Voyage of the ICSS
Serendipity
“At these velocities, time,
and distance, space, and light - even such commonalities as sight, and meaning,
all become highly relative phenomena.”
This article augments the (otherwise greatly abbreviated) voyage
of the ICSS Serendipity into the Interrupts. (Sub-ether 2 p 75), doing so in
the form of a day by day accounting of the voyage (done as an event log with
*short* sub tables and statblocks accordingly).
If you have access to the Sub-ether rules in Galaxy Black you are
encouraged to embellish or ramp up what’s here or substitute your own choice of
encounters. It’s your game.
Ship voyage time - Day one – Ship’s clock set to zero hour, Serendipity dives into the
shallow first layer of the Sub-ether.
Wherever the party is located, the remaining visible hull damage all
speak as though the holes are mouths, moaning once greatly in unison first in
horror and then ecstasy as the ship descends into Sub-ether from material
space.
For the next progression (seven days) the PCs are all somewhat
laid up with jump sickness; meanwhile
the walls seem to bleed or crawl with devouring insects. Soft calming music plays in your compartment.
It doesn’t help.
Day two – Behavioral Meme Breakout
- an epidemic of “being a single person standing in place and then shouting,
carrying on a sustained scream until stopped or passing out” hits the crew
passing inscrutably from one to another, sequentially but randomly until it has
passed through every single person aboard.
Should take most of the journey…..
Day three Throughout the vessel, all
of the corridors seemingly have gained an additional 500 feet while
traversed. Everyone on board is very
patient with you but they don’t seem at all alarmed. “Ya okay. mmmm Space is weird,. man.”
Day four a small group of spectral
entities get through the tatty ghost screens and lay waste to the outer upper
deck, slaying several members of command.
They are repulsed. The party hears
of it later.
Day five as all are sharing a
communal meal in the Gods’ hall, one of the ship’s engineers literally just
fades from existence. Any technically inclined characters may be recruited to
become Engineer’s Assistant 4th Class - (apprentice)
Day six – most of the crew are
hypnogogicly aslumbered as the vessel drops into a lower sub-ether depth. Everyone has intense fever dream visions of a
charging army, an actual wall of screaming maenads charging at them with sword,
axe, and dagger. A day of stupid jump
scares puts everyone on edge
Meanwhile the gravity drive has trapped 1-6 photonic birds in it’s
drive tubes until the vessel rises back to the first sub-ether on day Nine (see
below).
Day seven A few younger members of
the crew known to the PCs inscrutably age 40 years, leaving one of them infirm
and pro’lly close to death. These
effects are persistent.
Day eight meme warp. Everyone
make a Will save (DC 13) or have one of the following irretrievably spinning
around in the back of their head …. Forever.
“… the desert, or the sea,
that only voices out of the air can reach them”
“……..mana – mana…..doo DOOOO dee DOOO DOO mananana doo doo DOO
DOO”
“ARRmor hot dogs….”
The ancients of the radio
shell surely spoke in quite strange riddles.
Day Nine The ship makes what appears to be
unexpectedly good time/arc and rises back into the first sub-ether several days
early. In the drive compartment, the
photonic birds trapped days before briefly have a window of escape. Somewhere
else aboard vessel these critters “materialize”
Photonic Birds (1-6) Init +0; Atk
fists +1 “bite” melee (1d6 light absorbsion); AC 16; HD 2d8; hp; MV
230’; Act 1d20; SP dark matter creature, creature of the vacuum photovore; SV
Fort+0, Ref +0, Will +3; AL N.
Dark Matter – the creature is wholly composed of
non-baryonic ‘dark’ matter which ignores matter and energy completely but
affects and is affected by gravity.
Lower forms of such life are common along the galactic rim and the void
beyond as well as in specific concentrations that seem to follow ancient
galactic ‘leys’ splayed outward from the core as a spiral. Such creatures are commonly destroyed by the
use of Gravity Drives, It is thought by
some that the empire’s artificial gravity technology attracts such beings.
Photovores - the
being’s spiritual, psychic, or metabolic needs require them to feed upon light
and its constituent make up, literally consuming available light sources. Such
Light eaters gorge when fed and thus create darkness in a 5” radius / HD each
round that the creature gives itself over wholly to consuming available
light.
When
confronted with a hologram, the Photovores will be able to inflict 3d6
‘permanent’ hit point damage per bite attack
Creature of the Vacuum –
the life form is native, descended from native, or was long ago engineered to
survive natively in a near or total vacuum and is adapted to such an
environment.
Creature
begins with 1d3 innate resistance of the effects of cold, heat, and exposure;
each time such damage is inflicted, the creature takes 1d3 less damage than
would have been the case. The Judge can
stack this many times on the same life form to create much hardier vec life
creatures. Each time this is taken, the
resistance stages up once on the dice chain.
