Ten Adventure Sketches for ShadowFinder (Patreon)

I have been working on ShadowFinder, a modern-urban-fantasy play mode for Starfinder 1st edition, for more than three years. It's been badly sidetracked by societal and personal health issues, but I have never given up on it. As I slowly recover from chemoradiation treatments, I'm trying to spend a few hours a week getting back to this project.

Since it's been so long since I posted a lot about ShadowFinder, I wanted to remind folks who the play mode is supposed to be like. So, I am letting paying members see 10 adventure sketches for ShadowFinder, and free members to see one and get the first section of the other nine. And, obviously, you can take these sketches as use them for inspiration for any modern urban fantasy ttRPG game.

As a reminder, the Shadowblast is a shadowy demiplane that has trapped numerous dangerous entities inside it, and Shadowblastoi are creatures that have, at least temporarily, escapted that demiplane and are likely working to stay our, or even to jailbreak their more powerful lords.

Adventure Sketches

These aren’t fully-detailed adventures by any means, but they are quick sketches of events that could make good ShadowFinder sessions. A GM should be able to use these as inspiration for crafting a blueprint, filling in the details as appropriate depending on what world and tone and characters they are using for their ShadowFinder adventures. These also have some thematic suggestions that show how the energy of the Shadowblast can animate, alter, and infect things to create effects that defy rational, and even most mystical, explanation.

Each sketch includes the following sections:

Title. While these aren’t official the way a published adventure is, it’s easiest for people to have something to use when referencing these sketches in conversation. Plus, if there’s strong demand for one of these sketches to expanded into a full adventure (or get a follow-up, or get a follow-up that is a full adventure), it’s nice for people to know what to call it when talking about those options.

What It Looks Like. This is what the situation appears to be with casual observation. Even in worlds where magic is a fact of life, the Shadowblast’s weird mix of realities and tendency to create things inspired by belief and common media are often overlooked, disbelieved, or seen as a misunderstanding of “real” magic.

What’s Actually Going On. A short description of the real situation, as the PCs may come to understand during the course of the adventure.

How Do PCs Get Involved. Suggestions on ways to get PCs started on the adventure. If the PCs have a patron or are connected with the ShadowFinder Society, those methods can almost always get them to an adventure by having one or the other hear rumors and send PCs to investigate, so I don’t bother mentioning that every time.

How Does It End. A suggestion for that kind of encounter an end the problem driving the adventure. Again, these are just suggestions, and GMs should feel free to come up with their own ideas, or even follow the players lead if they come up with a cool idea on what might be going on and how to stop it.

Then What. Assuming the GM is running ongoing ShadowFinder sessions, this provides some ideas on what could develop after the events of the adventure.

[H4]Cult of the Corn

What It Looks Like: There is a spreading epidemic of missing children, starting in one small rural town several weeks ago, but now spreading out and covering more minor municipalities, all in the same region, which is mostly corn farms and silos.

What’s Actually Going On: A Shadowblastoi that cannot escape that demiplane has established a cult on the Material Plane that worships it. That cult is kidnapping children that show signs of being enigmas, and testing to see if their powers can fuel strange machines to open portals between the Material Plane and the Shadowblast. So far, those portals are only strong enough to bring a few more agents through, but now those are building more cults, and looking for more children.

The recent economic downturn in the area makes a number of people easy marks for the cult recruiters. Meeting in cornfields of rotting grain it’s not worth paying to harvest, or old corn warehouses that sit empty, the cult has begun to refer to itself as the Fellowship of Corn. The Shadowblastoi agents have found that a few minor tricks and a little stolen money goes a long way to convincing desperate folks to turn to a weird corn-figure religion that the Shadowblastoi are literally making up as they go along. As long as people bring them children to be “blessed in the cornfields” (tested for enigma powers), and no one complains when the children later go missing (and are replaced with bags of money), the Shadowblastoi don’t care what the cult members think is actually going on.

