Starfinder Society Scenario # 1-29: "Honourbound Emissaries" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

There's a lot to like in Honourbound Emissaries.  There's plenty of cinematic action scenes, interesting NPCs, and storyline development.  It is a very straight-forward scenario without much in the way of player agency, and there are some clunky spots with skill checks.  Still, I ran the scenario at subtier 7-8 using the four-player adjustment, and had a good time overall.


SPOILERS

During the briefing, the PCs may only slightly outnumber the NPCs.  Luwazi Elsebo is there on behalf of the Starfinder Society, but she's accompanied by the deliciously enigmatic Iteration-177 and another returning NPC (from # 1-04), Captain Yuluzak of the Vesk salvage vessel Honorbound.  It seems that the Honorbound recently came across a destroyed vessel of unknown make.  After returning to Absalom Station with some of the salvage, it was purchased and put up for sale by the pawnbroker Julzakama.  Iteration-177 heard of the sale and realized the item was unique to a federation of races in the Vast called the Kreiholm Freehold that used to occupy part of the Scoured Stars system!  The PCs are tasked with returning to the wreckage on board the Honorbound and seeing if they can find clues to where the Kreiholm Freehold exists today.

During the resulting Drift travel, the PCs are expected to bond with the crew of the Honourbound.  Each crew member is given a particular interest that the PCs can appeal to with the right skill checks.  Each success leads to the crew member giving the group some valuable technology (often worth thousands of credits!), which is a particularly clunky way to work in the justification for certain items appearing on the Chronicle sheet at the end.  I really wish organised play would find a way to dispense with the need for these loot dumps, as they just get in the way of the story and are rarely meaningful in play.

Once at the wreckage, finding the coordinates that the ship departed from isn't difficult. The story really heats up once the Honorbound drops out of the Drift and into the middle of a warzone!  The Kreiholm Federation is being invaded by a jinsul armada.  Before any decisions on what to do can be made, the Honourbound receives a distress call that's repeated in Vesk!  It seems that, planetside, a hospital is under attack by jinsul ground forces and the staff and patients inside are trapped.  Captain Yuluzak makes the executive decision to help out and lands his ship planetside.  The PCs are expected to rush into the hospital, rescue the civilians, and get back out before the entire facility is overrun by jinsul.  The Hospital flip-mat is put to great use here.  The PCs will end up engaging jinsul shock troops before they can evacuate the civilians.  The civilians' main spokesperson is a doctor named Yuuqa, and she's just one of three entirely new alien species within the facility: winged, batlike humanoids called Nelentu; amphibious creatures with cilia-based mobility called Syngnathrix; and gaseous, intelligent oozes who rely on encounter suits for communication called Thyrs.  It's a lot for the GM to describe in what's supposed to be a high-pressure situation, and it would have been nice if each species received its own illustration (following the picture being worth a thousand words principle).  There's an interesting moral choice for the PCs to make here between recovering surgical technology that exceeds even Pact Worlds standard versus hurrying to rescue the trapped civilians.  I'm sure most groups will choose the second option, but it's nice to see a plausible alternative (with credible consequences for either choice).

After lifting off from the planet with the refugees from the hospital, there's an opportunity for role-playing with the NPCs.  The PCs can learn more about the Kreiholm Freehold and its various sapient species.  Oddly, the scenario allows both Culture and Diplomacy checks here, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me--Culture represents knowledge already learned, so Diplomacy would seem to be the better option.  I find too many scenarios allow too many skill checks to be used as equivalences, which devalues the (already problematic) skill system in Starfinder.

The final third of the adventure is pretty damned exciting and cinematic.  The Honorbound receives a distress signal from a Kreiholm command ship named Kreiholm's Hope.  The ship is being actively boarded by jinsuls, but carries an important passenger: the thyr council member Speaks Forgotten Words.  The PCs have to board the command ship while the Honourbound engages the jinsul ships, rescue Speaks Forgotten Words, and get to an evacuation point for pick-up when the Honourbound returns.  The jinsul boarding party (mystics) aren't too tough, and there's a little fun to be had with glitching gravity generators.  The artwork for Speaks Forgotten Words is cool.  The real fun picks up when the PCs escort the ship's surviving crew out of a breach and onto the outer hull of the ship.  The PCs have to fight off wave after wave of jinsuls emerging from the interior until a sufficient number of rounds pass for the Honourbound to arrive.  Even after this happens, there's still the drama of getting the allied NPCs over to the friendly ship while under heavy fire.  PCs with a penchant for heavy weapons will enjoy the anti-personnel starship gun turrets they can use to even the score.  The map could be explained a bit more clearly and Zero-G combat is clunky, but (for the most part) it all feels very fast-paced and heroic in a Star Wars Jedi rescue vein.

The scenario ends with Speaks Forgotten Words extending an invitation for the Starfinder Society to meet with the Kreiholm Federation's governing council.  I'm sure some important plot developments will come from that.

I thought Honourbound Emissaries was a really good scenario.  Like too many SFS scenarios, it's very much on rails; if the PCs don't think of or do the right thing, Captain Yuluzak always steps in to advance the story.  It also needs some work in terms of skill checks to make choices more meaningful.  However, it introduces some really interesting NPCs, offers some interesting directions for future storylines, and has a really cool third act.  If blasting alien after alien to keep a foreign dignitary alive while trying to somehow cling to the hull of a starship during a massive space battle doesn't get your science-fantasy blood pumping, I don't know what will!