Stars in the Darkness

AL 5: Stars in the Darkness is a 3rd level adventure by Daniel J. Bishop. Art is by Christopher Heilmann (including cover), Kristian Richards (cartography), Pawel Dobosz, and The Forge Studios. The publisher is Purple Duck Games.

Disclosure: I am the author.

Man, this adventure was a fun one to write. See that picture on the cover? A painting by the same artist, Christopher Heilmann, was the inspiration from which all else was woven. Add to that the cartography of Kristian Richards, which depicted (to my mind) great Abysses as cosmic gulfs, some Appendix N stories, some H. Rider Hagard, and H.G. Wells' morlocks, and you have this adventure. Along with The Revelation of Mulmo, this rewrites elves into something a bit darker than they are in many other games.

Stars in the Darkness makes serious use of birth augurs and Luck scores. In fact, it is the first DCC adventure (to my knowledge) to make use of temporary Luck that must be spent before it is gone.

The adventure takes place in a "conceptual space" which, while the PCs may need to journey to reach it, both doesn't exist in the real world and intersects with many parallel worlds. Naturally, a party from such a world is included - and they have a different memory of what the areas they passed through were like! This allows the judge to have either replacement characters or potential antagonists as needed.

I have written adventures that take you to other planets - The Dread God Al-Khazadar and The Weird Worm-Ways of Saturn. I have written adventures that touch upon other planes of existence. This is, though, the most cosmic thing that I have written. It touches upon a time span exceeding millennia, and it concerns the fate of the multiverse itself.

This adventure is included in the Purple Duck compilation, The Stars are Falling.

In millennia past, the ancestors of the elves protected the stars as they followed their courses, for there are wolves in the outer dark.  Yet what manner of creature would dare to consume stars as though they were sheep in the field?  And what has become of the ancient starherds who once stopped such monsters?  For such a monster is back - Urstah, the Star-Drinker.  Stars are disappearing from the night sky, and with the loss of those stars, luck is being drained from the world.  Your luck.  Dare you enter the caverns, face the star-drinker, and release the stars in darkness?

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