1It has been a hundred generations since the Pioneers at last returned to rest, their journey concluded. In that time the Empire has grown weak on the flesh of the innocent, fattening the guilty with a thousand sins.

- Cantus Liberius, Chronicler of Ages

I dreampt an ever growing claw, like my father read to me out of the sto-ries of the Founders, slowly twisting and turning across every star like the Evershade River twists through our heartland. In that moment of dream I knew our ancient enemy slept no more.

- Anna, age 11 - student at the Academy of Songs, Tassamir

Myth and legend shape our society, teach our children morals and proper be-havior, and also corrupt us with prejudice and scorn. We tell of larger than life heroes - Beowulf, Odysseus, Frodo, and Anakin Skywalker - to entertain our-selves, yes, but also to reveal fundamental beliefs about ourselves and our world. Roleplaying game universes offer us the chance to shape our own myths on a more deeply personal level. All too often, however, a campaign becomes noth-ing but a backdrop to a wider setting, the heroes not our own alter egos, but he-roes of canon, of metaplot. This document is an attempt to lay the ground-work to throw that paradigm aside and propose a game that is truly mythic and empowers players.

The Quadrant universe began ten years ago from when I write this docu-ment, a home brew campaign setting that I and my fellow players - high

2schoolers who loved video games like Starcraft and Freelancer, and television shows like Firefly - created to tell our own stories. It was a labor of love and it was never terribly coherent. What Im offering here is a sketch in the same spirit - not intended to continue any old campaigns story or universe, but to take the ener-gy that we teens threw into a fantasy-in-space heartbreaker, and bring it to life in a way that can be shared beyond a single players table.

In this introductory sketch, I dont propose a system such as FATE, d20, or GURPS - although I would imagine any of those and countless others would work. My experience of RPGs is that it is far more common for the personality dy-namics between players and game masters - if we even wish to consider GMs as separate from players - to reach a toxic level of conflict with assumptions built into the setting, rather than for the campaign to be torpedoed because of issues with rules. I would suggest, however, that Quadrant: the Pioneers Return would be best played with a system players are familiar and comfortable with, which al-lows the mechanical differences between characters to emphasize the difference roles they play within the story.

3Setting: A Brief Sketch

Many centuries ago, legends say that the inhabitants of the Empire were one people, who were born, lived, and died on a single planet. Few had any ex-traordinary abilities beyond breathing, working, living, and dying. Depending on which of the tale-tellers one asks, the reason why they stopped living there varies: some say that the planet could no longer support them. Others tell of a great war. What we do know is that as soon as our foremothers left their ancestral home, they awakened something that waits behind the stars - a terror that could not truly be named. If it had a name, to speak it would be forbidden by all who still remember. And no word could encompass the enormity of what they discov-ered.

In the absence of a proper term, we call them the pegasans. The Book of the Pioneers says that the star charts we found on a craft older than any civilization before or since claimed that that was their home, but we dont really know. We

4dont even know if they had a home, or bodies for that matter. If they have minds, they are nothing like ours. No one alive today has seen a pegasan in the flesh.

On the old ships we found from that older people whose name has been for-gotten, we fled. We remember the name of the pegasans ancestors, but not our own. Led by the Pioneers, chosen guardians guided by visions from an unknown protector, we reached the expanse of galaxy we now call the Garden of Ages, and it is there that the great Empire began. Our ancestors spread out to become the many peoples of the Garden that we know today, all united beneath the Em-pires flag.

The last of the Pioneers is said to have died out long ago. Some do not even believe that we were guided here by a protector at all. But things have changed. The Empress is struck down with a dark and mysterious illness. More spacers have been quitting the trade, settling down for fear of spacers madness - and some have fallen prey to that dread sickness. Outlying colonies have been van-ishing, and the exploration and discovery of new systems becomes less popular as rumors of an ancient fear awaken.

Unbeknownst to many, the protector who saved us all in times of yore has re-turned. New Pioneers are being called - people young and old who have been chosen, whether by divine providence or chance or something yet stranger, to heed the call of adventure and wander the stars to save us. Will they lead us to a new galaxy away from our corrupted Garden? Will they restore the Empire to the glory it once held? Or will they fall to the dark? Whatever the answer, the prophets know the Pegasans are coming back.

5Campaign Concept The setting is meant to evoke the vastness and deep history of the Star Wars gal-axy, but add a twist of newer influences like Mass Effect and Firefly. Rather than simply remake something like Spectres or Jedi, the Pioneers are a new sort of chosen hero that leave the players and GM enough room to negotiate agency for characters while also giving them a heroic destiny. The protagonists in a Pio-neers campaign are blessed - or cursed - with visions of mysterious events and dark happenings that threaten the wellbeing of the great Empire.

In the Star Wars series, we often think about Luke and Anakin Skywalker as the main protagonists, or about Han Solo as the person everyone really wants to hear more about. Princess Leias role is often understated, however. Leia is a ma-jor force in driving the plotline in the original trilogy, as is her mother Padme Amidala in the prequels. For instance, as soon as Luke and Han rescue Leia from the Death Star detention block, she immediately takes on a leadership role. Han and Luke snark a bit but they go along with this. In The Empire Strikes Back, the entire plot happens because Leia insists on staying behind to evacuate the entire Rebel base. In Timothy Zahns excellent followup novels, Leia drives the entire galaxys future through her role as a stateswoman, along with Mon Mothma (who most folks know as the lady who gave the briefing about the second Death Star attack and delivered the immortal line about dying Bothans.) In Quadrant: The Pi-oneers Return, players will take on Leias role as a driver of galactic politics and affairs as much as they will Lukes as an adventurer. Furthermore, their destinies

6as mystically chosen heroes will affect their political maneuverings as much as their skill with ancient weapons and starship combat.

Any Quadrant campaign will draw upon four central areas of drama: adven-ture, intrigue, commerce, and mystery. Adventure refers to the space battles, the base infiltrations, the prison breaks, that are the bread and butter of any pulp space adventurer. Intrigue refers to the intricate political maneuvering and sce-heming that would be familiar not only to fans of Leias, but also to readers of George R.R. Martins Song of Ice and Fire novels, or Jacqueline Careys Kushiel saga. The Empire may be unified in name, but the many baronies, territories, and holdings throughout the great Garden are subject to much scheming and ma-nipulation. Commerce might seem boring, but its what got Han Solo in so much trouble to begin with. Its the way our heroes pay the bills of adventure and in-trigue - deals with crime lords and legitimate businessfolk alike. Finally, Mystery is the story of the Pioneers, the Pegasans, and the ancient mystical secrets of the world.

Unlike Jedi, not all Pioneers are religious by trade. Many if not most have come to their powers late in life. There is no trademark Pioneer weapon - some may use plasma swords, while others prefer a reliable ion pistol. What unifies our protagonists is the urgent need to change the status quo of the galaxy, no matter what the cost.