The Flowers of Algorab - My Next Campaign - Into the Great Dark in Search of a Lost Ark Ship

Having finished running The Jägermeister Adventure, I've now decided what I will run next. My shortlist had Blue Planet: Recontact, Traveller: Singularity and The Flowers of Algorab for Coriolis: The Great Dark.

I have the new edition of Blue Planet in PDF, but the books are yet to arrive. Singularity is not yet fully released, so I'm not 100% certain that I will want to run it until I've seen the full arc of the story. Which took me to Coriolis: The Great Dark. 

A long time ago, in a Horizon far away, two ark ships set out on humankind’s most ambitious journey ever undertaken. They were called Zenit and Nadir, and each housed tens of thousands colonists in deep sleep. Their goal: to reach a faraway star system and establish a new home for humanity. 

Alas, that is not what happened. 

Five hundred years into the journey, the Nadir disappeared, never to be heard from again. While the crew of the Zenit mourned their sister ship, they had no choice but to continue their mission. They would go on to arrive at their destination five centuries later, only to find it settled by humans who had discovered star portals, makingstar travel almost instantaneous. The story of Zenit, Coriolis, and the Third Horizon is known. After all, it is the place from which the Diaspora fled. However, the fate of the Nadir has been a mystery all these years. 

Until now. It is the year 189 of the Diaspora. On the labyrinthine asteroid-metropolis of Ship City, a group of Explorers, the player characters, are asked to investigate the unfortunate death of a retired ruin delver and the theft of an old stone tablet. What they discover in the heart of the asteroid will set off a chain of events that will change the course of the Lost Horizon and reveal the fate of the long-lost sister ship and its crew

I have both played and read this, and I like what I see. It moves on from the Third Horizon setting, and players take the roles of explorers, trying to find discovers of Builder technology to help their failing colony, alone and far from help. I'm going to run 'The Flowers of Algorab', which is a campaign that harkens back to the Third Horizon's background. In that, Coriolis Station was the remnants of the Ark Ship, Zenit, and the great mystery was the fate of its sister ship, Nadir, lost five hundred years before. This campaign will reveal that fate, if the players are successful.

The Great Dark feels like a setting of naval exploration; it reminds me of Shackleton and Franklin's ill-fated expeditions, mixed with Alastair Reynold's 'Revenger'. The game moves from normal play to something close to dungeoneering as ancient ruins are explored. I think it will feel very unique.

The core rules reference the following books as influences (their Appendix N). 

Across a Billion Years - Robert Silverberg

The Algebraist - Iain M Banks

Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer

Engines of God - Jack McDevitt

Eversion - Alastair Reynolds

Inherit the Stars - James P Hogan

In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeanette - Hampton Sides

The January Dancer - Michael Flynn

Gateway - Frederick Pohl

Newton's Wake - Ken MacLeod

North Water - Ian McGuire

Perdido Street Station - China Mieville

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Revenger - Alastair Reynolds

The Terror - Dan Simmons

Thin Air - Michelle Paver

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder - David Grann

Walking to Aldebaran - Adrian Tchaikovski

The one's I've read are in bold. If you've read any of the others and recommend them, please let me know! (I do have a copy of Piranesi in my to-read pile already).

Coriolis is an unfinished itch for me. I've run one home brew game at a con (ironically linked to the fate of the Nadir) and played a campaign that stalled some way in as we started the Mercy of the Icons trilogy. My friend Graham ran this, and it was more a matter that some of the players didn't find the investigative nature of the game fulfilling. Two of us wanted to continue, but it wasn't to be. Rather than revisit this (and potentially ask for a longer commitment than the 16-20 sessions this will need), I decided to embrace the new edition.

This will probably be a near weekly game, starting in January, with an aim to have over half the players there to be quorate (usually three players for a crew of four or five). I've not yet decided which VTT to use. It'll be Roll20 or possibly a return to Role. However, that may be complicated by the nature of exploration in the game, something that Role really recommends using Owlbear Rodeo for (so it means that it can be easier just to go with Roll20 which has it all in).

I've currently got an offer out to the crew of the Jägermeister to play - if I have spaces, I'll offer them on the Tavern and Tavern Discord as usual.

23 November 2025