I am currently lacking good ideas for additional Space Hulk Hazards (see AOLS). Radiation, gases and chemical leaks don't seem all that threatening to Marines in sealed Power Armours. Any ideas?
All I have come up with myself, so far, is a Lashworm-infested area. Other vermin might work too, of course.
Alex
What I'm thinking about for a while now is a setting simmilar to the movie alien versus predator, with shifting walls and traps. Might be a Xeno ship inside the hulk, might also be something Mechanicus.
I considered this for a 1 player campaign, the problem with more players might be, if you cut off the Marines from each other, it could be hard/take a while to get them together again, and everyone playing for himself is not the experience you want usually. If you have a Tech Marine in the KT you could go for the Mechanicus idea, with the Tech coordinating the marines with the local systems when they are seperated.
Another idea might be a living ship/very big creature, trapped inside the hulk, trying to lure prey inside to feed itself or something like that. For example it could lure with strong hallucinogens(more difficult dice roll maybe to have a chance against Marines) or movement inside (if your KT is prying this might work).
Last but not least, you could use instable parts(lots of tests could apply here) that break away to direct your Marines somewhere (for example right into a more dangerous zone).
Avdnm is right. One of a marines strength, other than their several KG of power armour, is their reliance on their fellow battle brothers, knowing that they have their backs. If you wished to create a sufficient hazard, sealing them off from each other would be an excellent idea. This can be achieved through unstable segments, doors closing by themselves, malfunctioning teleportariums. An isolated marine ups the suspense and makes them think.
An intriguing hazard though I have in mind, imagine a machine spirit, corrupted and manipulated or that daemonic cogitator from Mark of the Xenos (I think) something similar. Put one of those in charge of a space hulk or various sections of it. The whole space hulk would be an extension of its physical imprisonment as it makes doors close to seal people off, open airlocks to try and vent people out, activate defence turrets originally left abandoned as insidious metallic wired tentacles rope their way through the ship as the daemon bound to the cogitator asserts its will in the only way it can. With it so ingrained into an entire hulk, a kill team would be hard pressed to simply defeat it by wrecking or hacking a few circuits. How do you defeat an entity which can watch you everywhere in the ship with cameras, listen to you by vox recorders hidden in places, control the very environment you walk through. Even if you destroyed its primary core, the amount of circuitry in the hulk, it could likely retreat elsewhere in its network and reform itself with a new core site.
I really like your idea Calgor. Maybe I'll use that idea as soon as I have a Black Templar in my KT again. :>
By the way ak, if you tell us a bit more about your Hulk setting in general, maybe we can come up with even more ideas
Actually, it's a very small Space Hulk on which I am going to send a KT without Terminator armour. Basically about 12 to 18 ships of various sizes with a DW Rapid Strike vessel at the heart. The outer layers are basically semi-intact imperial ships.
So I guess I am asking for hazards on abandoned Imperial ships. Hazards as in: areas that the KT suddenly finds itself in that give per turn damage. And which they have to try to escape through multiple skill/characteristic tests.
I suppose warp effects could always play into it as well as vermin infestations.
Alex
How about collapsing parts they have to get through with debris falling onto the marines? Whatever caused it might be another potential source of damage. For example an initial explosion (maybe delayed caused by an earlier action of the KT) which causes explosion damage first, and then impact damage from the debris for every round they need to get where ever.
Misfunctioning generators might be another damagedealer, contaminating the whole area around it, maybe setting a flooded area the marines are in under electricity causing the servo armors to malfunction (very evil!). Maybe I wouldn't use this one on a KT without a tech marine/tech support...
I think it's better than letting the floor collapse and have them fall into a pool of acid.
Alex
You can design-a-xenos or use hordes of ex-guard plague-zombies. Maybe the Tau or the Eldar also have an interest in it, and they got there first, but nobody noticed. Old murder-servitors that have since gone rampant.
It's been lost in the warp, right? That's what usually happens with space hulks. That means you always have the option to go with daemonic infestation and warptaint. Something that feeds on their expectations.
STORYTIME. FEAR IT.
I was in a 1stEd D&D game back in 1998 or so where I encountered something like this. A kind-of-crazy wizard foe had teleported us away from him into a dungeon that seemed to be a long hallway. So we checked for traps and found traps. We disarmed the traps, kept going and kept checking for traps and kept finding traps. Someone commented "Long hallway. We have to find a door or an intersection or something somewhere." Sure enough, shortly thereafter we came to a four way hall intersection.
We must have been slow on the uptake or something, because (if I recall correctly, I was 14 at the time) it took us half an hour to an hour for us to figure it out. The litmus test? My buddy, playing a dwarven fighter, "I expect we'll see a line of dwarven dancing girls over at that intersection in a moment." Cue well-bearded dancing girls and shrieks of dismay (and laughter) from the rest of the (non-dwarven) party.
STORYTIME OVER.
So, they expect traps? The daemonic presence provides. They expect creeping shadows and electrical faults? The daemonic presence provides. They expect hazards? The daemonic presence provides a deadfall consisting of a collapsing macrobattery magazine. Powered armour or no, nobody soaks a macrobattery shell and likes it.
