While patrolling the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone, a to the main plot of the adventure. Sections marked with a Federation starship receives a mysterious distress signal, which person are opportunities for specific types of PCs, espe- quickly entangles the crew in the scheme of a Romulan com- cially the pregenerated characters from this adventure. mander desperate to reclaim lost glory and honor. Adventure Summary ABOUT THE ADVENTURE While studying a rare gaseous anomaly along the Romu- Who Tracks the Steps of Glory is a GURPS Star Trek adventure lan Neutral Zone, the USS Renown picks up a distress sig- set during the Original Series (TOS) era, based on the origi- nal from what seems to be a secret (and illegal) Federation nal 1985 FASA Star Trek:The Roleplaying Game adventure, monitoring base located inside the Neutral Zone. Where Has All the Glory Gone? This adventure uses material adapted from the freely-available, unofficial Final Frontier Warping to the rescue of the Federation base, the Renown supplement, though can be easily used with GURPS Prime discovers that the encrypted signal they received was actual- Directive as well. ly from a secret Romulan monitoring station. With radioac- tive gas flooding the station, the Romulans have only hours The adventure is suitable for four-to-six ~150 point char- left to live. The Renown faces a difficult decision – rescue the acters; the end of the adventure includes six ready-for-duty Romulans and risk an intergalactic incident, or leave them officers so you can get started right away, as well as the ship to their doom? statistics for the USS Renown. For players looking for star- ship combat rules for their Star Trek roleplaying, rules for The Romulan commander S’anra has her own opinions on simplified space combat are also included at the end of the the matter. After years of feeling abandoned, she has grown adventure. sick of Romulan politics. She decides to either take advan- tage of the station’s dilemma and defect to the Federation... Characters introduced for the first time in the adventure are or die in glory with the destruction of one of its starships. noted in ALL-CAPS. Skill rolls are in Small-Caps. Tech- Her erratic behavior, however, has alerted her suspicious nobabble that is fun but unimportant for players to really subordinates, who decide to enact their own agendas in understand is in blue italics. Sections marked with a map the precarious situation. Finally, the Romulan Star-Empire are sidequests and adventure hooks, and not important has dispatched a wing of cruisers to investigate the problem with their hidden outpost... 1 v1.1 Adventure Setup Before the adventure begins, give the most high-ranking of- enter the nebula, all scans, sensor, and similar rolls will be ficer (typically the captain, but if one is not present, the first at -3. However, the boson storms inside the micro-nebula officer) Handout B, which contains the sealed orders that make it dangerous to enter. Entering the nebula disables contain information about the secret Federation monitor- shields and makes transporter use impossible. The boson ing outpost located inside the Romulan Neutral Zone. storms will do 1d-1 damage to any ship’s superstructure upon entry, and then again once per hour. If the PCs think A Note on Crew Skill to modify their shields, an appropriate Engineer roll at -4 Starfleet officers often rely on their ship’s crew to perform reduces initial damage to 1d-3. actions they cannot. If the PCs assign a task to a random crewmate, assume that person has skill 12 in the appropri- Once mapped, a Electronics Operation (Scientific) ate skill. GMs can increase this by +1 or +2 if the PCs take allows a fascinating astronomic discovery about the micro- the time to find an appropriate specialist, or do a great job nebula (the GM allow the science officer to make any kind roleplaying and building comraderie with their associates. of technobabble up, perhaps the boson particle field is – amazingly – inverted at the nadir of the nebula). ACT 1: THE BOSON NADIR A Lost Vessel The adventure begins with the USS Renown, a Miranda-class While the results from the scientific study are transmitting starship, near the end of a six month patrol along the Ro- to the ship’s computers, short-range sensors pick up a small mulan Neutral Zone. Chartered to monitor transmissions, vessel, less than 15 meters in length, located inside the neb- protect trading vessels, and guard the border, the Renown’s ula. An Electronics Operation (Sensors) roll identifies mission so far has been fairly dull. Other than stopping a the vessel as a Tholian ship. A Research roll identifies the notorious Orion pirate