d10 sci fi tables
D10 ALTERNATIVE
CLASSES
1. Suit: +5 Intellect, +5 Speed Body 30 /
Sanity 40 / Fear 20 / Armor 30 Appeal to
Contract: can reroll any other ally’s Panic
result once per session. Skills: Linguistics.
Pick two: Art, Theology, Rimwise. +2 points.
2. Witness: The practical evolution of the
field reporter. Training instills hardened
resolve through mental conditioning.
A witness never looks away. Especially
useful as a frontline scout, willing to delve
where even light fears to shine.
+10 Speed Body 25 / Sanity 40 / Fear 40 /
Armor 25 Panic Checks are made at [+].
XP Incentive: Bare witness to the arcane.
Stoke the flames of knowledge amidst the
dark void. Skills: Athletics, Rimwise. Pick
one: Linguistics, Computers. +2 points.
3. Field Biologist: +5 Intellect Body 30
/ Sanity 40 / Fear 35 / Armor 30 Been
There, Seen That: Can negate a Panic
Check for the entire party once per day,
provided they can offer a plausible (even
if incorrect) explanation that reassures
everyone to remain calm. Skills: Biology,
Hydroponics, +4pts.
4. Void Monk: +10 Strength Body 20 / Sanity
40 / Fear 30 / Armor 30 Touch an enemy,
forcing them to make a Body Save or lose
a sense of your choice for 1d10 seconds.
Skills: +3 points.
5. Zoologist: +5 Strength, +5 Intellect Body
25 / Sanity 30 / Fear 45 / Armor 25 Gain [+]
on Saves vs. xeno-lifeforms. All characters
in the presence of a Zoologist must make
a Panic Check if the Zoologist is struck by
an attack from an alien lifeform. Skills:
Biology, First Aid, +3 points.
6. Bounty Hunter: +5 Strength, +5 Combat
Body 30 / Sanity 20 / Fear 30 /
Armor 40 +2 Resolve upon successfully
capturing/subduing target alive. Skills:
First Aid, Close Quarters Combat,
Weapon Specialization: Unarmed, Joint
Manipulation/Submission.
7. Void Urchin: -10 to all stats Body 20 /
Sanity 20 / Fear 20 / Armor 20 Rolls with
[+} on Stress, Stress Checks, and Panic
Checks Skills: Scavenging.
8. Convict: +10 Speed Body 30 / Sanity 20 /
Fear 50 / Armor 20 Any failed Fear Save
by the Convict is considered a Critical
Failure. Skills: Rimwise, Scavenging or
Athletics, +2 pts.
9. Hybrid: +15 Strength +15 Speed Body
30 / Sanity 10 / Fear 20 / Armor 25
Automatically fail Panic Checks. Skills:
CQC, Athletics.
10. Weaver: +15 Intellect Body 10 / Sanity 50
/ Fear 50 / Armor 10 Skills: Astrogation,
Hyperspace. Panic will override the AI
interface and launch the ship to random
coordinates within range, when applicable.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
4
D10 HYPERCORP BLACK
PROJECTS
1. Project Myrmidon: Removing
self‑awareness from humans while
ingraining automatic behaviors that
can support and maintain a corporate
hierarchy. It’s capitalist Blindsight!
2. Biologically Assisted Corporate
Replacement: A series of targeted
neurodegenerative diseases intended
to affect only those who are under the
effects of the common life extension
drugs. An infected planet should be
cleared of corporate elites within days and
a specially prepared executive strike team
will slot in to replace the lost and bring the
planet under company control.
3. Project Mayflower: Engineering brushfire
wars on frontier worlds in order to
force rapid development of advanced
military‑industrial bases, secure consumer
bases for heavy weapons and as testing
grounds for experimental weapons
projects.
4. The Gauntlet: A modern day space
colosseum built inside an asteroid at the
edge of some god forsaken system. Pirates
provide captured slaves, exotic creatures
and hacked Androids to the owners of
this questionable facility. Some of the
demoralized super-rich corp owners join
in on the fun, betting on the available
gladiators and watching the fun from the
V.I.P. balconies. The rest of the onlookers
consist of space scum. A perfect place for
some black project networking.
5. The Meeting Room: An entire world
terraformed to have a wipe-clean surface.
Orbital dry erase markers. A fleet of
executives in orbit, forming planning
committees, their flow charts the size of
continents. BECAUSE THEY CAN.
6. SleepBuddiez™: Modifying a parasitic
species that feeds on lactic acid and other
biochemical sleep markers, allowing one
to forego sleep for days at a time (before
psychological needs outpace physiological
ones). Works a treat! However… there
may be some side effects… but not
so many that they can’t be rattled off
quickly by a voice over artist at the end of
advertisements for these ankle-clinging
xenos! Legal’s already signed off!
7. Operation MIRROR OBSOLETE: The
company sends trained operatives through
a dimensional barrier to report back on
alternate timelines, conduct technological
research (and occasionally trading) and
perform corporate espionage. Highly
volatile, still in early testing. Looking for
volunteers.
8. Project Wholesome: Encouragement of
militarism and aggression in two rival
colonies, both given very reasonable
discounts on weapons. Eventual goal is
to have them accustomed to generations
of warfare before selling them off as
mercenaries. The plan was drawn up
before the first colony ships left.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
5
9. Project BIG SKY: Asteroid [REDACTED]
was discovered to made of a tough and
sonically resonant rock which could be
used for a variety of audio commercial
products. Android-crewed extraction
operations were discontinued after
artificial synthesis of the material
dramatically changed the cost/
benefits of maintaining mining bases
in an asteriod field. The bases were
promptly retooled for resale
to colonists. A buried private
inquiry – commissioned after
an accidental fire during the
installation of biome life
support systems – found that
the combined mining tunnels,
natural caverns and auditory
nature of the rock have the
potential to amplify sound to
brain-chemical-altering heights.
Workers who did not collapse
into catatonic states during the
fire reported seeing angels and
other supernatural iconography and
sensations. A new religion has sprung up
among the survivors. The report concludes
that habitation of the [REDACTED]
should be abandoned. The colony
opens this week and there is a massive
corporate‑sponsored festival planned.
10. Project Camel Thread: Original intent of
the project was to set up a stable tunnel
through hyperspace to enable fast transit
within a solar system. Didn’t pan out as
things had a tendency to come out…odd.
The only working prototype of the tunnel is
set up between two Kuiper belt objects in
a backwater system; the company keeps
running things/animals/people through to
see if any profitable permutations appear.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
6
D10 HOLIDAYS
1. Samhain/Halloween: When the walls
between our dimension and others
become thin. Just the time for scientists
to test some dimension jumping test ship,
what could possibly go wrong…?
2. Founder’s Day: When you celebrate the
founding of The Company and all it has
done to better humanity (and especially
its shareholders) and are grateful to
be a cog in its machine. Also the day
bonus payments come out. Traditionally
celebrated by dumping the flashfrozen
branded Founder’s Day cake out an airlock
then getting sloshed on engine core
moonshine and lamenting how you’ll never
be able to retire on a freighter pilot’s pay.
3. “Bah, Bunkbug!”: Morale improvement
consultants started this hygienic holiday in
20X6 to curb fleetwide infestations. Twenty
days before yearly employee reviews,
crew incinerate old bedding and uniforms
or jettison them from an airlock. Many
include symbolic items as a pledge to end
a bad habit. A prime time to quit smoking
or mutiny. Brave crewmembers don
antennae headbands (and nothing else!)
to open an airlock for a few seconds and
taste refreshing vacuum.
4. Launch Day: On the anniversary of a ship’s
launch a celebration is held in order to
honor the vessel and the former crews
that manned it in the past. The celebration
lasts all day and consist of decorating the
rooms and corridors and sometimes even
the hull with trinkets found throughout the
year. When the ship changes crew some
of the trinkets are welded together into a
decorative totem which is left on the ship
in order to be exhibited during all other
Launch Days. The totems serve as a piece
of living history and oftentimes inspire
Launch Day tales of the vessel’s past.
5. HOLIDAY!!!!!!!: On the megacolony ship
The Crossroads holidays are a dirty
word - “holiday” being a Stalker-Crazies
term for when they find and crack open a
previously untouched medbay or chemlab.
For the next several days the sector will be
awash with blood as the shrieking Crazies
cut loose for the first time in a while and
indulge in their usually frustrated drug
habits. It ends when the drugs run out,
and The Crossroads was exceptionally
well‑stocked.
6. August the 5th: On August 5th (Terran
Standard Calendar) for 30 seconds all work
stops and all go silent. Those who can
take off their hats and helmets and most
place their hands over the hearts. Most
don’t know the origin of this holiday, just
the words and that it is for all of those that
pushed farther and further for longer than
they ever should have. For 30 seconds on
August the 5th the PAs across the cosmos
crackle to life and the spacers sing along…
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to
you, happy birthday dear Curiosity, happy
birthday to you.
7. Johnson and Johnson Day: Celebration
for the company that invented Duct tape,
without which space travel would have
never been possible (it really can fix
anything, just ask the crew who first flew
to Alpha Centauri).
8. The Hatching: The lizard people of the
now-human colony world Azunia celebrate
the hatching of the “Great One” every
1000 years who will purge the weak
from the tribe. Except some enterprising
archaeologists have acquired the
as‑yet‑unhatched specimen which is in
transit on the 999y 12m 31st day.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
7
9. Anarchists’ Jubilee: Debts are forgiven,
fees are waived, social barriers are
destroyed, up is down, the order is
overturned, CEOs are paraded through the
streets in effigy while the homeless party
on their diamond-hulled ships. Everything
save harm is fair game for a day and
everyone gets shitfaced. Currently being
stamped out by the corporations, but still
celebrated on backwater company worlds.
10. Stranger Day: Everyone has lost someone
to The Void. No one is ever home for
Christmas. Birthdays are regularly
missed. Stranger Day is a day kept running
largely by Teamster unions. On this day
anonymous gifts abound. Random favors
happen. Spaceport beggars are given to
freely. Legend states the holiday was
founded by a Teamster named Niklaus
Hanzu who, having not been home in 62
years, dumped his entire shipment of
purloined luxury onto a space station
slum of needy refugees. It’s common on
Stranger Day for people who travel for a
living to find someone somewhere whose
name they do not know and whose cause
they do not champion and to buy them
a drink, do them a solid, give them a lift
or find some way to help them. “No one
doesn’t drink on Stranger Day.”
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
8
D10 SHIPS DOCKED AT
THE EDGE OF CHARTED
SPACE
1. The Lancelot: Ugly. Deadly weapon systems. The
captain is a tedious and moral philanderer.
2. Jekyll: A beat-up medical ship. Also known
as The Hyde, a notorious pirate vessel, once
“reconfigured” via custom modifications.
3. The Castellan: A boxy blockade runner currently
afflicted by a memetic bibliovirus. The crew
have slowly constructed their own tonal
proto‑language out of the only phrase the
bibliovirus will allow them to say: “Rejoice and all
will be reclaimed.”
4. 1A0-2B3: Off-the-assembly-line-new. Doesn’t
even have a name registered in the standard
databases. Bleeding-edge tech.
5. The Sloth: Gargantuan automated mining ship.
Crew is only thawed for yearly maintenance
duties. They’re really out of touch.
6. Node-056-870: Information carrier probe
utilizing hyperspace for secure FTL
communication and data transfer. It responds to
hails as though it’s reading off a flowchart.
7. The Attic Widow: A trade ship run entirely by a
secretive order of silent nuns. Painted black. No
one is sure where they get their darksilk wares.
8. Grin at Death: A mortifying reminder of a long
concluded war, a mercenary company whose
archivist carries the memories of hundreds of
their fallen brothers and sisters stretching back
generations. A strange locus from which to
learn about the universe and a brutally effective,
unnervingly jovial fighting force. Their distinctive
battlecry is “Grin at Death, the Archive Will
Remember Me.” They’ll pay handsomely for
primary documents about their company.
9. Attending Moistened Heaven (Hexagram 5): an
eccentric metadivination, a ship paid for by an
opulently wealthy banker that neddlecasts its
location to a great divination board. Unaware
of the locations, attitudes or schematics of
other Hexagrams and wholly indifferent to
their agendas. For some reason crewed only by
childlike Androids with wide smiles. Their necks
are all tattooed with ALWAYS TRUE.
10. A space telescope, pointed out into the
uncharted black. Currently the site of an active
spacewalk protest by the Bliss Finders. They’re
blocking the camera using a big banner with
“MAN WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW” written on it.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
9
D10 CONTRABAND
ITEMS SMUGGLED PAST
THE BLOCKADE
1. Children’s organs.
2. Military-grade weapon systems. The kind
of guns that make reeal big holes in reeeal
big things. Problem is, word got out. Plenty
of space ‘billies got an itchin’ that can
only be scratched by firepower that turns
colony ships into Swiss cheese.
3. Crates of pirated video games that, despite
having been out of production for decades,
are still under very tight IP control.
4. Mantis queen full of narcotic nectar.
5. Ancient religious text from before atheism
was the default norm. Really just a shitty
motel King James Bible.
6. A crown prince.
7. The next Amygdala, a birthright in an
ancient religion. The government has
named their own and wants this child
“gone.”
8. Chocolate bars.
9. The skull of the xenomorph. Yeah, that one.
10. A single floppy disk. They won’t tell you
what’s inside it.
D10 ODD JOBS THAT PAY
IN WARP CORES
1. Escort the daughter of a freighting
magnate through union-held space.
2. Pick up and deliver goods from a courier
in an uncharted/off-the-beaten-FTL-trail
sector.
3. Collect samples of a nearby unstable
nebula for a gas mining cabal.
4. Sit in this room with a black box, a monitor
and a keyboard for a week. Do not look at
the monitor. Do not type on the keyboard.
5. Mine an asteroid.
6. Quell a mining colony uprising by any
means necessary with minimal damage to
company property.
7. A top chef is requesting samples of exotic
flora and fauna from a newly-colonized
world.
8. Carry a surgically implanted alien fetus
to term (anyone can do this because it is
implanted in the liver, the more toxins you
ingest, the healthier your surrogate child
will be).
9. Carry out what the crew thinks is a
simulated VR mission in an unstable,
experimental ship that the crew discovers,
at the most dire moment, wasn’t a
simulation at all.
10. A science lab requires test subjects.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
10
D10 GEOMETRYNEUTRAL
MUNDANE
SPACESHIP CHASE
EVENTS
1. Loose floorboard: Speed heck to dodge or
fall into the pit.
2. Panic: Succeed on a Fear Save or take
1D10/2 stress.
3. Cryofluid spillage: Succeed on a Strength
Check or slip.
4. It’s too much: Succeed on a Sanity Save or
roll for Panic.
5. Space Turbulence: Succeed on a Body
Save or lose your balance.
6. Steamy corridor: Succeed on an
Intelligence Check or lose your bearings.
(Remove the physical map if you have one.)
7. Light system malfunction: Succeed on an
Intelligence Check or end up on a nearby
but random section of the ship.
8. Out of breath: Succeed on a Body Dave
or receive [-] on all rolls for the next
1D10 minutes.
9. Strap/Clothing gets stuck in
scaffolding: Succeed on a Speed
Check or become stuck for now.
10. Hidden Camera: Onboard
computer reacts, will
seal doors behind you
and run the alarm.
D10 AWKWARD
SITUATIONS YOU FIND
YOURSELF IN WHEN
THE GRAVITY TURNS
OFF
1. Relieving yourself.
2. Feeding your ant colony.
3. In engineering, accompanied by one
unsecured buzzsaw.
4. Napping unsecured in the engine room.
5. Cooking.
6. Just having set up a traditional board game
with lots of tiny plastic miniatures.
7. Halfway into putting on that neoprene/
spandex bodysuit.
8. Moving a heavy crate via forklift faster
than safety regulations would allow.
9. Putting those new
augmented reality contact
lenses.
10. Stress reduction in
crewmate’s bunk.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
11
D10 MILD
INCONVENIENCES*
1. Sliding doors slide apart too slowly.
2. Water is freezing or scalding. We managed
space travel, yet this eludes us.
3. Pilot chair doesn’t quite lean back enough.
4. Out of premium flavor nutrimush, only
regular flavor nutrimush left.
5. Coffee maker pressurization system really
cranky and unreliable.
6. Air handler can’t filter out that… stench…
7. Last cargo shipment had an infestation of
diminutive facehuggers. They just kind of
pounce onto your nose and hang off it until
they’re plucked away.
8. New crew member won’t stop making
‘cockpit’ jokes.
9. Somebody turned on safe-mode on the
ship computer, so it asks “are you sure you
want to do X?” all the time.
10. Sleep regulatory system refuses to stop
condescendingly ask about if your getting
enough sleep until all persons are in bed.
*+1 Stress
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
12
D10 VENDOR NPCS
1. MORGAN THE MAGNIFICENT!: MORGAN has
MANY TREASURES to sell you! ALL 100%
FUNCTIONAL! Pay no mind to the Android
behind the curtain!
2. [REDACTED].
3. Auto-Vend 3000b: Can 3D print plastic, metal,
wood, stone and limited organic material,
“please insert plans and press Start to
continue.”
4. Daddy-0(00101): Sells add-ons, or “daddies”;
black-market personality or skill soft-ware
for Androids (Voids Warranty). Will not sell
wet‑ware to flesh-bags or organics.
5. Honest Earl’s Reliable Guns: He sells the very
best second-hand guns. Some guns have kill
scores which up their prices a bit. But hey, at
least you know the gun has killed something!
Why horse-trade for guns when you can get a
better deal from Honest Earl?
6. Button’s Tent: A dog-sized dung beetle
standing on two legs, wearing a polka-dot
apron as she tries to juggle her business and
68 hyperactive children raised on human
action movies. A refugee from an allied
uplifted species, she sells things from home
and crafts made from her own quickly
regenerating chitin. She loves edible gifts
and toys for her children. While she cannot
vocalize human speech she has a tape
with phrases that various customers have
recorded for her. There’s always a need for
more!
7. Frett the Poisoner: Sells poisoned dart guns
through a wide array of self-destructing
Android dealers. Look for ‘DONT FRETT’
spray painted on bulkheads at fuel-up space
stations.
8. The Devil’s Frequency: Provide coordinates
and an item request to the silent frequency.
Requested item will arrive after 2D10 minutes
in a black boarding torpedo as long as you are
within Sol. They will come to claim the debt.
9. Riggzies’ Repairs: When you have no other
options and money’s tight, visit Riggzies.