How Do PCs Get Involved: This could easily be an entry-level adventure as a friend or family member’s kids goes missing (or if the PCs are younger, a friend of theirs), and with no one having any leads, the PCs are asked to help in an act of desperation. Or a member of the fellowship of Corn might try to recruit a PC, leading them to wonder what weird things are behind its strange, and often nonsensical, beliefs and practices.

Of, if one of more PC actually has work as a reporter, law enforcement, park ranger, or whatever, looking into this may be part of their normal job.

Alternatively, a side-effect of the portal machines could be that the kids can send out dreams (maybe only to people they know, or maybe only to enigmas – whatever makes the PCs a good target for this), and the children themselves send prophetic dreams and hints to the PCs, hoping to be rescued.

Or the PC’s van could break down between two fallow cornfields, and while looking for help, they spot a Shadowblastoi carrying off a child.

How Does It End: The PCs track down and destroy the abandoned corn silo where the kids are being held and strapped to weird portal-making machines.

Then What: Even if the PCs save all the kids, destroy the machines, and disband the cults, the original Shadowblastoi perpetrator is still safely in the demiplane, and still wants to get out. And now it knows the PCs’ names.

[H4]The Haar

What It Looks Like: As a cold coastal sea fog (a “haar” in local terms) moves in over the region, people begin to play pranks, vandalize business and public spaces they dislike, and settle grudges. But it’s getting more and more violent as unusual weather conditions causes the haar to stay for days, and the vandalism begins to include attacking people, blowing up telephone and radio towers, and wrecking the only bridges out of town. Local authorities think’s mass hysteria. Or maybe Antifa.

What’s Actually Going On: A planar conjunction has allowed part of the Shadowblast to overlap with the material plane. The haar is a side effect of things getting dark and visibility being limited, not the cause of it. While a few people have actually used this as an opportunity to settle old grudges, most of the damage is being done by monsters leaking over from the Shadowblast, and the longer things stay like this, the more powerful and dangerous the creatures are crossing over are, and the more damage they’ll do.

(Art by Dave)

How Do PCs Get Involved: If the PCs have a connection to the ShadowFinder Society (or a similar group), they may have been sent here because the planar conjunction was predicted and the Society wants them to make observations… of course no one predicted anything this serious. If any PC has predictive or psychic abilities, they might have had prophetic dreams telling them something weird and important was going to happen in the area. Of, if this is a first adventure, the PCs might all be people in the region, whose 1st-level abilities kick in as a result of the planar conjunction.

How Does It End: There’s no way to end planar conjunctions early, but appropriate skill checks or research challenges (see Complex Skill Encounters in Chapter Nine: ShadowFinder Rules) can use the movement of the haar, astrology, astronomy, and maybe tea leaf reading to predict when and where the planar barrier with the Shadowblast will be thin enough for monsters to cross over. The PCs can then intercept the last few incursions, preventing those creatures from causing more trouble (and possibly from performing rituals to bring over something big, if you want to have a set-piece final fight).

Then What: The PCs will now know that when the Shadowblast overlaps with the Material plane, it can cause strange weather phenomenon, and possibly other unexplained disturbances in the natural order (an aurora borealis only seen from some locations, flocks of animals moving in strange ways, milk and food spoiling suddenly, mass sponge migrations, and so on). This gives them a chance to find more Shadowblast incursions before they become serious. Not only does this given them a significant edge in Shadow Finding, but it makes it easy for the GM to introduce new adventures.

[H4]Hunt the Crocagator!

What It Looks Like: According to old records, in the 1980s, an unlicensed genetics lab was creating hybrid alligator-crocodiles as part of a project to try to unlock the ability to add specific genetic features from one species to another. Eggs they believed were defective they dumped in the sewer… and some of them hatched anyway. The spawn fought amongst themselves until only the strongest survived, the feared Crocagator. It hunted through the sewers for a few years, generating all sorts of urban legends, until it burst up through the sewer on day and ravaged a few neighborhoods. It was hunted down and killed, and the government hushed the whole thing up.

