Starfinder Society Scenario # 4-16: "Hope for the Future" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

If, like me, you're not fortunate to have a regular group methodically playing through PFS or SFS scenarios in orders, there are occasional downsides to just signing up for what's available online.  For me, I didn't realise that Hope for the Future was the big capstone scenario to the Season 4 ("Year of the Data Scourge") metaplot.  Playing it not only spoiled me on some of the twists in the season's storyline, but it also fell fairly flat because I wasn't really aware/invested in what was happening.  The scenario itself is (almost) one long "boss battle" that might have been satisfying if I had played steadily through the season.  But them's the breaks!  As a scenario, it has more of the feel of a Special--high stakes, lots of combat, and limited role-playing.  Not my favourite style of game, but your tastes may vary.

Oh, but awesome cover!  The art design team has really picked things up in Season Four.

SPOILERS!

Hope for the Future takes place on (and technically around) Absalom Station.  Apparently, the Starfinder Society has learned that the mysterious Data Scourge virus was engineered by the revived Historia-Prime.  The Stewards have dispatched a fleet to the coordinates where the virus' "source location" is and expect to finally confront Historia-Prime in the process.  The PCs, and hundreds of other Starfinders, gather together in the Forum in the Lorespire Complex to learn (and grumble about) not getting to be part of the action.  There's a good opportunity for some role-playing before the drama actually starts, and I liked the premise of Royo and some of the Society's other tech-adverse NPCs starting a movement to limit the organisation's reliance on technology.

First Seeker Ehu Hadif has just started addressing the assembled crowd when suddenly Absalom Station comes under attack by a massive, ever-shifting, silvery fluid vessel!  The Armada tries to defend the station but isn't having much luck.  Ixthia the Unbreakable gathers together the PCs and rushes to their shuttle to be part of the action.  Curiously though, by the time the shuttle gets into space, the silvery vessel has transformed into a massive space-platform--a near-perfect copy of the Lorespire Complex floating in orbit around Absalom Station!  Apparently, Historia-Prime has pulled a sneaky trick and, instead of waiting around for the Stewards to arrive, has launched a sneak attack to take over Absalom Station.  As a player, I found all of this fairly confusing, but I can appreciate it as a cool image if the GM is able to really sell it.

From this point, we have a classic "space-dungeon crawl" as the shuttle lands on the surface of the complex and the PCs disembark to investigate.  (Ixthia the Unreliable conveniently stays behind to "harry the defences from the outside").  The PCs encounter artificial nanite-composed simulacra of Celita and jinsuls before encountering someone "real"--an android named Hope-01 (from SFS # 4-13).  The group better rescue him, because he says he can delete Historia-Prime's digital back-up copies so the PCs can defeat him once and for all.  Along the way there are "nanite mounds" which function both as traps and as a resource that PCs can manipulate for advantages (I don't think our group did much with them)

Most of the scenario is taken up by a three-phase combat versus different forms of Historia-Prime in a (admittedly cool) chamber called the Prime Core.  History-Prime does lots of classic villain monologuing during the battle, which helps to fill in some of the backstory, but in essence this is a long boss battle.  Once it's over, and assuming the PCs win, they face an interesting moral choice.  Hope-01 explains he still retains part of the memory and personality of Historia-Prime and could someday evolve into a threat, and should therefore be destroyed himself.  The scenario supports either course of action (though subtly rewards the "let him live" choice by providing additional Reputation).  There's also a whole thing about the artifact that apparently let Historia-Prime continue to clone his consciousness, but the scenario takes the lazy opt-out of providing no detail about it and saying it'll be locked in an SFS vault.  

Anyway, that's the end of the Year of the Data Scourge!  I wasn't particularly impressed by the finale, but, as I said, part of that may be me coming in without much background.