Help flesh out dragonstar idea ...

[kramis]

So I had this sort of vague general setting/plot idea for dragonstar. Not really one plot, but something that can give rise to a lot of little adventures, and big ones later.

It occured to me that the dragonstar setting is actually a good place for smart powerful undead to gain some serious power.

I was thinking of a very high level necormancer Vampire who has turned some moon into a moving base of operations has started becoming a serious threat to the empire.

His moon base is hidden, and he is slowly creating a very large army of undead. The nice thing about undead is that all your fallen enemies just add to your army eventually. Also, the dark cold of space is very nice for undead. Space stations seem like great hunting grounds ... no sunlight.

So he has his minions make small raids to gather food for him and his other vampires, even keeping a small colony of slave humanoids like cattle.

Even the evil dragon emperor himself is scared. Right now the undead army is too small to be a serious threat, but it is growing, always growing, and one day it may be a serious problem. If only he could find the base to destroy it, but the vampire is clever and stays hidden, always on the move.

There are small skirmishes, and sometimes entire planets of undead are found and have to be blown up from space with weapons of mass destruction. But things are slowly getting worse and worse.

Soldiers are especialy terrified of fighting the undead. The undead fleets have special infiltration ships, or even some of them just fly right out into the dark of space through the hull and board the soldiers ships and try and take them over from the inside. After losing several ships this way, new orders were given. All ships sent into known battle against undead are given self destruct sequences that can only be countermanded within a certain time limit by authorized leaders.

Needless to say this wasn't popular with the soliders and lots of living men have been acidentally lost this way, but it has seriously slowed down the growth of the undead armies.


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Anyway, that's along the lines I was thinking. I would appreciate any sort of comments or ideas or anything to help flesh this out a bit, including small plot ideas (like the obvious lesser vampire on a remote space station type of mystery) and such.

Thanks much.

 

[ninjajester]

the vampire could also possibly have front corporations, possibly organ banks or mortuaries or whatever biomagic the setting has. this would allow him to bring in even more troops discreetly.

perhaps he also buys black market bodies, giving him contacts with star pirates and/or black marketeers.

the characters could even possibly start as employees of one of the front corps who discover that everything's not alright...

 

[BlackJaw]

The problem with vampires in space is that there is, in fact, a lot of sunlight (in systems). Now inside a ship, that isn't a problem, but windows in a ship is bad, and outside a ship is worse. now deep space activities and bases leads to no sunlight, and that's easy enough to do. also makes it immposible to locate the fleet or base without info on where to look.

On the other hand, undead don't need to eat, sleep, or breath. (well vampries may need to eat) That means you can fill a large ship with more undead, espeicaly minor ones, and simply release them as needed. think about etheral undead that can move out of the ships, through space, and into enemy ships directly boarding them at any location (ok, so you may need to get the FORCE SHEILDS down first).

I'd actualy recomend making the head vampire something really special. vampire dragon is cool and that bends the template rules only slightly. A yellow dragon works well for this as yellows are all but dead, and had not affiliation. another idea is the overly powerful spellcasting vampire (which is just to dang common in my opinion. why is it that all master mind villians are powerful spellcasters?) or my personal favorite, the Barbarian undead.

That last one works well for the dragon star setting. imagine a normal DnD world, that was attacked and taken over my the empire long ago, one of the first ones after the switch to evil dragon rule. That world had a powerful vampire warlord in it's northern region artic region. a small army of vampire spawn and barbarian vampries that lay dormant durring the summer in deep ice caves, and then emerge durring the winter when the sky is always dark. They awoke after the dragon emprie had taken their world, and proceeded to deal with it.

The army took a ship by force, and having made much of its crew dominated if not undead also, they could easly leave the world and start their raids. Slowly growing in ships and technical knowledge. I'd have the head vampire be the orginal undead warlord, and his right hand man a Mechanic of high level (also a vampire, or maybe a lich!) that handles the more technical matters, not that the barbarian hasn't had decades to learn.

Just imagine what those ships would look like, espeicaly on the inside. half lovecraftian bone temples, with a very connan the barbarian theme, wrapped in metal modified (no windows, solid black) space ship hulls.

Of course their tactics are still like they were on their home world. lay dormant then strike in mass.

Then again, a yellow dragon vampire lord, seeking vengence for the death of it's race would be cool and keep the dragon politics in play.

 

[kramis]

Some good ideas

Thanks Ninjatester ... those were some really top notch suggestions I hadn't thought of. Definitely some variations of them going in. Exactly what I was looking for!

I'd already thought of a lot of what you mentioned Blackjaw, but thanks anyway (ruling out some of it, using some of it). I do like the mechanist idea though and your description of the ship interiors.

I had already thought about incorporeal undead going through hulls (see my original post above). It did occur to me that incorporeal undead might not be able to travel in ships normally ... the ships starts to accelerate and leaves them behind as they pass through the walls. So maybe they need to travel in special Wall of Force cargo holds. I even thought of using small wall of force invasion missiles ... missiles designed to pierce the hull and then release an interior cargo of incorporeal undead into the ship. A wall of force inside the missile containting them, and that goes down on contact ... it wouldn't even have to pierce the hull, just stick to the outside. Luck shooting deadly spitballs.

If any of you have seen Andromeda, I was thinking along the lines of Magog invasions, but with undead.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I have been planing to use the zombie's from the Deathstaker books, basicly nano-zombies. You have a device, that releases nanobot into a ship during combat, the nanobots animate the dead, who then go after the living.

For the device I was going to use a "brain" undead one that is, that controls X number of the zombies.

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I can see vampires hiding the the space between systems but I think they would be found where the food was most common. This means the vampires would be on the most populated worlds or moving from planet to planet draining the dry. I also see a vampire fleet coming to a backward planet, grabbing every humaniod and hooking them up to blood milking machines.

 

[BlackJaw]

Still a cool idea.

 

[kramis]

additional related plot lines

I came up with a subplot line and then realized it actually ties in with the undead idea nicely. Actually, two more plotlines.

First, I thought of some new uber-drug called "nova" that really revs up the user giving super human strength and speed, but is highly addictive and very dangerous. When you OD you "go nova" and get all "veiny" looking and really really strong, but go beserk and start attacking everything and everyone around you until it kills you.

First I thought about making it a random underground drug thing, then I thought that was boring and thought maybe it was made by the empire in an experiment to enchance it's soldiers but it didn't work out too well (good lead in for beginnign characters here if they are legionaires ... it is put in the food, but they all get sick that day and dont' get any. The whole unit freaks out and ends up going Nova and they are the only ones who escape). But then I thought to put a little undead twist on it, and it could be made by one of the vampire's Alchemists and after you go Nova and die you come back as a ghoul or some other type of undead. Undead biowarfare.

The other idea was a more general one ... I thought the Soulmech idea should be extended to have living ships and possibly space stations. Then I thought of some complications in doing that, and maybe it would make humanoids insane to be forced into a ships body. They make a big point of how a soulmech looks a bit like the original body to help out with the transition. So then I thought, why not have something like a Dolphin soul put into a ship, with enhanced INT from the computer AI. It would "Swim" through space. These would be the more expensive types of ships and get some bonuses to flying ability, but making them vulnerable to mental attacks. This would be a general change to my dragonstar universe.

So, taking this with the undead ... two options. Either they "force" humanoid souls into ships, letting them go insane or chosing insane souls from the beginning. Or they have some type of undead ships.

Anyway, just some more thoughts.