But now people claim it’s happening again. In the same sewers, in the same neighborhoods, people claim to be seeing smaller, younger versions of the Crocagator. It sure looks like someone has started up the old experiments.

What’s Actually Going On: In this case, it exactly what it looks like. Except the new version of the experiment is much more advanced, combining alligator, crocodile, and even gharial genetics with a wide range of other creatures—chameleons, snakes, even vultures—and dumping them into the old sewer system on purpose to intentionally see which ones turn out to be the deadliest hybrid. It’s a perverted version of survival of the fittest.

It's worth noting that this adventure has nothing to do with the Shadowblast. It’s just a typical mad scientist, perhaps one with magic abilities, going nuts and making problems.

How Do PCs Get Involved: If the PCs have a public success dealing with weird situations, local authorities might call them in hoping to get the issue dealt with quietly. Or if the PCs have allies who happen to live underground or in run-down neighborhoods where the original Crocogator did damage, they might contact the PCs for help, fearful this is a new Shadowblast Beachhead. Or new Crocagator hybrids might turn out to have a nose for something the PCs have on them, be that some specific magic ability, or animal companion, or ancient relic, and come looking to take a bite out of the player characters directly, and then get tracked back to the region where it was spawned.

How Does It End: The nutjob who has restarted the Crocogator experiments needs to be stopped. Specific powerful Crocagator hybrids may have to be dealt with first – they’re hungry and violent and do not belong to the natural food chain—but the problem won’t be dealt with until the person creating them is arrested or killed. Of course, the mad scientist knows people will come for him eventually, and so has set up in an abandoned bomb shelter under Crocogator-hybrid infested sections of the sewer. He even has sections of the surrounding tunnels equipped with cameras. After all, if he wants to know what the deadliest hybrid is, watching PCs fight his creations is one way to find out.

Then What: The PCs are going to want to know HOW someone managed to restart these experiments. Even if they capture the guilty party for the actual Crocogator hybrids, it turns out he had funding and received old, classified records from some shadowy group. That group, the Department of Advanced Research for a Working Intelligence Network (D.A.R.W.I.N.) believes the only way current civilizations can survive the various threats they face is to create a kind of superwarrior to fight their wars for them. They may be a secret government project, or an offshoot of the Lighthouse, or anything else the GM thinks might be fun as a recurring villainous group.

[H4]Knight At The Museum

What It Looks Like: A publicity stunt for the “Hellknight” movie franchise has gone wrong, or someone is sabotaging it for bad press. The producers of  “Hellknight III: Hellevator” sponsored a major exhibition about medieval armor and weapons at a mid-sized museum in a city that is a major movie market. The exhibit includes a few suits of Hell Armor created for the movie, with placards explaining what real-world armor styles were used as inspiration.

But the night before it was supposed to open, a security guard went missing, and one of the suits of armor – known as the Hexecutioner – was found holding a bloody axe. But that’s all just PR for the movie, right?

What’s Actually Going On: One of the wealthy producers working on the film is also an occultism nut and kind of an idiot. They took numerous occult symbols taken from authentic grimoires and compendiums, and gave them to the movie’s armorers, insisting that they be included in one of the suits of armor. That suit’s occult markings, combined with the psychic energy of millions of fans who think the Hexecutioner is “rad” and “sick,” have opened a tiny crack in the barrier between the Material Plane and the Shadowblast, allowing devilish forces to actually inhabit and animate the armor.

They killed the guard, and dragged the body back into the Shadowblast.

But the connection is too weak to work except during the few hours when the sun is furthest from dusk or dawn, so all examinations of the armor (even magic ones) undertaken during the day reveal nothing but blood. And the guard’s body wasn’t found, and cameras don’t show it being taken out of the museum (cameras within the museum malfunctioned when the Shadowblast energies animated the armor), so authorities, for now, are assuming it’s a hoax.

