Excerpts Archive | 1/24/2011

Damaged Laboratory

Legion of Gold Excerpts

They come at sunset—mysterious warriors wearing armor of golden alloy. At first they numbered only a handful, but over the past two months, more and more of the marauders have appeared to terrorize the peaceful trade-towns that comprise the Barony of Horn. What they want, no one knows—the golden warriors never speak. They lay waste to farms and villages without warning. The armored raiders have dragged scores of captives off to unknown fates, vanishing into the wilds east of the Barony of Horn. The warriors are known as the Legion of Gold, and no one knows where they will strike next.

Legion of Gold contains much material for your D&D Gamma World characters—new origins, vocations, even rules for mounts. For Game Masters, the set also includes new locations to base your adventures, as well as the set’s namesake adventure itself:

“Legion of Gold” is a D&D Gamma World adventure for five characters of 6th or 7th level. By the adventure’s end, the characters should be 9th or 10th level.

Running the Adventure

Note: The following material is for Game Masters only, and should not be read by characters.

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Background

The Legion of Gold’s raids seem random, but the forays have a purpose: capturing new conscripts and destroying the defenses of the Barony of Horn. Many of the legionaries are captives taken in prior raids, now enslaved by a rogue AI installation known as NERO (Near-Earth Reconnaissance and Observation). Computer hardware is inserted into a “volunteer’s” brain to give NERO full control over the individual, and then the new servant is surgically fitted with golden armor and weapon systems. Humanoid robots known as centurions super vise the enslaved cyborg warriors.

NERO is a lunar facility originally built to defend the Moon. After decades of sleep, a moonquake recently reactivated it. The AI studied its surroundings (Moon Zone 9), determined that “aliens” had overrun the Moon, and tried to nuke everything—only to discover that it could not do so. The command to fire had to come from Gamma Terra, but no one still alive on the planet had the ability to give the necessary launch codes. Thus, NERO assigned itself a new mission: reestablish a government on Gamma Terra. To carry out this plan, the AI intends to sweep away the “alien invaders” that have occupied Gamma Terra and conscript a citizen militia to serve as its army. Once a new government is in place and proper elections can be held, NERO will run for office and become its own command authority, at which point it will order itself to push the button. This plan makes perfect sense to NERO, probably because the AI’s processors have degraded a bit over time—maybe more than a bit.

Of course, NERO is in a command bunker on the Moon, which makes it tricky to operate on Gamma Terra. Fortunately for the AI, it has access to a net work of old lunar operations support bases, including the LUCAS Laboratory. These teleportation facilities scattered around both Gamma Terra and the Moon allow NERO’s golden soldiers to launch raids and seemingly disappear at will. So far, the plan is going well, and the AI has turned its attention to designing campaign buttons. NERO for President—it’s the only logical choice!

Adventure Hooks

Here are a few ways the heroes might become involved in the plot.

The Baron’s Service: As mercenaries who have earned a reputation, the adventurers are hired by the Baron Warder and given a simple mission: Find out what’s causing the attacks and put a stop to it.

Kidnapped Kin: One of the characters has family in the Barony of Horn. The chosen character learns that his or her relative is one of the people carried off by Legion marauders. The character comes to Horn to mount a rescue attempt.

Cryptic Mission: A cryptic alliance has found Ancient records that reveal the existence of a teleportation network near the Barony of Horn. One of the characters who is a member of that alliance receives orders to find the network and map its nodes. The adventurers travel to Horn to search for clues to the location of the LUCAS lab, only to find that the barony is under attack. The fact that the golden marauders come and go mysteriously suggests that they might have found the teleportation network.

Caught in the Shooting: The characters are passing through the Barony of Horn on business of their own when they are caught in a Legion attack. Clearly, fighting off the raiders is a job for a group of seasoned adventurers.

Running the Adventure

Regardless of how or why the characters end up in the Barony of Horn, the adventure begins when they find themselves in the next town to be attacked: the settlement of Burl. The adventure is linear—the heroes can’t deal with NERO until they reach the Moon, and they can’t travel to the Moon until they track the legionaries to the LUCAS lab. To reflect this sequence of events, the adventure is organized into four parts:

Part 1: The Barony of Horn. The characters fight off Legion attacks and track the raiders to the LUCAS lab—their base on Gamma Terra.
Part 2: The LUCAS Lab. The characters explore the facility and discover the teleport pad.
Part 3: Moon Zone 9.
Part 4: NERO.

Encounter 6: Damaged Laboratory

When the characters enter the room, read:

This chamber was damaged by some type of explosion or collapse. A wide hole in the exterior wall leads outside to weed-choked rubble. Conduits and wires hang loosely from the ceiling, and machines and consoles are dead and dark. Two four-armed, two-headed giants stand guard here, protecting a normal-sized humanoid with gray skin and a wide mouth full of sharp teeth. The smaller humanoid shouts to the big guards, "Destroy these fools! They’ll ruin everything!"