Storm of the Century

The inner system has been inaccessible for centuries. Any ship crossing the belt goes silent, then burns toward the innermost planet, refusing all contact. Some land on the planet; many join the welter of wrecks in orbit. Something beckons to them from below, introducing a sinister Pattern to the computers of trespassing ships and to the minds of their crews. It propagates through satellites and derelicts, but its source is on the planet. No effort to harden a ship, or mind, against the Pattern has succeeded. 

But an enormous coronal mass ejection is welling up in the local star—the largest in a hundred years. A geomagnetic storm will devastate electronic systems on the surface and in orbit. With any luck, it will break the Pattern and make it possible for a daring crew to discover the secrets, or loot the treasure, of the forbidden planet.

Storm of the Century is a one-shot adventure (or a bunch of tables for cooking up a one-shot adventure, anyway) for the science fiction TTRPG of your choice, created for the Sci-Fi One-Shot Jam 2024.