The feats presented in this article can greatly help a GM to enhance the NPC classes described in the DMG, Chapter 4: Nonplayer Characters. Just imagine a scenario involving a militia constituted from simple commoners who beneficiate from feats such as Agriculture, From the Mines, or Lumberjack which all offer a larger choice of weapons if compares to the single one an ordinary commoner knows how to wield; let your PCs interact with an Expert well-versed in various subjects thanks to Architecture, Cartography, or Words and Illuminations; even better, give them the opportunity to pick these classes and turn them into full-fledged PCs.
The Adept, the Aristocrat, and the Expert are all interesting avenues worth exploring.
Valkyrie E17
A voyage made to pull the world of Orion IV from the brink of darkness
Written and created by Harrison Mallory, based on an idea by Jeremiah Griffin
This campaign was built using the D&D 3.5 system; Set in the distant future the party battles new obstacles, monsters, and scenarios. With updated armor, new classes and new weapons many new situations can come to stage.
On a mission to a harvest planet far from their home world, the crew of Valkyrie E17 is determined to save their world from starvation and collapse, creating the jump space portal (teleporter) will be the first step. Then while harvesting and mining the planet of its resources, Orion IV will become complete once again. But before any of this the ship and its crew must reach the planet. Deep in the perils of unexplored space the party lays helpless in hibernation as aliens
infest the ship. For reasons unknown the party was untouched by the first week or so of alien attack on the crew. But now there awake, and it’s on.
Italicized to be read to players
1: As your ice cold deep-space hibernation pods slide open your eyes adjust to the light, the chamber you’re in seems so familiar. The bleach white walls and the masses of wire and tubing running in every direction are a comforting sight
after gods only knows how long in hibernation. The 12 foot tall 4 foot wide hibernation chamber you laid in looks as shiny and clean as it did the day you got back in it. You gaze over at the other ten tubes lining the wall, as you see your fellow party members rise from there tubes you remember that you’re not alone. The captain’s tube and the info droids charging bay are empty. “As usually he’s probably fine tuning the coordinates” you think to yourself as you feel the numb feeling in your fingers finally fade. The huge blast door reading
“C7” (otherwise known as crew number 7) stands before you; your equipment lockers await you on the wall to your right.
The party may now create characters based on the D&D 3.5 system. (Page 9)
2: you and your friends suit up and get ready to save your home planet, all these years, the food you need to get. It all comes down to the next few days. If everything goes well and you set up the teleportation ring you will be heroes. Legends as great as those of the olden world; you and your elite crew, handpicked to be the captains highest aides and advisors on all matters, construction and direction or otherwise. You punch in the code to open the bay doors. As the 4 foot thick door slides open a grimly scented odder fills your nostrils, and a horrid sight meets your eyes. The hallway beyond is filled with debris and liquids of varying colors the lights have been smashed and flicker on and off never creating enough light to allow you to see (low-light and dark vision can see better but the flickering lights makes it equally difficult to discern more specific things) . Your captain is only a few feet away from you at the exterior room controls.
He slumps to the ground, mining laser in hand he gestures you to come closer. Without allowing you to interject he quickly whispers the following sentence “attacked, need high access key card, mine is ruined, take care, and finish the mission.
His breath leaves him as his eyes fade to a pale grey color in seconds. His half-elf features seem to diminish right before your very eyes. The two aids that are with you seem to boil with rage, one takes off down the hall the other stands next to the captain, a yelp and a scratch from down the hall and the first aid is not within sight, as you turn back to your captain the second aid is gone, blood lay in a thick coat all over that side of the room.
You are not alone.
3: as you begin to head down the hall you see three figures laying still on the ground, the distinct smell of laser burns touches your nostrils. As you turn to see if your party is seeing the same thing you see a flash out of the corner of your eye, turning back to where the bodies were you no longer see them, three red blotches stain the floor where the bodies were (knowledge xenotypes DC 10 will show that the blood comes from no type of creature aboard the ship). In front of you is a welded together mess of wiring, metal, tubing and a mix of other things. Although you reckon it was quickly pieced together it is definitely humanoid made. (a scavenger skill check DC 12 can find 2 laser batteries) To your left was a set of light doors, but now there are two tears in the wall were the hinges would have been and no door. To your right is a set of doors leading to the mess hall.
4: a small room with a collapsed wall greets you on the other side of the doors; another set of doors is straight ahead of you (spot DC 12 shows that directly across from the rubble of the collapse is an indentation in the wall almost 3 feet deep, there is currently nothing in or around said indentation).
The lights in this room don’t flicker but the low amount of power being directed to them makes it hard on non-lowlight and dark vision creatures to see.
