The Birdhouse

Act I

Session I (29/10/2025)

Starts out on the rock of braal, give the PCs a little time to walk around and get a lay of the land before heading them off too some asteroid mining star called Therrezynn two systems over on the edge of the blacksphere. Therrezynn itself’s a red giant star with a large asteroid belt after two planets collided with each other, rich in glitter. the main hab/base for most of the operations is usually also called Therrezynn, sometimes with a 1 added to alleviate confusion. They’ve had some unusual monsters pop up and need some people with combat experience to clean up.

First, have the PCs encounter Darius somewhere public on Ther, proclaiming the wonders beyond the blacksphere. then ship them out to a very small asteroid and fight some dudes, have that fall into the sphere as they’re leaving and tell them that the hab itself is falling towards the blacksphere and they need to evac everyone. Have them fend off some monsters in the town square or whatever while everyone evacs on the Yihan hauler they’ve been loading up and also maybe the storm chaser. Darius is conspicuously missing along with a few workers.

Level them up quick sharp - level two after the first combat, level three after getting off the asteroid. At least one level per session till five minimum.

Get a map for at least:

  • the storm chaser
  • the top level of ther
  • the small asteroid (think caves n shit)

Also need stat blocks for 2 new faction enemies minimum (melee/ranged) see Enemies Just use bandits for now

Session II (07/11/2025)

PCs have just cleaned out the asteroid of remnants and are about to realise that the blacksphere is expanding when it starts eating some far away asteroids. There were some dudes in the mine which capn wanted the PCs to find (and he forgot lmao), turns out they’re missing (obvious conclusion is that they turned into the crystal monsters)

Darius, upon their return, immediately knows that they haven’t found the miners and claims that they’ve gone beyond the blacksphere. The PCs will hopefully want to evacuate the station, but if they don’t, the mayor comes over and starts pestering them to help evac. Eventually the nearby bulk hauler moored to some asteroids pulls up and everyone who wants out gets out. Problem is that darius and some of his people who agree with him stay behind, and are lost to the blacksphere.

On the way out they get ambushed by a shardship and we gotta do some ship combat woo. the shardship is a galleon basically, except super black and edgy and crystally

Session III (14/11/2025)

The PCs have just finished getting out of an ambush by a remnant crystal cutter. They’re headed back to the rock of braal.

Todo list:

  • Murder ol capn jake
    • backstory: the captain hired darius ~90 years ago just after the cutoff, and he was a huge asshole for the entire journey. Matthew dumped him at the first opportunity, and wants nothing to do with him. Darius still holds a grudge and will just fuckin kill him if he gets the chance.
  • meet kira the mechanic

So the captain gets everyone out to the Pelego, a bunch of magically stabilised asteroids all inside a huge air bubble (the docks are outside the main air bubble to prevent large gusts of wind whenever a big ship shows up). He’s going there to try and engage the services of a youngish oortling mechanic, kind of a whiz kid, called kira. Wicked good with glittertech, runs a reasonably popular shop in the docks on the archipleago fixing up ships. She’s willing to join the crew as a mechanic/fixer because reasons (see brainstorming section)

Problem: the PCs catch a glimpse or hear a rumour or something of some jackass soapboxing in the center of the Pelego. It’s darius, of course, and he singles out the captain, provoking him before running off. the PCs will hopefully try and chase him down, if not he just ambushes them when they’re on their way back in an alley or something. They chase him out to one of the asteroids right on the edge of the bubble, where he murders capn jake dramatically. He then peaces the fuck out, the PCs chase him some more, and then he disappears into the ether.

PCs now have their own ship and a very good reason to hunt down Darius.

Reginald Blackstaff (raided a dragon cult 50 years ago, somewhat notable)

  • Saw some remnants out near the blacksphere, sent a letter to some journal or other some time ago (check this)
  • Captain knows him, but in a kind of off hand way, might have crewed the storm chaser at some point for a little.

Session IV (21/11/2025)

Darius has just challenged captain jake to a duel on the island leading to the docks. His three (?) bodyguards are very large and all identical (they’re secretly remnant shapechangers); they’ve been intimidating the hell out of the PCs.

Need: some way to get the duel out of the docks island and to the edge of the sphere. Fighting three shapechangers in a crowd is definitely enough to occupy the PCs.

Jake uses this as a weapon

Deal is, Darius summons a magic barrier around his duel, preventing the PCs from fucking with it. They instead have to deal with the shapechangers (or not, they won’t actively attack). Captain seems to be on top and pushes Darius back onto a moving platform and the PCs and kira have to chase.

