rest before proceeding, which would bring us to day 3 of the trip and sets the timing just right for Event 6 and 7. After Event 6, they will level up to level 2, so that is also right on track. After Event 7, they will get a chance to talk to the captain, which is also something high on their to do list. They are currently very suspicious of the captain and hopefully I can throw them of his scent in that conversation. Remarkably, they have voiced suspicions that shapechangers may be involved and even called out astrazoans specifically, but they have not yet really put things together.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Session 4

The PCs continue to meander through the investigation: Instead of following up on the potential murder weapon, they decide to talk to Trostinek again, because they had just remembered that Alyssa overheard his conversation with Algiada. They find him nursing his wounds from getting knocked out with some of Grath's moonshine. When asked about the meeting with Algiada, he replies as suggested by the book, pointing to Algiada as the possible reason why his robot malfunctioned. The PCs continue to pressure him and he eventually tells them his story about Kiiv's late night visit to the engineering deck. Stardust accuses Trostinek of just trying to shift blame and suspicion away from him (spot on), but Trostinek responds with bluster and successfully cows the party (many of which were dangerously low on HP at this point) into dropping the issue.

The group decides to leave him be for now and call it a day. They get enough hours for it to count as a long rest, but early the next morning, they overhear another screaming match between Song and the goblins. When a laser gun is fired, they realize something bad is happening and rush out to help: Event 6 plays out as written.

Before they get a chance to look at the goblin's map, the intercom comes on and they realize that there is a fight on the bridge. Rushing over there, the party leveled up to level 2.

They get to the bridge and Event 7 starts to play out just as written, with Jincheroga eventually biting the captain and dropping him to the floor before engaging the PCs. And then things turned ugly.

Jincheroga is a brutal enemy for a level 2 party! She starts off with her level 2 fear spell, targeting Eeree. He fails his save and starts running away on his turn. The rest of the party gets clobbered by the barghest, PCs dropping to dying, getting back in the fight, only to be dropped again. It felt like this could easily end in a TPK. That's when I decided to insert some of the Hints of Reality (see the sidebar): On his second round (of 10!) of being frightened, Eeree suddenly is blinded by bright light and then finds himself not only no longer frightened, but also much closer to the fight than he had been moments before. This is, of course, an episode of lost time and the supervising grays intervened because they realized they had calibrated the fight poorly. Back on the bridge, it still felt like a TPK was about to happen, so I added another suspiciously convenient moment: Just before Jincheroga's next turn, the captain suddenly lurched to life, grabbed a laser pistol from a secret compartment in the captain's chair, and critically hits Jincheroga, putting her down. That's where we ended the session.

Conclusion:
Fun, but very dangerous encounter! What is especially fun is that the players now think I just saved their butts out of the kindness of my own heart, being a friendly GM who does not want to TPK his party. It will make for a fun reveal later. If I get a chance, I plan to add some log files in book 2 that will mention the PCs' poor performance and the "rebalancing of the experimental parameters".

A sheer coincidence that worked out perfectly was that I picked Eeree as the target of the fear spell, which gave me the chance for the gray intervention. I described the event similarly to the vision he's experienced before the adventure, which the player immediately caught as such. He also mentioned something along the lines of "somebody is watching over us", so it sounds like they are really piecing things together. The party is also now digging into the theory that the security chief was in fact a shapechanger to begin with. At first they were a bit puzzled as to why the shapechanger would give up their perfect cover, but then realized that maybe it did not have access to the real target on Legacy Station and was now making its next move. I was positively surprised that they were able to put that together, despite their rather chaotic investigation methods. Testament to how well the adventure is written, I guess!

Looking forward to the next session. I think we are not far out from the final few encounters, but the party will definitely have to get some healing before they can face that sequence of battles. I might have to throw in some very generous healing options. Maybe there are three mk 2 healing serums on the bridge, that the captain will share with the party as a thank you.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Session 5

We jumped right back in with the captain's laser pistol still glowing from the kill shot. He quickly produces a couple of mk 2 serum of healing and hands them out to the group. The book does not have any healing supplies and the Chimaira does not even offer a medbay. Given the string of encounters that are likely to happen in pretty quick succession in this final stretch, that seems pretty harsh for a level 2 party. On the other hand, it opens a window for plenty deus ex machina moments that conveniently help out the PCs. In fact, I decided to go all in with those for the home stretch because otherwise the pacing just would not work or a TPK would be inevitable.

After the encounter on the bridge, the group did another one of their by now trademark superficial interrogations of the captain. They asked why he thinks Jincheroga wanted to take over the ship and asked about the smuggler hold, which the captain denied existed.

