Starfinder Society Scenario # 2-08: "The Stumbling Society, Part 2: Sangoro's Gifts" [RPG]

 

NO SPOILERS

I played The Stumbling Society, Part 2: Sangoro's Gifts with my Steward, Officer Swizzers, with the same PBP crew as in the first part.  The scenario offers a lot more opportunities for role-playing, especially if the GM gets into the NPCs.  There's also a chance to showcase some skills and, of course, some combats along the way.  The scenario does a really strong job of introducing a new alien race, and it also continues the main Season 2 meta-plot.  Interestingly, there's not that strong a connection between this scenario and part 1 (apart from some background), so a player shouldn't feel like they *have* to do both in order.  Anyway, I enjoyed the scenario and would rate it as 4 out of 5 stars.

SPOILERS!

In The Stumbling Society, Part 1: Sangoro's Lament, the PCs discovered that Datch has stolen crates full of military equipment from a Starfinder Society installation called the Arsenal.  In The Stumbling Society, Part 2: Sangoro's Gifts, we learn what she's doing with them: dropping them off on low-technology worlds for the locals to fight over, filming the results, and making it look like the Starfinder Society is responsible!  In the mission briefing, Fitch plays one of the anti-SFS propaganda vids filmed on a jungle planet called Stabrisis-14, home to strange, moth-shaped creatures known as kiriintas.  The SFS has avoided making first contact with the kiriintas so as not to interfere in their developing civilisations, but Fitch says it's now unavoidable: the SFS has to get those weapons back before the situation turns even worse.  In a departure from the norm, however, the PCs won't be travelling alone to their mission site; Fitch has assigned another agent, a maraquoi named Saivessa, to trail them in a second ship to help pick up the supplies.  Saivessa isn't really integral at all to the plot, but they have a great pic and an interesting personality, so a good GM could make them memorable.

After a short jaunt through the Drift (broken up only by a brief cameo from Captain Winks of the Clutter Collector, a nod to # 1-03), the PCs emerge near Stabrisis-14 only to find it protected by drone starships launched from a (cloaked) orbiting base.  The ensuing starship combat has an interesting twist in that more drones get launched until the PCs figure out that they're coming from a cloaked launch base, scan to locate it, and then destroy it.  Like almost all SFS starship combat, it's still not great, and in my game the GM called it once it became obvious we were (eventually!) going to win.  The interior artwork for the scenario is really strong, as the launch base also has a cool pic.

The PCs have no trouble locating a recently-dropped and unopened crate of weapons on the surface, but their timing could hardly be worse because two rival groups of kiriintas arrive at the same time!  The PCs are thus caught in the crossfire, and have to quickly decide what to do.  The scenario provides a fair amount of backstory into the two groups, explaining that they were once all part of the same kiriinta community but split when the weapons started dropping from the sky, with one group (the Builders) believing the weapons are a gift from the gods and meant to be studied and used, while another group (the Reflectors) also believe they're gifts but that tampering with them would be a type of blasphemy.  The PCs, of course, won't know any of this when they have to decide to fight back against one group, both, or try to stay out of the battle entirely.  (Oddly, the scenario provides information on what happens for the first two choices, but doesn't seem to contemplate the third.)

Whichever side prevails in the battle invites (with some language barriers that the PCs should have prepared for) the newcomers back to their camp, believing they're agents of the same divine authority that has been dropping the crates of weapons.  The fact that the crates bear the symbol of the Starfinder Society and the PCs probably do as well makes this a reasonable inference.  There's a lot of room for role-playing in this part of the scenario, and the author did a good job developing the kiirintas as a whole as well as particular NPCs from each faction.  Presumably, the PCs will try to persuade the kiirinta group they're with to abandon use of the weapons, in which case the kiirintas will put the PCs through a series of hastily-improvised tests to gauge whether they're really acting with divine sanction. The tests including drinking a local beverage, an athletics or debating contest, and (my favourite) what the PCs are told will be "Death Match."  But even jaded players should smile when they learn that "Death Match" is actually a local card game and completely harmless.

As the tests are winding up, the PCs receive a message from Saivessa: one final crate is on it's way to the planet.  When the PCs head to the drop site, they'll find whichever faction of kiirintas they didn't bond with there, but under attack from a huge burrowing monster called a tiraka.  Not-so-nice PCs will wait for the kiirintas to wear down the tiraka before joining in, but if they don't wait to long, they'll have a better chance of convincing the opposing kiirinta leader to renounce using the new weapons and mend fences with the other leader.  When I played, we did a really fast run and the tiraka only lasted a single round.  Anyway, that's the end of the scenario, apart from a brief epilogue.  The scenario has a nice boon (assuming  Part 1 has also been played): the opportunity to have a kiirinta character.  I liked the kiirintas, and I hope we get a chance to see more of them in future scenarios.