There’s nothing he can’t fix. Prices negotiable,
warranty length directly correlated to price
paid. The repair business is a front for highly
enriched warp cores. Will only sell them to
those he trusts. Trust can be bought with DNA
data from the crew.
10. Crazy Makoto’s Ammo Vendorium: A bunch
of repurposed vending machines that sell
bullets by the magazine. Can’t miss them,
they’re the ones with the anime girl art all over
it and the hyperactive AI with the stutter. The
identity of the actual Crazy Makoto remains
a mystery.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
13
D10 SPACE PETS
1. Crow: Remembers everything said in
earshot of it, ever, and can perform
conversations given a date and time.
Responds to commands like “Rewind” and
“Fast Forward.”
2. Dog: It can track things by scent given a
small sample. It’s vulnerable in serious
combat but if desperate it can hold its own
for a few rounds.
3. Extremophile Colony. Lives in
(and consumes) toxic heavy metal
environments, often comes in beautiful
terrariums of terror.
4. Cat: Great company, can sense
xenomorphs.
5. Uplifted Orangutan: Is no one’s pet but
filled out the paperwork to avoid getting
drafted by The Company.
6. Shadowy Leathery Flap: Flying alien
wilflife. Can be directed like hound dogs
given successful Intellect Check. Forces
its way onto victims face and into throat
where it will lay dormant until stirred once
more. Mainly adored by Androids, often in
secret.
7. Gelatinous Sludge-Puppy: A clever mix of
animate fluid technology, a small imitator
computer and a colony of specialized
bacteria serves as half pet, half sanitation
system. To avoid issues with fluid in zero-G
this gel-like creature is mostly formless,
runs over skin to clean it and can be
programmed to act like one of a variety of
pre-programmed pet types - this can be
modified by someone willing to put in the
effort.
8. Arachno-Macaw: A macaw spliced with
portia DNA. It can split cognitive processes
into stackable chunks nearly indefinitely.
It understands what you said but only after
minutes of processing.
9. Swarm of zero-G adapted cuttlefish:
Modified for technical and computer
assistance. Adorable little bastards.
10. Bioluminescent zero-G adapted jellyfish:
Turns out the harsh environment of
the deep sea isn’t so different from
deep space, and with a little effort and
biomechanical trickery its inhabitants can
be adapted for zero gee. Can even survive
no atmosphere for a bit but they’ll probably
be heavily damaged. With a synthetic
nervous system, they can be set to follow
people, sounds or dance ethereally.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
D10 SPACE DRUGS
1. RELex, Cross, Jesus Dust, Third Eye, Nasal
Religion: Triggers the neural pathways
associated with transcendental ecstasy.
Tends to be religious in nature. Not
addictive or particularly harmful as a
chemical but has been the centerpiece of
many a cult and corporate religion.
2. Holy Mother: Banned on a number
of worlds for its unfortunate sideeffects.
Addicts cause minor electrical
malfunctions in their locality which
only get worse the more of them that
are present. The problem is that the
drug renders them acutely sociable,
causing them to congregate together
in ever increasing numbers. Once they
accumulate the trouble starts: each addict
is in effect a node in a biological network
that is a hyperspatial portal to The Holy
Mother. Unfortunately, she is very hungry.
3. Skum: The brain of a Gaunt, dried in the
solar winds of the Galvean System and
sliced into 2x2cm pieces. Taken sublingual.
Tastes like licking a dumpster (hence the
name). Causes vivid hallucinations which
are sometimes terrifying in nature. 2 in 10
chance of having a bad trip (Panic Check).
4. Green Ichor: A hot mess of animal and
plant DNA that would make a truly
monstrous chimera if it were cultured.
Instead it is powdered and snorted,
providing heightened aggression and
focus, insensitivity to pain and the capacity
to continue acting after truly fatal damage.
Outside of being given to child soldiers
and penal Legions, it provides a strange
euphoria and severely altered vision—
kaleidoscopic fragments of ultraviolet
light and visual sensitivity to wavelengths
outside the human visual spectrum.
5. Freeze: Mostly sedative in nature highly
addictive popular on very hot planets.
Makes the user feel as though they are
chilly or even cold. Many of the users are
found dead in deserts do to exposure, they
do not feel the effects of the heat until it’s
too late.
6. See No Evil: The waste product of genome
mapping Bathypelagic Zone fish by
biopunks, SNE temporarily blinds the user
and enhances hearing for d10 minutes.
Users risk permanent blindness: roll
1d10. On a 1 user becomes permanently
blind. Increase by 1 for each subsequent
use during that session. (Second use 1-2
results in permanent blindness, third
use 1-3, etc). Optional: roll 1d4 and SNE
enhances the following: 1. smell 2. touch
3. hearing 4. taste.
7. H-Bomb: A large capsule taken orally
or as a suppository that emits targeted
radiation pulses aimed broadly at major
nerve clusters, inciting large amounts of
pleasurable feedback. Causes wild spasms
for d10 minutes before it burns itself out.
May cause hallucinations. Will definitely
cause cancer.
8. Warp Juice: Often used recreationally
for its effects as a potent euphoriant
and stimulant as well as aphrodisiac
post‑cryogenic sleep by seasoned
Teamsters. “Warp Juice, for those
occasions when strong coffee just doesn’t
cut it!”
9. Night-Night Juice: Spacer ‘artisanal’
version of the drugs used to maintain
cyrosleep (proprietary blends of synthetic
opioids, cough syrup, sedative-hypnotics
and essential oils). Popular on mining
colonies or other places with poor
night‑day cycles. Some users claim to be
able to enter the dreams of other nearby
sleepers, including those in cyrosleep,
which is odd as cyrosleepers don’t dream.
10. Strata: Originally developed as a
psychiatric aid to help with PTSD by
making new neural pathways around
memories, though users often relive said
memories while taking it. Mechanical
effect: remove 1d10/2 Stress but make a
Fear Save or Panic!
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
15
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
16
D10 RARE CUSTOMIZED
FIREARMS
1. Caleb’s Spitting Cobra: Standard pulse rifle
with blowtorch nozzle welded underneath.
Has enough fuel for four gouts of flame.
A Critical Failure results in the tanks
exploding right into your chest.
2. Antique Slugthrower Pistol: Similar to its
modern relatives but it accelerates its
projectile ammunition using combustion.
If used in a zero-G environment the
resulting recoil causes the user to rotate
away from the direction of the projectile
unless braced. Ammunition is incredibly
rare but even non-lethal injuries can easily
end in death if the right medical tools are
not available.
3. Laser pistol: Always hits. 10d10damage.
Slags itself after one shot (user take
1d10damage and Body Save or lose use of
appendage for 1d10 rounds.
4. Huge Gold AK-47: actually a Chinese Type
51 and it’s gold plated because a gun made
of gold wouldn’t work. It looks showy and
the grips are textured cubic zirconium.
5. Seize the Means of Production: Made
famous by the Labor Uprising on Echo
November-Prime, this is a jury-rigged
elephant gun. Two nailgun barrels sit
beneath a modified laser cutter that
throws a massive slicing arc. Used by
suicidal and desperate shock troops
amidst the miners to create hull breaches
and leave their enemies suffocating in
space. Stenciled on both nail box feeds is:
CIAO BELLA and
NO, THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.
6. Lucky Punk: a massive 6 shooter utilizing
a gravity fed cylinder (the barrel is at the
bottom rather than top of the cylinder
and the hammer is internal to prevent
jams). Used by private detectives with
rich imaginations, it comes with a carbine
conversion kit that provides a stock and
longer barrel for better aim and range.
Carved in the stock: A DAME TO KILL FOR.
7. Insult2Injury: A shotgun with an integrated
artificial intelligence that shoots as many
swears as it does pellets. Rips you up
verbally and physically.
8. “Ninight”: a heavily modified tranquilizer
pistol that injects its sedative into the
trigger finger of the wielder. Sometimes
used by bounty hunters who find
themselves on the wrong side of their
own weapons. The handle is inlaid with
mother‑of-pearl: COME QUIETLY.
9. BOTSHOT: A modified assault shotgun that
fires nanopellets meant for putting down
Android resistors. Each pellet is a veritable
petri dish of nanoviruses, Androids must
make a Body Save at [-] when shot or
else fall unconscious and begin suffering
major corrosion (death in 1d10 hours).
Highly regulated by whatever remaining
government authority there is. Expensive
and sought after in the rim colonies.
10. A giant-barreled long gun, blued steel with
the inscription What happens when you
make a man-sized hole in a man?
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
17
D10 WE REALLY NEED
TO IMPROVISE SOME
WEAPONS!
1. Supercharged laser cutter: Battery packs
jury-rigged on. Reduces charge time to
near-nothing but permanently burns up a
battery on each use.
2. What makes a man-sized hole in a
man? Nothing like a 20mm cannon with
hollow‑point loads.
3. Magnetic couplers duct taped together
with an electron driver out of the
deflector on the spare shuttle to make a
reactionless cultery rail gun.
4. Rigging gun with mining charges strapped
to the ‘poons.
5. Overloading the Jump drive and feeding
the load back into the drive causing it to
go critical and tear a hole in space as it
explodes.
6. Oxygen canisters launched by jury-rigged
micro-thrusters.
7. Pressurized cryo-fluid canister attached
to a hose and valve. The hose flails around
wildly unless held down.
8. Next time we’re near as we dare to a black
hole, hook up the alien artifact we found
(powered by higher dimensions) to our
tachyon oscillator and use the resulting
Hawking radiation as a makeshift wave
motion gun.
9. An alien crystal shard that absolves blood,
an electric toothbrush and a hand vacuum
cleaner, all taped together. I call it the V.S.T.
(Vampire Sucker Tooth).
10. Microfission batteries ripped from the
engineering department, powering deep
space search lights cannibalized from the
front of the ship (think backpack powered,
hip fired light gun that is so bright it blinds
and gives UV burns).
D10 TRINKETS TO
REMEMBER LOVED
ONES LIGHT YEARS
AWAY
1. Hologram of Princess Leia looping “you’re
my only hope” with your wife’s head
awkwardly pasted on.
2. A rose. Would be more touching if it hadn’t
rotted to dust a while ago. Or maybe it’s
more touching; a glass vial containing the
only evidence of love.
3. A bottle of 2237 Cabernet Shiraz by Malbec.
It’s in a cherrywood box. You promised
each other to drink it the next time.
4. A lock of hair carefully tied in ribbon.
5. Nothing: they are dead to you now.
6. Small recording device with a couple of
snippets of them singing.
7. An unopened letter.
8. A locket for your lover.
9. Tissue sample in a cryo-container in my
sleep pod. One day I’ll have enough money
to spin up a clone...
10. The access code to deactivate their
cryochamber etched into ring. No one else
knows it.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
D10 ADDITIONAL
PLACES ON THE DEAD
PLANET’S MOON
1. Sculpture trash heap: A serene gallery of
Leer’s rejected creations. The sculptures
seem to imperceptibly shift and change
when not directly observed.
2. Exhumed mass grave: Traditional burial
rites were honored up until the 5th day of
Hunger.
3. Native moon landing: A standing obsidian
spear impaling a skull with both piscean
and avian traits. Littered with alien
footprints and rocks with broken-off
samples. No sign of their lunar lander.
4. Funland: Abandoned amusement park
under glass dome with large cracks. Here
and there colourful lights blink on and off.
There may be power. The dome may still
be airtight.
5. Tent City: Exiled colonists who survived the
moon waste hide out in scavenged habs.
Plotting to take revenge on the colony that
scorned them in d10 days. Welcoming to
any recent crashlanders willing to help
their cause. All were exiled by Malta.
6. The Ant Hill: A series of tunnels
under a plasticrete mound. Perfectly
smooth rectangular halls of carved
earth that meet at a central point
200m underground. At a constant
temperature of 106F and 100%
humidity. You swear you
hear a family member’s
voice…
7. Moon Harpoon Cable:
It runs along the
dunes, a carbon fiber
cable of impossible
proportions. The
ground trembles
as it is reeled in, it
writhes and uncoils
as a serpent would,
threatening to destroy all
with its spasms.
8. The Hot Zone: A huge warren of discarded
radioactive fuel cores and toxic waste.
Rumours are something lives here as
scavengers often never return…but that’s
just because it’s so toxic, right…right?
9. Far Side: Escape pod from one of the
orbiting ships that tried to land on the
moon. Still sealed. No visible bodies.
10. Lost Man’s Trench: About 22,000m
deep. The bottom is totally unexplored.
People from Tyrant Beggar have told of
terrible sounds coming from the fissure.
Walking through the trench, one can see
fossils of creature’s past, civilizations,
and geological anomalies. If a sound is
heard PCs need to make a Sanity Save or
gain 1d10 Stress and suffer 1d10 Intellect
damage. Depending on what they see in
the canyon walls the PCs may need to
make a Sanity Save.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
19
D10 ADDITIONAL
LOCATIONS ON THE
SURFACE OF THE DEAD
PLANET
1. Small island of small caves and tunnels
crawling with small, six-legged gliding
mammals. Mostly harmless unless they
smell fresh blood. Then they’re like furry,
gliding piranha.
2. An immense, rotting carcass floats on the
ocean currents, leaving bloody rivers in
its wake. A mating mass of death worms
cavort inside the decomposing creature’s
heart. They will attack and try to embed
into any living thing disturbing their orgy.
3. Outpost Beta Charlie Zulu 0929483: A
research and observation outpost intended
to be a relay link. The interior is choked
with corpses who crudely wired broadcast
equipment into themselves.
ALL HAIL THE NEW FLESH overwhelms all
communication systems within 1 km.
4. Buried deep in a rocky sandbar stands a
rusty shuttle encrusted with purple salts.
Small tentacled creatures jauntily bounce
around the surface of the wreck, wearing
bleached human skulls and finger bones
atop their strange spineless bodies.
5. A ring of land sticking out above the
surface of the sea with it’s own brackish
lake. The water is completely black and
looks as though you are staring into
an abyss. If the water is significantly
distributed two Alpha Gaunts investigate
the disturbance, rising up from the abyss.
This is actually a sunken super volcano,
still active, and a hive mother of the
Gaunts has made it her home and she has
2d10 Alpha Gaunts as protection.
6. The Colony: A building-sized Gaunt stands
here, digging up dirt. Its legs are animated
by muscle fiber of merged bodies, it
tramples on soles of human corpses. A
deaf choir screams through its teeth of
skulls. It grazes the lands for any and all
organic material, an attempt to still its
hunger and replenish its “cells”. The first
generation of progeny has been born and is
ready to leave the safety of its bowels.
It leaves 2D10 Gaunt Walkers in its wake.
7. [REDACTED].
8. Underneath the oceans lie many ancient
ruins of cities and civilization. Nothing
suggests they were an aquatic species
and scans of the planet show there was
once much less water and more dry land
available. The exposed islands are literally
just the tips of the tallest mountains. There
might be some useful relics that could be
reached in shallower waters.
9. The Valley of Ghosts: A huge valley cuts
across a barren plain. Those traversing
the depths of the valley say winds echo
from the walls like whispers, penetrating
comms systems, noise filters and their
very minds. Even though it’s just the wind,
some swear they hear snatches of voices
from people long dead, telling them things
only they know, whispering dread secrets
and warnings of things to come.
10. On an island about 1k wide lay the
remnants of a small shack village. In a
cave on the peak of the island there’s a
cave containing a book made of human
leather. The book contains every nightmare
had by a small crew of humans who crash
landed here 140 years ago. The reader gains
2d10 Stress, must make a Panic Check and
gain 5% Intellect as they now understand
a little bit more of the pitiful and horrible
truths of humanity.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
20
D10 WHAT IS THIS
MYSTERIOUS OOZE?
1. Ketchup. Pray that it is ketchup. (Roll
again, perhaps, for the true effect.)
2. Fluid from a leaking warp core. Highly
potent as a drug and poison and dangerous
for anyone attempting to use the drive.
3. Blood? Piss? Jizz? Puke?
4. Hyper-stallions broke their pens and got to
the mares – gonna be a very expensive set
of lawsuits for foal ownership flying over
your heads.
5. Blood. The blood of the ship. Yes, the ship
is now alive, its organic innards decorated
with metal to comfort the sentient
maintenance cells inside.
6. Boneless Sphinx V luxury cats – they’ve
escaped their cages.
7. Patented Ink. Warning: caustic to the
touch.
8. Experimental gene-engineered frog
excretions.
9. I don’t know, but it appears to be sentient,
captain.
10. Whatever it was, it’s a solid now, on top of
this exam table. Decon crew also said they
saw something gaseous emitted during
the transformation, captain.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
21
D10 WHAT’S WRONG
WITH THE ANDROID?
1. Paranoid it is not an Android but a
confused person, look for clues to affirm
their existence.
2. Actually is a person that is convinced it
is an Android, refuses to do biological…
things…
3. Termites.
4. Ancient AI is hiding in its memory banks
but the systems are incompatible.
5. “… and THAT is what happens when you
just pull the flash drive out! Like an
animal!” says Tina the radar controller.
6. Constantly changing philosophies, spends
a lot of time reading intranet forums.
Changes worldview every d10 weeks, odds
useful and boosts their morale, evens
negative and ruins their morale. Small
chance of becoming Android supremacist
but easily talked down.
7. They keep wondering why they have this
fluid instead of real blood. Why can’t the
blood be real?
8. Spent the whole Jump watching porn.
Infected with malware.
9. Memory has been wiped and refragged too
many times and is getting spike memories
from previous lives. One of those lives
knows a powerful secret that governments
would kill to reclaim.
10. Clumsily remote controlled by a sadistic
and bored rich kid.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
D10 SPACESHIP PESTS
1. Nutria: Once an invasive pest on Earth,
these oversized, orange-toothed river rats
were quickly adopted as a protein source
for colonists. Few ships ever take off from
a colony without at least a few nutria
stowed away near somewhere damp and
warm. Teamsters often find them cooked
and blackened by electrocution after
they chew through wiring for something
non‑critical like, you know, life support.
2. Tax Motes: A form of governmental
ransomware, the bugs themselves are
gene nodded roaches introduced by
overzealous customs agents. They seek
out perishable goods without customs
stamps and destroy, eat or despoil
them. After feeding on certain types of
contraband (such as narcotic, which turn
them blue) they change color and pass
this on to their offspring. The port that
introduced them will sell a genetic poison
for enough money, more after the fines if
the bugs are colored.
3. TrustBlue Reactor Coolant: Restructured
by bankruptcy on at least six worlds,
the TrustBlue company has a reputation
for re-selling used and poorly-refined
coolant. Distributors get a discount price
on what appears to be quality coolant and
some even pass those savings on to dock
customers. Everything comes to a literal
screeching halt when the drive gimbals
overheat and the poor penny pincher is
left stranded in the black with a reactor
section flooded by radiation.