Further all such creatures save v. dazzling, bright light, and radiation
at +4 but this saving throw is not augmented by stacking this ability.
Such
a life form requires no vacuum suit to work in space though may still require
an environment suit when going planet side or into a strange atmosphere (which
for most such creatures will be all of them) - at the Judge’s option any single
atmosphere can be considered non-hostile and so the creature will not need
additional protection; commonly Garden oxygen-nitro atmosphere but not
necessarily)
Day Ten necrotic warp discharge – the ship is momentarily washed in a wave of negative energy
that sucks the colour out of all within it for but a moment. IN the aftermath the character with the
lowest luck score has …changed. Roll
once on Physical Appearance of Un-dead (DCC core p 381) and apply the
results immediately.
Day Eleven - Day of the Reader In the Sub-ether the ship is surrounded by strange misshapen
lights, orbiting ominously in a perfect ring.
The Green maiden manifest many places on the ship at once, seeking you
out - “You” being
a) anyone who has espoused interest in playing a psion, psychic,
telepath, or other such
b) anyone the Judge choses
at random
c) the character with the
single highest combination of PERS + INT
Those selected are offered a glowing seemingly golden apple, nut,
acorn, or berry, as appropriate to the character and life form. Those who consume it will experience an
incredible psychedelic vision resetting that realigns their cozmik Yuka.
On waking they have developed Empathy at 1d16. Those already so gifted will find the action
die for it now boosted to a d20k, and they have gained a psychic
proclivity.
Meanwhile the lights outside dissipate and fade.
Reader Proclivity/Truthseeker Psion - secrets
are impossible around you, they seem to be drawn to your mental ability of
their own accord. Whatever is repressed calls to you, whatever is hidden
whispers
+2 to discern or detect hidden strategies, kept secrets, things they
aren’t supposed to talk about, and the like during any psychic activity.
Day Twelve 11-30 breveavement hallucinations (see
below) are loosed on the ship.
Active Perceptual Breveavement Hallucinations – one of the commoner consequences of Sub-etheric travel, these
are NOT the spirits of the dead, but are instead noosphere memes of ‘seeing
dead loved ones’ (already commonly spawned while traveling through the
Sub-ether) which have gathered enough spiritual residue to take on a quasi-real
existence when infused with the attention span of a living creature.
No stat blocks are given – they are but a nuisance albeit a
frightening one. They are not genuinely
dead creatures nor un-dead but a phenomenon only common because of the effect
an active gravity drive has on the Sub-etheric medium and the ectoplam around
it. They have neither self nor
sentience. Whatever they say to you is pulled literally from your own mind. Experienced spacers know that if they are
persistent, to not engage with them. Literally “ignore them and they will go
away.”
Day Thirteen Healed scars move position on the body of the PCs. If they have a
scar on their left upper arm, as of today it is on their right upper arm, or
distributed somewhere randomly.
Beginning on this day, check for arrival; Roll 1d6. Arrival and
emergence from Sub-etheric depth occurs on results of 6+
On arrival see Day Seventeen below.
Day Fourteen The character with the lowest luck is stalked by their reflection
today, which acts independently and makes rude gestures at you when you are not
looking but when others can see.
Check for arrival again. On arrival see Day Seventeen below.
Day Fifteen the party member with the highest
PERS experiences an active hallucination of their own death on the moon to
which they are journeying. Someone you
trust has shot you in the back and leaves you, in your leaking suit out on the
vacc surface to die slowly and alone.
Check for Arrival at +2 On arrival see Day Seventeen below.
Day Sixteen the ship’s master of patterns comes to one of the party members –
apparently they would like to scan in an item of the party’s beginning
equipment into the ship’s Makers. If
the party member acquiesces then a duplicate of that precise object will become
standard equipment abord the ship within the next four progressions. Aboard
ship this carries with it social status and makes you look good. +1 XP to the
donor
Check for Arrival at +4 On arrival see Day Seventeen below.
Day Seventeen – Arrival – if it
hasn’t already the Serendipity rises out of its Sub-etheric trajectory, rapidly
breaking up into the first Sub-ether and then into normal space, perhaps 100
light minutes outside of the Ilthea system.
Anyone who has not ‘spent xp’ over the course of the voyage (functionally
anyone not first level) must made a DC 14 Fortitude save or find that within
1d4 hours of their return to normal space (roll 1d4)
- They
have aged one additional year physically
- Their
hair or other similar structure has turned white.
- They
have developed tiny purple-black thread shaped scars around their eyes.
- Their
hair, or nails begin to fall out or they begin to shed/molt, though
without unusual biological effect.
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