6. Several collapses have occurred in this room, one collapse is a hallway the other is the lift to lower levels, one which would be needed to get to the cargo hold or engine room, along with other places within the ship. However the VIP lift seems to be working, it could also take you to lower levels, and the bridge. However you would need a higher grade key-card to access said lift;
apparently his captain’s aids aren’t important enough to use the VIP lift.
7: upon closer inspection the VIP’s lift has several claw marks (knowledge xenotypes DC 10 show they are not of any organism aboard this craft).
7B: here are the stairs once were, know they have been sabotaged by some means unclear to you.
4B: this room is dark, but all types of vision can clearly make out a pair of legs protruding from
behind a storage bin in the corners, a pool of blood begins to seep down to the legs, a sweet smell wafts up you, it is clear that whoever is over there was just injured and may be still alive. If the party runs over to the body they quickly discover that it is a plastic dummy from the CPR training facility, and the red pool of what was thought to be blood is actually corn syrup, following this discovery 15 creatures (five from one doorway and 10 from another) run into the room engaging in combat.
The party has encountered 15 hive brood-lings. as you come into close vision of the body you discover that the body is really just a CPR practice dummy and the red liquid is just corn syrup, almost as soon as you discover this 15 inhuman figures enter the room, 10 from one door way, and five from the other, hissing with horrific threat they follow to engage you (roll initiative)
If the party ignores the body and attempts to continue on they find that the other door is blocked by something on the other side, presuming they turn to go back the 15 creatures enter as described above, the party should be allowed to get to the middle of the room before the creatures attack. The party has encountered 15 hive brood-lings. As you attempt to push open the door something blocks your attempt from the other side, most likely based on the amount of debris in the other room, the door is blocked due to a cave in. as you return the way you came 10 inhuman figures enter the room, five from each door way, hissing with horrific threat they follow to engage you (roll initiative)
5: with the strange creatures killed you can resume your search for a key card, and some survivors of whatever is happening here, you now stand in the mess hall for this part of the ship. In the corner of the room is the rations dispenser, it looks it good enough condition to use. Cyber tech, Magic hack, and Hack DC 12 will allow players to receive 30 rations. If the party does not attempt to use the skills above to rob the machine each party member receives 1 ration. If the party fails the skills above the machine locks them out. Again broken lighting and wires litter the room, a large pool of blood sits in the center of the room, but there is no body and no streaking, only droplets of blood leading around the corner
9: as you come around the corner from the mess hall you reach the main Crew room hallway. To your right is a destroyed bay door reading C8. In front of you is another bay door, this one has holes in it looking to be caused by a highly acidic substance, and finally to your left is a hallway, this one, like all the other rooms has blood streaks, claw markings, broken lighting, and mangled tubing all over.
10: the room once contained the equipment and tools necessary to maintain Deep-space
hibernation, now shattered glass and metal scraps cover the room, the hibernation chambers have clearly been pried open, blood soaks the inside of each chamber, the people within long gone.
Perhaps they were seen as meals in neat 1 million credit boxes. A small computer panel lay smashed next to the dismantled bay door. A short and barely audible sentence reaches your ears “Ov...
Over here sss…civilians” from here the party may engage the damaged info droid in conversation, the droid cannot access certain information (unless a robotics check DC15 is made in which case the droids memory is restored), the droid will begin with requesting his voice box to be fixed by turning a knob in his chest (which is visible due to his state. From there the party can ask any question they like, only the following questions will get an informed response.
Replies will be in normal text
Replies only accessible after the party succeeds a robotics check will be in underlined
P…please fix my v…v….voice box, you can nun reach it through myyyyyy chest (if the party agrees to fix it then it works and the bots speech no longer stutters or carries on)
Who are you, or what’s your name? I am Info droid number 865TO321, my crew called me 86 What happened here, or where are the crew members? Four average sized creatures barged into the room, I attempted to fight them off but they broke me into my current state, they followed to rip open the pods stab those within it and carry off the corpses
Who/ what attacked you? Xenotypes
What is the date/ how many days have we been in space? My internal watch is damage beyond repair What happened here, or where are the crew members? I don’t know
Who/what attacked you? I don’t remember
Can we help you, or can you be fixed? don’t bother trying to fix me; I am beyond repair in far too many a state
Can you come with us, or follow us? I cannot walk After the party has gained all the information available or leaves the bot he dies and cannot be repaired. But he can be salvaged, one armor implant (+1 natural AC {Cyborg/bot only}), one mining laser.
11: this room is the same as room 10, minus the robot.
12: this room is the same as room 10, minus the robot, but there is one thing, across the hallway from this room is a black swollen growth on the wall; blood trails lead to it from multiple directions.
