Chapter 36 — Starter Adventure: The Cold Lantern

A complete, ready-to-run scenario for a first session — roughly two to four hours, three to five players, and a GM who has skimmed Parts I–II and Chapter 32. It needs no prep beyond reading this. Hand the players the pregenerated Wanderers (Appendix A6, with full logs in the Quickplay/Characters folder) — Echo, Bram, Edda, Ace, Jinx — or let them build their own; the adventure assumes nothing about who they are except that they're a crew with a ship and a reason to take work.

Everything here is built from rules already in the book. Where a roll comes up, the chapter is noted. The opposition is described the Wanderstar way (Chapter 40): a damage die and a note on how hard it is to put down, nothing more. Players roll; the world doesn't.

The one-paragraph pitch. A dying frontier station, the Cold Lantern, is freezing to death. Its core-heat tap is failing, its decks are going dark one by one, and the corporation that owns the lease would rather foreclose than fix it. The crew is hired to get into the sealed engineering deck, recover what's needed to keep the lights on, and find out why the heat is failing. The answer is sabotage — and the saboteurs are still aboard.

Continuing into a campaign? If you're running The Cold Lantern as the doorway to False Light (the campaign in the Campaigns/ folder, set in the Coldwake Reach sector) — or just using the pregens — the crew's ship is the Long Account (Chapter 25), mortgaged to the Vance dock authority that runs this dock. That note is why a modest fee is worth taking, and why the next job always will be too. A one-shot table can ignore every word of this; the adventure stands completely on its own.

Index§

• The situation behind the screen
  • The three powers (faction beat)
• How the crew gets the job (the hook)
• Act I — The Cold Dock
• Act II — The Engineering Deck
  • The checkpoint (social / stealth)
  • The hot compartment (hazard — Chapter 13)
• Act III — The Saboteurs
• Wrapping up — rewards and threads
• GM cheat-sheet

The situation behind the screen§

The Cold Lantern is an old Tian-Lu Orbital hab-ring around a dead gas-giant moon on the frontier of the Coldwake system — a few thousand residents, a market, a dock, and a single Umbral Coring & Heat radiothermal tap drilled into the moon's warm core that keeps the whole ring from freezing. The tap and its heat exchanger are the station's heart. For three weeks that heart has been failing: decks cold-cycling, the rad-warnings creeping up, residents drifting away on every outbound ship.

It is not failing by accident. GANYMEDE Salvage wants the Lantern dead — a derelict ring is theirs to break and sell, and they have a buyer. Their agent aboard, a quiet fixer named Sool Vantongue, has hired a two-person sabotage crew to cut coolant lines and foul the exchanger, slow enough to look like ordinary decay. Umbral, which holds the heat-lease, has done the math and decided a foreclosure-and-write-off is cheaper than a frontier repair; their field rep has stopped returning the administrator's calls. Caught between the vulture and the landlord is the station's administrator, Mira Holt — out of options, out of money, and willing to hire strangers off the dock because no one official will help.

The crew's job, as offered: get into the locked-down engineering deck, retrieve the exchanger control core (a hardened data-and-parts module, mag-clamped to the deck in the hot zone) so the station's own engineers can attempt a repair, and bring back word of why the heat is failing. The job underneath: stop the sabotage, survive the saboteurs, and decide whose station this is going to be.

The three powers (faction beat)§

Run these as light faction trackers (Chapter 34). The crew's choices tip the clocks; the GM moves them between scenes.

• The Residents (Administrator Holt). Want: the Lantern to live. Can: offer the crew the run of the station, local knowledge, and a modest fee — but little muscle and less money. Clock (4): fills as the cold spreads. If it fills, the ring is evacuated and abandoned. Starts at 2 of 4 — it's already late.
• GANYMEDE Salvage (Sool Vantongue). Want: the Lantern dead and legally salvageable. Can: the sabotage crew aboard, a breaking-ship waiting one jump out, and money to buy silence. Clock (4): fills as the exchanger degrades; at full, the core fails for good and the station is theirs. Their saboteurs are the crew's direct opposition.
• Umbral Coring & Heat (absent). Want: the cheapest exit. Can: foreclose, or — if shown the sabotage is criminal and the station salvageable — be shamed or bargained into sending a real repair team. Lever: evidence. Umbral is the faction the crew can flip with proof, and the cleanest path to a real win.

How the crew gets the job (the hook)§

Pick whichever fits your table; all land the crew on the dock with Holt's offer.