from escaping Federation space, the ship as an O-class vessel, which is seemingly older than the last few months has been uneventful for the PCs. more modern O1-class Tholian destroyers. The Federation has never encountered this model before. A week ago, however, a deep space anomaly – a rare boson micro-nebula – was observed moving from within the Neu- tral Zone into Fed- eration space. With only one similar anomaly located in Federation space, the Renown was assigned to investigate the anomaly, run a full sensor sweep, and try to identify the source of its boson emis- sions. As the adven- ture begins, the PCs are staring into the wondrous, colorful swirls of the nebula from the edge of its perimeter. An Electronics Op- eration (Sensors) roll maps the unusual micro-nebula. How- ever, unless the PCs 2 Hailing the Tholian ship has no effect. Further sen- sor sweeps of the vessel show that it has minimal power, barely enough to sustain life support. The micro-nebula makes transporting the ship aboard impossible; the only way to retrieve the vessel is to enter the nebula and use tractor beams to pull it out. An efficient salvage op- eration would take up to 90 minutes. The only real way to retrieve the vessel is to enter the neb- ula, withstand the inverted boson storms, and tractor beam the vessel out with an Electronics Operation (Tractor Beam) roll at -2 due to the boson emissions. If recovered, it is revealed the location of the signal, located a little more than a half- that the obsolete Tholian vessel got lost in the micro-nebula way into inside the Neutral Zone. seventy years ago. The insectoid pilot is long-dead. Note that the sector source of this signal does mostly align GM Note: Retrieving the vessel isn’t important to the arch of with the rough location of the secret Federation listening this adventure – the distress signal below should interrupt sal- post given to the captain of the Renown at the beginning of vage attempts – but will earn the PCs additional commenda- the adventure. A Navigation roll reveals that the signal lo- tions from Federation intelligence if they pull it off! cation is a little (0.1 light years) outside the expected range. A Distress Signal A second Electronics Operation (Sensors) roll detects no other ships within range of the distress signal. While it’s In the middle of the micro-nebula investigation, the Re- possible there could be cloaked Romulans within range of nown receives an unencrypted distress signal on subspace the signal, sensor logs indicate that no Romulan ships have frequency K-43. The message is in Romulan and reads: appeared in that area for weeks. GM Note: There is, in fact, an older Romulan hidden fleet hiding in the shadow of a comet Life support systems failed. Immediate rescue needed for inside the neutral zone, but the fleet is utterly hidden and im- survival. Crew in suits. Request rocks of blood. possible for sensors to find. An Electronics Operation (Sensors) roll identifies that The final words of the transmission translate literally as the transmission originates from a stationary transmitter tovureen, a word unique to the Romulan language. A Lin- inside the Neutral Zone, 1.25 light years from the Renown. guistics roll identifies the word as some kind of proper The message is 3.2 hours old. If the roll is made by 5 or noun, likely referring to a type of mineral or deposit that is more, the Renown can get a blurry visual of the source – a unknown to this Federation crew. large L2-class asteroid, 890 km in diameter. Sensors indicate that the asteroid is 83% silicates, 17% nickel compounds in Any appropriate IQ-based engineering or professional skill dispersed metal flakes. It has no atmosphere, no magnetic (e.g., Vacc Suit) roll estimates that the maximum life sup- field, and nearly no discernible gravity (0.5 m/s², or about port a typical crew suit can maintain on its own is 24 hours. 5% of Earth’s). It is an unlikely place for a colony. If the Renown tries to hail the asteroid base, they receive no reply. GM Note: Hailing the base, however, alerts the Romu- Even without a visual, a Navigation roll can also pinpoint 3 lans that a Federation ship is en route. This causes the Romu- Emergency Warp and Stress Damage lans to commit suicide to avoid capture, as others prepare for an To travel the 1.25 light years to the station before its life support armed fight at the station. See below for details. runs out requires the Renown to push her engines. Surpassing Warp 6 is difficult for an older Miranda-class starship: A Law roll makes it clear that Regulation 998 mandates as- sistance to a distress signal if it originates from a Federation WARP TIME TO SKILL HULL / ENGINE or allied source.