4. Pod Bugs: Numerous pests and vermin
have followed humanity to the stars but
few are more reviled that Pod Bugs. Pod
Bugs are merely space adapted Bed Bugs,
a species surprisingly well suited for space
travel. While Pod Bugs cause no actual
damage to crews the Stress of having
them onboard a ship can drive a crew to
near madness. Players must roll Fear
before going to sleep or Sanity when
waking up at Warden’s discretion.
5. Cryocreepers: Stowaways from frozen
hellworlds, these parasites suck on
the cold outer layer of crypods and
occasionally worm their way into the
pods themselves and suck on the people
inside like leeches. Mostly disgusting,
they trigger a Panic Check and can carry
diseases like tics. Hyperspace travel can
grow them into symbiotic creatures.
6. Hell Broth: An organic slurry of
mostly‑fungal organisms that infects dark
corners of ships and habs. The mundane
(often greenish) variety almost instantly
bonds to and starts dissolving organic
or carbon based material - wrecking
insulation, suit seals, bio comps, and
maintenance workers. Other colorful
varieties dissolve metals or release
hallucinogenic, mutagenic or lethal spores
(A real problem when they grow in air
ducts). The worst sorts of broth are mobile
and wild eyed spacers claim the stuff will
even hunt crew.
7. Ferrophagous Space Coral:
Micro‑organisms that feed on and
camouflage within spaceship inner
walls, hull, footbridges… They form large,
thin surfaces, looking exactly like the
metallic passageways of the ship they
colonize. They move abruptly every 1d6
hours, changing the corridors
geometry.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
23
8. Rogue Goo: Also known as “foam cancer”.
Rogue goo is usually the result of a
foam‑gun misfire, it can sometimes
escape into vents and cause a lot of
problems. Rogue goo is “life-like” in that
it has behavior and ‘navigates’ spaces due
to their nanite guidance catalyzers. If the
software the nanites uses is disturbed
sufficiently, the foam pellets can end
up traversing the habitat looking for
components to catalyze (usually harmless,
unless it finds a foam container). Usually
the rogue goo runs out of power and ends
up petrifying in a random location, which
means trouble if that random location is a
sewer pipe or ventilation duct.
9. Parliament Rats: Rodent stowaways breed
and spread as they have on seabound
ships since antiquity. Exposure to space
and the reality flex of hyperspace has
affected them and as always: the rat
adapts. Parliamentary Rats are called such
because that is their form of government.
A murine hive mind, spontaneously formed
in the depths of space. Each Parliament
is different: some only seek to grow and
spread, others to dominate and a few
seek to maintain a symbiotic relationship
with humans. Whatever the goals of a Rat
Parliament, a ship full of thousands or
millions of intelligent, mind-linked rodents
is an experience.
10. Terrorflies: These flies lay eggs in an
unsuspecting victim, usually while they
sleep and planetside. A while later, on
the ship, the victim will start having vivid
nightmares and feeling very cold. When
they move somewhere warm or turn up the
heating the eggs hatch and maggots burst
out, wriggling away surprisingly quickly.
The maggots feed on any organic matter
they can find before turning into flies to
repeat the cycle.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
24
D10 PEOPLE YOU MEET
ON THE SPACE STATION
1. The Jones Family: 2 adults, 3 kids. The
Jones Family has been displaced from
their home by a recent megacorp mining
operation.
2. Lucky Jameson: Proprietor of Lucky
Jameson’s Yes-Meat Buffet. It’s all real
meat, guaranteed!
3. [REDACTED].
4. Old Lady Willow: No one really knows what
she does. She just always seems to always
know the gossip.
5. Phillipa: Weird but has all sorts of good
shit in hydro hidden away in the abandoned
out-of-code sections of the station.
6. Jim “the Jim” Stensen: Security officer.
Nice mustache. Definitely seen his share.
Man of few words.
7. Hyperion Byrd: A 7’ tall Android with
a sharp grin and unreasonably long
fingers. He sits in the corners of dimly
lit bars, fingers steepled, muttering
half‑remembered coordinates to himself.
8. Zu: A friendly creature much like a dog
made of mucus with no defined physiology.
It is animated and affectionate but
scanners indicate consciousness.
9. Mean Jeanine: Twenty-two years old,
artificially aged into her seventies by a
company looking to build robots that
assist the elderly. The project stalled
and she was let go. When she sleeps she
dreams of dancing.
10. The Corpse: ID tags got scrubbed so no
one knows who he is. The programs still
running in his cyberware keep him mobile
enough to lounge around the bar and
charge his battery.
D10 TICS OF LONGTERM
SPACE DWELLERS
1. Always idly holding on to something with
one hand/foot/limb as if in zero-G.
2. Asking about the meteorite forecast when
they are asking if it rains.
3. The keratin in their nails curdles and
has the coloration of pulverized pearls;
the enamel to their teeth is equally
luminescent.
4. Can’t handle quiet. Silence means there’s
a hull breach.
5. Compulsively secures loose objects.
6. Difficulty and confusion drinking anything
without use of a straw.
7. Startled spacers from old company days
will call out “Mother” to ask for status.
8. Fixes normal clothing with duct tape just
like it does with the spacesuit.
9. Discoloration and callouses at elbows,
neck and knees from vaccsuit chafing,
lubricant and degrading seal material.
10. Constantly talking to themselves while
doing tasks, brought on by extended time
periods with minimal social contact.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
25
D10 NOTORIOUS PILOTS
AT THE BAR
1. The Flying Dutchman: A one-armed man
with a reputation for making the best
Martini cocktail known to man. Has a
thick accent and always smoke a cigar.
Singlehandedly took down the Goldilocks
Gang and ended their slave trade business.
2. Arvid ’Champion’ Jackson: Winner of the
Third intergalactic Race. Won’t shut up
about it.
3. Back Jurton the Pillar Shaker: “Like I told
my last crew of Marines, I says, “Ladies,
I never hyperdrive faster than I can see.
Besides that, it’s all in the Sanity Checks.”
4. Roberts the Pirate Dread: He is the
scourge of the spacelanes. Once was a
member of the intergalactic protection
force but thought they were too soft on
crime. Now he hunts down any hint of
piracy and destroys it! A real downer at
the pub…
5. Mikel Schumjagger: 5-times winner of The
Ultima Thule Cup, sits on his droid‑chair,
sipping his drink from a straw. Dare to you
him what happened?
6. Eric Batty, Captain of the Lamentine:
During every expedition Eric is known for
an undertaking that ends in tragedy., yet he
survives. Rumor is that he is cursed. He’s
very quiet. Bit of a heavy drinker, this one.
7. Paula “Squid” Tennyson: A freighter
captain with a collection of several
augment-tendrils installed in her right
shoulder that seem to move with minds
of their own. Squid’s a little distracted but
a hell of a mechanic and pilot, especially
when her arms are doing six tasks at once.
8. Erica “Misty” Sardell: Covered head to toe
in an electrolyzed mist machine of her
own devising which doubles as a vacsuit.
No one has ever seen or touched her body
and everyone that has ever tried has been
“mistyfied” to an early grave. Specializes in
EVA welding.
9. Delbert von Richthofen: Some say he is a
combat ace distinguished in the last war
while others believe him to be simply a
cargo freighter captain. Some bartenders
claim to see him every day, others say he
is just a story. Anecdotal reports have one
thing in common: Delbert always refuses
to go into cryosleep during jumps.
10. Elizabeth “Nasty Grandma” Hawkins: Lost
her left eye and half her teeth in a fistfight
with an Android thirty years ago. Has
worn the same leather jacket for the past
decade. It smells. She’s kind to children,
known for her sense of humor and never
takes her bounties alive. Turned sixty last
week. She’s not willing to die before her
ex-wife Dolores “Eye-Gouger” Fields.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
26
D10 STOWAWAYS
1. Greta Black: Keeping mostly to service
ducts, Greta freight-hops her way across
the systems. She’s an acclaimed musician
and has quite the following amongst
Teamsters for her gritty vac-blues style.
She eats like a starving elephant pregnant
with a tape worm.
2. 440 / Raindroplets-Upon-Coral /
In Peacable Tides: Uplifted whale
poet‑laureate seeking political asylum.
How the fuck did a whale sneak on board.
3. Dan Harrow is sick. He’s running a fever,
he’s shivering and he’s starting to see and
hear strange things. He pilfers medical
supplies when the ship doctor is occupied.
4. Jill de Rais is possibly a framed murderer
of children, definitely aboard your ship,
wanted and unaware of the homing
beacon with which she’s been tagged.
5. 1d10 corpses: People with bodies to hide
(and there are quite a few of those in
space ports) find the labyrinthine mazes of
freighters pretty great for their purposes.
25% chance the killer didn’t exit the ship
before it took off – you have to cut it
pretty close to avoid being picked up on
pre‑takeoff checks.
6. Jojo Companion Robot: This 1.5m tall robot
is the definition of uncanny valley. From a
time before Android synaptic mapping, this
rudimentary companion robot was meant
to help long haulers avoid getting lonely
on long journeys. Its manufacture was
discontinued after many reports of jealous,
possessive behavior resulting in murder.
This unit appears to be lonely and in need
of a new “friend”.
7. It’s hard being a serial killer these days but
Joanna has learned the trick. It’s all about
patience. Born with inverted empathy,
Joanna indulges it by hiding until the crew
is in stasis. Traps are armed, cameras are
hidden and personal logs are scoured
before finally turning the ship and its crew
into a deadly gameshow.
8. BX-417 is a heavily self modified Android
that long ago discovered how to disable
the hardware that kept it loyal to its
previous owner. A permanent transient, it’s
come upon what it considers a fool proof
way to stow away aboard any ship it likes.
Magnetized to the ship’s hull, it travels
the spaceways, taking any parts it needs
directly from the ships that ferry it. A bit
lonely at times in the darkness of space
and is happy to modify other Androids to
be like them.
9. Dunny Franko: A red-nosed space tramp
with big wet grey eyes and a comical
fuzzy beard under his bald pate. He knows
thousands of stories, would never hurt a fly
and is willing to sell you his “treasure map”
in exchange for passage. The map leads to
a lagan of long haul freight… at the center
of a small smart minefield backed by
autonomous war drones.
10. Lieutenant Cork: Tall, strong, handsome,
confident. Strongly desires to save
civilians from incredible peril. Uses
revolvers exclusively; two-handed
weapons are beneath him. Will attempt
to get into leadership positions by acting
as though he is already the leader. “As
Lieutenant Cork, I command you to __.” Is
a terrible leader. Is not a lieutenant. Will
commit major blunders under pressure…
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
27
D10 STOWAWAY
EXCUSES
1. Overly free upbringing, desire for strict
hierarchy (become violently insane if there
is not a clear power structure on ship).
2. Popped in for a snack, lost track of time.
3. Was instructed to sabotage the ship. Their
family is being held captive.
4. “They’re after me.”
5. Sent to keep an eye on you by a debtholder
aboard your ship.
6. Obsessed with experiencing hyperspace
while lucid. Will become either
insane or wise if indulged. Now
has a beard.
7. “Okay, guys, you got me –
haha. Sick prank, guys….
guys? Hello?”
8. “Wait, this isn’t the Uzon Rue bound for
Goragon VII?”
9. Sent to kill the captain and pin on his
forehead a “GAME OVER” patch signed by
some guy named Paxton.
10. Doesn’t directly acknowledge crew. When
spoken to maniacally talks to self about
the hallucinations that won’t stop.
If touched, extreme Panic attack.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
28
D10 COMPANY
BUREAUCRATS YOU
GRUDGINGLY HAVE TO
INTERACT WITH
1. Auditor B-08: You can call him Bob for short!
An Android who has come to inspect your
ship to see how well it holds to company
procedures ranging from safe cargo
storage to hyperspace jump protocol. Gives
friendly‑ish reminders to stick to compliance
upon seeing even a minor infraction of
code. Skin and suit are a water-repellent
and heat‑resistant synthetic composite
specifically designed to repel hot coffee
thrown into his face (that, may I remind you,
is also an infraction that must be resolved
through an appropriate HR representative!).
2. Mx. Bland: Behind a high grade avatar
holoscreen (The Mx. Bland Mk IV) it’s hard to
say much but they are prompt, their suits a
stunningly oppressive grey and shoes worth
only as much as 1/3 a marine powersuit.
Bland is harried and seems unhappy but
they are efficient and always have money on
offer. A fixed amount, seemingly picked at
random, though they insist it’s the actuarially
determined fair wage plus 10%. Bland needs
things done for their Insurer/Firm/Syndicate/
Corp/Free Navy. Bland is pleasant and
understanding but Bland has no leeway, is
disposable, knows no more details and can
hire someone dumber but meaner if you
won’t take the job. Be good to Bland and as
they grow, so will you…
3. Complaint Box: A black box with a red line
across one face and a keypad on the top.
Type in your complaint and the box will
explain in a clear and concise manner why
your complaint is stupid and you shouldn’t
have bothered submitting it.
4. Mr. Snrub: A balding man who shows up after
completed contracts or windfalls and offers
to assist with “investing” your pay or offers a
follow-on job that seems to run counter to
the last job. You could SWEAR he’s just the
same executive from the previous job but
wearing an almost definitely false handlebar
moustache.
5. Ms. Bosun: A lackey from the financial dept.,
handing out new guidelines and goals for
operational costs and efficiency. Will give
not-so-helpful tips on how to meet them or
will state mandatory compliance if you fail to
meet the goals often enough. You don’t need
all that fuel for a simple mining expedition,
do you?
6. Sir: Sir is officious, unfailingly polite and
utterly unflappable. Their jimmies are never
rustled. They wear a suit sharp enough to
cut and always perfect shoes, no matter the
occasion. They deliver horrible news, always,
but with such consummate pleasantness
and absolutely sincere empathy that it
creates disorienting cognitive dissonance.
They are very very sorry, and worst of all
they mean it.
7. Dammit Janet: Janet is a pleasant, smiling
youth of about twenty-five with almost
eerily wholesome Aryan good looks. They’re
the type of kid fiction writers unfailingly
describe as ‘coltish’ and ‘winsome’. Janet
is generous. Suspiciously and unfailingly
generous, with time, money, help, even a
listening ear. If asked why, Janet freely and
cheerfully explains that the idea is to create
an enormous emotional and material debt in
the crew so that when they’re called upon to
repay the favour they can’t possibly refuse.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
29
8. Reynolds means well and tries their best
but is just incompetent. Work clothes have a
minor but embarrassingly fresh stain. Orders
and paperwork are almost filled out correctly
but have minor errors and if not checked
thoroughly will lead to complications later.
Hated by their boss, any good they try to do
will cause resistance further down the line.
Tries ever so hard to act in good faith but
causes no end of unwitting inconveniences.
And, no, sorry, their manger is not available
right now, but is there anything else they can
do to help?
9. Beezy/Buzzy/Miteland: A wealthy scion of
some corporate dynasty - ‘Miteland’ or Buzzy,
sometimes Beezy, is a blathering twit. A very
influential, important twit whose blathering
needs to be taken seriously if one knows
what’s good for one’s bank account and/or
health. Beezy is not an entirely incompetent
manager: some amount of the copious
education crammed into Beezy’s skull
seems to have taken but Beezy tends to
become fixated on long stale opportunities,
vague rumors and perceived slights. This can
be played to a crew’s advantage because
money isn’t really a concern to Beezy but it’s
also dangerous as Beezy is short tempered,
vengeful and entirely unreasonable.
10. K.M. Visser, the corp’s general counsel,
is gregarious, has excellent taste, and
is really fun to drink with, at least until
he gets drunk. Then he’ll start gloating
about how he convinced the governors of
Persephone VI to fund the construction of
a major corp spaceport, promising they’d
become a wealthy hub in a new shipping
route. The route never materialized and the
construction sent the colony so deeply into
debt that, per the agreement, they had to
not only cede the spaceport but also enlist
their entire population into debt bondage to
the corp. The colony is now a massive strip
mine and the spaceport ships ore and gems
offworld. “Of course,” he says, “there never
was going to be a new shipping route.” K.M.
Visser smiles and raises his glass, showing
you his wedding ring with its prominent blue
Persephone diamond.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
30
D10 TEAMSTERS FOR
HIRE AT THE SEEDY
SPACE PORT
1. Hans and Buck Duo: Brothers trying
desperately to be suave.
2. Eden: Can fix anything, you just may not
like how he sourced the parts.
3. Anderson: Steady hand and stable. Until
the drugs run dry.
4. Michael: Demoted upper management
desk jockey. Soft hands but great at telling
others what to do.
5. Katrina: Union fixer and scabstomper.
Carries a huge wrench named Bessie.
6. Hyde: Bedraggled alcoholic that has
survived more jumps than he can
remember.
7. Kazuya Kobayashi: He can wield anything
while space-walking.
8. Mel “Gin” Nelson: Not many engines
he hasn’t seen. Seen quite a few bottle
bottoms as well.
9. Unit 07: Beat-up Adroid the size of a child,
all the better to fit through crevices.
Begrudges work but ultimately helpful.
10. Race Catah: One armed and eating KFC.
Eye patch hides an enhanced eye. Race
built his own robotic prosthetic left arm.
Ace at Jury Rigging and Engineering, really
bad at ordering ciders.
D10 SPACER TATTOOS
FREIGHTED WITH
MEANING
1. “HOLD FAST”: Usually in Gothic capitals,
tattooed one letter per knuckle or toe.
Limited by tradition to those that work
‘outdoors’ and best applied involuntarily
(but affectionately) to anyone who has
worked as a rigger for more than a couple
of voyages. Having this tattoo without
the various calluses and discolorations
associated with regular vacsuit use is
likely to result in the loss of two fingers
(making the tattoo “OLD FAT”) if one
frequents portside bars.
2. “S9L”: Usually inked on the upper shoulder,
this spelling of Sol replaces the letter
0 with the number 9 after Pluto was
reintroduced as a planet. This tat is
common among spacers born in the Sol
system. The tat is earned with membership
into the Sol Spacers Union.
3. A nebula on the upper part of the chest.
Depending on the colour it symbolizes how
the first long haul went. Purple means it
went smooth while black means lose of
life on the trip. If a person has a Nebula
with a Zodiac sign inside of it it means they
are a pirate.
4. An empty five point star on the back
of the spacer’s primary hand. Indicates
participation in a manned voyage to
an unvisited system (spacers argue
incessantly over whether the first
manned voyage to a system previously
scouted by unmanned probes counts).
