I have my team going on a little romp through the tunnels of an abandoned gigantic fort and want to have them tasked with hunting down and retrieving five teeth from *insert terrible beast here.*

Those of you with more experience than me, what beasts would be sufficiently fun and a challenge for a group of 6 rank 5 acolytes? What would you suggest?

Lictor. A ***** to find and a nightmare in close quarters.

6 chars of level 5 can take it down but it will still be hard.

I'l' look up some others once i get home.

Tunnels are a good environment to meet some Ambull's

Haven't looked at the stats in a while, but maybe the Fenksworld Pit Thing? How it even got there can be an adventure in itself.

five teeth from a menupausing-under hiver. =D

I was leaning toward Amsbull or Pit Thing for a while and I still might go that route.

I am going to steer clear of any Nids as they wouldn't really fit with this particular mission (I am a player in the group running a side mission PbP during some down-time our RL group is having). The Lictor would be vicious, but I am looking more for a couple monsters rather than one big one.

Some details: A group of 6 "friendly" Blood Axe Orks are going to task the group with bringing them back 6 teeth from the beasts that roam the abandoned tunnels (this is after the group has been tasked with removing the Orks. Of course this could all be for naught if they just kick the door in, frag out, and start unloading with full auto fire).

Maybe a Fenksworld Pit Thing with some of its children (modified stats). In a random encounter perhaps the group would be forced to kill one of the children and then momma would be really pissed.

How tough are the Pit Things? I remember that they look really rough. But I cant recall any stats.

How tough are the Pit Things? I remember that they look really rough. But I cant recall any stats.

That depends. They've got Fear 2, and they have a seriously weaksauce anti-psychic power aura with a 15 meter range. But neither is likely to be a huge problem to a crew of Rank 6 Acolytes.

Damage-wise Pit Things are relatively weak (d10+10R), and while they have a reasonable chunk of hit points, they've also got the Bestial Trait which means they'll flee pretty easily. In addition, Pit Things are mindless, so as opponents they're completely disorganised and use no tactics beyond trying to eat the closest guy.

+++

If you use a brood with a slightly more dangerous Brood Mother who'll never run while another Pit Thing is alive, you rule that their anti-Psy auras stack, and you rule that that the Pit Things can use pack tactics while the Brood Mother is alive, you may have the makings of a decent challenge for your Acolytes.

I know you nixed the Lictor, but that would be my personal choice. Lictors make for incredibly awesome combat encounters when the Acolytes are strong enough that you can fully unleash the beast against them.

I know you nixed the Lictor, but that would be my personal choice. Lictors make for incredibly awesome combat encounters when the Acolytes are strong enough that you can fully unleash the beast against them

Oh, I have no doubt. But, alas, the actual GM of this group has the final say and I would like to stay in his relatively good graces. One day we will fight our Lictor and it will be glorious.

I love the idea of the brood mother and her offspring. Our psyker is pretty weak as it is, focusing on divinity and having minor powers that are much more suited at countering technologically inclined enemies or buffing the group, so the anti-psyker thing will serve as an annoyance. Albeit, it will be a very funny annoyance because the group really likes giving the Psyker sh!t, especially if he doesnt aid in combat at all.

Hello Pearldrum,

mind sharing a bit more of the Background of the "fort" the characters are going through and the world this fort is on?
Tunnels in Magnagorsk have other things at the ready then tunnels under a fort in Klybo .

Anway, I would suggest -not- to take the "big beasts". It was a long while that I played that game (frankly,I think the rules suck!) but my experience is that pc at this rank can dish out an awful lot of damage. And since Players are smart, they tend to hit first.

How about:
- having a nest of some rat-like creatures the size of small dogs that have different in-species breeds (like ants have)? The tooth the Orks want are those of the "prime guard" animals...and These are not the once securing the outer Perimeters not are they those who will be first to respond.
To add Problems to injury, the bites and scratches of the things are highly infectious. The wounds "enflame" in a matter of half an hour (penalties if the Toughness tests fail) and somebody might lose an arm the next day to come..if good medical care isn´t in reach (give them a nice cyber arm AFTER the adventure, so don´t tell them before).

