5 Million Worlds Rokaner Report #20, Not Enough Scoundrels Launch Sale!

RR#20, SEAT OF THE LAMB, August 2025

Aug 25, 2025

Hello Rift Divers,

Tis the season to get Back to Work, Back to School, and all that bit of rentrée funsies, eh? And check it, we’re cruising in a new spaceship, straight from Carly A-F! About time I upgraded from that ol’ public domain junker that did us so well for so long, eh?

Triangular spaceship with a wide hexagon thruster cruising towards a planet whose night side shows megalopolis lights in concentric circles.Triangular spaceship with a wide hexagon thruster cruising towards a planet whose night side shows megalopolis lights in concentric circles.

Other than prepping for BIG THINGS™, I had my vacation this month. Spent a good amount of hours in the sun, and got out over thirty sands-of-Toulon-touched Sabotage on Sater’s Redemption postcards to folk. Still technically on staycation this week, but you know how the old saying goes.

In this month’s Rokaner Report, I’m chatting up Twisting Unseen one last time before its 23 September Launch, got a digital release sale on Not Enough Scoundrels for y’all, and I’ve statted out five creatures from my in-universe Mothership zine SEEN ON THE VOID’S EDGE #043.

Twisting Unseen

With less than one month to the BackerKit launch, I’d like to talk about what folks will be getting with Twisting Unseen.

First up: the Rai Jump-9 Colony Ship patch, which is free for all physical tier backers in the first 48 hours. This is the crew patch for all the dedicated folk, including the player characters, who joined this wild venture to this far-flung world of Rai.

Then of course, the zine itself. It’s looking like this will be a 36-40 page adventure module, with layout by the lauded

Jean Verne

. Every physical zine comes with three inserts: double-sided map tiles for the players to build the Superstructure: one side is the initial, player-facing grid and the other side features cartography from Ripley Matthews!

Along with the core zine pack are two thematic bundles. Since Twisting Unseen is a continuation of the Sleeper Crew Adventures series, you can also grab Bio-Drones & Cryo-Clones and the Sleeper Crew Duo. With the Unseen bundle, you can continue the adventure in other Panic Engine games with The Unseen City with Cloud Empress RPG, and the brand new 5MW Star Cluster: DIN Tail for 5MW RPG.

I’m especially excited to get back to planetary adventure writing with the DIN Tail, a series of stars controlled by the authoritarian Dani, and illustrations from Carly A-F! Follow the launch to learn more as the campaign unfolds!

Not Enough Scoundrels: Digital Release Sale

I am super pleased to announce that RV Games has gotten the first lot of Scoundrels out the door to backers!

collage of three photographs, each a different backer’s photo of their Not Enough Scoundrel zine. One zine is on a wood table, still in its plastic sleeve. The second is on a blue cover, next to a couple of spaceship stickers. The third sits on a black hex table next to a fancy clackity-clack keyboard, nice lookin’ headphones, loads of chits, and black & yellow d100s & d20s.

Dag, it does feel good to hit a schedule on time. Just one major hiccup, this go-round, with the patches. I’ll spare y’all the details, but in the future, I will order patches much sooner instead of waiting until the zine goes to print (and use a different vendor).

With backers receiving their copies, Not Enough Scoundrels is now seeing its digital release! For one week only, it’s 20% off, on sale for $8 USD. If you missed the BackerKit, this is a good time to grab this space trucker & smuggler zine of spaceships, star systems, and scumbags.

Five Dangerous Xenos

Ok, clearly I’m inspired by the ongoing Alien: Earth. No spoilers, but the show is turning out to be a whole hell of a lot different than I’d imagined… Even before the show started, I started sketching out some notes:

Image collage. Top left corner are a couple of dumb gross sketches of The Swan and its eyeball bug (that I fuckin swear I wrote before the show started). Below that on the right, is a series of maps. First a pair of circular hemisphere maps; a zoom on a landbridge section, then another zoom on a bay of that landbridge shows a river surrounded by swamps to the north and mountains to the south; a bunch of circles depict the zones covering the ciyt. On the right are a pair of abstract, sketched out hexmaps of said city: top hex map with arrows for alien infiltration and crossover bits and (bottom) a venn diagram of the 7-hex flower zones of the city overlapping.

