Welcome back explorers!
This issue brings you, among other things, a reworking, or more accurately, an expansion of the background material on the Saurian race that was introduced in Dragon Magazine #103 (November 1985) as well as a bunch of other material that helps to flesh out that background. However, that wasn't our original intention.
Most of the content in this issue are a direct result of thoughts springing from ideas, implications, and consequences of the material presented in the Subspace Radios article. I originally wrote that article just after we published issue 1. It was the result of a discussion on subspace radios in the forums at the http://starfrontiers.us site. Much of the material was presented there but I have expanded a bit on my original postings in the final article.
That article prompted the idea of the Spacefleet Signal Corps and the Talnor Class Communications Vessel to be the primary ship of the Signal Corps. With that ship and branch of Spacefleet, it was just begging for a "first contact" scenario. Not wanting to introduce a new race, we realized that the introduction of the Saurians to the Frontier would make an excellent candidate for this scenario.
That led to the series of Knight Hawks encounters introducing the Saurians and the new Saurian ships and weapon system. Since those scenarios lead the characters to Kischen, the Saurian homeworld, we of course needed a planetary brief.
We've taken a bit of liberty with the background history of the Saurians to expand the ideas as we have but I feel that the path we took is mostly in line with the scant details provided by the Dragon article and definitely makes the background more interesting. The material presented in this issue could easily be used as the basis for a small campaign (or large one if you really wanted to expand it). It could be an extension of the Beyond the Frontier modules (SFKH 2, 3 & 4), or started with the PC's attending Gollwin Academy and being assigned to a Talnor Class vessel for a training cruise and being on the ship that makes contact with the Saurians. Beyond the basic KH adventures here, the PC's could go on missions to discover the fate of the other Saurian worlds or maybe there is a clue to the location of the elusive Sathar homeworlds. It's really up to you.
And that's how the issue came about. Much of the content flowed from that single article. And so without further ado, we present the Subspace Radio as the lead article in the issue.
Keep exploring.
- Tom Stephens
Senior Editor
