Mothership Month - Ghost Ship

(for the month, i'm going to throw together a couple short, unedited posts. no scope-crept regional hexcrawls, no 1d20 character classes, no nothing. just sitting in front of an intentionally-uncomfortable setup and hammering out some text)

Back when you could hold orbit over Mars, instead of getting shredded by Kessler or blinded by the ring-sun, back in the days of the intendencies, Colcom wanted to do something about the secessionists. We'd made a couple lucky hits on ground sites, on low-orbits, started a riot or two on the moons, and they decided they needed a show of force. 

So, they took this old destroyer, CCMS something-or-other, rechristened it the CCMS Olympus Mons - a threat, get it? We still own you. Loaded it up with high-altitude neutron bombs, so the infrastructure'd still be around for them to retake. Wanted to make sure we knew about it - staged some photos of the payload bay and then let them leak. Knew they wouldn't have to pull the trigger, just hang the sword over our heads. Didn't want to use them, anyway - things were tense enough between them and... what, they weren't the Leaden Conference yet, they were the... were they still flying that old banner of Fleet Kadzkadzat? 

Doesn't matter, just know that the LC, under whatever name, would've had a tantrum if their rivals made it rain hard neutrons over Noctis Labyrinthus. 

source

Of course, it didn't get that far - the Mons missed its braking burn, sailed right past us. Never closed its orbit. A few days later it popped, in clear view of everybody and God. All hands lost, reactor solidified. Drifted through the Jovians, but the LC wouldn't touch it - didn't want the implication that they did anything, so they just made a couple mocking press releases and painted any Colcom ship who tried to go after it with a targeting laser. 

By now it's dead-cold. Could be anywhere. Every once in a while some out-system tinpot tyrant says they picked it up, but they've always been bad fakes; hauler with a couple PD guns and a hold full of kinetic bombardment rods with "neutron bomb" stenciled on them, you get the idea. 

Colcom and the LC are in a god-forsaken court case about the thing - Colcom's trying to get them strung up on public-endangerment-via-loss-of-radioactive-materials, ignoring distress calls, et cetera. Never tried to blame them for the wreck, though - never said anything about enemy action. I'll choose to believe it was us, somehow. Engine sabotage and a field of magnetic limpets, or something. A bright spot in our history to look back on.

Sustainer Cell Character Background/Classes (Lanthanide Horizon)

This post has taken me just about forever. It is, theoretically, a prologue to a regional hexcrawl - the drought-struck tunnels of Component Transit - but, given how this went, I suspect it'll be a while before then. 

There tends to be some GLOG terminology in here, but there's no Lanthanide Horizon system (anymore) - if you want some of that Character Progression and staple OSE fighting-men and thief-types or something onto your PCs, I can't stop you. 

You may benefit from reading the worldbuilding post.  

Adventuring basics (light sources, rope, hammers, et cetera) can be obtained in exchange for debts in the endless turning of the Sustainer gift economy. I would write some kind of "procedure" for this but you don't need one. You take Asuman's sword and a couple weeks later if you haven't given them anything back they'll hint about how much they would just love a new dress, you get the deal.

one of the benefits of actually "running" a "campaign" is that the players draw things. this is by Vik (hi vik) who I don't know how to credit other than going "hi vik" so when she wakes up in the morning she'll get to kill me with a hammer or something
edit - https://www.tumblr.com/blog/vikugnavikugna

1. Magnate (farmer)

One of the virtues of the Cells is magnificence - to amass great wealth, and then to give it away.

Skill: one of Feasting/Brewing/Fashion

Starting Items: fine clothing, four bronze plates engraved with stories of myth, a twenty-foot string of red and blue beads, a thin spear (medium)

Perk: 3 NPCs are already in your debt. 2-in-6 chance any stranger recognizes you.

2. Herdsman (farmer)

They're a gift from the sleepers, to be sure - but did they have to make them so stubborn?

Skill: one of Vigilance/Logistics/Intimidation

Starting Items: four "sheep" (a type of pillbug, grown over with symbiotic algae. Sources of "milk", "wool", and meat) and a sheep-prodding stick (light)

Perk: your carrying capacity is doubled. You can haul a great object (a sheep, or a refrigerator, or a pair of your fellow PCs) without slowing, as long as you use both hands and don't do anything else.

3. Starveling (farmer)

You held your head high as you gave the last of your fields away for a scrap of bread.

Skill: Foraging, plus one of Herding/Sleight of Hand/Mockery

Starting Items: blowgun (1d4 damage, ranged), 4 doses smoking powder (mild stimulant, mildly addictive, dilates your pupils to all hell), warm coat.