But the armor is going to keep killing, at least one victim a night, no matter where it gets put…

How Do PCs Get Involved: One of them might recognize one of more of the diabolic symbols on the armor, and think there’s more to this than a hoax. Or the producer might hire one or more PC as an expert in the occult, because they are excited by the possibility it’s real. Or the PCs could just be fans of the Hellknght movies, and not want the production to suffer bad press.

How Does It End: The real occult symbols on the armor glow when it is animated, so after facing it in a fight the PCs should know which ones to destroy. If all the symbols are not destroyed, the armor will animate (even individual pieces of it, if it is taken apart) and seek to kill one person each night.

Then What: Whether the occultist producer originally contacts the PCs or not, if they prove able to deal with the armor the producer will be excited to work with them. Such a contact could prove useful, given the producer’s wealth and contact. But it’s a mixed blessing, since they are an idiot, assume they are always right, and are as likely to send PCs after a fake or into the center of a massive cult conspiracy, with no real warning which is happening.

[H4]Little Shop of Terrors

What It Looks Like: Someone keeps breaking into the Garden of Versatiles plant shop, and smashing it. They don’t seem to steal anything, just break things up. They especially tend to pull some of the bigger plants out of their pots, and scatter them all around the shop. Apparently fed up with the constant vandalism, the shop owners have declared they are leaving the country, and they don’t care what happens at their shop. When questioned, no one in the nearby neighborhood is willing to admit they saw anything, suggesting the vandals may be threatening people to ensure silence.

What’s Actually Going On: The shop is in an old building, where in the 1930s a wannabe-warlock tried to summon the Shadowblast itself to serve as his patron. He only mostly failed, and managed to get tiny motes of Shadowblast-tinged energy infused in the stone and steel of the building. And there it sat, insulated by iron and rock, until the Garden of Versatiles opened up. As new plants were grown, they managed to attract the residual Shadowblast energy

Those plants are mindless, but they are still seeking the Shadowblast, like a leaf turns to face the sun. As a result, when they come to life (only when the sun goes down), they do their best to create chaos and fear, two popular energies to wedge open a Shadowblast Beachhead. But since there is no Beachhead here, their instinctive efforts serve no purpose.

How Do PCs Get Involved: If the PCs have any contacts with fey, those fey might ask them to go look into it, as it sounds like a problem related to the sliver of the First World that can be accessed by mortals on this world. Alternatively, this is a great starting adventure for low-level PCs who happen to live nearby, or maybe have the shop owners as distant relatives who leave them ownership of the shop, and a note explaining they are terrified to enter it.

How Does It End: Pretty much the biggest, most dangerous and frightening plant creatures need to be dispatched. For the best long-term result, the origin of the problem should be found (perhaps tracking down old ownership records of the building, looking for weird symbols in the basement, using divination to speak to the motes of Shadowblast energy and discover their mindless desire to go home), and the residual energy dispersed.

Then What: Congratulations, the PCs own a flower shop! Or, if they do the leg work to get it to some other relative of the original owners, they have a friend with a flower shop, which includes some old rooms once used for magic rituals, a surprisingly-comfortable sofa in the back hall, and a delivery truck they can borrow.

[H4]Maisy Built a Fort

What It Looks Like: A child at an orphanage, Maisy, has convinced the other children to try to make the world’s largest pillow fort. The staff is unwilling to make any effort to take it down, and several kids are hiding in it and refusing to come out. Also, a few of the staff seem to have taken this opportunity to take unauthorized days off.

What’s Actually Going On: The pillow-and-blanket-fortification instigator, Maisy, is a powerful enigma whose parents were killed in a powerful Shadowblastoi attack. Th has turned this into more than just e Shadowblastoi have been trying to get her within the big, old building of the orphanage, and in defense, Maisy organized the children to build a pillow fort with every pillow, blanket, mattress, cushion, and tablecloth they could get their hands on.

But Maisy’s vast and unexplained enigma powers has turned this into far more than an easily-bypassed collection of bedding. She has literally used the focus and efforts of the children to create a demiplane, pocket reality constructed entirely of comforters, quilts, sheets, pillows, and other bedding and textiles. The “Fort Cushion” demiplane is rules by Maisy’s will, and while Shadowblastoi can enter it, the combination of its labyrinthine structure and teddy bear and stuffed animal defenders has so far kept Maisy safe.