The group then goes down to engineering to fix up their SRO buddy Stardust and they decide to take another good look at the wall they suspect holds the secret room. They asked Kiiv about it and I decided to throw them another (very convenient) bone and have him point out "that I totally could not tell you anything about a secret compartment that can be accessed through a door on the starboard side of the ship by using a hidden key pad" with a huge grin and then excuse himself to go "somewhere else".

With that huge pointer, they find the keypad, hack it, and enter the hold. They find the real captain's body and while they inspect it, "Trostinek" steps out of the shadow of one of the larger crates, slow clapping and cursing the "meddlers" before attacking.

Qub turned out to be a much more vicious opponent than I thought. He downed Alyssa in two rounds and her allies could not get to her in time to stabilize her. Since she is all out or resolve points, she actually dies.

A few rounds later, Qub is laid low. And then yet another gray intervention happens: Eeree notices the light getting bright for a split-second and the next moment, Alyssa wakes up, full health, full stamina, and everyone has their stamina back.

And then the ship is rocked by the pirate's docking maneuver and the session ends on a cliffhanger.

Conclusion:
This would be a very lethal adventure for a lot of parties if it weren't for the handy "gray intervention" card, which I think a GM should play when necessary to help. It worked pretty well for us and the players are quite creeped out by these events, which helps to overshadow the fact that they can't really fail. They don't trust it, which makes it fun.

I think next session we might be able to power through the last few bits of the book, which will get us to the big reveal in the end. I can't wait to see their reaction.


Interesting, Nullpunkt. In my game they handily dispatched every physical encounter but now that I think of it, it's because they have a soldier, solarian, operative, and envoy so their frontline was always well-protected. Can't wait to hear the ending!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Session 6
The final session was a bit of a high-speed railroad: I really wanted to get through the last three events and the final sprint to the escape pods in this session, so I pushed for quick decisions and postponed looting until after the session. Turned out to be the right decision!

The three last events with the pirates played out pretty much as written in the book. I once again had to do some on-the-fly nerfing because the group, already mostly low on hit points, would probably not have made it through all of them otherwise. I don't think the players even noticed, though, because I mostly fudged some rolls and lowered some enemy HP. Nothing flashy as in the previous encounters. It wouldn't have made much sense, anyway, since the observing gray were at this point probably already dealing with the incoming bombardment.

After the party laid low "Algiada", they get the relic and I was hoping for a cool WTF moment when they open it, but they decided to open it with the professor present, not knowing if it might be dangerous.

Unfortunately, they decided not to go straight to him, though, but go to the bridge first to... I'm actually not exactly sure what it was they wanted to do. But time waa running out and I wanted the big reveal at the end of this session, so I had them run into the professor, whom they promptly sent back to his cabin. Then I decide to end things and bring out Kiiv, who drops dead in front of them as the explosions rock the ship.

The party immediately decides to go for the escape pods, but not before recovering the relic they had stashed in the cargo hold. The skill challenges in the final minutes before launching the escape pods were also nerfed because even half of the 3d6 damage was a lethal threat at this point.

And then they learned the truth. What a glorious moment. The amused shock on their faces was truly a high point of my gaming career. What a finale.

Conclusion
The finale was every bit as amazing as I had hoped. So. Much. Fun. As described above, I had to once again nerf almost all enemies to avoid TPK or at least a technical KO that would be hard to recover from, given the final exit from the ship. Maybe my group is not optimized enough or maybe they are too much stuck in a Pathfinder mindset and haven't yet taken in the tactical differences to Starfinder. But ultimately, it did not matter, because it was easy to do on-the-fly, the players did not even notice, and above all everyone had a blast.

I very, very, very much recommend this module. I guess, the only slightly "negative" thing I could say about it is that, as written, it is virtually impossible to just pick this one up and play it, because it leaves so many questions unanswered. Perhaps most pressing of all: Where are these escape pods taking us?

So you should make sure that you are committing to at the very least the first two books of the AP when you start the first one. But why wouldn't you, with an opening chapter *this* awesome.

Fan. Tas. Tic.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

This is a great write up - sounds like your group had a lot of fun with book 1. I really like the “gray intervention” idea, in case one of the PCs goes down. The grays would never allow permanent harm to come to a clone near the end of its training, not after putting so much effort and time into them.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Thanks!

Yes, indeed, we had a lot of fun. We also just finished up book 2, but my session notes weren't very interesting since it's a fairly straightforward dungeon crawl.

Depending on how the first session of book 3 goes, I might start posting a journal again. So if you liked this one, keep an eye out for that one!

Community / Forums / Starfinder / Starfinder Adventure Path / The Threefold Conspiracy / [Campaign Journal] Nullpunkt's The Chimera Mystery All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in The Threefold Conspiracy