Perk: anything short of poison counts as food for you. You can live indefinitely on dead grass, chitin, and spite.

4. Tenant (farmer)

A dubiously legal position - some Sustainers argue that, in fact, debt-bondage is tantamount to self-replication, and should thus be taboo.

Skill: one of Farming/Hiding/Architecture

Starting Items: a medium farm tool, 6 rations (gruel)

Perk: Keeping a paranoid eye out for the approach of your landlord has made you immune to Surprise.

5. Thief (farmer)

Marked by a grid of dots on the right side of the face. "One who does not pay their debts" may be the more accurate translation.

Skill: One of Gambling/Feasting/Fleeing

Starting Items: a hide of land sufficient to support your household, half a dozen "sheep", a fabulous polearm (heavy), a wardrobe of magnificent and ostentatious clothing

""""Perk"""": You are deeply in the debt of 3 NPCs already, and there is a 2-in-6 chance any stranger recognizes you because you owe them too.

this one is by Gokun, also i'm pretty sure it's hatsune miku. so i guess that's something

6. Induction Smith (artisan)

Fire, true fire, is a rarity.

Skill: Metalworking, plus one of Medicine/Chemistry/Grappling

Starting Items: induction forge (either a 1 kilogram portable, or a 100kg extremely non-portable - both require electricity, both can run hot enough to melt steel), round hammer (light), protective tabard

Perk: you have felt, so many times, every harm a person could do to their hands; so you no longer fear them. Immerse your hands in acid, hold red-hot steel, and use them to jam whirring gears, all without flinching.

7. Trader (artisan)

Gifts should always be slightly too much, or barely not enough. To clear a debt perfectly, leaving none in return, is to cut away a social bond.

Skill: one of Navigation/Painting/Climb

Starting Items: a bolt of blue plastic-fabric, a PVC pipe capped on both ends and filled with wine, a conical hat covered in gold foil

Perk: When looking at someone, you can tell what they most want. When looking at something, you can tell who would most want it.

8. Laborer (artisan)

You can build a house, or dig a ditch, or engrave an image. Whoever takes your body next will curse you for its arthritis. 

Skill: Two of Glassworking/Architecture/Weaving/Art/Fishing/Brewing

Starting Items: depending on skills, a metal gripping claw on a two-foot stick/3 "doses" worth of caulk/50' rope/a vial of engraver's acid/net/small barrel of beer

Perk: Throw yourself into your work, whatever it is, and you do the work of four. Take 1d6 damage and gain a slot of Exhaustion and for an hour you do the work of ten.

9. Reborn (artisan)

Years, decades, longer passed in the Dream.

Skill: History, plus one of Art/Material Sciences/Mapmaking

Starting Items: a heirloom kanabo (heavy), a small figurine, and a fine set of clothes - they say you made all these things. You've never seen them in your life.

Perk: When you reach a new location, there's a 2-in-6 chance you've been there before; if you have, the GM will warn you of a notable hazard, guide you to a notable point of interest, and introduce you to a notable inhabitant. Assuming, that is, that nothing's changed since you last lived.

10. Iconoclast (artisan)

Marked by a circle-and-bar over the mouth. They told you it was irreplaceable - you thought there was no better reason to learn how to build another.

Skills: one of Electric Repair/Hide/Oratory

Starting Items: soldering kit, jumble of wires and tubing (cryopod parts), dark glass eyemask, bell earring

Perk: With three days of downtime effort, a broken machine - one beyond human knowledge, a cryopod, a speaking fire, a steel spirit - can be made to work, one final time, before collapsing completely.

vik again - this is definitely. an npc? from the campaign? i don't have a clue who

11. Bearer (scavenger)

Perhaps you fished it out of a crack in the earth, a dozen feet deep and six inches wide. Perhaps it came on a ship from some distant land of black rain and looming artificial stars. Perhaps you simply woke up one night with it clutched in your hands.

Skill: one of Tracking/Material Sciences/Foraging

Starting Items: your strange perk item, plus a blowgun (1d4 damage, ranged), screwdriver, and 30 feet of insulated copper wire.

Perk: In your travels, you found one of the following. Only you know how to use it:

1. The broken-open head of a spirit with great glass eyes. Peering through the back of its head lets you see through walls in its polychromatic LIDAR vision. Every minute spent with its tangled-bismuth brain wrapped around your face, save versus memory corruption. 
2. A flickering scalene triangle of seemingly indestructible... something, about the size of a palm. A whistling command pins it in space, completely immovable, and a different code releases it. 50% of the time, it works every time.
   
