Session Plans

Session I (2026-10-01)

This is going to have a lot of space for discussing pathfinder rules, adapting magic items, character creation, and anything else.

Narrative-wise, the only things to happen are finding the initial research station and subsequently travelling to the home base.

Wildfire Spindle

So this is a destroyed space station.

See notebook for general shape - a spindle with three rings. A very old station before it got destroyed, hence the grav rings. After being destroyed, the large central grav ring is split into three parts and the spindle is split in half at the middle and very damaged but otherwise in one piece.

As you approach the debris, a long and thin spine takes shape, split in half at the midpoint. Around the split are floating three large fragments which may have once been a circle surrounding the spine. Two more smaller circles also come into view, one above and one below the split, perhaps halfway down. Both ends of the spine appear to house more complex structures, though it is too far away to make out.

(one end is fatter, the other is pointy. the fat end is a docking hub and the pointy one is a mass of spiky towers of unknown function.)

The planet around which the station circles is similar to Venus, but plays host to massive, country-sized firestorms. It has fairly recently been taken over by Hell, and a continent-sized pentagram glowing red is visible from space, a little something like this but a lot more dark yellow:

Some dimensional fragments have managed to reach the station, and a few demons have made it aboard.

Important information to be conveyed:

• The location of the home base (starcode JV-189)
• The reason for moving (the empire vassal attack)
  • The vassal state is called 'The Union of Xekronoe Prime'
  • its flag is hexagonal in shape and features four nested hexagons:

Points of information:

• There's a lot of ship debris floating around the station, at least twenty ships or so. Some are flying federation flags (blue with a white fractal-ish rose), and some are flying the flag of the Xekronoe. Investigating any one provides some skeletons, a little bit of glitter and a captain's log saying where they're from and what they're doing.
• The hangars are full of skeletons and a nontrivial amount of busted up Oortling mechs.
  • The Xekronoe troops are all wearing identical uniforms of some kind of very thick fabric (stats: hide armour), each bearing a patch matching the flag on their chest. They are also no left-field races among them - humans/dwarves/tiefs mainly.
  • The Peraxians found in the hangars aren't soldiers and are from a much wider collection of races, including giff, xixchil, oortlings, and even a few centaurs. They aren't wearing armour of any kind.
• There's gravity in the central spindle, but none in the rings.
• Shuri's office is near the pointy end of the spindle. It's massive, taking up the entire width of the spindle (about two hundred feet across, since the spindle tapers off towards the pointy end). There are lots of empty bookshelves and lab tables; the only things remaining are on the desk (a semicircular affair) - an oortling psi-crystal containing a message and a local gravity generator (more details on that later). The message goes something like this:
  • It's after the battle, broadcasting from half a space station. Shuri doesn't know who attacked, she stayed in her office when the alarms started blaring.
  • They were mostly saved by a small peraxian detatchment here to test some weapons tech (now destroyed).
  • She thinks shit's really going to hit the fan now, perhaps even all-out war.
  • Orders from high are to shift to a safer location, more hidden and more mobile.
  • Having to move out so fast there's not even time to clear the hangar.
  • Lost a lot of good researchers, hope not to do so again. Fitting out the new base more agressively.
  • It's called the Starseer Sentinel and it'll be stationed close to the center of the core, in system JV-189. More or less directly coreward.
• There are signs around pointing to the different regions of the station - the base and bottom half of the spindle is all spelljammer-related stuff/logistics. The lower circle is high-G experimentation, the big one is weapons development/storage, the higher one is low-G experimentation, and the upper half of the spindle is fundamental magic/admin.
• The majority of the station is eerily empty and cavernous, since all the equimpent has been moved out. There's still the odd levitating cart with a stack of crates on it kicking around.

Fights:

• There's only one here; it's against a group of 4 horse-scorpion looking demons (kithangians). The arena is a room just below the split in the spine, so it opens out to space. It's a former lab where the only things left are a number of tables and, in the center, an extremely large distillation setup with pipes going up into the mangled mess of the split.

Session II (2026-10-08)

As of the end of session I, the PCs have explored the lower half of the spindle and discovered the hangar. Kira has fixed the elevator in the central tunnel.

I want to get them over to the Sentinel pretty quickly, so perhaps they get yeeted way up by the elevator into the top section, do a fight around a large glass assemblage of some kind and then reach Shuri's office.

Once they hear the message, they'll hopefully start heading coreward to the Sentinel. Once they get there, they are greeted by more or less the entire town, with Metrophanes taking the lead on showing the PCs around.

Session III (2026-10-15)

End of last session: The PCs have made it to the Sentinel and docked, but have yet to meet the crowd of people they see at the edge of the safe zone. They are in posession of the psi-crystal and the portable grav generator.

Metrophanes showes them around, introduces the NPCs listed over in narrative plans.

After being shown around by Metrophanes, they are pointed toward the researchers for stuff which happened a long time ago. Felix and Lily take the lead. The only info they get out of them is that someone named Calliope is involved, and that she was a famous singer, who performed at an arena a few systems over, on PX-564 aka Drummond. The PCs need to find this arena and discover the hook to the rest of the plot. The catch is that this system is under demonic control, and so the PCs will need to go down to the surface, fight off some demons and retrieve the info. They also get the nature of the demonic invasion explained to them; basically that the demons don't get blacksphere'd and there aren't any defenders around.