- those beasts being the "Apex predators" of a Micro-ecoystem that has formed in the tunnel? I once wrote up a Kind of "acid slugs" for "Hive Volg". If those are the "bread and butter" of said tunnel-eco System and the things hunting those are shy and stealthy, the real Problem could be dealign with that stubborn acid slugs while searching for a trace for the real pray

- the orks are mistaking and the beasts are mechanic in nature. Perhaps some Kind of cyber Mastiff that used to be part of the defense of the fort. The Thing should not be in prime conditin anmyore, but ist "weaponary" would still be far from "primitive" and thereby able to harm the acolytes. Especially in Close quartes. Still, that would be EASY pres


EDIT: and what is that Group made up of?
"3 assassins and 2 psykers " calls for far different measures then " a scum, a cleric, a guardsmen and a tech priest. The typical "tactical loud-out" would be nice to know, too

Sorry for all the questions, but I aim to find a tailored answer

Hello Pearldrum,

mind sharing a bit more of the Background of the "fort" the characters are going through and the world this fort is on?

Hey, buddy. Sure. This small world was once a fortress-world during some long-forgotten campaign. When the system was finally securely in Imperial hands, the forts were all abandoned and slowly the world turned into a de-facto agri-planet. One fort has stayed open, however, and it thrives as the most popular watering-hole in the system. It is always open with the doors locked "From Dusk until Dawn" for unknown reasons. There is a lot of political intrigue and various NPCs that I have come up with all pursuing their various interests keeping the PCs entertained and wanting more. So far, it has been going great.

The Fort itself has 5 stories above ground and 5 stories below. It has a perimeter wall and guard towers as well as an electrified fence outside of that. It is connected to various external bunkers now in disuse that dot the landscape around it in all directions. These can be accessed via underground roads from the basement level four. It was a means to move men and materiel to reinforce defensive positions back when the fort was operational. The top three floors are all bars, clubs, dance floors, music and entertainment (think that asteroid in Mass Effect 2 whose name escapes me). The top two floors are occupied by the club owners and their retinue.

The bottom two basement floors are marketplaces and living quarters for guests and workers. The third floor I have intentionally left inaccessible so future games and the actual GM can utilize it however they want. The fourth floor has been described and the fifth floor is a "fort-within-a-fort" that was used as a last-stand fall back position back in the day. The Orks currently occupy this fifth floor. It has access to a hidden underground hangar bay which is how the Orks entered the establishment without scaring the **** out of the guests.

To address the "meat" of your response: those are good ideas. I may hold on to them or pass them up to the actual GM for a later encounter. As of right now, I have already written up the stats for a Pit Thing "Brood Mother" and her lesser "Broodlings." The group has yet to encounter any random beasts and this will be a good first run. I might also throw some of your suggestions at them after this battle sometime.

I especially like the wounds getting enflamed and them losing appendages if things don't get fixed. There is a more in-depth story regarding the Orks' presence and why they haven't left the fort yet. Basically, they brought the Pit Thing with them (sedated) and let it loose intending to hunt it for sport. They didn't know it was pregnant and now it is a threat they are having trouble (and a lot of fun) dealing with.

and what is that Group made up of?

We have a Guardsman, Scum, Psyker, Assassin, Tech Priestess, and an Adept. We are pretty well rounded.

Since you already have made up your mind regarding your beasties I will simply pester you with some random stuff to incorporate while you are the GM and have them down in that bunker complex.

The place would not be overly dangerous in its own right, so. People party above it, many a looter will have delved down there over the course of the years and almost all valuables will have been stripped away by the PDF/Imperial Guard before they “abandoned” the installation. After all, it is not like that place was devastated in the war, was it? Last but not least, the mere presence of that Pit Things will have driven off most other things living there expect those quick and small enough to hide from it. Or those too dumb to flee.