That’s right, the Travellers have returned, for All Roads Lead to Rome. More on that soon(ish). For now, let’s look at some other freaky and dangerous aliens that you can add to your Mothership games:

Thumbhead

C: 65 Maul 3d10, I: 65, W: 4(30).
Dactyl Crush: Body Save or take 1 Wound (Blunt).

Named for the nest of the digit-like eyestalks that sprout from its wide-based body. Over two dozen many-knuckled fingers sprout from its circular underside, and another whirl of manipulator finger-limbs fidget nervously under its massive mouth of jagged molar-canines.
An adept hunter of its forests, climbing and digging and running for its prey: creatures with much more sensitive senses than humans. Smart enough not to ignore an easy meal. Repulsed by Androids, avoiding them unless they pose a threat.

Eye-Horse

C: 40 Kick 2d10, I: 35, AP: 5, W: 2(20).
Loving Stare: Sanity Save, or a rush of adoration fills your brain or Logic Core. Justify your adoration to your fellow crewmembers, and bring this majestic creature a delicious gift. Suffocate: Body Save, or its tendril-hair wraps around limbs and snakes into open orifices. STR Check[-] to escape (See PSG, Oxygen pg. 33.1)

Moose-sized. Travel in small herds of 1d10+5. When faced with predators, they arrange in a pattern to stare all together. They do not harm any who come bearing gifts of fruit or other herbivorous foodstuffs.

Meltoid

C: 34 Melt 1 Wound (Fire/Chemical), I: 56, W: 7(10).

Nasty, stinky gastropod-like creatures. Vary greatly in size and form. These carnivorous creatures pirate their prey’s DNA to create slug-analogues, like deformed copies. Black orbs grow in irregulat places across their bodies, their fecal eggs.
When taking the first Wound, it splits into two W: 3(10) Meltoids. On second Wound they split into two W: 1(10) Meltoids. On final Wound, they burst in a gush of acid, scattering their fecal eggs. Body Save, or 2d10 DMG (as Flamethrower, but it’s Acid).

“James”

C: 66 Slash 3d10, Fire Breath (as Flamethrower), Tail Gore 1 Wound (Bleeding) I: 66, DR: 5, AP: 10, W: 1(80).
Deploy Wings: Blown to the ground, prone.
Grab & Fuck up: Body Save, or grabbed. If flying, this fucker’ll drop you.

Nearly 4 meters tall. Cyborg wingspan of 12 meters. Multifaceted scales reflect laser fire. Takes double DMG from rocket fire.

The Drummer

C: 55 Concussive Blast 6d10, I: 50, DR: 2, AP: 7, W: 5(20).

A smidge smaller than an Indian elephant, with a lower backside and wider face. Its back is covered in a tear-proof carapace—protection from flying predators. Similarities between xeno ruins and the Drummer’s physiology leads exobiologists and sophontologists to posit them as relatives to the extinct civilization.
The Drummer’s face is capable of extremely powerful sonic propulsion, common to many creatures on its world. With each Wound lost, its Concussive Blast loses 1d10 in DMG.

The five above aliens, all illustrated in different ways. In the right corner is part of the cover of SEEN ON THE VOID’S EDGE, where they all first appeared. Thumbhead is a collage of photographed fingers, spider-like and angled, and a weird rubber thing for teeth. Eye-horse looks kinda like a pink horse with a single giant blue eye for a head, and watercolor strokes of tendrils or some such. Meltoid is an acrylic painting of a blob with orbs in it, sorta slug like, sorta “Devil in the Dark”-like. “James” is a Ripley knock-off from Metroid, with a split tail and demon horns, drawn across a ton of post-it-notes in marker. The Drummer is a pen sketch of a large six-limbed creature. Its fore and aft limbs are legs, and its middle limbs are lil T-rex arms. It’s got a couple of carapace-like bits on its back, and a face that looks like a drum kit.

I’ll likely add these to the quiet (neglected) 5MW Blog soon, so they can live there on their own. One day, I’d like to update that SEEN ON THE VOID’S EDGE in-universe zine into a rebel conspiracy alien hunter’s guide. Give each creature its own adventure, kind of similar to Distress Signals. Add more creatures. Too many project ideas, too little time!

Signing off,
Chris Airiau