The Pretech Markers 

Overview 

The Mystery of the Pretech Markers leads the players through a part of the history of the Precursors and the Albionic Void Corridor. A scavanger hunt to visit most planets of the Albion Sector will shed light on the nature of the pretech monoliths and what their dark, original use was before they were laid dormant untold Millennia ago.

Key People, Places, and Things 

Marker Locations:

• Will of God, Anaris, Macrodatum Target Acquistion
• Muse Moons, Avira Teredan Target Environment Data Collection
• Cassegrain Equator, Cassegrain Microdata Collection
• Markertown, Teredos Anchor Calibration
• Charenet Spires Data Hub and Directed Stream towards the Control World

Control World:

• M-M-M-Mystery

Background 

The Markers were a key part in a superweapon of the precursor’s war against their enemy. The were used to calibrate gravitational anchors, which were then used to propel entire stars through the void to collide with other stars, producing immense supernovas.

Since the disappearance of the Precursors, the control world of the network is lost to time, though a map still exists, hidden beneath the Dunes of Anaris. As fate would have it, a Meteor hit the spot where the Precursor base was located. During the Colonization of Anaris by the UPoS, An archeological team was tasked with the excavation. This team was lost when the Insanity Drone set in, and by now the excavation area has been devoted to the Great Flood.

The Precursor Base with the Map is now what is considered to be the Palace Vault of the Crater Oasis.

Storyline Elements 

The Map

Players break/sneak into the Palace Vault with Isaaka Sabe. Inside, they find the cryptic Map to the Markers and the Control World.

Players need to acquire robes for the palace in advance

Approaching the Vault

So that its not so boring as simply strolling up to the door, there’s some challenge to it:

The only entrance to the Sisters’ palace is guarded by a hydraulic gate operated by blood-fed machinery. The rite is that the gate needs a certain amount of blood to open. Whenever a group of sisters exit the palace, its already set in stone that there will need to be an offering made when they return.

Inside, the palace is laid out like this: After the gate is a large bridge that leads over the central reservoir. The bridge leads to a big courtyard between the pyramids.

Scene: The Sisters are performing a “Cleansing Rite” in the courtyard.
Players need to acquire robes for the palace in advance, they pass through the courtyard and witness the High Priestess Miriam “purify” a group of prisoners. She brands their foreheads using a large rod. The players passing are asked to give an offering of their blood.

The 5 rods are scattered throughout the palace as religious artifacts:

First Rod: the High Priestess conducts the ritual using the Ritual Rod to “purify” prisoners by burning a sigil into their forehead using the rod and a firepit. The Players need to somehow get the rod

Second & Third Rod: Scene: In a side-chamber, a mutilated danube cyborg lies on an altar, the rods jutting from its chest. The Sisters believe it’s a “holy martyr”. There is a Sister hooked up to the Cyborg as some sort of ritualistic life support system, which doesn’t seem to have any effect on the dead body. The Cyborg has a single file left in physical storage: DIRECTIVE_MOTION

The Cyborg came to the Palace to open the Vault, but was overwhelmed by the locals.

Fourth rod: Location: Embedded in a holographic chronicle device in the palace archives, projecting ghostly fragmented visions of the Precursors construction.
Scene: The Rod is both a key and a data-storage unit. Acolytes here are zealously transcribing the “holy visions” into illuminated manuscripts.

Fifth Rod: The fifth rod is located in the antechamber and is displayed above an altar. The rod is embedded into a petrified, giant humanoid body that spans the ceiling of the antechamber. The rod is about 3 meters long and is the only one inserted sideways instead of lengthwise.

Puzzle Map:

• Rods are slotted into a series of holes that light up the planets on the Albion map, but the map is from many thousands of years ago and not up to date.
  • Stars are marked by a dot and a circle, with a galactic orbit laid into them. When a rod is slotted, the circle and the orbit lights up. From the outer circles of the stars go lines to other stars, which may not line up with the connections between marker stars.

To get into the vault, they will need to solve a puzzle. (Something with Hand-sized rods to be slotted into circular arranged slots. Practical puzzle. Maybe use some text translated to galifreyan?)

Once they are in the Vault, they find a corridor leading a couple 10 meters in front of them, to the left and right are doors, and straight through is a big blast door. The right door leads to the armory, the left door opens but only leads to a collapsed corridor. Straight through is the map room. A giant spherical room with a bridge leading to a central platform, as the players approach a projection of the Albion sectors opens up, showing the locations of the Markers. Upon investigation they find the map to be incomplete, as the Control world is missing.

They can also find some pretech artifacts / weapons.

• A Heavy Pulse Laser Weapon (Shoulder Mounted)

• A stash of Pretech Ammunition (12, for the heavy pulse laser) (one expended)

• A palette of a Gold-Like Material with pearlescent sheen. (60 bars), 120k each

• Laser Rifle that can’t be disarmed from the hand (Something like the Forerunner weapons from HALO)

• A pretech environmental control unit (Toolbox sized rectangle with fans)

• A Hardlight Shield Emitter (Reinhardt Type) (Metal plate with symbols and markings)

• A Pretech Wayfinder (Can be attuned to the current place, and will keep a map of the way back to it. Maybe a like a holomap. Pyramid shaped object with displays that show a map of the current level, attunes to any structure and landscape.)

