Scourges Of The Galaxy

[Steve Long]

Here's our back-cover text describing Scourges Of The Galaxy:

SCUM AND VILLAINY

Every great hero needs an equally great villain as his nemesis. In a Star Hero campaign having just the right enemies for your heroes makes the campaign perfect. That’s what Scourges Of The Galaxy offers you — dozens of Science Fiction villains that add even more fun to any campaign! It includes:

—five master villains: Archimandrite Landol Callixtus, corrupt church leader from the planet Polyphemus; Geiger “Mind Master” Cray, a Mind Police officer with a secret agenda; the Machiavellian politician Senator Leopold D’Estaing; King Narch, leader of the terrifying Xenovore Fleet; and Tateklys, the Malvan leader of the Hzeel Outfit

—four organizations: the Church of the Infinite Dark, a cult of powerful “Void Messiahs” devoted to reshaping the Universe to suit its foul gods; the Clone Mob, a criminal organization with almost a half million identical members; Pelga’s Fist, a crew of bloodthirsty space pirates; and the Psindicate, a psionic criminal conspiracy whose tendrils reach across the Galaxy

—a dozen solo adversaries, including mercenary xenoarcheologist Lucas Bellair, rogue telepathic assassin Darryl Revok, master pilot and smuggler Double H, mad scientist Dr. Maximilian Landau, and cybernetic bounty hunter Blackjack Thorson

Even better, each villain comes with plot seeds, suggestions on how to use him in your campaign, and other useful information. So tell your heroes to get ready — it’s time for them to face the Scourges Of The Galaxy!


ISBN: 978-1-58366-112-3
SKU: DOJHERO305
Price: $26.99 US

[Labrat]

I posted this in the Star Hero forum, but afterwords realized that it would fit better here... d'oh...

Not to step on Ghost-Angel's toes or anything I just wanted to briefly comment about the SOG PDF that I purchased yesterday. This is just a few notes about my first glance-through and the impressions that I have about the book so far.

Content looks very versitile and extremely usable right out of the box. I really like the 'What they say: X' portion getting mock-third-person comments on the NPCs in the book. Great touch! I really appreciate the sporatic expansions about subjects not extensively covered in the TE/WOK books (the Clone Mob, the Psindicate, Church of the Infinite Dark and even a few new ones like the Imperial Bounty Hunter Network!).

Layout: Excellent.

Artwork: Supurb. Maybe the best collection of art seen in many a year from the HERO product line. The look is right, the headers and fonts are right and the Chapter intros are quite nice as well. There's only a couple of instances where 'old' artwork was inserted but that's quite understandable. It really completes the 'feel' of this book. Well done!

Playability: TBD. The plot seeds, combined with WOE and TE should make for some fantastic story constructions. Can't wait to get started.

Overall: If you are a Star Hero fan, especially wrt the Terran Empire setting then buy this book. Even if you are just a fan of Alien Wars, there are a few Xenovore NPC write-ups that make the book worth looking into.

[Black Ops]

Are Characters for Galactic Champions in it ?

[Admiral C]

Are Characters for Galactic Champions in it ?

I would like to know this as well.

[Labrat]

There is no direct mention since this is a Terran Empire space-opera genre book, but there are some higher point charcters (350+ CPs) such as those in the Psindicate (Mentalists), worshippers of the Sons of Edom, galactic bounty-hunters and others who could pass off as super-villians. As a matter of fact, a quick perusal of the material reveals quite a number of NPCs well into the 400+ CP region.

I'll leave it up to Steve and Jason to correct me if I'm wrong.

[ghost-angel]

Those all fall well under the standard GC level.

And meaning no disrespect to those asking the question - This is NOT a Champions product, I would certainly hope there isn't a single Champions character in the lot, Galatic or otherwise. It's hard enough to get Heroic level material as is, thank you very much.

[Admiral C]

And meaning no disrespect to those asking the question - This is NOT a Champions product, I would certainly hope there isn't a single Champions character in the lot, Galatic or otherwise. It's hard enough to get Heroic level material as is, thank you very much.

None taken GA. Although it would be nice to have a source of GC level write ups only if because they take a while to write up and coming up with them on the fly can be difficult. I certainly wouldn't want to stick them in material not appropriate for them like SotG, expecially when the write up in there are probably several centuries off from the GC setting.

I did a GC game a for a few sessions and had to craft an interim villain quickly and I had woefully underestimated the damage the players did.

[Black Ops]

Hey, no disrespect against the Terran Empire.
I like the Backround myself and will buy the Book anyway.