Of course, Maisy isn’t doing any of this on purpose, and she doesn’t understand that she controls the nature of Fort Cushion. She’s lost and frightened, as are numerous other children and a few of the most caring employees of the orphanage who went into the demiplane to comfort the children before they realized anything supernatural was going on. The remaining staff knows that even to people with experience with magic and the supernatural, “There’s an infinite pillow fort on the second floor, and staff can’t find their way through it, and we don’t like the way those teddy bears are looking at us” sounds crazy, and are just waiting for the situation to resolve itself… they hope.

How Do PCs Get Involved: As Maisy’s power spreads, it may begin to effect stuffed animals and bedding even beyond the orphanage, leading to the PCs finding their throw rugs and clean laundry trying to make it out the door, before collapsing as the strain on Maisy is too great. A quick review of local reports shows a radius of weird wandering washcloths… centered on the orphanage.

Of the PCs could investigate the death of Maisy’s parents, which could have been connected to their last case. This uncovers Maisy somehow survived, is seen as a “strange girl,” and that she’s at the orphanage, but the officials there won’t say anything about her.

How Does It End: The PCs are going to have to go into the Fort Cushion demiplane. They must defeat the most powerful of the Shadowblastoi to get in there, but also use diplomacy to convince the demiplane itself (represented by talking faces on quilts, stern teddy bear defenders, and walls of pillows forming bas relief animated negotiators) that they are not a threat to Maisy. Once she’s safe, the demiplane will let her, and the PCs and orphanage workers and other children, all leave safely.

Then What: Maisy needs someone to teach her about the real threats of the Shadowblast, and how to control her demiplane-creation power so she can defend herself and others without getting lost inside her own creation. The PCs could do that, or the ShadowFinder Society might reach out to help. Also, the Shadowblastoi were sent after Maisy by some more powerful force still within the Shadowblast, so that needs to be dealt with. Plus, the orphanage administration is now both willing to accept that the Shadowblast and things from it are a threat, and that the PCs are heroes fighting against it. They could become useful allies, and the old stone building that has been converted into the orphanage may have basements, outbuildings, or attic space the PCs can use as a base of operations.

[H4]Save The City Beneath

What It Looks Like: Water is mysteriously disappearing. From the drinking water system, reservoirs, even entire rivers and lakes are showing water levels way, way below what they out to be. The systems are all connected to the city’s drinking system, and if the loss isn’t stopped, the entire city is going to have a water shortage.

What’s Actually Going On: The city sits atop “The City Beneath,” a subterranean mix of old, unmapped sewers, storm drains, bootlegger tunnels, heating shafts, closed-off basements, cisterns, bomb shelters, previous cities, and secret underground complexes, natural caves, mined-out salt mines, where a civilization exists with only sporadic contact with the normal city above them. The City Beneath has actual physical portals to the Shadowblast, but also to demiplanes with less malignant residents and much ancient lore and preserved mystic libraries.

The City Beneath is not an inherently evil place. It’s a city, with good people, bad people, homeless people, gangs, unions, charities, arks, and everything else you’d expect to find in a big city—just all underground. But a powerful and judgmental person or group in the upper class of the “normal” surface city (we’ll call them F.L.O.O.D. – Friends of Law, Order, and Organized Democracy) has decided the City Beneath is an unacceptable danger. This group wants to find the City beneath, scour it of everything of value and power, and destroy it.

So, FLOOD are flooding the lower sections of their own city—uncaring that they are drowning the homeless, flooding out the dispossessed, and terrifying the vulnerable members of the lower class in the process—to follow the water drainage into passageways to the City Beneath.

Of course, in the process they are also waking up and releasing things the City Beneath locked away as too dangerous centuries ago.