If the PCs get a good rap with Francis, he turns up as they're about to leave and tells them about a demon-infested firearms foundry on Drummond and asks them to check it out for blueprints, gunpowder or prototypes.

Should they actually get to the end of all this and want to head out, they arrive at Drummond without incident. Observed from orbit, it's a colder than average habitable planet around a binary star system but otherwise unremarkable, with two major continents and normal atmosphere and oceans.

It also posesses a giant pentagram; smaller than the one seen by the Wildfire Spindle, it is inscribed on the smaller of the two continents.

Session IV (2026-10-22)

Notes from the previous session:

• Sam of ASRA told the PCs about Drummond, since they were the one to remember a Calliope performance when they passed through the starport on the way to the Sentinel.
• The PCs did not meet Melanie or Leo.
• The crystals, like the ones in the settlement and on the storm chaser, come from inside capital ships.
• Francis did tell them about the foundry. It is located on a peninsula on the smaller continent.
• The pentagram is actually on the larger continent now.

The PCs can either visit the foundry, which they know the location of, or try and find the starport and associated city.

Foundry

This is an old firearms manufacturing plant. It's right on the end of the peninsula, which ends in extremely tall and steep cliffs down to a roiling ocean.

(source: sergey vasnev on artstation, 2017)

This, but larger, with a whole bunch of massive redwod-ish trees around and inside it, and right up against a whole bunch of >300m tall cliffs.

It consists of two major structures, a rectangular warehouse/factory floor type beat and a circular tower almost hanging off the edge of the cliffs. Both have somewhat hidden entrances to the basement, a few monsters and a bit of loot.

• Work room: One side is a very large wood-fired foundry/furnace/metalworking setup with lots and lots of pipes. The other side is workbenches, table saws, lots of woodworking equipment and stuff. There's a massive crane gantry spanning both sides and walkways forming a sort of second floor. The roof has skylights which can be entered through.
  • Combat: room contains an Ainamuuren (humanoid demon, four horns, fur covering everything except forearms, lower legs/feet and head, runes engraved where there isn't fur, greataxe) and two abysium horrors (huge-sized radioactive metal spiders). The Ainamuuren is the commander of the expeditionary force, and they are trying to uncover the weapons.
• Office room: Mostly ~5 desks in a circle and a combination of scroll shelving and normal shelving. Contains notes on harnessing the elemental planes and some random consumables and cash. Also two elite mimic chests.
• Basement: contains a device to open and stabilise a portal to the fire plane. The players need to activate it and defeat a bunch of monsters to obtain the prototype.
  • The monsters summoned by the portal are two solar crows followed by an anguished flame. There's a clipboard around the place with instructions, though it, like the room, is very scorched.

Gameplay aside, it contains the blueprints to the obsidian edge (major).

Starport and city

The city is on the edge of a massive lake/small sea. The starport is on the edge of the lake and includes both water berths as well a large zeppelin-style docking tower. A dockside building has been crushed by a mid-sized hedgehog-like spelljammer falling on it. Tall implausibly tall and winding buildings tower over the docks, a skyline composed of layers and layers of domes and spikes and arches.

The aesthetic of the city proper is very brutalist skyscraper energy - manhattan if everything was concrete. Lots of impossible structures like skybridges with runes etched onto the outside and lots of unorthodox ortholinear shapes, not just enormous rectangles. And of course the whole city is overrun with demons and a lot of the buildings are heavily damaged if not destroyed.

The arena/music venue they're looking for looks like ramiel from evangelion (when it's just a cube) just kinda sat down and was made of concrete. It's in its own plaza of sorts. The info they're after is in a hidden room in the backstage complex, which since this is a 360 arena is reminiscent of catacombs below the arena. It contains another psicrystal and a cabinet with some written notes, detailing Calli's meeting with her Peraxian handler. If the players end up here, imma freestyle this. If not, i'm going to write out the details next week.

Session V (2026-10-29)

Events of the previous session:

• The players visit the foundry, ambushing and defeating the demons in the workshop.
• They discover the basement device and activate it.
• They haven't visited the office of the factory.

I'm going to need to condense the story a whole lot. I forgot how long everything takes lmao

Soooo, skip the mimics in the office, just have normal chests with the loot. After that, level them up and try and get them to the city pretty quickly.

As for the city itself, perhaps make it so overrun with demons that fighting is an obvious impossibility. Perhaps have some enormous flying demon turn up at the city just after the players do (or after they find where the arena is), which they have to avoid.

The giant flying demon is actually an ancient cinder dragon, and ambushes the players upon them leaving the backstage.

As for what Calli (who is wearing a tight purple dress matching her hair, black elbow gloves and a simple tiara) and her handler (who is wearing a large witch hat and circular glasses, otherwise out of frame) say:

• calli tells the handler about the blackfire torch.
• handler tells calli about the borked graves op and the destruction of the spindle.
• handler asks calli to go to some system in the empire and get him out.
• calli is totally tired of this politics bullshit but goes along anyway.

The players presumably follow.