Posted on

Story 56

The Hive

Stretching in all directions, as far as you can see through your viewport, is an irregular brown and gray surface. The surface of this structure is a several kilometer thick rock with various ore deposits. Your comm system is filled with buzzing noise on all channels. It sounds like the same buzzing you heard on the comms during the Great Reset. Most disturbing is what your sensors see inside this giant structure. It’s a honeycombed structure with giant insects and a space gate. Because of the thickness of [The Hive] walls, the only way in is through the Hive Gate. 

You know this can not be good.

 Space wasps – the active player will place [The Hive] sector with the Hive Queen and 2 drone insects. Immediately roll a d4 to add that many more drone insects and distribute them to the various gates using a d6 for each drone. Once all the spaces that a ship could occupy when entering a gate is covered by drones, the gate becomes impassable. Also, once a gate is full if another drone is to be added, simply move to the next gate in the list that has an open position.

  1. Deltus Gate
  2. Expedior Gate
  3. Lacerta Gare
  4. Samara Gate
  5. Thenēr Gate
  6. Tigris Gate – The insects can somehow use the Tigris Gate even if it is not retethered.

Each drone can take 10 damage, its chitinous body functions as a d6 shield, and it can do d8 damage to a ship it shares adjacency with.  An individual drone will seek vengeance on anyone that attacks it, or the Hive Queen, flying up to 8 spaces and never going more than 1 sector away from a gate.

The Hive Queen can take 20 damage, her chitin provides d8 shielding, and she can do d12 damage to a ship she shares adjacency with. The Hive Queen can move 6 spaces, but does not leave [The Hive]. If the queen is killed, whomever made the kill shot will be hunted by all remaining drones.

There is a set maximum of 16 drones and one Hive Queen. When any of them are destroyed they do not respawn. The chitin on their bodies has a high metal alloy content and when they are killed they will also cause debris fields, if the optional debris field when ships are destroyed rule has been applied.

Posted on

Story 16

The Great Reset

You hear a strange insect-like buzzing noise come over your comm system. Suddenly the entire Drift System has a massive shift! 

One of the unique things about the Drift System that physicists and philosophers have been pondering for over a millennium now is why the Drift System functions so differently from every other observable solar system with sectors occasionally shifting location and yet not experiencing catastrophe during those shifts, but never in recorded history has something of this magnitude happened to the Drift System.

You thought you had a pretty good idea as to where everything was and where you were heading to next, but that’s not true anymore. Remove every tile if it is not one of the Nyr [Star] tiles, or if it does not have a player ship, an NPC, space station/lab or ice asteroid on it. The tiles that are left still sitting out, draw them in closer to Nyr [Star] until they all connect, edge symbols do not need to match. If there are any tiles that seem difficult to discern where they should go, allow the player to the right of the active player to make any final tile placement decisions.

The tiles that have been removed are to be shuffled and need to once again be discovered through exploration. In addition, The Hive sector also now needs to be added to the stack of tiles that are being shuffled. Relics and Exploration Tokens will be placed on these tiles as they are discovered again. If tiles had overlays on them, you will need to replace overlays on them again immediately when those tile(s) are re-discovered. Debris tokens and virus tokens on the tiles that were reshuffled have been removed. If a planet was killed by a virus, a space kraken, or the Rikishi Event, it is still dead when it is re-discovered.

It doesn’t take long for the media outlets to start referring to this event as the Great Reset. Place the Great Reset Token on Nyr to signify that this occurred.

When The Hive sector is discovered, read/listen to Story 56.