Environmental Effect: Stale Air
If the lower levels aren´t officially used anymore, there will be no powered ventilation systems that helps bringing fresh air down there. While the complex is large in itself, it wasn´t used for a –long- time. If you feel like it, you could impose a routine(+20) Toughness test on the characters after a couple of hours (or a strenuous scene like “combat” or “running” or “breaking up something that was sealed”. If you use “a couple of hours”, the TB is a good rule of thumb for the “hours” the pc can go on before needing a check.

If the character in questions does not pass the test, she will gain a point of fatigue. This is not successive. Once a character suffers from that point, she will not get another for this environmental effect. If the air is just “stale/used up” it will not make you drop in its own right.

Task: Opening Blast Doors
Since this was a military bunker complex meant to be held against invading troops I guess there will be a lot of “blast doors” installed. Not as entrance doors to different areas but perhaps in the middle of corridors as well. Since the installation wasn´t in use for years, I guess those doors down below aren´t powered anymore. Blast doors usually have some means of “manually” opening them in case of a system power failure (and the power usually comes from a point “farest” form any possible entry angle of invading forces …just to get sure that THEY do not cut off the power).

So, you can ask for Strength tests ranging from “routine(+20)” to “difficult (-10)”, with the difficulty reflecting the relative amount of time the characters give themselves to get that door open. A failure means a level of fatigue; three level or five level of failures could mean a strained muscle which could be played as -1 to STB for the next one or two days.

Difficult 1 Minute; minus 5 seconds for every additional level of success
Challenging 2 Minutes; minus 5 seconds for every additional level of success
Ordinary 3 Minutes; minus 10 seconds for every additional level of success
Routine 5 Minutes; minus 15 seconds for every additional level of success

Of course, somebody with a bit of equipment could bypass the security circuits of the door systems. Use “Tech-Use” or “Security” or “Trade(Technomant)” and the table above, so the times are doubled and there is no fatigue to failed tests…if a character cannot do it quick, she simply has wasted time and can try again with a lower difficulty. Of course, the door needs to be POWERED for that. A Tech-Priest might to this with his Potentia Coil (and the matching talents)… or it could be done with a portable battery pact.

As they gear up to venture below, ask them for easy(+30) Common Lore (Tech or War) or “Trade”(Technomant) test.If they pass it, there characters are clever enough to foresee that kind of problem & know about the possible solutions to it. Needless to say, a lot of blast doors will already have been opened. Looters haven here, the orks have been here…

Oh! And if you want to give your characters a moment to pause…have them come along one or more a blast doors that were obviously bend out of shape by something large…doesn´t mean the Pit Thing actually broke it up, but finding those doors bend out of shape with a lot of large claw marks on the surface gives testimony of the size and ferocity of the thing they are going to face…

Ambient: Rats in the cellar
If there are humans, then there are rats. This has been true since the dawn of civilization, when we started hording stock. The characters will hardly see of the rats, so. They will see them hushing about in the corner of the beams of the light sources they carry with them, will hear them in the air ducts above them & see their droppings litter the floor in some places. Perhaps they see a dead cadaver or have some jumping at them if they corner them accidently (no real danger, so!). These creatures are NOT the fat, large things you might see in our sewers today. And they are not half as numerous. They will be much smaller, and leaner. Not much waste to go around and no supplies left. The businesses above might simply drop down there waste along old waste chutes, so. The rats feed mainly from this trash and waste from the business going on above them and hunt the insects and other small vermin that inhabit the complex as well.

If you want to give the characters a clue about the location of a PitThing, have a score of those run towards and past them in PANIC. The aura of those things should be enough to drive them around in large numbers, making them dashing about in the open as their instincts order them to GET AWAY. And again.. the rats are NOT a danger to the acolytes. They are ambience. If the characters fail an awareness test, you can explain to them that they dismissed the sound/motion (of the real danger) as another sign of the rat infection “at first”.


Creature: Grimeslugs
The “Grimslugs” are either native to the planet or they were “brought in” early on with the first settlers…just like sailor ships of the old times spread the rats over the world. Those creatures are best described as naked slugs, but they have only one eye socket, have a much more malleable body (which allows even the largest examples to press themselves through cracks about 4 inches wide) and have color best described as “a pale and dirty yellow”.