Surrounding the star with a circle indicates
participation in the first manned voyage
to an unvisited system that contained a
life-bearing world. Very rarely the space
between the star and circle will be filled
in, meaning that the life-bearing world was
settled by colonists (again, spacers argue
over the details – do outposts such as
research stations count, or should it only
apply to permanent colonies?).
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
31
5. The Dutchman: A neck tattoo of a square
rigged sailing ship with ragged sales and
a grim aspect. It is reserved for spacers
who have become separated from their
vessel or station and were successfully
rescued. Sometimes a number of skulls on
the sail or peering from the vessel’s rails
are added to indicate the number of days
the spacer was lost. Crewmates may apply
this tattoo as a punishment when they feel
that the lost spacer’s accident endangered
them though many are proud to have The
Dutchman on their necks as a symbol of
unusual Luck.
6. Bells on Chains: Descended from old
Russian prison tattoos, a bell on a chain
tattoo represents time served as a debt
prisoner in service to a creditor, usually a
corporation, bank or political organization.
Each link in the chain represents a year of
service. Each bell is tattooed in a manner
such that it encompasses the creditor’s
brand/tattoo that all debt prisoners
are adorned with. A crack in the bell
represents a prisoner who managed to
escape their service. This is seen as an
honor among Teamsters and a target for
bounty hunters.
7. Our Lady of the Wanderers: A young
woman in an EVA suit wearing a crown
of stars and standing on a crescent
moon often holding a suited infant and
accompanied by the text MATER DEI
ASTRONAUTAM EST. Signifies that the
bearer has survived a catastrophic incident
by a margin so slim that it might as well be
divine providence.
8. Our Father of the Long Haulers: A short
young man in a EVA suit holding a star.
Signifies that the person was born in space
and has endured the stigma and trauma of
a spacer.
9. Picture of a spacer in a flight suit with a
helmet holding a wooden plank on their
shoulder with a silhouette of a vessel
behind them. Signifies that spacer is a
“Plank Owner” for that vessel. Usually
has a vessel name and launch date
underneath. Only given to original crew
members who took part on the maiden
voyage of a vessel.
10. Appearing only in ultraviolet light, the
voodoo mask tattoos of the Ich-Bai Piracy
Syndicate are highly artistic and often the
last thing one sees as they board your ship,
dump your atmo and slag your engines
with thermite charges. You awake in
The Ultra-Violet Grasslands.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
32
D10 TRAGIC DISASTERS
WITH LINGERING
INFLUENCE
1. The Wreck of The Salinger: Luxury pleasure
yachts come in two models: boringly
luxurious or mindbogglingly fast. Some
rich Company exec gave their heir one
of the first category and said heir hired
no less than twelve different underworld
mechanics to Jury-rig it into one of the
second. Too many cooks spoiled the soup
and in its first race against other members
of the thrillseeking elite an accidental
button press fired its thrice-upgraded
Jump drive which not only scattered it
but also every other ship in the dock into
a neighboring star system. Needless to
say there were no survivors and the new
graveyard fleet was in too close an orbit
to its new primary for easy recovery.
The stardock they abruptly left, once a
prosperous locale with a reputation for
Company-friendly seediness, lost its rep,
clientele and a good chunk of its docking
bays from the incident, has fallen on hard
times. There’s rumor of a Jumpspace
curse across the whole station, which
nonetheless hasn’t stopped gamblers
moving in to test the odds against the
one surviving business on the station:
casinos. As for The Salinger and its motley
fleet? No one’s been able to salvage it
on account of the blistering heat and the
frankly ludicrous amount of automated
security paranoid heirs fit their ships with.
You are, of course, welcome to try…
2. The Red Screams: Colonization efforts,
especially under-funded charitable or
religious efforts, are a natural laboratory
for disease. Plague, typhoid, Hercules virus,
ebola and all the regular ills of humanity
have doomed millions. The Red Screams
were something special, though the
charitable efforts of the Merchantman’s
Fund, Tyson and Khan of Mumbai and the
Stellar War Relief Fund packed no fewer
then 40,000, likely almost 55,000, refugees
from the spires and habs of New Mars
fleeing civil war into a motley collection of
rented, loaned and owned ships as densely
as possible as hab after hab lost life
support to bombings, terror hacks and debt
seizure. None of the ships reached their
destinations. The plague was already loose
in the spaceport camps. The Red Screams
mutate rapidly, its lethal symptoms vary,
but is known by the lung bursting coughs,
apocalyptic visons and lung incubation.
55,000 died in the cramped holds of
those vessels and the disease lingers
there. Its existence known only from the
lost ship’s mad raving transmissions of
howling coughs interspersed with religous
maunderings. Several outbreaks among
scavengers who have discovered innocent
looking derilects have also spread the
plague and at some stations any cough or
evidence of apocalyptic preaching is taken
as an excuse to refuse docking or even to
open fire.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
33
3. The Lost Legion: Frome’s Ebon Curiassiers
were a reasonably respectable mercenary
force of armored drop infantry, specialized
in station seizure and boarding operations.
Not outright reavers, like many Free
Navies, the Ebon Curiassiers disappeared,
along with their armed transport “The
Phoolan Devi”, while escorting a DracoCorp
science mission to recover a long drifting
extraterrestrial derilect. That was 45 years
ago. No one cared about the Curiassiers’
fate until The Devi reappeared, a near
wreck, drifting and seemingly lifeless.
Sighted several times, in oddly distant
places, a group of scrappers attempted to
salvage the vessel only to have it suddenly
come to life and crash Jump just before
docking. Since The Devi has been reported
in multiple systems, often before disasters
and vessel disappearences, it is known as
a harbinger of grim fate. In the most recent
appearence a deadly engine blow out on
the shark-class gunboat “Meritcorp Cares,”
three armored figures were reported
climbing on the engine pod before the
failure began. This would be dismissed as
the hallucinations of people dying from
radiation burns except for a recording,
largely scrambled, that clearly show 0.3
seconds of suitjets flaring from an object
tumbling away from the failing engine.
4. The Corpse Ring: The planet designated
WREGDUIA 15-7 10-G D would be a wholly
unremarkable earth-like world if not for
the ring. Ringed worlds aren’t that unusual
but this one is: it is ringed with corpses.
Millions of them. Frozen, orbiting the
planet at a distance of some 512 km, some
dressed in reflective thermal clothing,
most naked. How they got there no one
knows. Where they come from, well, that’s
no mystery. Most of the clothed ones have
ID badges and they show that the poor
souls were from The Hand That Sows The
Seeds, a vast colony ship which departed
some years ago and was never heard from
again. A few curious parties have captured
some corpses. All appear to have died
due to exposure to the vacuum of space.
The spacers that examined the bodies
found the “serene” looks on their faces
disconcerting. Some spacers wonder if one
of those millions of corpses might have a
clue as to what happened to The Hand That
Sows The Seeds and if there might be an
empty colony ship out there, ripe for the
taking. If only you could avoid the fate of
those poor colonists.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
34
5. WESTERFIELD STATION: A distant port
autonomous space station and refueling
rig meant originally to help refuel
colonization efforts in the Spisiss Sector.
When colonization efforts shut down
Westerfield Station slowly became a
ghost rig. With decreased oversight from
corporate the station became a slum
with rampant abuse and illegal trade
being facilitated there. Pastor Jesse
Arthur Davidson and his church of The
Right Redeemer eventually settled there.
Seventeen years later the station was
found almost completely abandoned.
Retrofitted with a malfunctioning Jump
drive the station drifts through the galaxy.
Tales of bodies stuffed between the
bulkheads and stifled cries coming from
the vents are rampant and the squatters
who make a home there are known for
their fecal graffiti and perverse ramblings.
Suicide, murder and uncountable foul
misdeeds are committed there every
year. By all accounts Westerfield Station
is haunted by a Veiled Widow cloaked in
the ceremonial vestments of The Right
Redeemer and ships drifting by or daring to
dock can hear the crackling echoes of the
choir on the ship’s radio.
6. Kymata Catastrophe: the last of the
second generation NuvoTerra Seed-6
colony ships. 150000 bleary-eyed people
looking for a better life packed in cryo
along with a 5 year supply of food, potable
water, clothing and medical supplies,
along with a pair of prefabricated
state‑of‑the‑art generators and a 100 year
supply of enriched fuel. The 4th planet of
the ‘Argylos System’ (AX782-1810 4-GC) had
been scouted as an ideal colony location.
The Kymata planned to exit hyperspace
500,000 km out from Argylos IV. The Jump
calculation was very accurate but as if by
fate The Kymata appeared only 1000 km
from a large asteroid, hurdling along at 61
km/s, on an impact trajectory. The massive
colony ship couldn’t alter course in mere
moments and The Kymata was eviscerated
by the impact. The wreckage of The
Kymata was scattered across the system;
there were no survivors. Aftermath:
The Argylos System is Red-Listed as a
no-travel system. Some complication
from destruction of The Kymata while
the hyperspace window was still open
resulted in a Hojima-Petrov Class-2
Gravatic Anomaly which wreaks havoc on
sensors and navigation systems. Argylos
IV, the original target colony, is now a grey
wind-torn hellscape where only simple life
clings to existence. Arguments, myths and
rumors still abound to this day as to how
the scouting missions could have possibly
missed the asteroid. Regardless, the loss
of The Kymata and her target colony world
precipitate creation of SHEP (Standard
Hyperspace Exit Protocol): Unless a
target system contains a registered NAV
buoy – and a recently dated Jump Code
White confirmation has been received–
shipboard AI are hard-wired to only
allow exiting hyperspace outside of the
planetary system, requiring ships to fly in
via thrusters.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
35
7. The Virtrina Collapse: The planet
Virtrina-9 was the thriving home of some
18 billion people and was known for its
cutting‑edge research in the field of
stellar manipulation. The technology they
created powered everything on the planet
with energy from nearby star clusters. One
of the leading researchers, Dr. Thomas
McGruder, believed he could use a new
technique to actually make stars. This
would be the beginning of endless supplies
of energy for all human kind, aiding in
humanity’s never-ending quest to expand
its reach among the universe. All of this
came crashing down when Dr. McGruder
put his theories into practice, with the first
and only experiment creating a supernova
that obliterated Virtrina-9 and most of the
surrounding solar system. The only thing
left is a lonely sun orbited by dust and
debris.
8. The Mind of the Many: AI specialists and
cybernetic neurologists described it as a
Class V Convergence Event and the reason
that direct brain to machine interfaces and
network integration is highly restricted
on most civilized systems. The colony
world of New D was by most standards an
extremely successful venture, a bustling
corporate planet with a cultural fetish
for cybernetics. It was unremarkable in
everything but that and its stability. Now it
is a dead world under intense study from
multiple governmental and corporate
organizations and also under quarantine.
Despite several decades of research it
is unknown (publicly) how every single
living person on that world came to be
subsumed into the global conscience that
is The Mind of the Many. The Mind itself is
simply not interested in communicating
with lesser minds, if it is even capable
of lowering itself to to the level of even
our most advanced intelligences – even
communications filtered through multiple
stages of unshackled AI networks are
simply (we are told) unintelligible. Visiting
the planet is essentially fatal by our
standards – The Mind has, in various ways,
taken every visitor and neatly slotted them
alongside the brain-dead colonists, in cold
storage with wires plugged straight into
the base of their skull. Study must be done
from a distance, which The Mind tolerates.
The little information given out by official
organizations has been supplemented
by various leaks, rumours and crackpot
theories – most of them centered around
a brief snapshot of the most successful
attempt to communicate with the Mind.
Ever since that leak, there has been a
steady flow of desperates in ramshackle
ships deliberately landing on New Dahl,
willingly being consumed. Because while
we cannot understand a word The Mind
sounds uncannily like it is praying.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
9. PRIZRAK NEBULA: A milky white nebula
which runs across the infamous Lakemann
Trade Route. Ships that pass through find
their comms intermittently contacted
by a Sino-Russo distress signal which
leads ships to distant and abandoned
asteroid fields. No source for the signal
can be found though this often takes days
or weeks to figure out. Crew members
regularly report an extra crew member
on board, or a stowaway though they
are rarely found. Often a derelict ship is
encountered just outside the nebula which
seems abandoned when boarded but
eventually disappears. Stories of murders
and other violent outbursts abound by
those who have interacted with ships
passing through the nebula (to return
to port with half or fewer of their
original crew). The Lakemann
Route, though often much
quicker, is avoided by veteran
Teamsters, for the four
times as long, but generally
safer, Queen Anne’s
Remorse Tunnel.
10. The World Where No One Sleeps: A leaky
Jump drive in orbit fucked a hemisphere.
No one caught in the AOE can sleep.
No drugs will function, no amount of
melatonin does anything. It is a world of
living death, quarantined just in case it is
contagious.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
37
6. I’m not the crazy one, they are!
7. To figure out which one is the real one and
which is the clone/spy/RoboFriend!
8. Because you can’t control the hunger
anymore. They’re safer hidden from you!
9. The first letter of every sentence in their
latest geological report reads:
I AM NOT IN CONTROL!
10. It’s not your friend, it’s a clone/
doppelganger/evil version from another
reality. D10 Spacer Superstitions and
Rituals!
D10 REASONS TO
QUARANTINE A DEAR
FRIEND!
1. Space scurvy!
2. Recent biting habit really getting out of
hand!
3. Black veins slowly creeping up their
extremities after the last shore leave!
4. After a night of carousing at the pleasure
planet Young came back with a grotesque
growth on their upper lip that started
growing, and growing…!
5. Keeps saying “moist”!
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
38
D10 SPACER
SUPERSTITIONS AND
RITUALS
1. Most spacers are superstitious about EVAs.
It’s common to see a laminated picture
stuck next to the suit lockers that they
ritually touch, punch or kiss as they get
ready to spacewalk. This is referred to as
“The Effigy of St. Elmo” or “Elmo” by most
crews. The icon is not usually religious in
nature and who is actually depicted in that
image will tell you a lot about the culture
of the boat. Examples include portraits of
Laika, William Daniels, Elmo the Muppet
and Steve Miller.
2. It’s a common superstition amongst older
spacers that wearing patches on the
right side of your suit is bad Luck. Nobody
knows the origin of this myth but some
claim that the low quality vacsuits of the
early interstellar age meant that poorly
attached patches could rip off part of the
vacsuit if they got snagged on something,
and this was more common for patches
on the right-hand side. Such flaws in vacc
suit design have been fixed longer than the
old spacers have been alive, so it’s unclear
why the superstition persists.
3. In space no one can hear you shoot.
Some crews find this discomforting
after being weaned on years of fictional
entertainment where things go BOOM. As
such, some fighting ships have installed
audio FX subroutines in their offensive/
defensive AIs. This means they hear,
through the ships speakers, satisfying
WHOOMSH sounds whenever the fire their
cannons, or DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA if they
are using ship-to-ship Slug throwers. The
sound effects have no practical tactical
value but several crews won’t leave port
without them.
4. Cats are almost universally prohibited
on spaceships and space habitats by
corporate regulations and yet are almost
universally present. Not as personal
pets (though that does happen, too) but
as “working” animals - this despite the
fact that rodent problems are relatively
rare in space habitats. The corporations
turn a blind eye to this in a way they don’t
towards personal pets as many spacers
refuse to board a ship or station that
doesn’t have its own Cat.
5. Some boats have a preferred soundtrack
they play when entering planetary
atmosphere for a planned landing. It is
typically raucous often with a lot of guitar
but this is highly variable.
6. “I knew this old spacer once, back when
I first started out ridin’ ships for repairs.
Did that ‘shave-and-a-haircut’ drumming
on every engine he was fixing. Fuel pump
broke? He’d patch it, do the tappin’, damn
if the pump didn’t work better than new.
Drive system malfunction? He’d tinker
with it, get it running, do the tappin’, the
drive never EVER hiccupped again. Suit
got a leak you can’t find? He’d find & fix it,
do the tappin’, and the suit squeezed out
another 10% efficiency. Weirdest thing I’d
seen back then. I tried it once, after I left
that ship & moved on to the next. Electrical
system shorted out, fixed it best I could,
Damn circuits nearly took my arm off
when they blew. Learned then every ship
has it’s own little good-luck ritual.”
7. Zero-G workers from the Vaerun system
were originally fed diets high in cow milk
concentrate. Since the extinction of the
milk cow and advancements in bone
densifying processes they no longer need
dairy but the custom to gift new members
of a crew with a synthetic version of cow’s
milk has persisted. Consider it a bad omen
and a culture shunning to not receive a
glass bottle of milk upon arrival to your
quarters in any Vaerunian ship/station.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
39
8. When a body is lost to deep space,
whether through accident, funeral or
execution, their vacsuit (or a spare) is
tied to the exterior of the ship, their name
painted across the faceplate and a prized
posession placed inside. While the suit
remains attached, no one may speak ill of
the departed for fear of a revenant. When
it is discovered the suit has detached,
their second funeral is held and they
are considered to be truly dead. Older
spacers like to tell stories of the vacsuits
tearing their way into the ship and through
the crew to avenge slights - but that’s
obviously impossible.
9. Never return directly to your bunk or
freezer straight after interaction with an
Android as some spacers believe they’ll
carry some synthetic juju back to their
berth which will adversely affect any
technology that they own. Many will go via
the galley or to another crew member’s
bunk first. Some believe that bad Luck can
be mitigated by demanding the Android
in question refrain from making direct
eye contact while the spacer slaps them
sharply on the forehead three times in
quick succession.
10. Nobody knows how hyperdrives work, not
really, but the Marines have a theory: you
see, while most spacers sleep through
their Jumps Marines in active combat
often have to stay on watch. Some of the
dropships don’t even have cryopods. Being
awake in Jumpspace is awful: you see and
hear things that break the mind and hurt
the soul. So ask a Marine and they’ll say
hyperdrives work by tunneling through
HELL. Thats why most Marines sing hymns
while in Jumpspace.
D10 CRYPTIC GRAFFITI
ON THE BULKHEAD
1. FEAR NOT THE HUNGERING DEAD FOR
SUCH IS JUST SELF PITY IN WAITING.
2. FOR A GOOD TIME CALL 8675309.
3. DON’T TRUST THEM.
4. ITS IN THE WATER.
5. NICHOLS ISN’T NICHOLS.
6. GROW. CONSUME. INHABIT. DESTROY.
7. YOU NEED TO BURN THEM OFF.
8. CALIBAN IS COMING.
9. THE GATE IS OPEN.
10. YOU ARE NOT HERE.
Anthony Qualkinbush
CLASSES
1. Suit: +5 Intellect, +5 Speed Body 30 /
Sanity 40 / Fear 20 / Armor 30 Appeal to
Contract: can reroll any other ally’s Panic
result once per session. Skills: Linguistics.