A warp taint also means that you can roll on the psychic phenomena table (or the perils table) and apply it to some random location when they exacerbate it. Apply penalties to PP tests if you have a Librarian.
I already wrote this up somewhere in a different thread, but I really like the idea of ships fusing together sideways and upside-down, with differently functioning gravity fields. Even if someone remembers to activate the magboots (thus avoiding the dreaded falling damage), it can play all kinds of havoc like unfastened objects suddenly falling "upwards" when crossing a doorway to a different ship and having the floor suddenly becoming the ceiling. Add ceiling tiles which are metal, but not exactly designed to hold the 200+ Kg of a fully armed SM, and you can have some nice surprises - including various Ag tests.
You mentioned that the hulk is made mostly of Imperium ships, depending what vessels you can have some unique hazards.
Rogue trader vessels may contain all manner of plant or xenos life. One thing you may want to consider as an environmental or per turn affliction, since time travels at varying rates in the warp you could have a sample of xeno plant on one of the attached RT ships which, due to an incalculable time in the warp, has grown into thick foliage which restricts movement. I'm sure you can come up with something painful about it, maybe barbs/acid in the plant stem etc. So the team have to cut or burn their way through.
Also to build on musungu's idea of gravity fluctuations it may be possible to have the gravity generators go into overdrive, imposing effects similar to a grav gun being deployed, as their progress slows to a crawl fighting the ships high gravity.
Any mechanicus vessels, Xenos or still RT vessels which got fused may hold rare incomprehensible technology. Consider something like stasis fields, localised time disruptions.
"As you're walking through the hull, you notice that Brother Priam has stopped mid step. Meanwhile *to Brother Priam* You notice your squad mates have suddenly taken on an immense burst of speed and seem to be a few steps ahead of you."
Localised time distortions slowing various squad members actions or require them to sidetrack to locate the source of the distortion and free them.
Could also just use generators and loose power leads. The armour may still suffer some ill effects from a few million volts
Could also just use generators and loose power leads. The armour may still suffer some ill effects from a few million volts
They'd probably not enter such an area to begin with. At least not venture deep into it.
As for gravity, depending on what route they choose, it may play a role in an encounter.
So, for the sake of variety, I'll pass on it this mission. Anyway, this thread has given me some ideas already, thanks guys.
Alex
Edited by ak-73Allow me to put my fellow GM's Space Hulk Random Encounters:
Roll 1d100, then divide the result by 2 rounding up.
1. Mutated ancestors of the crew, filthy warp-tainted spawns which can only be redeemed throurgh incineration.
2. Same as above - but it's mutated xenos we're talking about!
3. A bunch of orks. Those greenskins infest all the galaxy, and here they split into gangs and eagerly fight each other or any newcomers.
4. Chaos dreadnought filled with bloodlust is lurking thurough the decks and bays of immence ship. He will attempt to destroy PC's lander and docking bay before saying hello.
5. Small, deranged hermit techno-cult which boarded this once devoid of life vessel and tuned its cogitators and subsystems to near-perfect condition. They are very disappointed by your interference. Very disappointed.
6. Stasis-chamber with Eversor Assasin inside. Emergency activation ritual is almost complete, a small interference might be enough to do the trick.
7. Fallen space marine apothecary with gene-seeds collected by him. Who knows how being lost in the warp altered them?
8. Strange skeleton-like mechanisms are spread across the ship, mostly in cargoholds and workshops. They look lifeless... for now.
9. Your average human crew. They desperately try to repair their ship, but with little sucsess. If a visitor touches one of them - he will turn to dust, and this is when the party begins.
10. Iron Man AI from legendary times of Golden Age. He is so glad to see living, breathing human beings aboard - his former guests died after a mere century of his favorite game.
11. Ruthless rogue trader was here before you and left armed guards to keep relics and treasures aboard secure before he arrives with transport voidship and escorts.
12. Genesteelers. How very original.
13. Cargohold has everything needed to perform Exterminatus upon a planet - viral bombs, cyclonic torpedoes and so on. What else is inside is already irrelevant, question is what planet was condemned, why, and is it still possible to deliver the payload before this planet causes more harm?
14. Hopelessly mad psyker screams absurd things in his delusion, and he is the only one who is alive of all the crew.
15. This once was a piligrim transport with huge statue of the god-emperor decorating the main cathedral. Today a cult with bloody, delusional parody of the Creed worships the statue and offers it sacrifices - heretics, mutants and outsiders. Especially outsiders.
16. There is a huge black mirror in captains quarters. It reflects everything a tiny bit warped or with a tiny lapse in time, and this is very unsettling - for a good reason.
17. Small black box with one activation rune on it - it looks like archeotech or xenotech. Is someone is suicidal enough to push the button the box will play a short tune and nothing else will happen... at first.