The “new born” about the size of a thumb but from that point they grow in size slowly but constantly. Most are the size of dogs and the truly “old ones” have reached the mass of a human (cowering on all fours, so). The slow moving creatures are not a danger but a pest. If something but another of their kind moves close to them, they form pseudo-mouthes on their body and spew forth digestive juices onto them. Those stink, they temporarily blind if they hit the eyes (10% chance) and cause a burning sensation on the skin that will quickly die down to an itching skin rash after two combat round. If you don´t –know- about all of that, this comes as quiet a mean surprise, so. And I bet some of your characters will reach for a cantina to water down the “acid” they were just covered in J

The things simply slime about and take in all the grime and filth and any other organic material they get themselves over, breaking it up slowly, discharging all of the things they cannot digest with the slim they “sludge about on”. Their wobbly bodies are basically edible, but so foul tasting that most predators refrain from it unless starving …or hailing from a chem-wasted environment like the bowls of a hive... A human would need to pass a routine(+20) Toughness test to avoid throwing up).

Even a large grimeslug is easy to kill. No matter if you try to shoot it or to chop it up, no tests are needed to hit. But since there physique is so simple (and lacking “single vital organs) it needs between 2 and 6 shots (depending on size and weapon used) to kill the larger ones, no matter how well you place them. Flamers do the trick quiet well (one shot). Killing them in melee is easy as well, but one will end up with two to three “hits” of the digestive juices before it is done. Of course, one can just try to hurry by without getting hit by the juices they spew forth (routine Dexterity test).

In general, these things are meant as answer to “what way my brood eating, anyway?” Of course, the PitThings will decimate the population of Grimeslugs in the installation rapidly! In addition…it is good to give the characters something to waste their ammo on, isn´t it? The fact that “unknown large slimly things encountered in the dark” are good for the mood of a monster hunt is just icing on the cake.

Have your group encounter the “dried out” slime trails and later some smaller or large life specimen. And as the character get closer to the area where the PitThings roam, make them encounter the dried out “skin husks” of those slugs the PitThing have devoured on sight. This will look a lot like an old, discard piece of plastic plane.

Creature: Gloom Haunt
Do you own the “Creatures Anathema” Book? If this “fortress” has its own landing field for shuttles, some “Gloom Haunt” might be encountered below. Use only one of them, so, as a mean little surprise attack to one of the characters… a “side show”, so to speak. They will only encounter one of it. Shall they check the ceiling for the reminder of the session, so.


Ambience: Markings on the wall
Have the characters find some old marks made with chalk or spray paint on different walls. Very simple marks, like “X” or arrows point towards the location the characters came from. These are old marks from loot pickers and reclaimators who searched the place for valuables. A routine(+20) test for logic will not only tell that but that the arrows point towards the direction that lead to EXITS (“they found in and wanted to make sure they found back out again”) and that the “X” marks areas that had already been searched. These marks are YEARS old, but since there is no rain or cleaning servitors to wash them away…they simply stay.

I always suggest to ask for Intelligence (or Navigation) tests to avoid getting lost in large, unknown, unlit places. Unless the characters have some way of tracing their steps themselves.

Not be too much of a drag on this but why bother defining the creature at all?

All you need for a hideous beastie is a vague idea and a simple (D10 based) statblock.

Baically:

What does it look/sound/smell like?

How fast does it move?

how much does it hurt?

How much can I hurt it?

E.g.

Exampolorian quill-leaper

Ws 7 Bs 0 S 6 T 6 Ag 8 Per 8 blah blah blah

Av: 2 (all)

Wounds: 40

teeth 2d10+6

claws 1d10+6

Hairless tiger with grasshopper-style hind legs and quill-spines along it`s back.

Smells like sulphur in a butcher`s shop.

Sounds like a screaming child.

Job done.

Greg, I wanna give your response the time and effort it deserves but work has been swamping me. I will flesh it out later. Thanks.

Greg, I wanna give your response the time and effort it deserves but work has been swamping me. I will flesh it out later. Thanks.