The Monolith

When the players approach the monolith, they are first met with a giant airlock, 3 meters high and about 10 wide.

The main entrance is sealed by a pretech environmental system that requires specific atmospheric and temperature parameters to open safely. Players could find controls that affect localized conditions, needing to experiment or find clues to unlock the next area.

Once inside, they are met with a huge metal shaft that leads down into the moon. Inside the chasm floats a bunch of debris, boxes and other small litter due to gravitational anomalies. The players must find a paths and pockets of gravity to go down a number of layers to reach the bottom the shaft. each floor is 50m apart, the last one being 120m.

Floor 1: branching off on each side to three other rooms

• A dormant maintenance bay with an inert, multi-limbed Pretech drone that looks like it could spring to life at any moment.
• A storage chamber with sealed pretech containers, some empty, some holding strange, inert materials or unusual tools.
• A habitation module that hints at the Precursors’ brief presence here—perhaps a perfectly preserved, minimalist living space or a strange, ceremonial chamber.****

Floor 2: small combat encounter with a pretech drone (easy-to-medium) Pretech Security Drone (Relic-Class) This drone is a remnant of a bygone era, its metallic chassis still sleek despite millennia of dormancy. It hovers with an almost imperceptible hum, its optical sensors glowing with an unsettling, ancient intelligence.

AC: 16 (Pretech Composite Plating) HP: 25 Attack Bonus: +4 Damage: 1d8 + 2 (Integrated Pulse Cannon) Shock: 2/AC 15 (The Pulse Cannon’s concussive force can rattle even armored foes) Move: 15m (Hover) Morale: 10 (Non-sentient, follows programmed directives until destroyed) Skill: Notice +2, Tech +1 Saves: Physical 12+, Evasion 14+, Mental 16+

Special Abilities:

• Pretech Plating: The drone’s ancient composite armor is surprisingly resilient. It reduces the damage from any energy weapon attack by 1 (to a minimum of 1).
• Grav-Shift Manoeuvres (Instant Action): Once per round, as an Instant Action, the drone can rapidly shift its localized gravitational field. This allows it to ignore the effects of difficult terrain for a round or perform a rapid, short burst of movement (up to 5m) that provokes no attacks of opportunity. This can be used to quickly reposition or break line of sight.
• Targeting Lock (Action): As an Action, the drone can lock onto a single target. Until the end of its next turn, its attacks against that target gain +1 to hit. If the target attempts to hide or take evasive action, they suffer a -2 penalty to the roll.
• Automated Repair (Passive): At the start of its turn, if it took damage last round, the drone has a 1-in-6 chance of automatically repairing 1d4 HP. This is a subtle, slow repair, reflecting its self-maintenance programming.

Floor 3: Data Vault, maintenance drones. While the main map is in the Palace Vault, the bunker contains a very small, localized pretech schematic. It shows a few star systems in the Albion sector with small precursor stashes and outposts, even a “ghost” location for the Control World that is deliberately mislabeled.

From the last level, looking down they see the bottom of the shaft.

The bottom gives access to the control room. Most controls are dead and are not operational, but do reveal a logfile:

The Players find a fragmented data log detailing the Monolith’s function. The logs might reveal the sheer scale of the data being collected, perhaps mentioning “celestial bodies” or “gravitational signatures,” hinting at the larger connection.

---

Interarc period

Players might get contacted by the Danube Research Corp. to find some information on Mnemosyne and its moons. The message might appear on a console on their ship, without them having ever interacted with the corporation.

---

Hunting Clues

Players visit all the Marker sites to gather data to fill in the rest of the Map During this, they also slowly find out what the Markers were used for (Calibrating some system with gravitational manipulation)

• Avira Teredan: Solve a puzzle using crystals to unlock environmental data.
• Markertown: Negotiate with a smuggler who stole calibration codes, risking a shootout if diplomacy fails.

Charenet

The markers lead the players to the Pretech Spires in the Charenet System. Those were an important data conduit for the system and the connection protocols there leads them to the Control World (Some conflict with the Archivo Urkantone/Danube Research Corp. here?) This step also reveals the nature of the system as part of the superweapon and why there are areas of total star absence.

Charenet Spires: Survive a zero-gravity data-stream heist while avoiding corporate drones.

Total Control

The players reach the Control World. Along the way they might have attracted a few different actors. Here, there should at most be two factions with the players in the Control System, better yet if they are rivaling. Options could be:

• Criminal Underworld
• Unified Planets Navy / Imperial Navy (or Confederate Navy)
• Danube Research Company / Lanternyard Inc.
• UPN / Badigo Pirates (or One Earth Government)
• or someone else

The sun of the Control System is a Thorne–Żytkow object. Immediately when they enter the system, it is obvious at the host red giant is becoming increasingly erratic, meaning that the orbit of the internal neutron star has almost fully declined into the red giant’s core. This gives the players a supernova timebomb for decisions, should the DM need it.

Concluding the Adventure 

Epiloque

Who knows really

• If the Control World is destroyed, the Markers in the Albion sector become inactive and power down. Somewhere else in the galaxy though, other markers activate (one or less per sector), hinting at a larger, experimental network.

Additional Details 

Placeholder