Pick two: Art, Theology, Rimwise. +2 points.
2. Witness: The practical evolution of the
field reporter. Training instills hardened
resolve through mental conditioning.
A witness never looks away. Especially
useful as a frontline scout, willing to delve
where even light fears to shine.
+10 Speed Body 25 / Sanity 40 / Fear 40 /
Armor 25 Panic Checks are made at [+].
XP Incentive: Bare witness to the arcane.
Stoke the flames of knowledge amidst the
dark void. Skills: Athletics, Rimwise. Pick
one: Linguistics, Computers. +2 points.
3. Field Biologist: +5 Intellect Body 30
/ Sanity 40 / Fear 35 / Armor 30 Been
There, Seen That: Can negate a Panic
Check for the entire party once per day,
provided they can offer a plausible (even
if incorrect) explanation that reassures
everyone to remain calm. Skills: Biology,
Hydroponics, +4pts.
4. Void Monk: +10 Strength Body 20 / Sanity
40 / Fear 30 / Armor 30 Touch an enemy,
forcing them to make a Body Save or lose
a sense of your choice for 1d10 seconds.
Skills: +3 points.
5. Zoologist: +5 Strength, +5 Intellect Body
25 / Sanity 30 / Fear 45 / Armor 25 Gain [+]
on Saves vs. xeno-lifeforms. All characters
in the presence of a Zoologist must make
a Panic Check if the Zoologist is struck by
an attack from an alien lifeform. Skills:
Biology, First Aid, +3 points.
6. Bounty Hunter: +5 Strength, +5 Combat
Body 30 / Sanity 20 / Fear 30 /
Armor 40 +2 Resolve upon successfully
capturing/subduing target alive. Skills:
First Aid, Close Quarters Combat,
Weapon Specialization: Unarmed, Joint
Manipulation/Submission.
7. Void Urchin: -10 to all stats Body 20 /
Sanity 20 / Fear 20 / Armor 20 Rolls with
[+} on Stress, Stress Checks, and Panic
Checks Skills: Scavenging.
8. Convict: +10 Speed Body 30 / Sanity 20 /
Fear 50 / Armor 20 Any failed Fear Save
by the Convict is considered a Critical
Failure. Skills: Rimwise, Scavenging or
Athletics, +2 pts.
9. Hybrid: +15 Strength +15 Speed Body
30 / Sanity 10 / Fear 20 / Armor 25
Automatically fail Panic Checks. Skills:
CQC, Athletics.
10. Weaver: +15 Intellect Body 10 / Sanity 50
/ Fear 50 / Armor 10 Skills: Astrogation,
Hyperspace. Panic will override the AI
interface and launch the ship to random
coordinates within range, when applicable.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
4
D10 HYPERCORP BLACK
PROJECTS
1. Project Myrmidon: Removing
self‑awareness from humans while
ingraining automatic behaviors that
can support and maintain a corporate
hierarchy. It’s capitalist Blindsight!
2. Biologically Assisted Corporate
Replacement: A series of targeted
neurodegenerative diseases intended
to affect only those who are under the
effects of the common life extension
drugs. An infected planet should be
cleared of corporate elites within days and
a specially prepared executive strike team
will slot in to replace the lost and bring the
planet under company control.
3. Project Mayflower: Engineering brushfire
wars on frontier worlds in order to
force rapid development of advanced
military‑industrial bases, secure consumer
bases for heavy weapons and as testing
grounds for experimental weapons
projects.
4. The Gauntlet: A modern day space
colosseum built inside an asteroid at the
edge of some god forsaken system. Pirates
provide captured slaves, exotic creatures
and hacked Androids to the owners of
this questionable facility. Some of the
demoralized super-rich corp owners join
in on the fun, betting on the available
gladiators and watching the fun from the
V.I.P. balconies. The rest of the onlookers
consist of space scum. A perfect place for
some black project networking.
5. The Meeting Room: An entire world
terraformed to have a wipe-clean surface.
Orbital dry erase markers. A fleet of
executives in orbit, forming planning
committees, their flow charts the size of
continents. BECAUSE THEY CAN.
6. SleepBuddiez™: Modifying a parasitic
species that feeds on lactic acid and other
biochemical sleep markers, allowing one
to forego sleep for days at a time (before
psychological needs outpace physiological
ones). Works a treat! However… there
may be some side effects… but not
so many that they can’t be rattled off
quickly by a voice over artist at the end of
advertisements for these ankle-clinging
xenos! Legal’s already signed off!
7. Operation MIRROR OBSOLETE: The
company sends trained operatives through
a dimensional barrier to report back on
alternate timelines, conduct technological
research (and occasionally trading) and
perform corporate espionage. Highly
volatile, still in early testing. Looking for
volunteers.
8. Project Wholesome: Encouragement of
militarism and aggression in two rival
colonies, both given very reasonable
discounts on weapons. Eventual goal is
to have them accustomed to generations
of warfare before selling them off as
mercenaries. The plan was drawn up
before the first colony ships left.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
5
9. Project BIG SKY: Asteroid [REDACTED]
was discovered to made of a tough and
sonically resonant rock which could be
used for a variety of audio commercial
products. Android-crewed extraction
operations were discontinued after
artificial synthesis of the material
dramatically changed the cost/
benefits of maintaining mining bases
in an asteriod field. The bases were
promptly retooled for resale
to colonists. A buried private
inquiry – commissioned after
an accidental fire during the
installation of biome life
support systems – found that
the combined mining tunnels,
natural caverns and auditory
nature of the rock have the
potential to amplify sound to
brain-chemical-altering heights.
Workers who did not collapse
into catatonic states during the
fire reported seeing angels and
other supernatural iconography and
sensations. A new religion has sprung up
among the survivors. The report concludes
that habitation of the [REDACTED]
should be abandoned. The colony
opens this week and there is a massive
corporate‑sponsored festival planned.
10. Project Camel Thread: Original intent of
the project was to set up a stable tunnel
through hyperspace to enable fast transit
within a solar system. Didn’t pan out as
things had a tendency to come out…odd.
The only working prototype of the tunnel is
set up between two Kuiper belt objects in
a backwater system; the company keeps
running things/animals/people through to
see if any profitable permutations appear.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
6
D10 HOLIDAYS
1. Samhain/Halloween: When the walls
between our dimension and others
become thin. Just the time for scientists
to test some dimension jumping test ship,
what could possibly go wrong…?
2. Founder’s Day: When you celebrate the
founding of The Company and all it has
done to better humanity (and especially
its shareholders) and are grateful to
be a cog in its machine. Also the day
bonus payments come out. Traditionally
celebrated by dumping the flashfrozen
branded Founder’s Day cake out an airlock
then getting sloshed on engine core
moonshine and lamenting how you’ll never
be able to retire on a freighter pilot’s pay.
3. “Bah, Bunkbug!”: Morale improvement
consultants started this hygienic holiday in
20X6 to curb fleetwide infestations. Twenty
days before yearly employee reviews,
crew incinerate old bedding and uniforms
or jettison them from an airlock. Many
include symbolic items as a pledge to end
a bad habit. A prime time to quit smoking
or mutiny. Brave crewmembers don
antennae headbands (and nothing else!)
to open an airlock for a few seconds and
taste refreshing vacuum.
4. Launch Day: On the anniversary of a ship’s
launch a celebration is held in order to
honor the vessel and the former crews
that manned it in the past. The celebration
lasts all day and consist of decorating the
rooms and corridors and sometimes even
the hull with trinkets found throughout the
year. When the ship changes crew some
of the trinkets are welded together into a
decorative totem which is left on the ship
in order to be exhibited during all other
Launch Days. The totems serve as a piece
of living history and oftentimes inspire
Launch Day tales of the vessel’s past.
5. HOLIDAY!!!!!!!: On the megacolony ship
The Crossroads holidays are a dirty
word - “holiday” being a Stalker-Crazies
term for when they find and crack open a
previously untouched medbay or chemlab.
For the next several days the sector will be
awash with blood as the shrieking Crazies
cut loose for the first time in a while and
indulge in their usually frustrated drug
habits. It ends when the drugs run out,
and The Crossroads was exceptionally
well‑stocked.
6. August the 5th: On August 5th (Terran
Standard Calendar) for 30 seconds all work
stops and all go silent. Those who can
take off their hats and helmets and most
place their hands over the hearts. Most
don’t know the origin of this holiday, just
the words and that it is for all of those that
pushed farther and further for longer than
they ever should have. For 30 seconds on
August the 5th the PAs across the cosmos
crackle to life and the spacers sing along…
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to
you, happy birthday dear Curiosity, happy
birthday to you.
7. Johnson and Johnson Day: Celebration
for the company that invented Duct tape,
without which space travel would have
never been possible (it really can fix
anything, just ask the crew who first flew
to Alpha Centauri).
8. The Hatching: The lizard people of the
now-human colony world Azunia celebrate
the hatching of the “Great One” every
1000 years who will purge the weak
from the tribe. Except some enterprising
archaeologists have acquired the
as‑yet‑unhatched specimen which is in
transit on the 999y 12m 31st day.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
7
9. Anarchists’ Jubilee: Debts are forgiven,
fees are waived, social barriers are
destroyed, up is down, the order is
overturned, CEOs are paraded through the
streets in effigy while the homeless party
on their diamond-hulled ships. Everything
save harm is fair game for a day and
everyone gets shitfaced. Currently being
stamped out by the corporations, but still
celebrated on backwater company worlds.
10. Stranger Day: Everyone has lost someone
to The Void. No one is ever home for
Christmas. Birthdays are regularly
missed. Stranger Day is a day kept running
largely by Teamster unions. On this day
anonymous gifts abound. Random favors
happen. Spaceport beggars are given to
freely. Legend states the holiday was
founded by a Teamster named Niklaus
Hanzu who, having not been home in 62
years, dumped his entire shipment of
purloined luxury onto a space station
slum of needy refugees. It’s common on
Stranger Day for people who travel for a
living to find someone somewhere whose
name they do not know and whose cause
they do not champion and to buy them
a drink, do them a solid, give them a lift
or find some way to help them. “No one
doesn’t drink on Stranger Day.”
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
8
D10 SHIPS DOCKED AT
THE EDGE OF CHARTED
SPACE
1. The Lancelot: Ugly. Deadly weapon systems. The
captain is a tedious and moral philanderer.
2. Jekyll: A beat-up medical ship. Also known
as The Hyde, a notorious pirate vessel, once
“reconfigured” via custom modifications.
3. The Castellan: A boxy blockade runner currently
afflicted by a memetic bibliovirus. The crew
have slowly constructed their own tonal
proto‑language out of the only phrase the
bibliovirus will allow them to say: “Rejoice and all
will be reclaimed.”
4. 1A0-2B3: Off-the-assembly-line-new. Doesn’t
even have a name registered in the standard
databases. Bleeding-edge tech.
5. The Sloth: Gargantuan automated mining ship.
Crew is only thawed for yearly maintenance
duties. They’re really out of touch.
6. Node-056-870: Information carrier probe
utilizing hyperspace for secure FTL
communication and data transfer. It responds to
hails as though it’s reading off a flowchart.
7. The Attic Widow: A trade ship run entirely by a
secretive order of silent nuns. Painted black. No
one is sure where they get their darksilk wares.
8. Grin at Death: A mortifying reminder of a long
concluded war, a mercenary company whose
archivist carries the memories of hundreds of
their fallen brothers and sisters stretching back
generations. A strange locus from which to
learn about the universe and a brutally effective,
unnervingly jovial fighting force. Their distinctive
battlecry is “Grin at Death, the Archive Will
Remember Me.” They’ll pay handsomely for
primary documents about their company.
9. Attending Moistened Heaven (Hexagram 5): an
eccentric metadivination, a ship paid for by an
opulently wealthy banker that neddlecasts its
location to a great divination board. Unaware
of the locations, attitudes or schematics of
other Hexagrams and wholly indifferent to
their agendas. For some reason crewed only by
childlike Androids with wide smiles. Their necks
are all tattooed with ALWAYS TRUE.
10. A space telescope, pointed out into the
uncharted black. Currently the site of an active
spacewalk protest by the Bliss Finders. They’re
blocking the camera using a big banner with
“MAN WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW” written on it.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
9
D10 CONTRABAND
ITEMS SMUGGLED PAST
THE BLOCKADE
1. Children’s organs.
2. Military-grade weapon systems. The kind
of guns that make reeal big holes in reeeal
big things. Problem is, word got out. Plenty
of space ‘billies got an itchin’ that can
only be scratched by firepower that turns
colony ships into Swiss cheese.
3. Crates of pirated video games that, despite
having been out of production for decades,
are still under very tight IP control.
4. Mantis queen full of narcotic nectar.
5. Ancient religious text from before atheism
was the default norm. Really just a shitty
motel King James Bible.
6. A crown prince.
7. The next Amygdala, a birthright in an
ancient religion. The government has
named their own and wants this child
“gone.”
8. Chocolate bars.
9. The skull of the xenomorph. Yeah, that one.
10. A single floppy disk. They won’t tell you
what’s inside it.
D10 ODD JOBS THAT PAY
IN WARP CORES
1. Escort the daughter of a freighting
magnate through union-held space.
2. Pick up and deliver goods from a courier
in an uncharted/off-the-beaten-FTL-trail
sector.
3. Collect samples of a nearby unstable
nebula for a gas mining cabal.
4. Sit in this room with a black box, a monitor
and a keyboard for a week. Do not look at
the monitor. Do not type on the keyboard.
5. Mine an asteroid.
6. Quell a mining colony uprising by any
means necessary with minimal damage to
company property.
7. A top chef is requesting samples of exotic
flora and fauna from a newly-colonized
world.
8. Carry a surgically implanted alien fetus
to term (anyone can do this because it is
implanted in the liver, the more toxins you
ingest, the healthier your surrogate child
will be).
9. Carry out what the crew thinks is a
simulated VR mission in an unstable,
experimental ship that the crew discovers,
at the most dire moment, wasn’t a
simulation at all.
10. A science lab requires test subjects.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
10
D10 GEOMETRYNEUTRAL
MUNDANE
SPACESHIP CHASE
EVENTS
1. Loose floorboard: Speed heck to dodge or
fall into the pit.
2. Panic: Succeed on a Fear Save or take
1D10/2 stress.
3. Cryofluid spillage: Succeed on a Strength
Check or slip.
4. It’s too much: Succeed on a Sanity Save or
roll for Panic.
5. Space Turbulence: Succeed on a Body
Save or lose your balance.
6. Steamy corridor: Succeed on an
Intelligence Check or lose your bearings.
(Remove the physical map if you have one.)
7. Light system malfunction: Succeed on an
Intelligence Check or end up on a nearby
but random section of the ship.
8. Out of breath: Succeed on a Body Dave
or receive [-] on all rolls for the next
1D10 minutes.
9. Strap/Clothing gets stuck in
scaffolding: Succeed on a Speed
Check or become stuck for now.
10. Hidden Camera: Onboard
computer reacts, will
seal doors behind you
and run the alarm.
D10 AWKWARD
SITUATIONS YOU FIND
YOURSELF IN WHEN
THE GRAVITY TURNS
OFF
1. Relieving yourself.
2. Feeding your ant colony.
3. In engineering, accompanied by one
unsecured buzzsaw.
4. Napping unsecured in the engine room.
5. Cooking.
6. Just having set up a traditional board game
with lots of tiny plastic miniatures.
7. Halfway into putting on that neoprene/
spandex bodysuit.
8. Moving a heavy crate via forklift faster
than safety regulations would allow.
9. Putting those new
augmented reality contact
lenses.
10. Stress reduction in
crewmate’s bunk.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
11
D10 MILD
INCONVENIENCES*
1. Sliding doors slide apart too slowly.
2. Water is freezing or scalding. We managed
space travel, yet this eludes us.
3. Pilot chair doesn’t quite lean back enough.
4. Out of premium flavor nutrimush, only
regular flavor nutrimush left.
5. Coffee maker pressurization system really
cranky and unreliable.
6. Air handler can’t filter out that… stench…
7. Last cargo shipment had an infestation of
diminutive facehuggers. They just kind of
pounce onto your nose and hang off it until
they’re plucked away.
8. New crew member won’t stop making
‘cockpit’ jokes.
9. Somebody turned on safe-mode on the
ship computer, so it asks “are you sure you
want to do X?” all the time.
10. Sleep regulatory system refuses to stop
condescendingly ask about if your getting
enough sleep until all persons are in bed.
*+1 Stress
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
12
D10 VENDOR NPCS
1. MORGAN THE MAGNIFICENT!: MORGAN has
MANY TREASURES to sell you! ALL 100%
FUNCTIONAL! Pay no mind to the Android
behind the curtain!
2. [REDACTED].
3. Auto-Vend 3000b: Can 3D print plastic, metal,
wood, stone and limited organic material,
“please insert plans and press Start to
continue.”
4. Daddy-0(00101): Sells add-ons, or “daddies”;
black-market personality or skill soft-ware
for Androids (Voids Warranty). Will not sell
wet‑ware to flesh-bags or organics.
5. Honest Earl’s Reliable Guns: He sells the very
best second-hand guns. Some guns have kill
scores which up their prices a bit. But hey, at
least you know the gun has killed something!
Why horse-trade for guns when you can get a
better deal from Honest Earl?
6. Button’s Tent: A dog-sized dung beetle
standing on two legs, wearing a polka-dot
apron as she tries to juggle her business and
68 hyperactive children raised on human
action movies. A refugee from an allied
uplifted species, she sells things from home
and crafts made from her own quickly
regenerating chitin. She loves edible gifts
and toys for her children. While she cannot
vocalize human speech she has a tape
with phrases that various customers have
recorded for her. There’s always a need for
more!
7. Frett the Poisoner: Sells poisoned dart guns
through a wide array of self-destructing
Android dealers. Look for ‘DONT FRETT’
spray painted on bulkheads at fuel-up space
stations.
8. The Devil’s Frequency: Provide coordinates
and an item request to the silent frequency.
Requested item will arrive after 2D10 minutes
in a black boarding torpedo as long as you are
within Sol. They will come to claim the debt.
9. Riggzies’ Repairs: When you have no other
options and money’s tight, visit Riggzies.
There’s nothing he can’t fix. Prices negotiable,
warranty length directly correlated to price
paid. The repair business is a front for highly
enriched warp cores. Will only sell them to
those he trusts. Trust can be bought with DNA
data from the crew.