Don´t worry Like every other internet troll, I am fine having something posted with somebody hitting a like button. Think of the dogs of Pavlov . So, I am still curious about that Ork thing. "Read ya!"

2 part response:

(…)most popular watering-hole in the system:( (…)
<< so the place is having a landing field for surface-to-orbit vehicles? Or is it just –near- such an installment? (see “Gloom Haunt” below)

(…)that Asteroid in Mass Effect 2 (…)
I do not even know “Mass Effect 1”. J But I guess I get the picture anyway

(..)orks (…)hanger (…)
I am curious: how did those smuggle themselves into the system, anyway? I got it that this world isn´t a “frontier world” anymore. And why did they strayed so far away from “ork turf” in the first place? As far as I got it they CAME here and aren´t any leftovers from this once-great-war, are they? Far away from home just for “hunting” a creature..they end up not hunting themselves, anyway.

Imported Fenksworld Pit Thing
How long has the “pregnant mother” and later “mother and brood” be around in the tunnesl? What did they feed upon? These things are LARGE and the larger a thing is the larger its prey needs to feed on (see “GrimeSlugs”)

1 - It is near an installment. The fort itself has been almost entirely converted over for use by patrons of the bar/club. Landing pads are connected by highway, sealed off from the outside world by electro-fencing for as of yet undefined reasons.

2 -

3 - As the team just found out, one of the bar's 2 owners (twin brothers who are **** near at war with one another who each have their own private security force within the fort) just revealed that he had been given a tip by an anonymous Rogue Trader to use this small group of Blood Axes to do smuggling runs for him. The Blood Axes, if you dont know, are probably the only Ork Klan that would ever be seen collaborating with humans. So, they did not have to smuggle themselves into the system. Imperial control is very lax here, and the Orks take all the risk for the owner. They have their own landing pad that connects to basement level 5.

For their most recent job, they unexpectedly refused payment and instead told the owner they wanted room and board. So, naturally he put them as far away from the general pop as possible on the b lvl 5. But now they won't leave and he doesnt know why. So he tasked the team with getting rid of them. Little do they know, they had a captured Pit Thing with them that they have been dying to hunt. They let it loose and now it is getting a little out of their hands. So THEY are going to now task the team with killing it and bringing back its TEEF.

4 - they have been in the tunnels for nearly a month now. Since their incubation and maturity period is up to our imaginations, I have deemed that well enough time for her to have her brood and for them to be adolescent. They have been eating whatever they can find. Lately they have had a taste of unlucky Ork. But there is a darker story to the Ork line in that aside from their hunt, they have also been gladiator fighting criminal humans with the owner's consent. We will see how the team reacts to that. As such, the Pit Things have also gotten their hands on some unlucky humans.

Back2Topic:

“We have a Guardsman, Scum, Psyker, Assassin, Tech Priestess, and an Adept. We are pretty well rounded.”

Since you already have made up your mind regarding your beasties I will simply pester you with some random stuff to incorporate while you are the GM and have them down in that bunker complex.

The place would not be overly dangerous in its own right, so. People party above it, many a looter will have delved down there over the course of the years and almost all valuables will have been stripped away by the PDF/Imperial Guard before they “abandoned” the installation. After all, it is not like that place was devastated in the war, was it? Last but not least, the mere presence of that Pit Things will have driven off most other things living there expect those quick and small enough to hide from it. Or those too dumb to flee.

Not too many looters. The owner's own private guards run a pretty tight ship, but lately since tensions have been so high, they have been slightly more lax. Perhaps there are fresh looters down there. There are no left over from the PDF/IG. This place actually saw very little battle. The Crusade that passed through was ill-led at best and the planet was unecessarily converted into a fortress world.

Environmental Effect: Stale Air

If the lower levels aren´t officially used anymore, there will be no powered ventilation systems that helps bringing fresh air down there. While the complex is large in itself, it wasn´t used for a –long- time. If you feel like it, you could impose a routine(+20) Toughness test on the characters after a couple of hours (or a strenuous scene like “combat” or “running” or “breaking up something that was sealed”. If you use “a couple of hours”, the TB is a good rule of thumb for the “hours” the pc can go on before needing a check.

