Greetings, brethern,

since my other ideas for the next adventure of my Friday-Group (uncovering and later storming of a illegal blood pit on Scintilla) still needs more time to stew, I intend to buy myself this by running a modified version of "Shades of Twilight" (PtU).

A thing that disappointed me was the ruling of the authors that there is atmosphere througout the entire hulk. I understand that they wanted to keep the fuzz (and danger!) of zero-air void combat out of it. But I think my players will not welcome that kind of treatment... and I think they actually might enjoy the tension of "oh-sweet-Emperor-let-me-be-able-to-patch-this" void suits leaks.

I gave the whole thing some thought till now, but would really appreciate some input from you fellow GM´s around here

My idea so far:
They will be issued Selenite armored void suits (see IH p.165); additional air supllies (raising the duration of air supply to 20hours and the overall weight to 25kg).Please take not that these are in fact two units with 10hours of air each. The units are mentioned to be changable without taking the suit of.
The suits are further mentioned to come with a "seal patching kit". Additional packs might be taken (1 pack = 1 kg).

This kit will be good for 10 applications. Each application can seal one "hole" in the suit

A ranged attack penetrating the armor counts as 1 hole
A melee attack penetrating the armor counts as 2 holes
if attack achieved 10+ damage (after AP) double the amount of holes
if attack has the tearing quality double the amount of holes.

Every round, a suit is losing 15 minutes worth of air for evey "hole" it has

A suit leaking air is reason for a Fear(+0) test (+10 for void born). This is treated as a fear test in a non-combat situation (penalty to other tests as long as the leak is not sealed)

As a full action, a pc might try to patch holes. This is a routine(+20) agility test (the suit will worsen this to +10) or simple (+40) if someone else is doing it for you.

While the concept is still cinematic (a suit cut open by a melee weapon might realistically be beyound patching) I think it brings a new danger to the field while not killing the pc outright. The Fear test is used to simulate the panic that might grap a pc/npc if air is leaking out.

I will not make the whole hulk "airless". There will be pockets of air inside some of the remains of imperial ships. But at the entry area, there will be no air. And in the final battle at the center of the hulk, there will be no air).

What is your opinon/comments/suggestions?

Throw in some resist cold tests if two holes are currently open, -10 at 3 and -20 at 4.
Failure should result in Fatigue or even actual frostbite damage (1d10+the number of holes minus toughness only)

S.

This was gone over previously, I'll see if I cannot locate the previous discussion to link in here.

-=Brother Praetus=-

When we played SoT, I gave the PCs access to the Boarding Armour (as well as a few rather mundane weapons like the Ironclaw shotgun and void-rounds) from the IH. I ruled for playability reasons (and because I thought it fitting for combat armour made specifically for boarding actions in the void) that the Boarding Armour is more or less self-sealing in a way.

In the beginning of the venture into the Space Hulk the PCs had to wear their helmets and had to activate their mag-boots, as it was zero atmosphere (besides about -270°C) and zero gravity. I also had the first encounter with the warp beasts in this condition, especially as this gave the warp beasts an even more alien character. A few moments before the encounter with the Dark Eldar scout I told them about the rune on their boarding armour that turned from amber to green and the void born Tech-Priest realized rather fast on his auspex that gravity, temperature and atmosphere was rather ‘normal’. Two of the PCs kept their helmets anyway and during the encounter with the Dark Eldar scout the groups Arbitrator suffered a salvo of splinter shots to the head (for about 2 wounds) and so his visor got a few cracks that unsettled him a lot…

Apart from a few sudden gravity changes in certain areas, I left it that way throughout the rest of the Hulk. My players were (rightly...) wondering a little where the other Acolyte group from Inquisitor Soldevan had/left their void suits though.

To cut a long story short, I won’t complicate matters further, as this adventure lives from being fast-paced and action oriented. Just leave a certain angst that their suits could be damaged and/or atmosphere suddenly disappears with short notice…

Just my opinion though.

Santiago said:

I'd like to interject that vacuum is not in fact cold or hot or anything of the sort. Temperature is a property of matter. There's a reason we use vacuum flasks to keep our coffee warm, it insulates and not much else temperature wise.

The real problem in such environments, assuming they manage to keep the air in their void suits, would be how to get rid of excess heat. Everything from basic metabolism to their weapons will produce heat. And that heat has very few places to go when surrounded on all sides by nothing.

The suits would probably have some way of dealing with at least their body heat. Rafter wall, it's done today on space suits. But their normal weaponry would become very temperamental.

Indeed, though not a scientific link I just pulled it up quickly:

http://www.damninteresting.com/outer-space-exposure

"When the human body is suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space, a number of injuries begin to occur immediately. Though they are relatively minor at first, they accumulate rapidly into a life-threatening combination. The first effect is the expansion of gases within the lungs and digestive tract due to the reduction of external pressure. A victim of explosive decompression greatly increases their chances of survival simply by exhaling within the first few seconds, otherwise death is likely to occur once the lungs rupture and spill bubbles of air into the circulatory system. Such a life-saving exhalation might be due to a shout of surprise, though it would naturally go unheard where there is no air to carry it.