13: as you enter this part of the hallway more of the creatures burst forth, varying amounts from each of the holes in the ground around you. But this time there are some larger, more humanoid like types of aliens. (5 hive brood lings, 3 hive underlings, and 2 cystic underlings)
14: like before, you see a barricaded area, but this time a view hole and a pair of eyes accompany the metal mix of wall that stands before you. Farther down the hall another pile of rubble seems to block your entry. (After some questions back and forth between party and guard the party is let inside the complex).
15: the complex has about 7 poorly armed guards 9 average workers and 14 or so stowaways that have been accepted in this time of need. There is clearly a sense of safety here; bed rolls, food, weapons, tables, clothing, and water are all provided here. Any party member can ask around but will find that there is no head of the group here. However a high ranking mechanic seems to eye you, a VIP card hangs from his shirt collar. The mechanic proceeds to room 17, the party may follow.
16: A number of cut and bent pipes linger in this area; the group has obviously created this passage to the emergency stash.
17: as you enter this room two guards stand at the ready, both have fully automated blaster carbines
pointed at you, “welcome to our little paradise boys and girls, here is how this shake down is going to work. You’re going to give us all your rations and all your guns and in return I’ll give you this little beautiful.” Says the mechanic sneering as he holds his VIP card. If the players try to fight consider them dead, those rifles are high quality and would likely kill most the party in the first round. When the party hands over there food and guns the mechanic give them his key card and throws them out with all due haste. (The party can make it to the VIP lift without problem, however once at the lift they encounter * raiders coming from the stair room {which has now been repaired with ladders and makeshift boards}) * Same as the party size.
18: As you ascend in the lift it jerks and clatters, you hear grinding metal and smell smoke. Just as it seems all hope is lost the lift bell rings and the door slides open, 4 men stand at the entrance, guns pointed at you. They quickly realize that your humanoid and grab you; throwing you out of the lift just in the nick of time before you hear a snap and the lift hurtles down.
19: Before you may even fully realize what just happened a deafening boom sounds at the bottom of the shaft, followed by a gust of searing hot air, followed still by hundreds of hissings jaws and clattering claws. “GUNNER!” yells one of the guards that pulled you out, “ROGGER!” yells a man on the other side of the now apparent (and professionally built) barricade; but before you can even conceive what’s going on three loud clicks sound off and your thrown into another room, the guards accompanying you.
20: your group, panting and gasping for air realize that you were just saved by five well equipped professionally trained militarized men.
The man behind the barricade is now visible and unloading rounds from a mounted auto laser into a swarm of different aliens. As you stand and regain your breath you fully take on your surroundings.
Around you is another (smaller) barricade with a gap in the middle. Radio technicians and mechanics bustle across the bridge room. You made it.
21: these doors lead to stairwells to varying places.
22: here are the escape pods, long and sterling in there hatches they wait, however seeing as how there are now planets within sight and your moving at 212MPH its unlikely you will see one short of fixing the main engine systems. This is also were the armory is.
23: here is the primary control room, recordings and transmissions can be intercepted and played here.
24: serving as a med bay a single doctor tends to the wounded.
25: As you walk to the bridge view port you see a tall grizzly half-giant, he barks out commands with dashing speed, when you finally get your turn to talk to him he speaks quickly without pause.
“Welcome men, to the bridge, right now we are in the lead among the fractions among us in terms of quality of life, advancement in saving our hides and ability to kill aliens.” “Here are your weapons and here is the recording, play it in the other room.
“Now get to it men!”
The party may now go to room 23 and play the transmission; the following is what the party hears.
Report log…
Day 1: Valkyrie E1780T5 lifts off from Orion IV, no problems detected
Day 159: Valkyrie E1780T5 reaches slingshot gravilaunch #471 on time without error
Day 483: Valkyrie E1780T5 reaches deep-space on time without error
Day 985: The crews 1-25 of Valkyrie E1780T5 comes out of deep-space hibernation to eat and check vital signs
Day 987: The crews 1-25 of Valkyrie E1780T5 returns to deep-space hibernation chamber, all vitals checks out
Day 1254: Small meteorite penetrates hull, systems detect no major malfunction. Life signs of crews remain stable.
R33p0rt logg101001g…….
6aY 8761235763: SYst3ms faiiilure DeteCTeD, Loca7i0n UNkn0wn, *unreadable text* SiGnnnnal W1th or1ion 1V 10st *unreadable text*
awakenn1ng Val7yr13 E1780123T5g$q CReews 1-25…..
(Day 8761235763: systems failure detected location unknown. *unreadable text* signal with Orion IV lost. *unreadable text* awakening Valkyrie E1780T5 crews 1-25…..)
After listening to this grim AI recording a small man or gnome (not half-ling) approaches you,
“hello there, I’m Garl Fixnob, the generals secondary aid; he forgot to tell you this but he needs you to go down to the cargo room and
“hello there, I’m Garl Fixnob, the generals secondary aid; he forgot to tell you this but he needs you to go down to the cargo room and