If the character in questions does not pass the test, she will gain a point of fatigue. This is not successive. Once a character suffers from that point, she will not get another for this environmental effect. If the air is just “stale/used up” it will not make you drop in its own right.

This isn't a bad idea. In fact, I like it a lot. It just goes to show that not much thought goes into the very bottom level other than housing undesireables.

Task: Opening Blast Doors

Since this was a military bunker complex meant to be held against invading troops I guess there will be a lot of “blast doors” installed. Not as entrance doors to different areas but perhaps in the middle of corridors as well. Since the installation wasn´t in use for years, I guess those doors down below aren´t powered anymore. Blast doors usually have some means of “manually” opening them in case of a system power failure (and the power usually comes from a point “farest” form any possible entry angle of invading forces …just to get sure that THEY do not cut off the power).

So, you can ask for Strength tests ranging from “routine(+20)” to “difficult (-10)”, with the difficulty reflecting the relative amount of time the characters give themselves to get that door open. A failure means a level of fatigue; three level or five level of failures could mean a strained muscle which could be played as -1 to STB for the next one or two days.

Difficult 1 Minute; minus 5 seconds for every additional level of success

Challenging 2 Minutes; minus 5 seconds for every additional level of success

Ordinary 3 Minutes; minus 10 seconds for every additional level of success

Routine 5 Minutes; minus 15 seconds for every additional level of success

Of course, somebody with a bit of equipment could bypass the security circuits of the door systems. Use “Tech-Use” or “Security” or “Trade(Technomant)” and the table above, so the times are doubled and there is no fatigue to failed tests…if a character cannot do it quick, she simply has wasted time and can try again with a lower difficulty. Of course, the door needs to be POWERED for that. A Tech-Priest might to this with his Potentia Coil (and the matching talents)… or it could be done with a portable battery pact.

As they gear up to venture below, ask them for easy(+30) Common Lore (Tech or War) or “Trade”(Technomant) test.If they pass it, there characters are clever enough to foresee that kind of problem & know about the possible solutions to it. Needless to say, a lot of blast doors will already have been opened. Looters haven here, the orks have been here…

Oh! And if you want to give your characters a moment to pause…have them come along one or more a blast doors that were obviously bend out of shape by something large…doesn´t mean the Pit Thing actually broke it up, but finding those doors bend out of shape with a lot of large claw marks on the surface gives testimony of the size and ferocity of the thing they are going to face…

Ambient: Rats in the cellar

If there are humans, then there are rats. This has been true since the dawn of civilization, when we started hording stock. The characters will hardly see of the rats, so. They will see them hushing about in the corner of the beams of the light sources they carry with them, will hear them in the air ducts above them & see their droppings litter the floor in some places. Perhaps they see a dead cadaver or have some jumping at them if they corner them accidently (no real danger, so!). These creatures are NOT the fat, large things you might see in our sewers today. And they are not half as numerous. They will be much smaller, and leaner. Not much waste to go around and no supplies left. The businesses above might simply drop down there waste along old waste chutes, so. The rats feed mainly from this trash and waste from the business going on above them and hunt the insects and other small vermin that inhabit the complex as well.

If you want to give the characters a clue about the location of a PitThing, have a score of those run towards and past them in PANIC. The aura of those things should be enough to drive them around in large numbers, making them dashing about in the open as their instincts order them to GET AWAY. And again.. the rats are NOT a danger to the acolytes. They are ambience. If the characters fail an awareness test, you can explain to them that they dismissed the sound/motion (of the real danger) as another sign of the rat infection “at first”.

Creature: Grimeslugs

The “Grimslugs” are either native to the planet or they were “brought in” early on with the first settlers…just like sailor ships of the old times spread the rats over the world. Those creatures are best described as naked slugs, but they have only one eye socket, have a much more malleable body (which allows even the largest examples to press themselves through cracks about 4 inches wide) and have color best described as “a pale and dirty yellow”.