[Steve Long]

There are no Galactic Champions characters in SoG at all. However, it would be easy enough to ramp some of them up in power for a GC game. The Void Messiahs in particular would make awesome GC villains, IMO.

[ghost-angel]

The Upside:

Scourges Of The Galaxy is a short volume of enemies and adversaries for a Star Hero campaign. The default setting assumed is the Hero Terran Empire Setting, this is done simply to give character backgrounds some context to work from. Changing out specifics is pretty easy, and transplanting the characters themselves to another setting is also easy. The book contains about forty characters in it.

Chapter One - Master Villains. Five different master villains, and their immediate underlings, are presented here. Each one approaches the Campaign Arch Nemesis from a slightly different angle. Archimandrite Lanzol Callixtus is a good example of a villain who looks immaculate on paper, a high standing member of a planetary religious group - with a dark underbelly that controls the criminal underground and the government. His reach isn't galactic, and is probably best used as the main adversary of a Planetary Romance style campaign, as he can get into any aspect of life within his reach. He has two lieutenants and a generic follower write-up with his.

Geiger Cray is at the top level of the Mind Police in the Terran Empire, and the leader of a conspiracy to boot. This allows him to be used in two different ways, the first is simply the head of a massive Empire Wide psionic police force that can be used to chase down the PCs. Putting a face to the organization and making it a more personal threat. The second is his conspiracy, which can be the focus of an entire campaign to uncover and stop (or help!). Three of his co-conspirators are written up with him, each of various powers and danger levels.

Leopold D'Estaing is another government level master villain, only this time he's a high standing member of the Imperial Senate, from a system that was a Power before the Empire formed, and wants to become a free standing power again. The senator is also a xenophobe in the truest sense of the word. If you need someone to hound a group of alien PCs, or want to focus a campaign around groups that want to break a star empire apart into "kingdoms" again this is a good choice of top level villain. His bodyguard and personal agents are written-up with him.

King Narch is both a pirate and an ancient enemy. The Xenovores are the main enemy in the Alien Wars Setting, and in the Terran Empire Setting are nothing more than a scattered species doomed to extinction. Enter King Narch, trying to bring his species back together, and reform the Xenovore Empire, while under the banner of a pirate king. If you're playing a campaign where the PCs are members of the Empires military you can focus it on hunting down King Narch and his many followers. Three pirate captains of different motivations are written-up with him.

Tateklys is, to put it the most simply, a Plot Device master villain. He also heads up one of the Empire's most spread out and entrenched criminal organizations. You can use him either as a catalyst for adventure - since he's a bored immortal with access to time travel - or more simply as the Boss Of Bosses for the Hzeel Outfit. His bodyguard, a Hzeel Underboss and one other Hzeel are written-up to use with Tateklys.

None of the Master Villains are serious combat threats themselves, and really represent massive widespread organizations that can become the focus of an entire campaign. By the time the PCs actually get to these characters personally things are probably coming to a climax. All of them are imaginative and different enough that you could ambitiously place all of them into one campaign without any overlap.

Chapter Two - Organizations. Four organizations are presented, unlike master villains, parts of the organization could conceivably live on even if you 'cut off the head' by removing the top guy. You can use these either as the focus of entire campaigns, or easily as shorter adventures within a campaign (having remnant constantly coming back to haunt the PCs).

The Church Of The Infinite Dark, for those campaigns that want to introduce a bit of a horror element, and Things That Should Not Be, to it there is The Church. This isn't so much a single organization as a collection of organizations that have a similar veneer. Each faction is trying to bring through a particular Ancient God type being, reminiscent of Chthuloid Mythos creatures. Any given faction is a separate entity making it easy to insert the Church into a campaign for a short lived time, destroying a faction effectively removes that faction completely. Four factions each get written-up, and their specific agendas.

The Clone Mob, one of my favorite concepts from the Terran Empire setting gets fully detailed here. One man, hundreds and hundreds of bodies. The Clone Mob is a group of one man who cloned himself again and again. This is a case where cutting off the top man does nothing, because everyone is the top man. And they are everywhere. You can introduce them in one adventure, and just have them keep reappearing as a recurring villain anywhere else.

Pelga's Fist is a pirate ship. Complete with crew, this is an example of a good recurring group of villains that are on the same power level as the PCs, or just ahead of them. They could be competitors in a smugglers campaign, villains the PCs are trying to chase down in a galactic police campaign, or just a thorn in the side of the adventurers.