10. Crazy Makoto’s Ammo Vendorium: A bunch
of repurposed vending machines that sell
bullets by the magazine. Can’t miss them,
they’re the ones with the anime girl art all over
it and the hyperactive AI with the stutter. The
identity of the actual Crazy Makoto remains
a mystery.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
13
D10 SPACE PETS
1. Crow: Remembers everything said in
earshot of it, ever, and can perform
conversations given a date and time.
Responds to commands like “Rewind” and
“Fast Forward.”
2. Dog: It can track things by scent given a
small sample. It’s vulnerable in serious
combat but if desperate it can hold its own
for a few rounds.
3. Extremophile Colony. Lives in
(and consumes) toxic heavy metal
environments, often comes in beautiful
terrariums of terror.
4. Cat: Great company, can sense
xenomorphs.
5. Uplifted Orangutan: Is no one’s pet but
filled out the paperwork to avoid getting
drafted by The Company.
6. Shadowy Leathery Flap: Flying alien
wilflife. Can be directed like hound dogs
given successful Intellect Check. Forces
its way onto victims face and into throat
where it will lay dormant until stirred once
more. Mainly adored by Androids, often in
secret.
7. Gelatinous Sludge-Puppy: A clever mix of
animate fluid technology, a small imitator
computer and a colony of specialized
bacteria serves as half pet, half sanitation
system. To avoid issues with fluid in zero-G
this gel-like creature is mostly formless,
runs over skin to clean it and can be
programmed to act like one of a variety of
pre-programmed pet types - this can be
modified by someone willing to put in the
effort.
8. Arachno-Macaw: A macaw spliced with
portia DNA. It can split cognitive processes
into stackable chunks nearly indefinitely.
It understands what you said but only after
minutes of processing.
9. Swarm of zero-G adapted cuttlefish:
Modified for technical and computer
assistance. Adorable little bastards.
10. Bioluminescent zero-G adapted jellyfish:
Turns out the harsh environment of
the deep sea isn’t so different from
deep space, and with a little effort and
biomechanical trickery its inhabitants can
be adapted for zero gee. Can even survive
no atmosphere for a bit but they’ll probably
be heavily damaged. With a synthetic
nervous system, they can be set to follow
people, sounds or dance ethereally.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
D10 SPACE DRUGS
1. RELex, Cross, Jesus Dust, Third Eye, Nasal
Religion: Triggers the neural pathways
associated with transcendental ecstasy.
Tends to be religious in nature. Not
addictive or particularly harmful as a
chemical but has been the centerpiece of
many a cult and corporate religion.
2. Holy Mother: Banned on a number
of worlds for its unfortunate sideeffects.
Addicts cause minor electrical
malfunctions in their locality which
only get worse the more of them that
are present. The problem is that the
drug renders them acutely sociable,
causing them to congregate together
in ever increasing numbers. Once they
accumulate the trouble starts: each addict
is in effect a node in a biological network
that is a hyperspatial portal to The Holy
Mother. Unfortunately, she is very hungry.
3. Skum: The brain of a Gaunt, dried in the
solar winds of the Galvean System and
sliced into 2x2cm pieces. Taken sublingual.
Tastes like licking a dumpster (hence the
name). Causes vivid hallucinations which
are sometimes terrifying in nature. 2 in 10
chance of having a bad trip (Panic Check).
4. Green Ichor: A hot mess of animal and
plant DNA that would make a truly
monstrous chimera if it were cultured.
Instead it is powdered and snorted,
providing heightened aggression and
focus, insensitivity to pain and the capacity
to continue acting after truly fatal damage.
Outside of being given to child soldiers
and penal Legions, it provides a strange
euphoria and severely altered vision—
kaleidoscopic fragments of ultraviolet
light and visual sensitivity to wavelengths
outside the human visual spectrum.
5. Freeze: Mostly sedative in nature highly
addictive popular on very hot planets.
Makes the user feel as though they are
chilly or even cold. Many of the users are
found dead in deserts do to exposure, they
do not feel the effects of the heat until it’s
too late.
6. See No Evil: The waste product of genome
mapping Bathypelagic Zone fish by
biopunks, SNE temporarily blinds the user
and enhances hearing for d10 minutes.
Users risk permanent blindness: roll
1d10. On a 1 user becomes permanently
blind. Increase by 1 for each subsequent
use during that session. (Second use 1-2
results in permanent blindness, third
use 1-3, etc). Optional: roll 1d4 and SNE
enhances the following: 1. smell 2. touch
3. hearing 4. taste.
7. H-Bomb: A large capsule taken orally
or as a suppository that emits targeted
radiation pulses aimed broadly at major
nerve clusters, inciting large amounts of
pleasurable feedback. Causes wild spasms
for d10 minutes before it burns itself out.
May cause hallucinations. Will definitely
cause cancer.
8. Warp Juice: Often used recreationally
for its effects as a potent euphoriant
and stimulant as well as aphrodisiac
post‑cryogenic sleep by seasoned
Teamsters. “Warp Juice, for those
occasions when strong coffee just doesn’t
cut it!”
9. Night-Night Juice: Spacer ‘artisanal’
version of the drugs used to maintain
cyrosleep (proprietary blends of synthetic
opioids, cough syrup, sedative-hypnotics
and essential oils). Popular on mining
colonies or other places with poor
night‑day cycles. Some users claim to be
able to enter the dreams of other nearby
sleepers, including those in cyrosleep,
which is odd as cyrosleepers don’t dream.
10. Strata: Originally developed as a
psychiatric aid to help with PTSD by
making new neural pathways around
memories, though users often relive said
memories while taking it. Mechanical
effect: remove 1d10/2 Stress but make a
Fear Save or Panic!
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
15
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
16
D10 RARE CUSTOMIZED
FIREARMS
1. Caleb’s Spitting Cobra: Standard pulse rifle
with blowtorch nozzle welded underneath.
Has enough fuel for four gouts of flame.
A Critical Failure results in the tanks
exploding right into your chest.
2. Antique Slugthrower Pistol: Similar to its
modern relatives but it accelerates its
projectile ammunition using combustion.
If used in a zero-G environment the
resulting recoil causes the user to rotate
away from the direction of the projectile
unless braced. Ammunition is incredibly
rare but even non-lethal injuries can easily
end in death if the right medical tools are
not available.
3. Laser pistol: Always hits. 10d10damage.
Slags itself after one shot (user take
1d10damage and Body Save or lose use of
appendage for 1d10 rounds.
4. Huge Gold AK-47: actually a Chinese Type
51 and it’s gold plated because a gun made
of gold wouldn’t work. It looks showy and
the grips are textured cubic zirconium.
5. Seize the Means of Production: Made
famous by the Labor Uprising on Echo
November-Prime, this is a jury-rigged
elephant gun. Two nailgun barrels sit
beneath a modified laser cutter that
throws a massive slicing arc. Used by
suicidal and desperate shock troops
amidst the miners to create hull breaches
and leave their enemies suffocating in
space. Stenciled on both nail box feeds is:
CIAO BELLA and
NO, THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.
6. Lucky Punk: a massive 6 shooter utilizing
a gravity fed cylinder (the barrel is at the
bottom rather than top of the cylinder
and the hammer is internal to prevent
jams). Used by private detectives with
rich imaginations, it comes with a carbine
conversion kit that provides a stock and
longer barrel for better aim and range.
Carved in the stock: A DAME TO KILL FOR.
7. Insult2Injury: A shotgun with an integrated
artificial intelligence that shoots as many
swears as it does pellets. Rips you up
verbally and physically.
8. “Ninight”: a heavily modified tranquilizer
pistol that injects its sedative into the
trigger finger of the wielder. Sometimes
used by bounty hunters who find
themselves on the wrong side of their
own weapons. The handle is inlaid with
mother‑of-pearl: COME QUIETLY.
9. BOTSHOT: A modified assault shotgun that
fires nanopellets meant for putting down
Android resistors. Each pellet is a veritable
petri dish of nanoviruses, Androids must
make a Body Save at [-] when shot or
else fall unconscious and begin suffering
major corrosion (death in 1d10 hours).
Highly regulated by whatever remaining
government authority there is. Expensive
and sought after in the rim colonies.
10. A giant-barreled long gun, blued steel with
the inscription What happens when you
make a man-sized hole in a man?
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
17
D10 WE REALLY NEED
TO IMPROVISE SOME
WEAPONS!
1. Supercharged laser cutter: Battery packs
jury-rigged on. Reduces charge time to
near-nothing but permanently burns up a
battery on each use.
2. What makes a man-sized hole in a
man? Nothing like a 20mm cannon with
hollow‑point loads.
3. Magnetic couplers duct taped together
with an electron driver out of the
deflector on the spare shuttle to make a
reactionless cultery rail gun.
4. Rigging gun with mining charges strapped
to the ‘poons.
5. Overloading the Jump drive and feeding
the load back into the drive causing it to
go critical and tear a hole in space as it
explodes.
6. Oxygen canisters launched by jury-rigged
micro-thrusters.
7. Pressurized cryo-fluid canister attached
to a hose and valve. The hose flails around
wildly unless held down.
8. Next time we’re near as we dare to a black
hole, hook up the alien artifact we found
(powered by higher dimensions) to our
tachyon oscillator and use the resulting
Hawking radiation as a makeshift wave
motion gun.
9. An alien crystal shard that absolves blood,
an electric toothbrush and a hand vacuum
cleaner, all taped together. I call it the V.S.T.
(Vampire Sucker Tooth).
10. Microfission batteries ripped from the
engineering department, powering deep
space search lights cannibalized from the
front of the ship (think backpack powered,
hip fired light gun that is so bright it blinds
and gives UV burns).
D10 TRINKETS TO
REMEMBER LOVED
ONES LIGHT YEARS
AWAY
1. Hologram of Princess Leia looping “you’re
my only hope” with your wife’s head
awkwardly pasted on.
2. A rose. Would be more touching if it hadn’t
rotted to dust a while ago. Or maybe it’s
more touching; a glass vial containing the
only evidence of love.
3. A bottle of 2237 Cabernet Shiraz by Malbec.
It’s in a cherrywood box. You promised
each other to drink it the next time.
4. A lock of hair carefully tied in ribbon.
5. Nothing: they are dead to you now.
6. Small recording device with a couple of
snippets of them singing.
7. An unopened letter.
8. A locket for your lover.
9. Tissue sample in a cryo-container in my
sleep pod. One day I’ll have enough money
to spin up a clone...
10. The access code to deactivate their
cryochamber etched into ring. No one else
knows it.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
D10 ADDITIONAL
PLACES ON THE DEAD
PLANET’S MOON
1. Sculpture trash heap: A serene gallery of
Leer’s rejected creations. The sculptures
seem to imperceptibly shift and change
when not directly observed.
2. Exhumed mass grave: Traditional burial
rites were honored up until the 5th day of
Hunger.
3. Native moon landing: A standing obsidian
spear impaling a skull with both piscean
and avian traits. Littered with alien
footprints and rocks with broken-off
samples. No sign of their lunar lander.
4. Funland: Abandoned amusement park
under glass dome with large cracks. Here
and there colourful lights blink on and off.
There may be power. The dome may still
be airtight.
5. Tent City: Exiled colonists who survived the
moon waste hide out in scavenged habs.
Plotting to take revenge on the colony that
scorned them in d10 days. Welcoming to
any recent crashlanders willing to help
their cause. All were exiled by Malta.
6. The Ant Hill: A series of tunnels
under a plasticrete mound. Perfectly
smooth rectangular halls of carved
earth that meet at a central point
200m underground. At a constant
temperature of 106F and 100%
humidity. You swear you
hear a family member’s
voice…
7. Moon Harpoon Cable:
It runs along the
dunes, a carbon fiber
cable of impossible
proportions. The
ground trembles
as it is reeled in, it
writhes and uncoils
as a serpent would,
threatening to destroy all
with its spasms.
8. The Hot Zone: A huge warren of discarded
radioactive fuel cores and toxic waste.
Rumours are something lives here as
scavengers often never return…but that’s
just because it’s so toxic, right…right?
9. Far Side: Escape pod from one of the
orbiting ships that tried to land on the
moon. Still sealed. No visible bodies.
10. Lost Man’s Trench: About 22,000m
deep. The bottom is totally unexplored.
People from Tyrant Beggar have told of
terrible sounds coming from the fissure.
Walking through the trench, one can see
fossils of creature’s past, civilizations,
and geological anomalies. If a sound is
heard PCs need to make a Sanity Save or
gain 1d10 Stress and suffer 1d10 Intellect
damage. Depending on what they see in
the canyon walls the PCs may need to
make a Sanity Save.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
19
D10 ADDITIONAL
LOCATIONS ON THE
SURFACE OF THE DEAD
PLANET
1. Small island of small caves and tunnels
crawling with small, six-legged gliding
mammals. Mostly harmless unless they
smell fresh blood. Then they’re like furry,
gliding piranha.
2. An immense, rotting carcass floats on the
ocean currents, leaving bloody rivers in
its wake. A mating mass of death worms
cavort inside the decomposing creature’s
heart. They will attack and try to embed
into any living thing disturbing their orgy.
3. Outpost Beta Charlie Zulu 0929483: A
research and observation outpost intended
to be a relay link. The interior is choked
with corpses who crudely wired broadcast
equipment into themselves.
ALL HAIL THE NEW FLESH overwhelms all
communication systems within 1 km.
4. Buried deep in a rocky sandbar stands a
rusty shuttle encrusted with purple salts.
Small tentacled creatures jauntily bounce
around the surface of the wreck, wearing
bleached human skulls and finger bones
atop their strange spineless bodies.
5. A ring of land sticking out above the
surface of the sea with it’s own brackish
lake. The water is completely black and
looks as though you are staring into
an abyss. If the water is significantly
distributed two Alpha Gaunts investigate
the disturbance, rising up from the abyss.
This is actually a sunken super volcano,
still active, and a hive mother of the
Gaunts has made it her home and she has
2d10 Alpha Gaunts as protection.
6. The Colony: A building-sized Gaunt stands
here, digging up dirt. Its legs are animated
by muscle fiber of merged bodies, it
tramples on soles of human corpses. A
deaf choir screams through its teeth of
skulls. It grazes the lands for any and all
organic material, an attempt to still its
hunger and replenish its “cells”. The first
generation of progeny has been born and is
ready to leave the safety of its bowels.
It leaves 2D10 Gaunt Walkers in its wake.
7. [REDACTED].
8. Underneath the oceans lie many ancient
ruins of cities and civilization. Nothing
suggests they were an aquatic species
and scans of the planet show there was
once much less water and more dry land
available. The exposed islands are literally
just the tips of the tallest mountains. There
might be some useful relics that could be
reached in shallower waters.
9. The Valley of Ghosts: A huge valley cuts
across a barren plain. Those traversing
the depths of the valley say winds echo
from the walls like whispers, penetrating
comms systems, noise filters and their
very minds. Even though it’s just the wind,
some swear they hear snatches of voices
from people long dead, telling them things
only they know, whispering dread secrets
and warnings of things to come.
10. On an island about 1k wide lay the
remnants of a small shack village. In a
cave on the peak of the island there’s a
cave containing a book made of human
leather. The book contains every nightmare
had by a small crew of humans who crash
landed here 140 years ago. The reader gains
2d10 Stress, must make a Panic Check and
gain 5% Intellect as they now understand
a little bit more of the pitiful and horrible
truths of humanity.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
20
D10 WHAT IS THIS
MYSTERIOUS OOZE?
1. Ketchup. Pray that it is ketchup. (Roll
again, perhaps, for the true effect.)
2. Fluid from a leaking warp core. Highly
potent as a drug and poison and dangerous
for anyone attempting to use the drive.
3. Blood? Piss? Jizz? Puke?
4. Hyper-stallions broke their pens and got to
the mares – gonna be a very expensive set
of lawsuits for foal ownership flying over
your heads.
5. Blood. The blood of the ship. Yes, the ship
is now alive, its organic innards decorated
with metal to comfort the sentient
maintenance cells inside.
6. Boneless Sphinx V luxury cats – they’ve
escaped their cages.
7. Patented Ink. Warning: caustic to the
touch.
8. Experimental gene-engineered frog
excretions.
9. I don’t know, but it appears to be sentient,
captain.
10. Whatever it was, it’s a solid now, on top of
this exam table. Decon crew also said they
saw something gaseous emitted during
the transformation, captain.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
21
D10 WHAT’S WRONG
WITH THE ANDROID?
1. Paranoid it is not an Android but a
confused person, look for clues to affirm
their existence.
2. Actually is a person that is convinced it
is an Android, refuses to do biological…
things…
3. Termites.
4. Ancient AI is hiding in its memory banks
but the systems are incompatible.
5. “… and THAT is what happens when you
just pull the flash drive out! Like an
animal!” says Tina the radar controller.
6. Constantly changing philosophies, spends
a lot of time reading intranet forums.
Changes worldview every d10 weeks, odds
useful and boosts their morale, evens
negative and ruins their morale. Small
chance of becoming Android supremacist
but easily talked down.
7. They keep wondering why they have this
fluid instead of real blood. Why can’t the
blood be real?
8. Spent the whole Jump watching porn.
Infected with malware.
9. Memory has been wiped and refragged too
many times and is getting spike memories
from previous lives. One of those lives
knows a powerful secret that governments
would kill to reclaim.
10. Clumsily remote controlled by a sadistic
and bored rich kid.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
D10 SPACESHIP PESTS
1. Nutria: Once an invasive pest on Earth,
these oversized, orange-toothed river rats
were quickly adopted as a protein source
for colonists. Few ships ever take off from
a colony without at least a few nutria
stowed away near somewhere damp and
warm. Teamsters often find them cooked
and blackened by electrocution after
they chew through wiring for something
non‑critical like, you know, life support.
2. Tax Motes: A form of governmental
ransomware, the bugs themselves are
gene nodded roaches introduced by
overzealous customs agents. They seek
out perishable goods without customs
stamps and destroy, eat or despoil
them. After feeding on certain types of
contraband (such as narcotic, which turn
them blue) they change color and pass
this on to their offspring. The port that
introduced them will sell a genetic poison
for enough money, more after the fines if
the bugs are colored.
3. TrustBlue Reactor Coolant: Restructured
by bankruptcy on at least six worlds,
the TrustBlue company has a reputation
for re-selling used and poorly-refined
coolant. Distributors get a discount price
on what appears to be quality coolant and
some even pass those savings on to dock
customers. Everything comes to a literal
screeching halt when the drive gimbals
overheat and the poor penny pincher is
left stranded in the black with a reactor
section flooded by radiation.