• Off the board. The crew's ship is low on fuel or funds and the Lantern is the only port in reach. On the dock, a harried woman in a patched admin coat is openly trying to hire anyone who looks capable. (Default.)
• Owed a favor. A contact (use any pregen's contacts — Ace's salvage broker Tace Driftwell, Bram's Warden-Captain Steelshield, Jinx's Velvet Account) asks the crew to look in on the Lantern as a personal favor, or a paying one.
• The cold call. Holt's distress message reached the crew mid-jump — weeks stale, the way all news travels (Chapter 30). They arrive not knowing if anyone's still alive.

Per-pregen hooks, if you're using them:

• Echo (engineer) — a failing core-tap is personal; the warren she's from lives or dies on exactly this kind of gear.
• Edda (medic) — the cold is killing the old and the young first; she can't walk past that.
• Ace (pilot) — Tace Driftwell tipped him that GANYMEDE is circling; there's salvage money in knowing the truth first.
• Bram (soldier) — Won't Leave Anyone Behind; a frightened station full of people is exactly his wound.
• Jinx (fixer) — she smells the angle immediately: someone's killing this station on purpose, and that someone has money.

Act I — The Cold Dock§

Where: the Lantern's docking ring and market deck — cold enough to see your breath, half the shops shuttered, residents queuing for outbound passage.

Open on the chill and the fear. Let the crew move around, talk to people, and feel the place dying. This act is roleplay and information, not dice for their own sake — call for a roll only when something's uncertain and the answer matters.

Administrator Holt makes the offer plainly: get into engineering, bring back the control core, tell her what's wrong. She can pay Cr3,000 for the crew, plus salvage rights to anything non-essential they haul out. She'll admit, if pressed, that her own engineer won't go to the engineering deck — the rad-warnings spooked the whole staff after the coolant alarms started.

What's findable, and how:

Sool Vantongue, the GANYMEDE agent, is here too — moving quietly, watching who Holt talks to. A perceptive crew (Recon, opposed by Sool's Sneaking, Chapter 5) might notice they're being noticed. Sool will try, once, to buy the crew off ("the station's finished — take a finder's fee, look the other way, everybody eats"). How they answer sets the tone.

Faction beat: if the crew takes the job openly, GANYMEDE's clock ticks forward (Sool knows they're a threat and tells the saboteurs to expect company). If they play coy or seem bribable, it holds.

Act II — The Engineering Deck§

Where: the sealed contractor deck and the hot exchanger compartment beyond it. This is the set-piece. It exercises a social obstacle, an environmental hazard, and a hard skill test before any shot is fired.

The checkpoint (social / stealth)§

The lift down opens onto a corridor blocked by a folding table and two hired guards in mismatched armor — GANYMEDE's, posted to keep the curious out. The crew can:

• Talk through — Deceive, Charm, or Bureaucracy, opposed by a guard's Psychology (Chapter 5). The "we're the official repair crew" angle works beautifully (and is exactly the scene shown in Chapter 4). A clean win can leave the guards believing the crew is sanctioned — useful later.
• Sneak past — Sneaking vs the guards' Recon, via a maintenance crawlway Ace's Nose for Trouble or a Recon test can find.
• Go loud — the guards are mooks (damage 2D; one solid hit each puts them down). Fast, but the noise brings the saboteurs in Act III sooner, and Holt wanted this quiet.

The hot compartment (hazard — Chapter 13)§

Beyond the checkpoint, the exchanger compartment is taking a rising radiation dose from the exposed, sabotaged core. No one has a sealed suit. This is a radiation hazard on a clock: each round inside, the intensity compares to a Wanderer's Radiation rating (0 for an unprotected body, higher only in rad-rated gear), and any hit is Maimed-grade — it will not clear with rest.

The compartment is survivable if handled smart, deadly if rushed:

• Read it first. Edda's dosimeter (or any Recon test, Advantage with a dosimeter — 1 Momentum) reveals the core pulses: time a dash to the ebb and a Wanderer gets one clean round inside before the clock ticks. This is the intended solution, and it rewards looking before leaping.
• Grab the core. The exchanger control core is mag-clamped to the deck. Releasing it is a Mechanical test (8+); Echo does this trivially, anyone else likely Untrained. Failure means a second round inside — and now the rads land (1 trauma, Maimed-grade; gain 1 Momentum). This is the moment a crew without an engineer pays for it — see Chapter 4, where Ace does exactly this and limps out Maimed.
• Negate it properly. A rad-suit or vacc-suit (Rad rating), a Sealed suit, or shutting the exposed core behind a blast hatch first (an Engineering or System Operations test) removes the danger entirely. Reward the crew that prepares.

What the core tells them: once recovered and read (Engineering, Electronics, or System Operations, 8+), the control core's logs are unambiguous — the coolant lines were cut by hand, on a schedule, by someone with contractor access. This is the evidence that can flip Umbral. It is the adventure's most valuable object, and it's worth more as proof than as salvage.