18. Stasis chamber with another kill-team fully equipped for combat.
19. A group of acolytes with their weapons drawn and a cooling body of radical inquisitor armed with demonic weapon.
20. Squats - these exodites escaped the Great Devourer thanks to this space hulk.
21. Tzeentch. He plotted your arrival and has a proposition you wan't be able to decline - or so he believes.
22. The ship is sweeped clean, there is no damage and no traces of how this all happened.
23. The crew is messily murdered by daemons and according to captain's log this ship has came from grim future of the 43d millenium after setting sail into the warpstorm. This log contains all kinds of interesting notes about M43 - but were the logs twisted by immaterium or not - that is the question.
24. Stasis chamber with fully-equipped Word Bearers chaplain from the times before Lorgar started having doubts about Imperial Truth.
25. Corpses of PC's lie on the deck of the ship as they arrive aboard. This time-warping trap is caused by warp, and now PCs have very little time to alter the present and make them becoming corpses they have seen an unlikely variant of the future.
26. All logs and data-crypts are deliberately and throughly destroyed, Machine Spirit is exorcised from the ship, all displays show only static. But something keeps drawing your attention to these displays. Maybe something is still hidden within?
27. Techno-miracle of a ship and Mechanicus explorator fleet which is eager to get it. So eager, in fact, that it can begin confrontation even with astartes or the inquisitor of your ship - but this strategy implies no witnesses left alive.
28. Previously unknown STC. Looks like it is working fine. Yeah, indeed.
29. Tau vessel is eager to repair the crippled imperial transport ship and deliver its cargo - poor, hungry imperial refugees and war orphans to Tau Empire for the greater good.
30. Ship is devoid of life but filled with marble statues of crewmen and officers at work. Auspex shows that thi is just a marble, but the statues look uncannyly alive.
31. Immense librarium.
32. Heavy armored vehicles, which bear markings of Mars forges but their design doesn't look familiar - or even human.
33. Golden ring. If you heat it you will see runes looking like eldars, but the language is obviously different.
34. Duct Tape STC
35. Eldar Webway portal.
36. There is a single Magos aboard, and the cargoholed is filled by spare parts of some immence mechanism said Magos is fanatically eager to assemble.
37. Some old heretical writings.
38. Smaller ship is docked to bigger one, both ships are devoid of life. Obviously, smaller ship's crew wanted to loot the bigger one but something gone very wrong.
39. 12 000 Astartes Bolters - too bad that STC for their bolts was lost 4 millenia ago.
40. The whole space hulk is but an anchor for huge and puzzling warp-anomaly.
41. The ship is haunted by former crew and ghosts can affect the events aboard. The only way to get rid of them is to give their corpses to the void.
42. This was a flying laboratory of Magos Biologos, and something gone wrong during experiments. What exactly? Crewmen turned into zombies are a good hint.
43. Statues of angelic beings which close their face with hands as if they weep. Statues never appear on the same place twice, and no crew is to be found. The only thing you can find is "Don't blink" written on the bulkhead with blood.
Actually, crew can keep their existance even in this state and the will nicely ask any intruder to leave using writings in blood. They will only be nicely at first.
44. Crew, turned into savage cannibals.
45. This is inquisitorial Black Ship, where cargoholds are full by psykers put into artificial sleep. Unfortunately, arcane security systems have weakend and psyker's collective nightmares begin to manifest aboard.
46. This Ordo Xenos ship once carried numerous dangerous xenos for interragation or research in its stasis chambers. Good news - those organisms could help the holy Inquisition if safely delivered. Bad news - ship will not be able to keep stasis chambers online for much longer. Very bad news - some of the chambers are already offline and open.
47. Ship and crew are fine, and living angels of emperor's wrath are welcomed aboard as honoured guests. But the ship was supposed to be lost to the warp and auspex readings show it has been navigating the warp with its Gellar fields offline.
48. Ship is empty, unmanned and unpowered, but something is blocking the auspex trying to investigate its insides and after a few days of walking through the decks it becomes clear that ship is much larger inside than it is from outside.
49. Entrenching servitors turned this ship into bastion filled with razor-wire, mines and sentry turrets of all kinds. The main cogitator, which can shut the defences down is located in the most secured hold reserved for very important cargo - who knows what relics are there with it?
50. Grey Knights space marine in a state of self-induced coma holds a huge ancsient tome. Servo-joints of his suit of armour are deliberately jammed in a way which looks like prevents the book from opening itself.
Edited by Chaplain
Micro-meteor bombardment- tiny rocks travelling at high enough velocity to punch through hull sections (and armour).
A ship's reactor has 'melted down', burning through it's containment and it is now slowly melting a path through the space hulk.
Corrupted servitors. The Emperor Protects has stats for these- or you could go crazy with a giant 'forklift' servitor running amok...
Compromised integrity- a section of the 'hulk starts to break apart. Or the other way around- centrifical force/gravity anomalies cause a section of the 'hulk to start compacting.
-And I know you know about this, ak-73 , but for people new to the Forum who clicked on this because they also need more space hulk stuff, check out my home-made SPACE HULK VERMIN with the link in my signature below.
Edited by Adeptus-B