[Abe Sargent]

I removed a lot of the story behind why you wanted to take out the Temple (in the main story, the Temple has kidnapped a Baroness of Blackmoor and the King wants you to find and retrieve her). Here, we have a different reason for taking this thing out.

But get ready…


I think it’ll be really interesting for me to do a deep copy and paste from DA3 for you:

Far from the sun that helps Blackmoor, almost a third of the way around the galaxy lives light and life to
The Federation, a loose confederation of planets and peoples dedicated to the preservation of internal order and peace. Within the vast bureaucracy that governs this federation is a small bureau that is a tiny part of a big department that is but a fraction of a huge secretariat. This microscopic organization, the Galactic Survey Bureau (GSB), is charged with the long-term mission of exploring and mapping the galaxy, specimens of its flora and fauna, building a comprehensive directory of planets. One of the ways the bureau accomplishes its mission is by sending forth hundreds of Federation Survey Ships to visit
and catalog the stars and their planets.

A little over five years before the events related in this module, one of those survey vessels, the FSS Beagle, suffered a serious malfunction in its drive pod while in orbit around the sole inhabited world in a minor and heretofore uncataloged star system. Based on what was known, this accident was not supposed to happen. In fact, the engineers flatly maintained that it was impossible. Nevertheless, a power plant explosion destroyed the ship’s spatial discontinuity field and even damaged its conventional
drive. As a result, the crew of FSS Beagle found itself in a decaying orbit around a primitive world in a ship that was never meant to enter atmosphere.

Fortunately, Captain Bork Riesling found what appeared to be a dead sea bottom and managed to bring his ship down on it by badly abusing his conventional drive. Riesling’s maneuver saved both ship and
crew, but Beagle’s propulsion pods were so badly damaged that the vessel would never lift again-at least not without a new drive and power plant. Following the standard operating procedure, the captain sealed the ship and sent out survey robots to examine surface conditions. When their data was processed, there could be hut one unhappy conclusion.

The Beagle was stuck on a Class 9 pretechnological world inhabited by a number of sentient
species, of which the dominant species seemed to be genetically related to the principal species on the Federation Board of Governors. In fact, many members of Beagle’s crew, who were drawn from that principal species, could easily be mistaken for the dominant sentients of this planet except that their skin appeared to have a slight greenish cast under the light of the local sun. It would have been
extremely easy for the aliens to mix with the locals and gain global dominance within a few decades. But the very backwardness of the planet was its protection.

Federation regulations clearly prohibited cultural intervention in Class 9 worlds. Of course, regulations can be bent; and this was an emergency situation. The Beagle could not repair itself, and it could not lift.
There was enough power to keep the ship operational for decades, for perhaps as long as a century with a reduced crew. And, in a few years, the vessel would be missed, and a Federation rescue mission would begin backtracking its planned itinerary. Any vessel that came within a light year would almost certainly
pick up Beagle’s powerful distress beacon.

There always the chance, though, that some combination of events would delay the rescue. Budget cuts in 2946-2958 had delayed the rescue mission that was to search for FSS Foxglove, and the ship ended up being forgotten for almost 50 years until a minor bureaucrat noted that the vessel was still reported overdue.

In weighing these factors, there were those in the Beagle’s crew who favored a radical course of action. They wanted to contact the locals, establish cultural ascendency over them, and mobilize them to create an industrialized civilization. Using Beagle’s technological resources and with an entire planet to draw
from, it would be possible to establish a comfortable colony on the planet that would remain viable even if rescue was delayed for 500 years! The local sand folk, who occupied the desert surrounding Beagle, were already overawed by the aliens, calling them gods and their ship the City of the Gods. If the
other planetary cultures were as easily swayed, control of the globe might be established within a few short years and a global industrial base built within two decades.

It was a compelling argument, but one that Captain Riesling rejected. Regulations, he felt, could not he so easily flouted. When the rescue mission did show up, he would be accountable for all action taken; and the last captain to flout the nonintervention regulation had been cashiered and shipped to the ice
mines afFreya as an involuntary colonist. So FSS Beagle would adhere to regulations. Most of the crew would be placed in stasis. The robots would utilize the time to gather specimens on this world (thus impressing the superiors who would eventually review Riesling’s performance). A watch crew would run
the ship until the rescue mission arrived.

One of the crewmen who opposed Riesling’s decision was Security Officer Stephen (“the Rack”) Rocklin. As a senior line officer, Rocklin was part of the watch crew, charged with establishing groundside defenses against the natives. During the course of his duties, Rocklin became aware of some very strange aspects to Beagle’s new home. Many of the species captured by the e-bots (ecology robots) used as scouts displayed remarkable characteristics never encountered anywhere else in the galaxy. At first, it was thought that these were manifestations of unique parapsychological talents, but further
investigation showed that they were related to a strange energy field permeating the planet, but strongest just north of where the Beagle was grounded. Some of the aspects of this energy field were so bizarre that Rocklin and others took to referring to them as “magic,” (which, of course, is what they are).

After months of exposure to the bizarre phenomena of this world, Rocklin reached the conclusion that Beagle’s crew absolutely had to explore the planet further. The power represented by its energy field was a unique treasure that could change the lives of countless billions of yet unborn sentients throughout the galaxy. It must be studied and understood.

Knowing that the captain would never allow the cultural contact needed to accomplish this end, Rocklin recruited others to his cause and plotted a mutiny. Some crewmen joined because they agreed that what they had discovered on the planet justified breaking any and all regulations. Most, though, were simply scared that they would never he rescued.

As so often happens, the mutiny failed because it was betrayed. When Riesling was informed of the plot, he tried to arrest the ringleaders. Rocklin and his people fought back. It was touch-and-go for awhile, but the captain eventually regained control of the ship. Opening all of the envoi-pods in order to
create a diversion, Rocklin and a handful of mutineers managed to escape in a stolen lifeboat.

Though most of the loyal crew members were occupied rounding up the specimens who had wandered out of the open envio pods and into the ship’s corridors, one gunnery officer noted the lifeboat’s departure and sent a hellbore missile winging after it. The missile eventually caught up with the
lifeboat and sent it plunging into Frog Swamp, where Racklin and the survivors made contact with the Order of the Frog, which he eventually took over and turned into a personal power base.