Horrors in space

There are two things one should have in mind when talking about horrors in outer space:

1. Up til the first physical exploration of space, we were all alone in the universe 
2. Any life out there since then - no matter how twisted or unreal - has its origin down here on Earth 

That is, anything encountered up there is a bastardly remix of something we once sent up on purpose - or just lost by accident somewhere in the thermosphere.

The V-2 rocket (1942)
The first rocket to reach outer space, actually never returned to Earth despite common belief. Became sentient and suicidal after being exposed to a stellar flare in 1981.

40 mice (1960)
Part of the original all animal crew of Korabl-Sputnik 2, these mice never did return safely to Earth. Gnawing through their cage at re-entry, they suddenly hit a power cord just as the shuttle passed through an aurora - causing them to switch places. The caged aurora was never made official.

Имре́к (1962)
Just one of many unofficial and unknown cosmonauts lost during the Vostok programme. At the time, a large translucent mesh passed through our neck of the universe, causing these poor souls to be collected like fish in the sea.

In 1978, a thin purple cord shot out through deep space, attached itself to the mesh and started pulling it in. The cord bumped into the Soviet satellite Kosmos 954, causing it to malfunction and later crash over northern Canada.

Ticks in Space (Santicore 2015 entry)

(Since I haven't seen any signs of life from the Santicore hellves yet, I thought I might as well dump my entry here on the blog)

The request I got for Santicore 2015 was:

"O Secret Santicore, what random horrors could unfortunate adventurers encounter in the darkness of space?"

And I thought, ticks of course! If you want to make your own custom tick mini for your game, just take a potato and stick some toothpicks in it (or just leave them out in the sun a a couple of days, and it'll grow its own appendices).

 

1. Celestial Tick

A celestial tick ranges in size from a small space shuttle, to that of a moon - or larger. Soft celestial ticks are attracted to magnetic fields and will harvest electricity, while hard celestial ticks are drawn to heat and will attach to anything from warp cores to smaller planets.

It’s possible to remove a celestial tick by force, at risk at infecting the host. Rumour has it that tick pirates comes from a planet infected by a vicious tick bite.

2. Tick Ambergris

When a larger celestial tick consumes something it can’t digest or doesn't want, its gastrointestinals will cover it in a thick secretion so that it can pass without harming the tick. As the ambergris leaves the tick’s body and enters space, it will harden and travel indefinitely, sometimes even protecting the unwanted thing in a forced cryosleep.

Things known to have been found in tick ambergris:

1. Lava and pieces of a volcano
2. Small space shuttle containing a crew (living but cryosleeping)
3. A mountain top
4. A smaller celestial tick (see Tick Miners below)

3. Tick Pirates

There’s a remote relative to humans in outer space that’s been successful in utilizing celestial ticks as transporation vessels, from the smaller ones as two-man shuttles, to the rumoured interstellar tick that drifts through the multiverse and houses several thousands of pirates.

On the larger ticks the pirates tend to burrow a bit into the body, to shield against the worst radiation of space.

Things possibly found on a tick pirate:

1. Spear with tip smeared in a mixture consisting of celestial tick nymphs and random droppings
2. Semi-living sextant
3. Boots made of the shell of a hard tick
4. A metallic plaque depicting the Arecibo message

4. Tick Miners

It is rumoured that tick miners are a cybernetic race aiming to regulate the efficiency of celestial ticks. Why they would do that is unknown - maybe they suffered from a planetary tick themselves, who spewed out diseases into their perfect feedback society?

Tick miners - being more robotic than organic, yet lacking a fully-fledged AI found in other parts of the multiverse - perform experiments on celestial ticks of all sizes, without hurting or killing them. At least not intentionally.

Some known augmentations/”corrections” made by tick miners:

1. Drove a planet-sized tick into a sun by increasing its heat fixation through medication
2. Constructed a life supporting exoskeleton for a tick about to die. While the tick didn’t die, the exoskeleton became sentient and soon took over, changing its role as a supporting unit to that of master controller.
3. Constructed a lattice of equally sized, smaller ticks to see if they could fill the gap after the death of one enormous celestial tick (and see if they as a “hive” had a better chance of surviving)
4. Bred a race of smaller ticks that could cover itself in its own ambergris during stressful conditions

One Page Dungeon draft I never got around to use

An old map I probably meant to send to the OPD contest but forgot about.

TL;DR: a monster that collects head. One player loses one at the entrance. The monster wears it when they encounter it. Slay it and get it back.

The good folks over at G+ seemed to like it, so why not put it over here as well.

Brown & Green & White & Red

Emoji dungeon

PuterUmberWasp

Yeah so what's so old and computery about this UmberWasp, you wonder. Well it's tiny as hell and burrows into MonitorHeads and other hardwares and introduces BUGS.

It loves nibbling on electronic impulses, and inverting logical patterns (it hates AND-gates).

Puterpadpion

Some species comes with a turbo button. If met, you should run twice as fast.

PuterBrute +HEARTz

No obvious 80s puter reference in the pic? No monitorhead? No diskdriver for a mouth? Well maybe his brain is an Atari ST, and the MIDI-controller is connected to the heart, beating in steady 119 BPM.

Into the Odd character generator

Click here to see this character!

Into the Odd (by Chris McDowall) is a game that doesn't really need a character generator. It takes less than a minute to create a character with equipment and all.

But since I needed a new project (and really like the system), I made one anyway: http://odd.pushingcows.se

It will generate a new character each time the page is reloaded.

Things that differ from the character generation in the book:

• Doesn't use the starter package table. Instead, randomized items from the table (but at least two weapons)
• Name tables are snatched from here and here

At the bottom of the character creation, I included a random image to spur the imagination of the player and/or referee. Or maybe it will just irritate people, I don't know. The images are all in the public domain and snatched from here.

It should be fairly usable on those smart phones as well.

Yeah, and you can click/tap on your attributes to perform a saving throw. Probably not useful but you never know.

Use to the permalink to save your character (e.g. use the generated link).

Atop the Prismatic Wave, there is a village

The village on top of the Prismatic Wave travels along. The platform upon which the settlers have build its home is slippery (like algae on wet rock), and many have been lost due to bad (or no) shoes.

Therefore, it is common practice to use a rope and toss it between buildings - if there's a kind soul to give you a hand at rope's end, that is.

The Prismatic Wave is easily spotted due to its vivid colours and 200 meters tall profile.

The four tall buildings each houses a wizard, unable to leave their home. They hate the next wizard in a clock-wise order for reasons not entirely obvious.

Each wizard also keeps a small shop, specialized in one of following items:

1. Small things that still lives
2. Large things that still lives
3. Bread, and treasure maps where the lines appear gradually the closer you get to the treasure
4. Welcome mats (you can get them in any language you want)

They gate these things in through portals (that look very much out of place) on their attics, but may only do so twice a day.

Typical encounters include:

1. Washed up fish making it hard to navigate the streets, or people risking their lives to get their hands on one or two
2. Someone holding on to the edge, screaming for help
3. A sour wizard throwing things at passersby from his attic window
4. Being hit by a thick rope by someone who wishes to pass the street
5. Winged beasts trying to push people over the edge, for a quick snack
6. A drunkard trying to trade used welcome mats for beer
7. A large beast (or even monster) running around the slippery streets due to a portal mishap of one of the wizards
8. Florentia Mcnaught reading her god-awful poetry from her kitchen window