The Psindicate is another widespread criminal organization, this one made up of psionic criminals instead of mundane (or cloned) criminals. If you're focus is a psionic campaign this is a great organization to place into it. The entire organization is made of up cells, each controlling a specific start system, only one such cell is written up but it provides a good example of how other systems would be set up with this group. Placing them in a campaign with Geiger Cray and the PCs in the middle could make for a lot of fun.

Chapter Three - Solo Villains. This is where the book falls a little short of being a Really Great Book. There are only nine different individuals that are presented to be on the same power level, or just higher, than the PCs. Still, we get some very interesting personalities than can be used in a pretty good range of campaign types. Two of them (Lucas Bellair, Grogan Cartagena) are explorers and archaeologists, good for Pulp Science or Exploration games - Bellair especially reminds me of an Indiana Jones nemesis set in space. Four of them (Fast Eddie, Double H, Darryl Revok, Blackjack Thorson) are simply criminals of some nature; pimp, smuggler, psionic assassin, mercenary/assassin respectively. A good set of villains and one off adventures for any Sci-Fi campaign. Two more (Dr. Landau and Dr. Moreau) are good higher level villains for extended story arcs. Dr. Moreau is exactly what you would think - only scaled up for science-fiction monsters instead of man-beasts. The last Solo Villain (Lord Zorn) could easily be made into a Master Villain, and I wonder why he was placed here. He is a political villain from an Alien Empire that is neither an ally or an enemy of the Terran Empire, he could be used as a foil to a campaign involving Leopold from Chapter One, or as an arch-nemesis himself involving the alien empire.

More solo villains would probably be variations on a theme - as a good range is presented - but sometimes more of the same can be a good thing if you need NPCs to put into your campaign. Especially if you're wanting to create impromptu groups of like minded adversaries.

Overall, this is a good wide range of NPCs for a Star Hero campaign.

The Downside:

As I said, the only thing I might want to add more of is Solo Villains in Chapter Three. Nine seems to be too few, but it's hard to find the balance between Just Enough and Repeating Yourself.

The Otherside:

If you need some NPCs for your Space Opera campaign this is a good collection. It's strong point is really setting up large groups or powerful enemies for full campaigns or long running story arcs, it comes up a little short on throw-away villains for a single session or two though. If you don't use the Hero System you can still easily use the book - especially the full histories and motivations of the Master Villains and Organizations.

I'd definitely recommend this collection for anyone needing some ideas or adversaries in a Star Hero campaign.

[Lord Liaden]

There are no Galactic Champions characters in SoG at all. However, it would be easy enough to ramp some of them up in power for a GC game. The Void Messiahs in particular would make awesome GC villains, IMO.

ghost-angel, now that you've evaluated Scourges Of The Galaxy, would you mind giving your perspective on the above statement?

[ghost-angel]

Sure - The Void Messiahs' are the titles of the Church Of The Infinite Dark's "high priest leaders" - the group as a whole could be scaled up to Galactic Champions levels easily.

Not just easily - they're almost begging to be made into GC Level Villains. Their entire purpose is to run around the galaxy and try and bring the Qliphothic Entities through to our universe. They're like a really really evil DEMON, only actually scary.

There are a few others in the book you could kick up a notch - well, any of them with a little work actually. But the Church Of The Infinite Dark is halfway there already.

[Maur]

Content looks very versitile and extremely usable right out of the box. I really like the 'What they say: X' portion getting mock-third-person comments on the NPCs in the book. Great touch!

Sounds reminiscent of the Shadowrun books that were written as if they had been posted to an electronic BBS, so character comments showed up inline with the rest of the text.

[FenrisUlf]

Sure - The Void Messiahs' are the titles of the Church Of The Infinite Dark's "high priest leaders" - the group as a whole could be scaled up to Galactic Champions levels easily.

Not just easily - they're almost begging to be made into GC Level Villains. Their entire purpose is to run around the galaxy and try and bring the Qliphothic Entities through to our universe. They're like a really really evil DEMON, only actually scary.

Um, no offense, but have you actually read the DEMON sourcebook?

I'd say they were plenty scary by themselves.

[Steve Long]

Not to put words in g-a's mouth, but DEMON is a more, hmmm, subtle horror I'd say, and one tinged by the fact that the PCs have superpowers. The Void Messiahs are more of an over-the-top, lucky-to-come-out-of-an-encounter-with-them-with-sanity-intact kind of horror, affected by the fact that the PCs are basically just skilled normals.

But they're both pretty damn creepy, that's for sure. Makes me wonder what DEMON would be like if Jason had written that book, or the VMs if Allen had written them.