Episode 4: Leather Goddesses of Phobos

At the end of Episode 2, the characters discover that they are actually on Phobos, home of the Phobians, a race of Amazon-like warriors. The Phobians interrogate the characters, trying to find out how they're helping the Romulans. Meanwhile the characters are still trying to find out what's really going on. Who are the Phobians? How are they related to the Taurhai and the Romulans? What is Project Luna? Finally, the Phobians put the characters on trial and it's up to the characters to prove their innocence.

Episode 5: Mail Order Monsters

As the characters gain the trust of the Romulans, the Senate (or at least a pro-Federation faction) enlists the characters and their ship as envoys to negotiate a final end to the Romulan-Taurhai War. But are these mysterious Taurhai the demons that the Romulans claim, or are they another enlightened Federation, or something else? Meanwhile, Senator Kassus has a plan to sabotage the peace negotiations. And why is everyone coming down with these splitting headaches?

Episode 6: Bounty Bob Strikes Back!

Senator Kassus has captured the Phobian Doomsday Weapon! Phobos will be the first to fall, after that Chi'tan (the Taurhai homeworld), then Emperor of the Romulan Empire and the rest of the galaxy soon to follow! Muhahaha! But, there is one hope left. Those pesky characters are going to mount a suicide mission to stop Kassus and foil his plans for Galactic Domination. Or die trying.

The episodes are designed to be run in the given order, which is not linear in time. Linearly, the episodes run in this order: 1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 6. You can think of the season as starting in the past, then moving to the present, then going back to the past and switching back and forth. Optionally, you can run the season in linear order, but some of the mystery of episodes four and five will be lost.

One problem with running the season in the intended order, besides confusing the players, is that characters will probably improve after each session. Logically, this means that in episode three the characters can be better than in episode two, which comes after three linearly. It's unlikely to be a significant problem so I suggest you ignore it. The same argument goes for Renown.

Narrator Notes

The whole story arc came about from one concept that I wanted to run. I wanted to run an episode where the characters wake up and have no memory of what's been going on the last six months. Of course, to make it believable I had to rationalize how the characters got to that point, and so the whole story slowly came out of that. Senators Merek and Kassus had been behind-the-scenes figures for a couple of seasons, acting through their agents Telan and Sela, so it only made sense to have their final battle become a central part of the story. The Taurhai were added to be used as the mystery race that the characters encounter after waking up. The doomsday weapon plot device was added so that there'd be a big space battle where I can use my Red Alert! factory set.

The first episode title that I thought of was Murder on the Zinderneuf, which is an old game that I used to play on the Commodore 64. From that I decided to use old computer game titles to name the episodes. A Mind Forever Voyaging and Leather Goddesses of Phobos are both Infocom games. The others are from various publishers, with Zinderneuf and Mail Order Monsters published by Activision. I browsed through a site full of Commodore 64 games to find the other two titles, both of which I'd never heard until then.

Now that I had the episode titles, I had to make each title reflect its title at least a little bit. The biggest change came from Leather Goddesses of Phobos, which can't really refer to the Taurhai who look like a bunch of big-brained bandits. Enter the Phobians (really Phobosians but Phobians fits so much better with their world-view), a race of Amazon warriors modeled after Xena and Leela (from Dr Who). They become the real "mystery bad guys" and as a bonus they're a totally new villain if you have players that have read The Way of D'era.

As a final note for now, I've always wanted to write an episode to submit to TrekRPG.net. I've run a good three-fourths of the episodes posted there and they've all been excellent. I'm particularly impressed with Dave Biggins' work because he's written many of the TrekRPG.net episodes. Consistently, his episodes are focused, well-scripted, involve elements of Star Trek:The Next Generation, and are imbued with the spirit of Star Trek. A real inspiration for other writers.