They land up on some backwater industrial warehouse asteroid, whereupon Darius pulls some bullshit, stabs jake, drains his magic and yeets him out of the bubble.

carter is one of jack’s friends, undecided as to their purpose, personality or anything.

Session V (28/11/2025)

The captain is dead. The PCs have recieved his last will and testament, the ship’s theirs and they have set off with Kira in tow, en route to the Parking Swarm on the border of the Jianfeng alliance. They’ve just landed on the Vixie arcology in search of leads (?) and money. Vixie has a thriving deep-dive industry raiding sunken arcologies and crashed spelljammers for glitter, ancient relics, and such like. The plan is for the PCs to get suckered into a super-dangerous job finding treasure hidden on some underwater nautiloid which crashed into an arcology a few hundred years ago or so. The macguffin is an armillary sphere containing divination magics.

PCs descend in a diving bell to here, which is half sheared off after a nautiloid crashed into it.

  • One of the shops has a pristine diving suit which is a hundred years out of date (not that the PCs know that), the rest of them have miscellaneous diving-related and adventuring gear
  • The houses contain some interestingly out-of-date personal effects and not much of interest
  • The market is just trashed
  • The tavern is kind of okay, the PCs can raid the cash register for ~100 glitter
  • The town hall is half destroyed, but the undestroyed half is also a bank with arcane-locked doors to back rooms with treasure and magic item table something or other.
  • The nautiloid contains the aforementioned armillary sphere in the control room at the top, as well as a couple of mind flayers.

Post-session update: the PCs have just arrived at the docks with a diving bell carrying a set of mythril diving armour, a dead mind flayer, the armillary sphere, and ~1200 glitter. The dodgy guy who lent them the suits, mr williamson, is going to be very surprised.

Session VI (05/12/2025)

First, they need to offload their stuff and bargain with Mr Williamson, who rented them the suits for 30 apiece plus 30% or something. He’ll take any one of the magical items or ~500 glitter for 30%, roughly, or maybe some more shenanigans will happen. He’s very surprised that the PCs made it back at all, since he knew it was a nautiloid down there. He’d hoped that the PCs would get scared and back out like most adventurers do.

Then they’re off to the parking swarm. Couple of things:

  • they’re here to buy a fighter ship (probably a shitty secondhand one)
  • the syndicate are very active here running a smuggling operation which runs rings around the border police lurking around. lots of black market shit available here.
  • rumours are circling about the blacksphere expanding
  • after they get their ship, some ship combat needs to happen.
    • Ideally this happens a few systems coreward
  • just as they arrive, the alliance locks down their borders. PCs are a little stuck for options, when they get approached by a syndicate member offering them some cash for a smuggling job.
    • this leads them coreward to pick up the merch, which is some cursed magic items or some shit, whereupon they get jumped by remnants. Like a lot of remnants. A couple of corrupted hammerships and three to five cutters.

Session Shenanigans:

  • mind flayer ship crashed into vixie to avoid giving the astromancy archive up in the unspecificed mindflayer-involving conflict
  • heading alliance way, finding the captain’s old friends
  • astral lighthouses to keep people out at the parking swarm system.
  • the USA is real and they’re coming for your oil.

Post-Session:

  • The PCs pawned off the mithril diving armour in exchange for keeping everything else;
  • The armillary sphere is actually a fairly powerful divination device;
  • level up to level 5;
  • they fast-tracked to the parking swarm in search of a fighter;
  • They found out about a spirit warrior fighting ring;
  • An old oortling offered to teach Eeta the ways of the spirit golem (a spirit warrior mini-spelljammer with a psicrystal designed for oortlings) since he needs a pupil, but only on the condition that she wins a fight;
  • CB signs on with Gemini for a thousand glitter reward and him and eeta have a face off in the ring;
  • Eeta looses and gets told to go on a training arc, but CB picks up a hundred glitter (after fees);
  • later, in the tavern, Graves picks up a job from a Giff lackey with a cigar and circular sunglasses to go retrieve some crates or something from a system coreward. pay’s 5000 glitter on delivery.

Session VII (12/12/2025)

Need to pull something together on short notice. PCs now have to heist the boxes they’re after from a YGMC holding asteroid.

Problem 1: they need to get into the asteroid in the first place. This is a problem because on the outside it’s an asteroid and not particularly destructible; and there are two entrances. the main entrance, which is very very locked but also understaffed by easily bribed or persuaded low-tier employees. The other option is a very heavy arcane-locked big cargo door.

When inside, they find a busted-up PoS blade of the tugboat variety. If they want it, they have to either bust out the front or open the cargo door, in addition to the crates they need to nab.