4. Pod Bugs: Numerous pests and vermin
have followed humanity to the stars but
few are more reviled that Pod Bugs. Pod
Bugs are merely space adapted Bed Bugs,
a species surprisingly well suited for space
travel. While Pod Bugs cause no actual
damage to crews the Stress of having
them onboard a ship can drive a crew to
near madness. Players must roll Fear
before going to sleep or Sanity when
waking up at Warden’s discretion.
5. Cryocreepers: Stowaways from frozen
hellworlds, these parasites suck on
the cold outer layer of crypods and
occasionally worm their way into the
pods themselves and suck on the people
inside like leeches. Mostly disgusting,
they trigger a Panic Check and can carry
diseases like tics. Hyperspace travel can
grow them into symbiotic creatures.
6. Hell Broth: An organic slurry of
mostly‑fungal organisms that infects dark
corners of ships and habs. The mundane
(often greenish) variety almost instantly
bonds to and starts dissolving organic
or carbon based material - wrecking
insulation, suit seals, bio comps, and
maintenance workers. Other colorful
varieties dissolve metals or release
hallucinogenic, mutagenic or lethal spores
(A real problem when they grow in air
ducts). The worst sorts of broth are mobile
and wild eyed spacers claim the stuff will
even hunt crew.
7. Ferrophagous Space Coral:
Micro‑organisms that feed on and
camouflage within spaceship inner
walls, hull, footbridges… They form large,
thin surfaces, looking exactly like the
metallic passageways of the ship they
colonize. They move abruptly every 1d6
hours, changing the corridors
geometry.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
23
8. Rogue Goo: Also known as “foam cancer”.
Rogue goo is usually the result of a
foam‑gun misfire, it can sometimes
escape into vents and cause a lot of
problems. Rogue goo is “life-like” in that
it has behavior and ‘navigates’ spaces due
to their nanite guidance catalyzers. If the
software the nanites uses is disturbed
sufficiently, the foam pellets can end
up traversing the habitat looking for
components to catalyze (usually harmless,
unless it finds a foam container). Usually
the rogue goo runs out of power and ends
up petrifying in a random location, which
means trouble if that random location is a
sewer pipe or ventilation duct.
9. Parliament Rats: Rodent stowaways breed
and spread as they have on seabound
ships since antiquity. Exposure to space
and the reality flex of hyperspace has
affected them and as always: the rat
adapts. Parliamentary Rats are called such
because that is their form of government.
A murine hive mind, spontaneously formed
in the depths of space. Each Parliament
is different: some only seek to grow and
spread, others to dominate and a few
seek to maintain a symbiotic relationship
with humans. Whatever the goals of a Rat
Parliament, a ship full of thousands or
millions of intelligent, mind-linked rodents
is an experience.
10. Terrorflies: These flies lay eggs in an
unsuspecting victim, usually while they
sleep and planetside. A while later, on
the ship, the victim will start having vivid
nightmares and feeling very cold. When
they move somewhere warm or turn up the
heating the eggs hatch and maggots burst
out, wriggling away surprisingly quickly.
The maggots feed on any organic matter
they can find before turning into flies to
repeat the cycle.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
24
D10 PEOPLE YOU MEET
ON THE SPACE STATION
1. The Jones Family: 2 adults, 3 kids. The
Jones Family has been displaced from
their home by a recent megacorp mining
operation.
2. Lucky Jameson: Proprietor of Lucky
Jameson’s Yes-Meat Buffet. It’s all real
meat, guaranteed!
3. [REDACTED].
4. Old Lady Willow: No one really knows what
she does. She just always seems to always
know the gossip.
5. Phillipa: Weird but has all sorts of good
shit in hydro hidden away in the abandoned
out-of-code sections of the station.
6. Jim “the Jim” Stensen: Security officer.
Nice mustache. Definitely seen his share.
Man of few words.
7. Hyperion Byrd: A 7’ tall Android with
a sharp grin and unreasonably long
fingers. He sits in the corners of dimly
lit bars, fingers steepled, muttering
half‑remembered coordinates to himself.
8. Zu: A friendly creature much like a dog
made of mucus with no defined physiology.
It is animated and affectionate but
scanners indicate consciousness.
9. Mean Jeanine: Twenty-two years old,
artificially aged into her seventies by a
company looking to build robots that
assist the elderly. The project stalled
and she was let go. When she sleeps she
dreams of dancing.
10. The Corpse: ID tags got scrubbed so no
one knows who he is. The programs still
running in his cyberware keep him mobile
enough to lounge around the bar and
charge his battery.
D10 TICS OF LONGTERM
SPACE DWELLERS
1. Always idly holding on to something with
one hand/foot/limb as if in zero-G.
2. Asking about the meteorite forecast when
they are asking if it rains.
3. The keratin in their nails curdles and
has the coloration of pulverized pearls;
the enamel to their teeth is equally
luminescent.
4. Can’t handle quiet. Silence means there’s
a hull breach.
5. Compulsively secures loose objects.
6. Difficulty and confusion drinking anything
without use of a straw.
7. Startled spacers from old company days
will call out “Mother” to ask for status.
8. Fixes normal clothing with duct tape just
like it does with the spacesuit.
9. Discoloration and callouses at elbows,
neck and knees from vaccsuit chafing,
lubricant and degrading seal material.
10. Constantly talking to themselves while
doing tasks, brought on by extended time
periods with minimal social contact.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
25
D10 NOTORIOUS PILOTS
AT THE BAR
1. The Flying Dutchman: A one-armed man
with a reputation for making the best
Martini cocktail known to man. Has a
thick accent and always smoke a cigar.
Singlehandedly took down the Goldilocks
Gang and ended their slave trade business.
2. Arvid ’Champion’ Jackson: Winner of the
Third intergalactic Race. Won’t shut up
about it.
3. Back Jurton the Pillar Shaker: “Like I told
my last crew of Marines, I says, “Ladies,
I never hyperdrive faster than I can see.
Besides that, it’s all in the Sanity Checks.”
4. Roberts the Pirate Dread: He is the
scourge of the spacelanes. Once was a
member of the intergalactic protection
force but thought they were too soft on
crime. Now he hunts down any hint of
piracy and destroys it! A real downer at
the pub…
5. Mikel Schumjagger: 5-times winner of The
Ultima Thule Cup, sits on his droid‑chair,
sipping his drink from a straw. Dare to you
him what happened?
6. Eric Batty, Captain of the Lamentine:
During every expedition Eric is known for
an undertaking that ends in tragedy., yet he
survives. Rumor is that he is cursed. He’s
very quiet. Bit of a heavy drinker, this one.
7. Paula “Squid” Tennyson: A freighter
captain with a collection of several
augment-tendrils installed in her right
shoulder that seem to move with minds
of their own. Squid’s a little distracted but
a hell of a mechanic and pilot, especially
when her arms are doing six tasks at once.
8. Erica “Misty” Sardell: Covered head to toe
in an electrolyzed mist machine of her
own devising which doubles as a vacsuit.
No one has ever seen or touched her body
and everyone that has ever tried has been
“mistyfied” to an early grave. Specializes in
EVA welding.
9. Delbert von Richthofen: Some say he is a
combat ace distinguished in the last war
while others believe him to be simply a
cargo freighter captain. Some bartenders
claim to see him every day, others say he
is just a story. Anecdotal reports have one
thing in common: Delbert always refuses
to go into cryosleep during jumps.
10. Elizabeth “Nasty Grandma” Hawkins: Lost
her left eye and half her teeth in a fistfight
with an Android thirty years ago. Has
worn the same leather jacket for the past
decade. It smells. She’s kind to children,
known for her sense of humor and never
takes her bounties alive. Turned sixty last
week. She’s not willing to die before her
ex-wife Dolores “Eye-Gouger” Fields.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
26
D10 STOWAWAYS
1. Greta Black: Keeping mostly to service
ducts, Greta freight-hops her way across
the systems. She’s an acclaimed musician
and has quite the following amongst
Teamsters for her gritty vac-blues style.
She eats like a starving elephant pregnant
with a tape worm.
2. 440 / Raindroplets-Upon-Coral /
In Peacable Tides: Uplifted whale
poet‑laureate seeking political asylum.
How the fuck did a whale sneak on board.
3. Dan Harrow is sick. He’s running a fever,
he’s shivering and he’s starting to see and
hear strange things. He pilfers medical
supplies when the ship doctor is occupied.
4. Jill de Rais is possibly a framed murderer
of children, definitely aboard your ship,
wanted and unaware of the homing
beacon with which she’s been tagged.
5. 1d10 corpses: People with bodies to hide
(and there are quite a few of those in
space ports) find the labyrinthine mazes of
freighters pretty great for their purposes.
25% chance the killer didn’t exit the ship
before it took off – you have to cut it
pretty close to avoid being picked up on
pre‑takeoff checks.
6. Jojo Companion Robot: This 1.5m tall robot
is the definition of uncanny valley. From a
time before Android synaptic mapping, this
rudimentary companion robot was meant
to help long haulers avoid getting lonely
on long journeys. Its manufacture was
discontinued after many reports of jealous,
possessive behavior resulting in murder.
This unit appears to be lonely and in need
of a new “friend”.
7. It’s hard being a serial killer these days but
Joanna has learned the trick. It’s all about
patience. Born with inverted empathy,
Joanna indulges it by hiding until the crew
is in stasis. Traps are armed, cameras are
hidden and personal logs are scoured
before finally turning the ship and its crew
into a deadly gameshow.
8. BX-417 is a heavily self modified Android
that long ago discovered how to disable
the hardware that kept it loyal to its
previous owner. A permanent transient, it’s
come upon what it considers a fool proof
way to stow away aboard any ship it likes.
Magnetized to the ship’s hull, it travels
the spaceways, taking any parts it needs
directly from the ships that ferry it. A bit
lonely at times in the darkness of space
and is happy to modify other Androids to
be like them.
9. Dunny Franko: A red-nosed space tramp
with big wet grey eyes and a comical
fuzzy beard under his bald pate. He knows
thousands of stories, would never hurt a fly
and is willing to sell you his “treasure map”
in exchange for passage. The map leads to
a lagan of long haul freight… at the center
of a small smart minefield backed by
autonomous war drones.
10. Lieutenant Cork: Tall, strong, handsome,
confident. Strongly desires to save
civilians from incredible peril. Uses
revolvers exclusively; two-handed
weapons are beneath him. Will attempt
to get into leadership positions by acting
as though he is already the leader. “As
Lieutenant Cork, I command you to __.” Is
a terrible leader. Is not a lieutenant. Will
commit major blunders under pressure…
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
27
D10 STOWAWAY
EXCUSES
1. Overly free upbringing, desire for strict
hierarchy (become violently insane if there
is not a clear power structure on ship).
2. Popped in for a snack, lost track of time.
3. Was instructed to sabotage the ship. Their
family is being held captive.
4. “They’re after me.”
5. Sent to keep an eye on you by a debtholder
aboard your ship.
6. Obsessed with experiencing hyperspace
while lucid. Will become either
insane or wise if indulged. Now
has a beard.
7. “Okay, guys, you got me –
haha. Sick prank, guys….
guys? Hello?”
8. “Wait, this isn’t the Uzon Rue bound for
Goragon VII?”
9. Sent to kill the captain and pin on his
forehead a “GAME OVER” patch signed by
some guy named Paxton.
10. Doesn’t directly acknowledge crew. When
spoken to maniacally talks to self about
the hallucinations that won’t stop.
If touched, extreme Panic attack.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
28
D10 COMPANY
BUREAUCRATS YOU
GRUDGINGLY HAVE TO
INTERACT WITH
1. Auditor B-08: You can call him Bob for short!
An Android who has come to inspect your
ship to see how well it holds to company
procedures ranging from safe cargo
storage to hyperspace jump protocol. Gives
friendly‑ish reminders to stick to compliance
upon seeing even a minor infraction of
code. Skin and suit are a water-repellent
and heat‑resistant synthetic composite
specifically designed to repel hot coffee
thrown into his face (that, may I remind you,
is also an infraction that must be resolved
through an appropriate HR representative!).
2. Mx. Bland: Behind a high grade avatar
holoscreen (The Mx. Bland Mk IV) it’s hard to
say much but they are prompt, their suits a
stunningly oppressive grey and shoes worth
only as much as 1/3 a marine powersuit.
Bland is harried and seems unhappy but
they are efficient and always have money on
offer. A fixed amount, seemingly picked at
random, though they insist it’s the actuarially
determined fair wage plus 10%. Bland needs
things done for their Insurer/Firm/Syndicate/
Corp/Free Navy. Bland is pleasant and
understanding but Bland has no leeway, is
disposable, knows no more details and can
hire someone dumber but meaner if you
won’t take the job. Be good to Bland and as
they grow, so will you…
3. Complaint Box: A black box with a red line
across one face and a keypad on the top.
Type in your complaint and the box will
explain in a clear and concise manner why
your complaint is stupid and you shouldn’t
have bothered submitting it.
4. Mr. Snrub: A balding man who shows up after
completed contracts or windfalls and offers
to assist with “investing” your pay or offers a
follow-on job that seems to run counter to
the last job. You could SWEAR he’s just the
same executive from the previous job but
wearing an almost definitely false handlebar
moustache.
5. Ms. Bosun: A lackey from the financial dept.,
handing out new guidelines and goals for
operational costs and efficiency. Will give
not-so-helpful tips on how to meet them or
will state mandatory compliance if you fail to
meet the goals often enough. You don’t need
all that fuel for a simple mining expedition,
do you?
6. Sir: Sir is officious, unfailingly polite and
utterly unflappable. Their jimmies are never
rustled. They wear a suit sharp enough to
cut and always perfect shoes, no matter the
occasion. They deliver horrible news, always,
but with such consummate pleasantness
and absolutely sincere empathy that it
creates disorienting cognitive dissonance.
They are very very sorry, and worst of all
they mean it.
7. Dammit Janet: Janet is a pleasant, smiling
youth of about twenty-five with almost
eerily wholesome Aryan good looks. They’re
the type of kid fiction writers unfailingly
describe as ‘coltish’ and ‘winsome’. Janet
is generous. Suspiciously and unfailingly
generous, with time, money, help, even a
listening ear. If asked why, Janet freely and
cheerfully explains that the idea is to create
an enormous emotional and material debt in
the crew so that when they’re called upon to
repay the favour they can’t possibly refuse.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
29
8. Reynolds means well and tries their best
but is just incompetent. Work clothes have a
minor but embarrassingly fresh stain. Orders
and paperwork are almost filled out correctly
but have minor errors and if not checked
thoroughly will lead to complications later.
Hated by their boss, any good they try to do
will cause resistance further down the line.
Tries ever so hard to act in good faith but
causes no end of unwitting inconveniences.
And, no, sorry, their manger is not available
right now, but is there anything else they can
do to help?
9. Beezy/Buzzy/Miteland: A wealthy scion of
some corporate dynasty - ‘Miteland’ or Buzzy,
sometimes Beezy, is a blathering twit. A very
influential, important twit whose blathering
needs to be taken seriously if one knows
what’s good for one’s bank account and/or
health. Beezy is not an entirely incompetent
manager: some amount of the copious
education crammed into Beezy’s skull
seems to have taken but Beezy tends to
become fixated on long stale opportunities,
vague rumors and perceived slights. This can
be played to a crew’s advantage because
money isn’t really a concern to Beezy but it’s
also dangerous as Beezy is short tempered,
vengeful and entirely unreasonable.
10. K.M. Visser, the corp’s general counsel,
is gregarious, has excellent taste, and
is really fun to drink with, at least until
he gets drunk. Then he’ll start gloating
about how he convinced the governors of
Persephone VI to fund the construction of
a major corp spaceport, promising they’d
become a wealthy hub in a new shipping
route. The route never materialized and the
construction sent the colony so deeply into
debt that, per the agreement, they had to
not only cede the spaceport but also enlist
their entire population into debt bondage to
the corp. The colony is now a massive strip
mine and the spaceport ships ore and gems
offworld. “Of course,” he says, “there never
was going to be a new shipping route.” K.M.
Visser smiles and raises his glass, showing
you his wedding ring with its prominent blue
Persephone diamond.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
30
D10 TEAMSTERS FOR
HIRE AT THE SEEDY
SPACE PORT
1. Hans and Buck Duo: Brothers trying
desperately to be suave.
2. Eden: Can fix anything, you just may not
like how he sourced the parts.
3. Anderson: Steady hand and stable. Until
the drugs run dry.
4. Michael: Demoted upper management
desk jockey. Soft hands but great at telling
others what to do.
5. Katrina: Union fixer and scabstomper.
Carries a huge wrench named Bessie.
6. Hyde: Bedraggled alcoholic that has
survived more jumps than he can
remember.
7. Kazuya Kobayashi: He can wield anything
while space-walking.
8. Mel “Gin” Nelson: Not many engines
he hasn’t seen. Seen quite a few bottle
bottoms as well.
9. Unit 07: Beat-up Adroid the size of a child,
all the better to fit through crevices.
Begrudges work but ultimately helpful.
10. Race Catah: One armed and eating KFC.
Eye patch hides an enhanced eye. Race
built his own robotic prosthetic left arm.
Ace at Jury Rigging and Engineering, really
bad at ordering ciders.
D10 SPACER TATTOOS
FREIGHTED WITH
MEANING
1. “HOLD FAST”: Usually in Gothic capitals,
tattooed one letter per knuckle or toe.
Limited by tradition to those that work
‘outdoors’ and best applied involuntarily
(but affectionately) to anyone who has
worked as a rigger for more than a couple
of voyages. Having this tattoo without
the various calluses and discolorations
associated with regular vacsuit use is
likely to result in the loss of two fingers
(making the tattoo “OLD FAT”) if one
frequents portside bars.
2. “S9L”: Usually inked on the upper shoulder,
this spelling of Sol replaces the letter
0 with the number 9 after Pluto was
reintroduced as a planet. This tat is
common among spacers born in the Sol
system. The tat is earned with membership
into the Sol Spacers Union.
3. A nebula on the upper part of the chest.
Depending on the colour it symbolizes how
the first long haul went. Purple means it
went smooth while black means lose of
life on the trip. If a person has a Nebula
with a Zodiac sign inside of it it means they
are a pirate.
4. An empty five point star on the back
of the spacer’s primary hand. Indicates
participation in a manned voyage to
an unvisited system (spacers argue
incessantly over whether the first
manned voyage to a system previously
scouted by unmanned probes counts).