How Do PCs Get Involved: If the mystery of a regionwide water shortage centered on a major city isn’t enough to get the PCs poking around, when some monsters start popping up in basements, abandoned bank vaults, old tunnel systems, and trendy secret clubs, the PCs can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or someone working for FLOOD might even try to hire the PCs to protect their water-trackers, hoping monster-hunters will blindly accept that the City Beneath must be “dealt with.”

How Does It End: The PCs figure out what FLOOD is up to, and either expose them to the public (which won’t result in anyone important going to jail, but will bring enough pressure for FLOOD to give up… for now), or hunt down and take out the FLOOD manager in charge of the deadly operation. FLOOD won’t be destroyed either way, but will decide such high-profile, headline-grabbing operations are a bad idea.

Then What: Assuming the FLOOD threat to the City Beneath is ended, the PCs now have access to an entire hidden society. In future adventures they can explore, train, use Coin of the Realm to buy magic items, set up bases, make allies, and go adventuring to deal with the City Beneath’s unsavory elements and gangs.

For inspiration on the City Beneath, look up the real-world locations of the Aldwych tube ghost station in London, England; Avinguda de la Llum in Barcelona, Spain; the Burlington Bunker in Corsham, England; the Cincinnati Subway in Ohio; Derinkuyu, Turkey; Dixia Cheng in China; the Estación de Chamberí abandoned subway station in Madrid, Spain; K'n-yan; Metro 417 in Los Angeles, California; Naours, France; New York City’s City Hall station; The Paris Catacombs, France; Poland’s Wieliczka Salt Mine; Portland Underground, in Portland, Oregon; Three Kings Catacombs in Tizimín, Mexico; and the Seattle Underground, in Seattle, Washington.

[H4]There Must Have Been Some Magic…

What It Looks Like: Someone in a snowman costume is scaring kids out in the woods. Or some kids are pulling a prank, and maybe it went too far.

Either way, some kids are claiming a snowman came to life when they put an old silk hat on its head, and began terrorizing them, and demanding they bring it tribute. Other kids say they were in the same place at the same time, and the terrorized kids hid and destroyed the snowman they were supposed to put the hat on. Then, the kids who claim a snowman came to life jumped out of nowhere screaming there was an evil snowman after them.

But, regardless, a couple of the terrorized kids are missing now.

What’s Actually Going On: The silk hat put on the snowman’s head is, in fact, an incredibly tiny Shadowblast Beachhead. It formed in an abandoned magic shop, and managed to get rats to carry it outside. It has also influenced the weather, making multiple snow days, to get kids out of school. But it is a truly tiny Beachhead, and it can only affect a single snowman and an area of about 50 feet around him. When it does, ShadowWalkers find themselves in a creepy winter forest with talking wolves, mobile carnivorous trees, whiteout storms full of blizzards, and of course one evil snowman construct which demands tribute.

The kids who happen to be ShadowWalkers ended up on the Shadowblast Beachhead as soon as they put the silk hat on the snowman. A minor Shadowblastoi animated the snowman, and is now trying to build a cult of children so they can expand the Beachhead to let it into the Material Plane. The kids who were there that didn’t happen to be ShadowWalkers just lost sight of everyone who crossed over into the Beachhead, and assumed they hid.

The Evil Snowman can’t cross over—yet—but if more than a couple of day go by without children bringing it tribute, it’ll begin to send what wintery nightmares it can through the Beachhead into the kid’s community. It’s already done so one, and grabbed to children it is keeping as hostages to force their friends to sneak out and bring it things.

(Art by Dominick)

How Does It End: The PCs are going to have to actually cross over into the Shadowblastoi Beachhead, destroy the creature that has taken up residence in the hat, then find and recover the kids, fleeing back to the material world as the wintery nightmare of that beachhead unravels around them.

Then What: There remains the question of what magic shop the hat came from. It has a tag from Spangle’s Sorcerous Supplies… which went out of business years ago. (On the other hand, of that shop was once in the same building as the Little Shop of terrors, the PCs could move natural from this adventure to that one.)