3. A lapis lazuli sphere, trailing a single ten-foot wire. Hold it above your head and spin it - listen to it howl, and feel the weight of your arms grow. In a ten-foot radius, gravity first doubles, then quadruples, then octuples, and so on. You are not immune. 
4. A long plastic cylinder with a paddle trigger. No stock, no handguards, no nothing. The first time you "fired" it, the front half disappeared, along with five feet of bulkhead. It will fire once more (30 damage).
   

12. Explorer (scavenger)

You tell stories of halls that burn with an invisible light, of endless forests of swaying golden foil, of the view from atop a three-mile-tall antenna. All of them are true.

Skill: one of Logistics/Mapmaking/Foraging

Starting Items: 3 torches (bright blue-green smokeless light), prybar (light), chaff pouch (blinding to visuals and radar alike), big pair of shears.

Perk: things a person could climb with tools and preparation can be climbed by you without either, and you move at a walking pace while crawling through tunnels.

13. Champion (scavenger)

You have died on the battlefield thirty-seven times. But all you can remember are the victories.

Skill: +2 to-hit, plus one of History/Intimidation/Singing

Starting Items: yatagan (medium), shield, back-banner (personal symbol, cell icon, and the red arc of "destruction of a body" - a threat)

Perk: Once per round, if you can both move and attack, you can parry - reduce the damage of an incoming melee attack by 1d6+[your to-hit bonus]. If this reduces the damage to 0 or less, you immediately make an attack against the target. If you hold no weapon, you can catch slow-moving projectiles (arrows, not bullets).

14. Marked (scavenger)

You don't know what that light was, or what it did. But ever since you saw it, you've been having such strange dreams...

Skill: One of Fleeing/Gambling/Drinking

Starting Items: dozens of ovoid charms (a meditation aid, and a decently valuable gift), three doses of soporific dust (save vs. sleep - you may choose to fail this save), light hammer, high-pitched flute.

Perk: machines of the earth roll Reaction for you.

15. Wastrel (scavenger)

A wretch's wretch, marked by an arch over the eyes. Suicide, murder, and negligence - all of them cost the community a body, and one way or another you cost them more than they're willing to pay.

Skill: two of Climb/Sneak/Endure

Starting Items: long knife (light), jug of wine, bear trap, 50' rope

Perk: when you attack someone (or something) that wasn't expecting it, roll your damage twice and add them together.

by Morgan - good god look at that hat

16. Augur (priest)

In the heartbeats of the sleepers, one can glimpse the progress they make in building the world.

Skill: one of Oratory/Plumbing/Carving

Starting Items: set of magnifying glasses, chalk and steel tablet, jumble of wires and tubing (cryopod parts), pliers

Perk: once a week, ask a question about the future and get a 1d6+[INT bonus] word answer.

17. Painter (priest)

When a new body awakes, they is insensate for [1d6+1] hours, and confused for that many days. For those first hours, they are vulnerable to persuasion - being told they are someone else, somewhere else, something else.

Skill: Medicine, plus one of Tracking/Theology/Wrestling

Starting Items: 5 tins of facepaint (blue, green, yellow, purple, black), mancatcher, 3 rations (flatbread, fruit jam, dried meat, water)

Perk: with ten minutes of analysis, you can tell what any given chemical would do when consumed or applied to the skin.

18. Adversary (priest)

Criminals are punished by addition of debt, by red-painted marks, and by exile into Dream. All are seen as a religious function.

Skill: one of Investigation/Interrogation/Jurisprudence

Starting Items: tin of red facepaint, grey official sash, equally official yatagan (medium)

Perk: You have the right to drag suspected criminals in front of the Cell for compurgation - they, and six others of their choice, must swear the innocence of the accused. If all seven take the oath, all is well. If any of them shy away, all those who swore face the same punishment as the criminal.

19. Spiritualist (priest)

An unorthodox belief - that memories of past minds still lie in bodies, and these past lives can be summoned back to the present.

Skill: one of Conspicuousness/Medicine/Very Normal Theology, Thank You Very Much

Starting Items: a loop of ovoid charms, a medium walking stick, and a chisel and hammer that definitely aren't for vandalism

Perk: With a short conversation, you can determine someone's greatest skill, greatest fear, and, if applicable, number of HD and attack bonus.

20. Duplicit (priest)

Marked by a two-tier trapezoid on the cheek - or at least, you will be once you're caught.

Skill: one of Disguise/Electric Repair/Hide

Starting Items: two sets of pale green "wool" clothing, two metal bowls and spoons, and a knife (light) you both argue over.

Perk: there are two of you, each identically facepainted and each driven by the same mind. Both of you will be exiled into Dream if you're found out.

both Locheil. good ol' locheil

eeeheeehee. cone
it's midnight
get me out of here immediately