Creature Catalogue: Spine

You spot something hanging in the air...

Spine (undead)
Armour Class: 6
Hit Dice: 1-9*
Move:
Fly: 30' (10')
Attack: special
Damage: special
No. Appearing: 1 (0)
Save As: as victim
Morale: 12
Intelligence: as victim
Treasure Type: nil
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 6/25/50/125/300/500/850/1200/1600

Description: a section of spine mounted with white eyeballs growing from their stalks.
The spine attacks the charisma of an opponent. The victim must roll higher than their charisma to resist the attack of the spine. Equal or less results in the victim's spine and eyeballs separating to become a spine. Turns as undead of equal hit dice.

Adventure Idea: The Grandfather Paradox

Ape like hominid (4HD, AC7, heavy bone club (3d4)) steps out of a mirror and attacks.
If they send him back through the mirror alive...everything remains normal...unless they give him a sword...at which clerics use swords.
If pcs kill him they experience a grandfather paradox when their hair color changes from black to red. Everyone re-rolls their physical height 17d6+5 inches.

Terran Empire: Proxima B is probably not our first interstellar colony

You probably heard (or read) that a planet has been detected around Proxima (a red dwarf) and Proxima B close enough and earth sized that it can enjoy surface water. Nevermind the heavy x-rays its being bombarded with...we can send an unmanned probe ship to examine the planet.

Updated
There are indications of other planets in the Proxima System so the prospect of some planet on the edge of the solar system where we can establish an observatory are improving.

Updated
They now think that Proxima B is an ocean world. An ocean 124 miles deep around an iron core, receiving 0.2% of the light we get from our own Sun yet 2000 times the x-ray dose. First off what they will realize is with an ocean depth of a hundred and twenty four miles the pressure increases to the 2.3 gigapascal range. Sufficient for the formation of Oxygen4 (solid oxygen). Oxygen is a diamagnetic so solid oxygen will migrate to the core. With electromagnetic fields applied by the star the planet will have a very strong magnetic field.

It also means It can be a Super-ocean. It will be much larger than earth with a solid oxygen core. The larger size and subsequent depth of ocean means Oxygen8 as opposed to Oxygen4. So Red Dwarf stars are condusive to Super-oceans.
And Electromagnetic fields means increased chance of supporting life: Oxygen based life forms are going to be very different from Carbon Based Life. They will need to exist at great depths and Pressure. They probably wont be very complex and it will definatly not be like anything you know.
Life near the surface will be from cometary introduced organisms. Space Bacteria. Without vast mineral resources to build on it wont flourish.

Age of Discovery: Pirates?

Finally stumbled across one of those historical artefacts that wind up being shelved and forgotten. It was originaly pushed up by a bulldozer clearing land by the beach for a carpark in 1981. So...Pirates! and now the urgent need for a geophysical survey of a public carpark by the beach.

For the DM
Small Scimitar: 1d6 (2' blade may be added to a ten foot pole to create a pole arm).

Independence Day: writing fanfic for the setting

July 1st, 1996
A big ass space ship shows up in orbit...
So you decided to write fan fiction for the Independence Day setting but unless its slash fic about two dudes on a repaired alien space craft currently docked to the mother ship and the ten secret moments they spend together...you feel hard up.

History
Having some Idea of real world events that were going on in the background will help:
July 1st... Space Shuttle Columbia was conducting a Space Lab life sciences experiment mission (STS-78) The first of the International Space Station modules was yet to be put in orbit...so no ISS.

The STS-78 Columbia Crew were:
Com T.T. Henricks
Pil K.R. Kregel
MS1 Richard Linnehan
MS2 Sue Helms
MS3 Charles Brady Jr.
PS1 Jean Favre
PS2 Robert Thirsk

This provides you with a selection of  real NASA Astronauts who are caught in orbit at the moment of Arrival.

Independence Day: Prelude
July 1st, 1996: Sue Helms stared out the window of the Columbia at the distant Moon and its new companion, her eyes wide in shock and confusion. She flailed blindly with her hand to reach Commander Henricks who was busy behind her checking her report.
"Um...Commander...what's that?"
"That would probably be the Moon you are looking at Sue." Commander Henricks laughed and continued reading...
"No...not the Moon...I mean I see the Moon..." Sue sucked on some water to quench the odd sensation as though she just woke up in the desert.
"Whats that other thing coming our way from behind it...?" Commander Henricks turned and looked. His brain rebelled against its obvious nature and Commander Henricks switched on Comms.
"Uhhh...NASA we have something large comming at us from behind the Moon." Henricks waited for a response. Seconds became minutes.
"NASA...are you receiving?" Commander Henricks rubbed his fingers against each other nervously.

Anyway...short of Commander Henricks pulling a handgun from the purple people eater protocols locker and shooting himself in the head now that he has been cut off from his chain of command (NASA)...we can go do some research to find out what the response of the real crew would have been in this situation.

Adventure Seeds: The Fisherman's Pearl

A fisherman discovers a giant pearl and places it under his bed for good luck for ten years.

For the DM: The giant pearl is 74.9572lb.
Pearl: Base price (500gp/cn) × 749.572cn = 374,786gp

Source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/1655484/fisherman-kept-giant-pearl-worth-76m-hidden-in-his-wooden-shack-for-a-decade-with-no-idea-of-its-worth/

Creating the Future: Metropolis and beyond

Metropolis is a billion population city occupying Long Island. One million one acre blocks are each occupied by an apartment block of a thousand small shipping container sized apartments specifically designed for single residency: A sleep module, toilet, shower, laundry, kitchenette...for the singular price of two hundred thousand dollars each. The central communal use core of each apartment block is a ten floor vertical farm for food production, a pool, a tennis court, a gym, a lecture hall, music auditorium, library, and cinema.
The fifty trillion in 'profit' must be directed into not only the city infrastructure including water desalination, power, waste ptocessing, and mass transit. It must go into a better future. Having purchased the innevitable thirty trillion dollar US national debt and freed future generations of the senile beliefs of previous generations, this populace is rewarded with parliamentary self representation. A consensus government that has access to the creativity and intellectual property of its billion citizens.

Beyond Metropolis are the ruined cities being mined for the resources that built them. The Mainland is divided fifty-fifty into farmland and national park.
Private ownership of land is long gone. Farms are for the efficient mass production of food for a billion population. No longer are they nests of religious brainwashing or paranoid terrorists.

Space colonization has with the annual interest on ten trillion dollars become the mass production of O'Neil cylinders for launch to space. Thirty two billion cubic feet of lift hydrogen lifts a million ton colony to the edge of space where rocket motors push them beyond orbit. They land on Mars to become food production farms and three dee printers turning raw materials into colonies...