Back in the early '80s, when Steve Jackson still owned Space Gamer, there was an adventure in that magazine for Traveller (i dont have the mag and tried to buy a few space gamers off ebay but cant find this adventure any more). the idea was that a group of humans who had travelled to planet x and backslid into barbarism and had been rebuilding their knowledge and tech base back up to at the point the equiv of earth's tech in the 1960s. Their new home planet had been very harsh and tough to survive on and as a result they had through natural selection become shorter like pygmies (this race of man had also begun to realize that they were not native to the planet). the imperial authority had re-discovered them but decided that it could be harmful for the societal matrix of these people to discover that they where an offshoot of man and "shrunken" in comparison. so a listening station was put in hidden behind one of the moons and some stealthed satellites all 40years ago. The adventure happens because the PCs get detailed to find out why the listening station stopped reporting.They get there and find that they cant dock with the station as the air lock is open and something is floating in the way(remains of one crewman). inside they find a mess like maniacs rampaged threw the station. The doctor is still in the autodoc because he programmed it to remove all his interanal organs which are now rotting in a bowl while the autodoc keeps him alive in stasis. It turns out that the officer in charge has fired off a probe at the planet and forgot to arm its self destruct- players could descover that but they will most likely be too busy with the mystery of what happened and the beginning onset of physcosis among them selves. The "pygmies" have recovered the probe from its crash in a lake and now know they are not alone and that knowledge has taken away all resistence to spend money on a space program and they are about to launch a shuttle. The source of all the trouble on the station is that the life support reads ok but dangerous levels of CO2 has developed and crew went crazy from basically killed them selves. The Pcs have to deal with a bunch of matenance issues plus the other shoe will drop with the launch of the shuttle. and they have to decide if they what to do about their orders of not letting the pygmies discovering the larger galactic society before their ready and quite possibly they get to have a first contact encounter.<br /><br />It was a fascinating adventure, I especially liked the idea of the undermaintained equipment on a space station and the "fight" being to keep things together <br /><br />However, the topic is redemption for the ifshnits. Wouldn't it just make more sense to have the Ifshnits being an offshoot of man with a similar background? Their relationship to humans being much like the relationship between a boxer and a chihuahua. Tweak their culture a little and they work in the setting without being Gnomes or Dwarves in space.
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