[H4]Vermin

What It Looks Like: Giant, man-eating cockroaches are flooding up out of the sewers. Maybe they are related to Hunt the Crocogator? Or the effort to Save the City Beneath? Wherever they are from, they’re swarming up in masses in alleys, abandoned buildings, and condemned sections of town in vast swarms… eating people.

What’s Actually Going On: A colony of astriapis (Alien Archive IV) got sucked into the Shadowblast from beyond the planar Gap. Horrified by the environmental damage they saw there, they sought to start a revolution to turn the Shadowblast into a fungal paradise of lightless bounty.

It failed.

The astriapis were infused with negative energy and other planar energies, and turned into undead. They are effectively ghuls (Starfinder #15: Sun Divers), except their two forms are an astriapi, and a medium-sized swarm of cockroaches, rather than a humanoid and a hyena. But, otherwise, they work like ghuls. (Or the GM can use any buglike species and undead they want for this basic plat).

The undead colony escaped the Shadowblast and passed into the decrepit sections of a dying city. As they were not bound to the Shadowblast they can dwell on the Material Plane indefinitely. But they has passed judgement on the wardens of the world they find themselves on, with its pollution and strip-mining and tainted oceans, and decided all its sapient species must be killed.

How Do PCs Get Involved: if the PCs have run through Hunt the Crocogator or Save the City Beneath, they can easily go from those adventures to this one, thinking it’s a continuation of the same issues.

How Does It End: The colony is going to have to be stopped, and it’s hatchery of undead larva destroyed.

Then What: The  astriapi are aliens, True aliens, not just from another world, but somehow from beyond the planar Gap, Even if the PCs don’t care about that, if word gets out, there will be those who want to dissect their brains to find out how the astriapi crossed from beyond the Gap into the Shadowblast.

[H4]Yellow Tide

What It Looks Like: A strange new algae in a local body of water (be that a lake, pond, ocean, or even cistern) is driving people into murderous rages. The area needs to be isolated and quarantined until an effective algaecide can be developed and sprayed over it.

What’s Actually Going On: A cloaked spaceship crashed into the body of water, killing the crew and damaging the ship. The goo used in the ship’s healing chambers has leaked into the water, and bonded to local forms of algae. It’s then gone wild, trying to heal the corpses of the dead alien crew, turning them into things that act like undead, but are of the plant type. The spaceship is still sending bizarre black-box-technology energy waves into the air and water, ensuring the hybrid healing-goo-algae keeps having enough power to keep growing.

Since the algae fills every cell of the reanimated corpses, any living creature attacked by the hungry-plant-creatures itself becomes a faux-undead. The reanimating goo is able to access some memories and skills in the dead brain of its host body, gibbering and trying to act as it did in life, but these are reflexes, not actual conscious thought. (Any undead can be used for these creatures, except they become plants and living, rather than undead, for any rules interaction.)

Since the body of water is a popular swimming hole, the reanimated aliens attacked a bunch of locals, who have in turn become killing faux-undead. But the alien goo isn’t really an algae, and no algaecide is going to contain it. Worse, rather than the infection only impacting people who go into the water, so quarantining makes sense, it’s acting like a mobile infection vector with a growing population. It’s turning animals, other plants, and people in the area into a growing hoard of infected attackers, and if it’s not dealt with soon, their numbers will grow large enough to

How Do PCs Get Involved: Trying to hunt down alien influences, perhaps after dealing with the astriapi in Vermin, could lead the PCs to be able to track certain alien energies, such as those keeping the reanimated aliens and the things they infect going.

How Does It End: The most powerful animated corpses need to be destroyed, and the spaceship reactor blown up. It can’t be shut down, so if some agency is allowed to cart it off, eventually the cycle will start all over again.

Then What: Anyone who gets through both Vermin and Yellow Tide is going to get a reputation as being an expert in alien undead. And that’s the sort of thing that comes out of the Shadowblast so much more frequently than anyone wants to admit…

More ShadowFinder Coming!

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