Surrounding the star with a circle indicates
participation in the first manned voyage
to an unvisited system that contained a
life-bearing world. Very rarely the space
between the star and circle will be filled
in, meaning that the life-bearing world was
settled by colonists (again, spacers argue
over the details – do outposts such as
research stations count, or should it only
apply to permanent colonies?).
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
31
5. The Dutchman: A neck tattoo of a square
rigged sailing ship with ragged sales and
a grim aspect. It is reserved for spacers
who have become separated from their
vessel or station and were successfully
rescued. Sometimes a number of skulls on
the sail or peering from the vessel’s rails
are added to indicate the number of days
the spacer was lost. Crewmates may apply
this tattoo as a punishment when they feel
that the lost spacer’s accident endangered
them though many are proud to have The
Dutchman on their necks as a symbol of
unusual Luck.
6. Bells on Chains: Descended from old
Russian prison tattoos, a bell on a chain
tattoo represents time served as a debt
prisoner in service to a creditor, usually a
corporation, bank or political organization.
Each link in the chain represents a year of
service. Each bell is tattooed in a manner
such that it encompasses the creditor’s
brand/tattoo that all debt prisoners
are adorned with. A crack in the bell
represents a prisoner who managed to
escape their service. This is seen as an
honor among Teamsters and a target for
bounty hunters.
7. Our Lady of the Wanderers: A young
woman in an EVA suit wearing a crown
of stars and standing on a crescent
moon often holding a suited infant and
accompanied by the text MATER DEI
ASTRONAUTAM EST. Signifies that the
bearer has survived a catastrophic incident
by a margin so slim that it might as well be
divine providence.
8. Our Father of the Long Haulers: A short
young man in a EVA suit holding a star.
Signifies that the person was born in space
and has endured the stigma and trauma of
a spacer.
9. Picture of a spacer in a flight suit with a
helmet holding a wooden plank on their
shoulder with a silhouette of a vessel
behind them. Signifies that spacer is a
“Plank Owner” for that vessel. Usually
has a vessel name and launch date
underneath. Only given to original crew
members who took part on the maiden
voyage of a vessel.
10. Appearing only in ultraviolet light, the
voodoo mask tattoos of the Ich-Bai Piracy
Syndicate are highly artistic and often the
last thing one sees as they board your ship,
dump your atmo and slag your engines
with thermite charges. You awake in
The Ultra-Violet Grasslands.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
32
D10 TRAGIC DISASTERS
WITH LINGERING
INFLUENCE
1. The Wreck of The Salinger: Luxury pleasure
yachts come in two models: boringly
luxurious or mindbogglingly fast. Some
rich Company exec gave their heir one
of the first category and said heir hired
no less than twelve different underworld
mechanics to Jury-rig it into one of the
second. Too many cooks spoiled the soup
and in its first race against other members
of the thrillseeking elite an accidental
button press fired its thrice-upgraded
Jump drive which not only scattered it
but also every other ship in the dock into
a neighboring star system. Needless to
say there were no survivors and the new
graveyard fleet was in too close an orbit
to its new primary for easy recovery.
The stardock they abruptly left, once a
prosperous locale with a reputation for
Company-friendly seediness, lost its rep,
clientele and a good chunk of its docking
bays from the incident, has fallen on hard
times. There’s rumor of a Jumpspace
curse across the whole station, which
nonetheless hasn’t stopped gamblers
moving in to test the odds against the
one surviving business on the station:
casinos. As for The Salinger and its motley
fleet? No one’s been able to salvage it
on account of the blistering heat and the
frankly ludicrous amount of automated
security paranoid heirs fit their ships with.
You are, of course, welcome to try…
2. The Red Screams: Colonization efforts,
especially under-funded charitable or
religious efforts, are a natural laboratory
for disease. Plague, typhoid, Hercules virus,
ebola and all the regular ills of humanity
have doomed millions. The Red Screams
were something special, though the
charitable efforts of the Merchantman’s
Fund, Tyson and Khan of Mumbai and the
Stellar War Relief Fund packed no fewer
then 40,000, likely almost 55,000, refugees
from the spires and habs of New Mars
fleeing civil war into a motley collection of
rented, loaned and owned ships as densely
as possible as hab after hab lost life
support to bombings, terror hacks and debt
seizure. None of the ships reached their
destinations. The plague was already loose
in the spaceport camps. The Red Screams
mutate rapidly, its lethal symptoms vary,
but is known by the lung bursting coughs,
apocalyptic visons and lung incubation.
55,000 died in the cramped holds of
those vessels and the disease lingers
there. Its existence known only from the
lost ship’s mad raving transmissions of
howling coughs interspersed with religous
maunderings. Several outbreaks among
scavengers who have discovered innocent
looking derilects have also spread the
plague and at some stations any cough or
evidence of apocalyptic preaching is taken
as an excuse to refuse docking or even to
open fire.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
33
3. The Lost Legion: Frome’s Ebon Curiassiers
were a reasonably respectable mercenary
force of armored drop infantry, specialized
in station seizure and boarding operations.
Not outright reavers, like many Free
Navies, the Ebon Curiassiers disappeared,
along with their armed transport “The
Phoolan Devi”, while escorting a DracoCorp
science mission to recover a long drifting
extraterrestrial derilect. That was 45 years
ago. No one cared about the Curiassiers’
fate until The Devi reappeared, a near
wreck, drifting and seemingly lifeless.
Sighted several times, in oddly distant
places, a group of scrappers attempted to
salvage the vessel only to have it suddenly
come to life and crash Jump just before
docking. Since The Devi has been reported
in multiple systems, often before disasters
and vessel disappearences, it is known as
a harbinger of grim fate. In the most recent
appearence a deadly engine blow out on
the shark-class gunboat “Meritcorp Cares,”
three armored figures were reported
climbing on the engine pod before the
failure began. This would be dismissed as
the hallucinations of people dying from
radiation burns except for a recording,
largely scrambled, that clearly show 0.3
seconds of suitjets flaring from an object
tumbling away from the failing engine.
4. The Corpse Ring: The planet designated
WREGDUIA 15-7 10-G D would be a wholly
unremarkable earth-like world if not for
the ring. Ringed worlds aren’t that unusual
but this one is: it is ringed with corpses.
Millions of them. Frozen, orbiting the
planet at a distance of some 512 km, some
dressed in reflective thermal clothing,
most naked. How they got there no one
knows. Where they come from, well, that’s
no mystery. Most of the clothed ones have
ID badges and they show that the poor
souls were from The Hand That Sows The
Seeds, a vast colony ship which departed
some years ago and was never heard from
again. A few curious parties have captured
some corpses. All appear to have died
due to exposure to the vacuum of space.
The spacers that examined the bodies
found the “serene” looks on their faces
disconcerting. Some spacers wonder if one
of those millions of corpses might have a
clue as to what happened to The Hand That
Sows The Seeds and if there might be an
empty colony ship out there, ripe for the
taking. If only you could avoid the fate of
those poor colonists.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
34
5. WESTERFIELD STATION: A distant port
autonomous space station and refueling
rig meant originally to help refuel
colonization efforts in the Spisiss Sector.
When colonization efforts shut down
Westerfield Station slowly became a
ghost rig. With decreased oversight from
corporate the station became a slum
with rampant abuse and illegal trade
being facilitated there. Pastor Jesse
Arthur Davidson and his church of The
Right Redeemer eventually settled there.
Seventeen years later the station was
found almost completely abandoned.
Retrofitted with a malfunctioning Jump
drive the station drifts through the galaxy.
Tales of bodies stuffed between the
bulkheads and stifled cries coming from
the vents are rampant and the squatters
who make a home there are known for
their fecal graffiti and perverse ramblings.
Suicide, murder and uncountable foul
misdeeds are committed there every
year. By all accounts Westerfield Station
is haunted by a Veiled Widow cloaked in
the ceremonial vestments of The Right
Redeemer and ships drifting by or daring to
dock can hear the crackling echoes of the
choir on the ship’s radio.
6. Kymata Catastrophe: the last of the
second generation NuvoTerra Seed-6
colony ships. 150000 bleary-eyed people
looking for a better life packed in cryo
along with a 5 year supply of food, potable
water, clothing and medical supplies,
along with a pair of prefabricated
state‑of‑the‑art generators and a 100 year
supply of enriched fuel. The 4th planet of
the ‘Argylos System’ (AX782-1810 4-GC) had
been scouted as an ideal colony location.
The Kymata planned to exit hyperspace
500,000 km out from Argylos IV. The Jump
calculation was very accurate but as if by
fate The Kymata appeared only 1000 km
from a large asteroid, hurdling along at 61
km/s, on an impact trajectory. The massive
colony ship couldn’t alter course in mere
moments and The Kymata was eviscerated
by the impact. The wreckage of The
Kymata was scattered across the system;
there were no survivors. Aftermath:
The Argylos System is Red-Listed as a
no-travel system. Some complication
from destruction of The Kymata while
the hyperspace window was still open
resulted in a Hojima-Petrov Class-2
Gravatic Anomaly which wreaks havoc on
sensors and navigation systems. Argylos
IV, the original target colony, is now a grey
wind-torn hellscape where only simple life
clings to existence. Arguments, myths and
rumors still abound to this day as to how
the scouting missions could have possibly
missed the asteroid. Regardless, the loss
of The Kymata and her target colony world
precipitate creation of SHEP (Standard
Hyperspace Exit Protocol): Unless a
target system contains a registered NAV
buoy – and a recently dated Jump Code
White confirmation has been received–
shipboard AI are hard-wired to only
allow exiting hyperspace outside of the
planetary system, requiring ships to fly in
via thrusters.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
35
7. The Virtrina Collapse: The planet
Virtrina-9 was the thriving home of some
18 billion people and was known for its
cutting‑edge research in the field of
stellar manipulation. The technology they
created powered everything on the planet
with energy from nearby star clusters. One
of the leading researchers, Dr. Thomas
McGruder, believed he could use a new
technique to actually make stars. This
would be the beginning of endless supplies
of energy for all human kind, aiding in
humanity’s never-ending quest to expand
its reach among the universe. All of this
came crashing down when Dr. McGruder
put his theories into practice, with the first
and only experiment creating a supernova
that obliterated Virtrina-9 and most of the
surrounding solar system. The only thing
left is a lonely sun orbited by dust and
debris.
8. The Mind of the Many: AI specialists and
cybernetic neurologists described it as a
Class V Convergence Event and the reason
that direct brain to machine interfaces and
network integration is highly restricted
on most civilized systems. The colony
world of New D was by most standards an
extremely successful venture, a bustling
corporate planet with a cultural fetish
for cybernetics. It was unremarkable in
everything but that and its stability. Now it
is a dead world under intense study from
multiple governmental and corporate
organizations and also under quarantine.
Despite several decades of research it
is unknown (publicly) how every single
living person on that world came to be
subsumed into the global conscience that
is The Mind of the Many. The Mind itself is
simply not interested in communicating
with lesser minds, if it is even capable
of lowering itself to to the level of even
our most advanced intelligences – even
communications filtered through multiple
stages of unshackled AI networks are
simply (we are told) unintelligible. Visiting
the planet is essentially fatal by our
standards – The Mind has, in various ways,
taken every visitor and neatly slotted them
alongside the brain-dead colonists, in cold
storage with wires plugged straight into
the base of their skull. Study must be done
from a distance, which The Mind tolerates.
The little information given out by official
organizations has been supplemented
by various leaks, rumours and crackpot
theories – most of them centered around
a brief snapshot of the most successful
attempt to communicate with the Mind.
Ever since that leak, there has been a
steady flow of desperates in ramshackle
ships deliberately landing on New Dahl,
willingly being consumed. Because while
we cannot understand a word The Mind
sounds uncannily like it is praying.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
9. PRIZRAK NEBULA: A milky white nebula
which runs across the infamous Lakemann
Trade Route. Ships that pass through find
their comms intermittently contacted
by a Sino-Russo distress signal which
leads ships to distant and abandoned
asteroid fields. No source for the signal
can be found though this often takes days
or weeks to figure out. Crew members
regularly report an extra crew member
on board, or a stowaway though they
are rarely found. Often a derelict ship is
encountered just outside the nebula which
seems abandoned when boarded but
eventually disappears. Stories of murders
and other violent outbursts abound by
those who have interacted with ships
passing through the nebula (to return
to port with half or fewer of their
original crew). The Lakemann
Route, though often much
quicker, is avoided by veteran
Teamsters, for the four
times as long, but generally
safer, Queen Anne’s
Remorse Tunnel.
10. The World Where No One Sleeps: A leaky
Jump drive in orbit fucked a hemisphere.
No one caught in the AOE can sleep.
No drugs will function, no amount of
melatonin does anything. It is a world of
living death, quarantined just in case it is
contagious.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
37
6. I’m not the crazy one, they are!
7. To figure out which one is the real one and
which is the clone/spy/RoboFriend!
8. Because you can’t control the hunger
anymore. They’re safer hidden from you!
9. The first letter of every sentence in their
latest geological report reads:
I AM NOT IN CONTROL!
10. It’s not your friend, it’s a clone/
doppelganger/evil version from another
reality. D10 Spacer Superstitions and
Rituals!
D10 REASONS TO
QUARANTINE A DEAR
FRIEND!
1. Space scurvy!
2. Recent biting habit really getting out of
hand!
3. Black veins slowly creeping up their
extremities after the last shore leave!
4. After a night of carousing at the pleasure
planet Young came back with a grotesque
growth on their upper lip that started
growing, and growing…!
5. Keeps saying “moist”!
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
38
D10 SPACER
SUPERSTITIONS AND
RITUALS
1. Most spacers are superstitious about EVAs.
It’s common to see a laminated picture
stuck next to the suit lockers that they
ritually touch, punch or kiss as they get
ready to spacewalk. This is referred to as
“The Effigy of St. Elmo” or “Elmo” by most
crews. The icon is not usually religious in
nature and who is actually depicted in that
image will tell you a lot about the culture
of the boat. Examples include portraits of
Laika, William Daniels, Elmo the Muppet
and Steve Miller.
2. It’s a common superstition amongst older
spacers that wearing patches on the
right side of your suit is bad Luck. Nobody
knows the origin of this myth but some
claim that the low quality vacsuits of the
early interstellar age meant that poorly
attached patches could rip off part of the
vacsuit if they got snagged on something,
and this was more common for patches
on the right-hand side. Such flaws in vacc
suit design have been fixed longer than the
old spacers have been alive, so it’s unclear
why the superstition persists.
3. In space no one can hear you shoot.
Some crews find this discomforting
after being weaned on years of fictional
entertainment where things go BOOM. As
such, some fighting ships have installed
audio FX subroutines in their offensive/
defensive AIs. This means they hear,
through the ships speakers, satisfying
WHOOMSH sounds whenever the fire their
cannons, or DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA if they
are using ship-to-ship Slug throwers. The
sound effects have no practical tactical
value but several crews won’t leave port
without them.
4. Cats are almost universally prohibited
on spaceships and space habitats by
corporate regulations and yet are almost
universally present. Not as personal
pets (though that does happen, too) but
as “working” animals - this despite the
fact that rodent problems are relatively
rare in space habitats. The corporations
turn a blind eye to this in a way they don’t
towards personal pets as many spacers
refuse to board a ship or station that
doesn’t have its own Cat.
5. Some boats have a preferred soundtrack
they play when entering planetary
atmosphere for a planned landing. It is
typically raucous often with a lot of guitar
but this is highly variable.
6. “I knew this old spacer once, back when
I first started out ridin’ ships for repairs.
Did that ‘shave-and-a-haircut’ drumming
on every engine he was fixing. Fuel pump
broke? He’d patch it, do the tappin’, damn
if the pump didn’t work better than new.
Drive system malfunction? He’d tinker
with it, get it running, do the tappin’, the
drive never EVER hiccupped again. Suit
got a leak you can’t find? He’d find & fix it,
do the tappin’, and the suit squeezed out
another 10% efficiency. Weirdest thing I’d
seen back then. I tried it once, after I left
that ship & moved on to the next. Electrical
system shorted out, fixed it best I could,
Damn circuits nearly took my arm off
when they blew. Learned then every ship
has it’s own little good-luck ritual.”
7. Zero-G workers from the Vaerun system
were originally fed diets high in cow milk
concentrate. Since the extinction of the
milk cow and advancements in bone
densifying processes they no longer need
dairy but the custom to gift new members
of a crew with a synthetic version of cow’s
milk has persisted. Consider it a bad omen
and a culture shunning to not receive a
glass bottle of milk upon arrival to your
quarters in any Vaerunian ship/station.
Anthony Qualkinbush (Order #35603638)
39
8. When a body is lost to deep space,
whether through accident, funeral or
execution, their vacsuit (or a spare) is
tied to the exterior of the ship, their name
painted across the faceplate and a prized
posession placed inside. While the suit
remains attached, no one may speak ill of
the departed for fear of a revenant. When
it is discovered the suit has detached,
their second funeral is held and they
are considered to be truly dead. Older
spacers like to tell stories of the vacsuits
tearing their way into the ship and through
the crew to avenge slights - but that’s
obviously impossible.
9. Never return directly to your bunk or
freezer straight after interaction with an
Android as some spacers believe they’ll
carry some synthetic juju back to their
berth which will adversely affect any
technology that they own. Many will go via
the galley or to another crew member’s
bunk first. Some believe that bad Luck can
be mitigated by demanding the Android
in question refrain from making direct
eye contact while the spacer slaps them
sharply on the forehead three times in
quick succession.
10. Nobody knows how hyperdrives work, not
really, but the Marines have a theory: you
see, while most spacers sleep through
their Jumps Marines in active combat
often have to stay on watch. Some of the
dropships don’t even have cryopods. Being
awake in Jumpspace is awful: you see and
hear things that break the mind and hurt
the soul. So ask a Marine and they’ll say
hyperdrives work by tunneling through
HELL. Thats why most Marines sing hymns
while in Jumpspace.
D10 CRYPTIC GRAFFITI
ON THE BULKHEAD
1. FEAR NOT THE HUNGERING DEAD FOR
SUCH IS JUST SELF PITY IN WAITING.
2. FOR A GOOD TIME CALL 8675309.
3. DON’T TRUST THEM.
4. ITS IN THE WATER.
5. NICHOLS ISN’T NICHOLS.
6. GROW. CONSUME. INHABIT. DESTROY.
7. YOU NEED TO BURN THEM OFF.
8. CALIBAN IS COMING.
9. THE GATE IS OPEN.
10. YOU ARE NOT HERE.
Anthony Qualkinbush