Gateway to Destiny details & campaign ideas

[GamingGlen]

I'm running a MgT campaign in GtD, in the area of the Imperial Trade Cluster (Ley sector), about year 820 (psionic suppression era, and not called ITC yet).

I have an idea to tie in a few things for a series of adventures, but could use some hard science suggestions.

From the Cold Fuzion adventure: the alien floaters on Hansen's World have a particular molecular signature not found elsewhere. Also, the PCs found the very distributed debris field of what might have been a wrecked spacecraft from very long ago. A tiny piece of that wreckage they managed to get also has that same molecular signature.

What could be a different molecular signature in some normally common materials?

The PCs snatch a professor off of Mamikha at the request of the professor's children already off-planet. That planet's governments had put a stop to emigration during their civil war. The professor then will hire them to pursue this molecular signature; he got reports about the aliens from the former director on Hansen's. He'll be interested in that piece of salvage.

First stop: Igikur. An Imperial research station there is investigating an intelligent water species. Also mentioned in a report was a particular molecular signature, alien to the world. The PCs and professor will arrive just in time to go along with a submersible research mission into the depths. They'll save (hopefully) a child of the octopus-like species (anyone write something up about them?) and it's enough to help with a serious first contact and get more info. The child will be wearing a necklace with a piece of metal with that same molecular structure. It's to ward off the Destructor. Also, they will be given a gift of a weird musical instrument.

GtD lists the species at TL 7, but I wonder what a TL 7 underwater civilization is like.

Hmm. Haven't thought how to get them to go in the next direction yet. (a star's spectrum has that molecular signature?) It will lead the PCs and professor trailward (less explored and less populated area of space), where they find a couple worlds devoid of land life (Chamax plague) with perhaps a wrecked spaceship (as in Chamax Horde/Plague adventure) until they find the home world of...

Some species that died out several thousand years ago and the former space-faring water-based Igikurians were at war. Both lost. The Igikurians lost when their civilization was "bombed back to the stone age" by a fleet of the other species (fyi: Igikur has many filled-in-over-time bombardment craters). The other species lost due to the spread of a bio-engineered eating machine (the "Chamax plague") created by the Igikurians (which can explain why it leaves water creatures alone). The Chamax can be turned "off" by that strange musical instrument (something like a kazoo? :file_21

So I got lots of details to fill in.

 

[tjoneslo]

For molecular signature in a starship hull, you're probably talking about ratio of isotopes of a specific atom. For example Carbon-14, used in radiocarbon dating. The Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5700 years. A living creature ingests the C-14 as part of their normal life cycle, but upon their death, the C-14 begins to decay. Using precise measurements of the radioactive decay of the carbon, you can tell exactly how long ago your sample creature or plant died.

In a similar fashion, most star systems form from the same cloud of gas. So the radioactive decay profile of some long term element like potassium or uranium will be the same on all the worlds in the system. And similar on worlds close by, since they might have been formed from the same supernova remnants.

So what you have is a worlds formed in a different super nova remnant, ejected into deep space to wander for several million years, the be captured by a new system. A very rare, but not impossible event. Any object made on that world would have a slightly different radioactive profile. Distinct if you know what you are looking for.