The “new born” about the size of a thumb but from that point they grow in size slowly but constantly. Most are the size of dogs and the truly “old ones” have reached the mass of a human (cowering on all fours, so). The slow moving creatures are not a danger but a pest. If something but another of their kind moves close to them, they form pseudo-mouthes on their body and spew forth digestive juices onto them. Those stink, they temporarily blind if they hit the eyes (10% chance) and cause a burning sensation on the skin that will quickly die down to an itching skin rash after two combat round. If you don´t –know- about all of that, this comes as quiet a mean surprise, so. And I bet some of your characters will reach for a cantina to water down the “acid” they were just covered in J

The things simply slime about and take in all the grime and filth and any other organic material they get themselves over, breaking it up slowly, discharging all of the things they cannot digest with the slim they “sludge about on”. Their wobbly bodies are basically edible, but so foul tasting that most predators refrain from it unless starving …or hailing from a chem-wasted environment like the bowls of a hive... A human would need to pass a routine(+20) Toughness test to avoid throwing up).

Even a large grimeslug is easy to kill. No matter if you try to shoot it or to chop it up, no tests are needed to hit. But since there physique is so simple (and lacking “single vital organs) it needs between 2 and 6 shots (depending on size and weapon used) to kill the larger ones, no matter how well you place them. Flamers do the trick quiet well (one shot). Killing them in melee is easy as well, but one will end up with two to three “hits” of the digestive juices before it is done. Of course, one can just try to hurry by without getting hit by the juices they spew forth (routine Dexterity test).

In general, these things are meant as answer to “what way my brood eating, anyway?” Of course, the PitThings will decimate the population of Grimeslugs in the installation rapidly! In addition…it is good to give the characters something to waste their ammo on, isn´t it? The fact that “unknown large slimly things encountered in the dark” are good for the mood of a monster hunt is just icing on the cake.

Have your group encounter the “dried out” slime trails and later some smaller or large life specimen. And as the character get closer to the area where the PitThings roam, make them encounter the dried out “skin husks” of those slugs the PitThing have devoured on sight. This will look a lot like an old, discard piece of plastic plane.

Creature: Gloom Haunt

Do you own the “Creatures Anathema” Book? If this “fortress” has its own landing field for shuttles, some “Gloom Haunt” might be encountered below. Use only one of them, so, as a mean little surprise attack to one of the characters… a “side show”, so to speak. They will only encounter one of it. Shall they check the ceiling for the reminder of the session, so.

Ambience: Markings on the wall

Have the characters find some old marks made with chalk or spray paint on different walls. Very simple marks, like “X” or arrows point towards the location the characters came from. These are old marks from loot pickers and reclaimators who searched the place for valuables. A routine(+20) test for logic will not only tell that but that the arrows point towards the direction that lead to EXITS (“they found in and wanted to make sure they found back out again”) and that the “X” marks areas that had already been searched. These marks are YEARS old, but since there is no rain or cleaning servitors to wash them away…they simply stay.

I always suggest to ask for Intelligence (or Navigation) tests to avoid getting lost in large, unknown, unlit places. Unless the characters have some way of tracing their steps themselves.

These are all awesome suggestions and ideas. Thank you for taking the time to write them out.

One thing left: I strongly suggest that you do not make the Orks ordering/hiring the "humees" to hunt the Pit Thing(s) for them .
Orks are not portrayed as "afraid to die". In Addition, they look down on those who are "weak" and if you don´t hunt/fight on your own but have others do it you ARE weak.

Instead, how about the Orks "asking" (bring it about as a mixture of a demand & a threat) to hunt the Beast with them?
If the Orks have a social pecking order based on small groups (perhaps 5 to 10) with the own small "bosses" and there was one Group that TRIED hunting that beast but failed (culled down to the Boss and perhaps another Ork survivor) that remaining Orks might be pretty pissed about all the jokes and arrogance the other "crewz" treat them with by now. They would try it again, but they are missing limbs (which was only very crudely replaced by now with hooks or pieces of steel or something) and the other Orks deems them unfit for the hunt now.

These two Orks might thereby "ask" the Players to join them in hunting the Things. This has the added value of having to Orks NPC around your characters can interact (squabble) with.