Picture the scene – Your players have just come back from the Vast having fought off some unspeakable horror, and they are ready to return to civilized space. Only, coming back from Gods Knows Where means you are coming back to the fringes of the space you know, and at a time of day that isn’t going to be predictable. Maybe it’s Absalom Station at 6pm Pact Worlds standard, but far more likely it’s going to be some place like the Drift Beacon Station above Tabrid Minor at 3:40am local time. Interstellar travel is unpredictable, and even more so in this time of Drift Crisis. But a rag-tag group of barely civilized space mercs has to eat and decompress just as much as the long haul trader ships and other travelers, so they all need a place they can go and get something hot to eat in a setting that if not welcoming, is at least familiar.
Enter the Intergalactic Haus of Sustenance! One of the most common sights in the Pact Worlds, it is hard to find a Drift Beacon that doesn’t have an IHOS nearby, and if you do, it’s only because they haven’t finished building the prefab structure to make it. The IHOS business model is simple – they are always open, and serve food that is edible by the majority of species within the Pact. Staffing is always something of a grab bag, mixing the young, the desperate, and burn outs with nowhere else to go, but coupled with a Virtual Intelligence that runs the food synthesizer and work schedule, they manage to remain on the open side of functional nearly every day.
Given the nature of IHOS, no few number of shady deals have gone down in their vaguely sticky booths. The fates of vast fortunes, perhaps even civilization have hinged on conversations that happened within the prefab faded pink and blues walls. And fights to the death, often involving the surprisingly battle-hardened staff happen far more often than the IHOS Central Office would like to admit.
IHOS is the perfect place to put a one-shot or between story adventure for you party. An immediately relatable space, with the potential to serve as the back drop to any number of stories, it can host anything from a shoot out to a Akitonian Pancake Eating Contest.
With this interior map, adapted from SimCityGirls IHOP add on for The Sims, could serve a battlemap if you need one, or feel free make your own. As long as it’s got booths and a dubious quantum claw machine, it’s an IHOS!
As always, if you like this or any of the other content here on Solo Run Studio I would welcome a little of your support through Ko-fi. Until next time Starfinders!
Jeremy Corff
Artist and Writer