Starfinder Scenario: Pirate Queen

[MonkeySage]

My players are about to pick a new star to visit. My plan is for them to run into a world whose inhabitants are still in their knights and feudalism stage. The players might, through investigation, discover that the inhabitants are growing a plant that's not native to their world- and is a known component in a very illegal drug.

The inhabitants claim they got it from their Queen, who came down from the stars 10 years ago and ordered them to grow it. Most of them view her as a tyrant, but they're terrified she'll destroy them if they rebel.

The Queen is going by an alias, but she's a defector from the human Royal Navy who stole a ship and disappeared 12 years ago.

What can I do to hook my players, get them interested in staying on this planet for a while? Currently, the rules for interacting with less advanced civilizations aren't set in stone, simply because it hasn't been a problem yet.

[PunBlake]

The classic sci-fi trope would be ship maintenance ("We have to wait on this primitive planet while we fix X!" and/or "We need <component> from locals and must help them make it!"), but I don't know if/how such a thing works in Starfinder.

[Psyren]

Another common trope is weather - both that of the planet itself ("we have to wait for that storm/hurricane to blow over before we can try taking off" - see Alien Covenant) or the nearby cosmos ("Sunspots! Solar Flares! Neutron bombardment! Planet is passing through a meteor shower! We cannae take off cap'n!")

Another one I lift from Lost In Space (the Netflix remake) - there was a special life form on the planet that immediately infested their ship and ate all their biofuel. Even after clearing the infestation, they might need to stick around on the planet and find something that can be used as replacement fuel.

And if all else fails, Drift engines are literally powered by magic - you can mess with that all kinds of ways. You could literally curse the ship and force them to find a way to lift it before they can leave, unless they want the trip home to take forever.

There's all kinds of ways really.