Faction beat: recovering the core ticks the Residents' clock back (a repair is now possible) and arms the crew against Umbral. GANYMEDE's saboteurs, if not already alerted, now have every reason to come finish the job — and the crew.

Act III — The Saboteurs§

Where: the engineering deck, as the crew tries to leave with the core. The trap closes.

As the crew exits the hot compartment, the lift opens and the sabotage crew arrives to make sure the damage stays done — and finds strangers holding the control core. This is the combat set-piece (the second half of Chapter 4 shows it in motion).

The opposition (Chapter 40 — describe, don't stat):

• Korr and Dab, the saboteurs — two hardened foes (each shrugs the first hit, needs a couple; give each two "down" boxes if you want bookkeeping). Armed with carbines, 3D damage. Competent, not suicidal — they fight to drive the crew off the core, and will break for the lift if badly outmatched.
• Sool Vantongue (if the crew angered or exposed them in Act I) — arrives a round or two later, a boss: not a brawler but a problem, armed with a concealed stunner (Stun, 3D) and a willingness to deal, threaten, or flee. Sool is a scene, not a number — they'll offer money, name a price, or try to take the core back by talk before by force.

Running it the Wanderstar way: the saboteurs never roll to hit. When one fires at a Wanderer, that player rolls to avoid — Dodge (Athletics), dive for cover, or break line of sight — against 8, and only a failure brings the GM's single damage roll (Chapter 11). Cover is plentiful here: coolant housings (Solid, +4), conduit banks (Light, +2). A crew that uses it well is hard to hurt.

The choice at the core. The fight isn't really about the saboteurs — it's about what the crew does with what they now know. Three honest endings, none "correct":

1. Save the station. Hold the core, drive off or capture the saboteurs, and hand Holt's engineers the part and the evidence. With proof of criminal sabotage, the crew can shame or bargain Umbral into a real repair team (a Negotiate, Bureaucracy, or Political Science scene, possibly back-and-forth — Chapter 5's extended contest). The Lantern lives. Residents' clock empties; GANYMEDE's is broken.
2. Take the money. Sool's offer is real. Hand over the core, pocket a GANYMEDE finder's fee (Cr5,000+), and let the ring die on schedule. Clean credits, cold conscience — and a station full of people who'll remember the strangers who watched them freeze. GANYMEDE's clock fills.
3. Walk away with the truth. Grab the core, leave the factions to their war, and sell what they know to the highest bidder one jump out. The most Wanderer ending — and the one most likely to make the crew enemies on both sides.

Let the players decide. Whatever they choose, change the station to match and seed the result into a rumor (Chapter 33) for next time.

Wrapping up — rewards and threads§

Payment. Holt's Cr3,000 and salvage rights for saving the station; GANYMEDE's larger, dirtier fee for letting it die; or whatever the crew negotiates from Umbral once the evidence is in their hands. Salvage from the cold decks can add a rolled item or two (Chapter 38).

Advancement (Chapter 20). Mark any skill that was failed on a roll at Trained or better, and resolve marks at session end. Everyone gains +1 XP for completing the session; remind players that any Bane invoked during play earns its 1 XP (Jinx's Owes the Wrong People, Ace's Mistaken for Property, and Bram's Won't Leave Anyone Behind all have obvious openings here).

Lasting trauma. If anyone took a Maimed node in the hot compartment (very likely for a crew without an engineer), that's a full recovery session waiting to happen — the perfect spine for adventure two, and a natural spotlight for a medic in the crew.

Threads to pull next:

• GANYMEDE doesn't forget. If the crew cost them the Lantern, Sool's people will surface again, slowly, the way everything moves in the Shore (Chapter 30). And the Lantern was not their only scheme: out past the fringe, GANYMEDE has learned to make the wrecks it breaks — ships that misjump near the Greywell derelict graveyard, one jump out, end up in their yards. (The thread the False Light campaign pulls; ignore it for a one-shot.)
• Umbral's debt. A corporation shamed into doing the right thing is a corporation that now knows the crew's name — patron and threat at once (Chapter 34), a relationship that outlasts this one station.
• The Lantern itself. A saved station is a port, a contact, and a home base; a dead one is a derelict the crew helped make, and may revisit — even strip.
• A rumor for the road. Dock talk warns of a derelict field one jump out that salvage crews give a wide berth, and of beacons that have lately started putting ships where they shouldn't be. Most of it is true (Chapter 33).

Before the table breaks, note where the crew stands with each power — the Residents, GANYMEDE, and Umbral — whichever way the night went. That standing is the seed the next session grows from.

GM cheat-sheet§