In the absence of atmospheric pressure water will spontaneously convert into vapor, which would cause the moisture in a victim’s mouth and eyes to quickly boil away. The same effect would cause water in the muscles and soft tissues of the body to evaporate, prompting some parts of the body to swell to twice their usual size after a few moments. This bloating may result in some superficial bruising due to broken capillaries, but it would not be sufficient to break the skin.

Within seconds the reduced pressure would cause the nitrogen which is dissolved in the blood to form gaseous bubbles, a painful condition known to divers as “the bends.” Direct exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet radiation would also cause a severe sunburn to any unprotected skin. Heat does not transfer out of the body very rapidly in the absence of a medium such as air or water, so freezing to death is not an immediate risk in outer space despite the extreme cold.

For about ten full seconds– a long time to be loitering in space without protection– an average human would be rather uncomfortable, but they would still have their wits about them. Depending on the nature of the decompression, this may give a victim sufficient time to take measures to save their own life. But this period of “useful consciousness” would wane as the effects of brain asphyxiation begin to set in. In the absence of air pressure the gas exchange of the lungs works in reverse, dumping oxygen out of the blood and accelerating the oxygen-starved state known as hypoxia. After about ten seconds a victim will experience loss of vision and impaired judgement, and the cooling effect of evaporation will lower the temperature in the victim’s mouth and nose to near-freezing. Unconsciousness and convulsions would follow several seconds later, and a blue discoloration of the skin called cyanosis would become evident.

At this point the victim would be floating in a blue, bloated, unresponsive stupor, but their brain would remain undamaged and their heart would continue to beat. If pressurized oxygen is administered within about one and a half minutes, a person in such a state is likely make a complete recovery with only minor injuries, though the hypoxia-induced blindness may not pass for some time. Without intervention in those first ninety seconds, the blood pressure would fall sufficiently that the blood itself would begin to boil, and the heart would stop beating. There are no recorded instances of successful resuscitation beyond that threshold.

Though an unprotected human would not long survive in the clutches of outer space, it is remarkable that survival times can be measured in minutes rather than seconds, and that one could endure such an inhospitable environment for almost two minutes without suffering any irreversible damage. The human body is indeed a resilient machine."

Graspar said:

Uh, believe me, interstellar space is **** cold. About 270°C (almost 3°K) to be more precisely. As you said, temperature is (more or less) a property of matter, thus no matter equals to (almost) no temperature.

It's not a perfect vacuum for that matter, although moreso than your coffee flask for sure. Apart from that (and the reason I said 'almost') cosmic background radiation is the reaon for having a temperature at all (beyond absolute zero) in interstellar space.

Then riddle me this. How do you have temperature (which is, at the base level, the movement of particles) if you have no particles?

No vacuum is perfect (about one atom per cm3 for interstellar medium if memory serves me) and I'll quite happily concede that the few bits and pieces of matter that's scattered around interstellar space will be in thermal equilibrium with the cosmic background radiation at ~3 K. But that's wholly irrelevant for the purposes of a ruptured space suit.

Besides, the space hulk in question is fresh out of the warp. The temperature of it and stuff in it is not a question of physics but rather magic and GM fiat.

Graspar said:

You answered it yourself: (Almost) no particles = (almost) no temperature (i.e. ~3°K). The few degree Kelvin are just due to the ubiquitous cosmic background radiation of the big bang (i.e. a few photons, neutrinos and whatever other quanta).

Anyway, in a ruptured void suit your first problem is most probably the rapid decompression and the possibility of rapturing the lung and blood vessels (or any cells for that matter). Still, you would also freeze to death as any bodily on the surface of your skin (or whatever is beneath the rapture) and mucosa would evaporte rather fast. But as Graspar said, its a 'magical' space hulk straight from the warp und thus might be full of (thermal) radiation and whatnot. Besides, it happens in a solar system, so the thermal radiation of the stellar body therein might increase the temperature even further.

You answered it yourself: (Almost) no particles = (almost) no temperature (i.e. ~3°K). The few degree Kelvin are just due to the ubiquitous cosmic background radiation of the big bang (i.e. a few photons, neutrinos and whatever other quanta).

Well, as long as we're splitting hairs (which frankly appears to be all we can split. I see no real disagreement about physics here). The particles in your ruptured space suit would primarily consist of what little remained of your air, which would presumably be around room temperature. It would, at those densities and temperatures, take a good long while for brownian motion and what little conduction occurs to equalize the temperature. And also, thermal radiation from the body would help warm the surrounding particles some.

Graspar said:

Well, I am not a phsicist, but I think brownian motion can be more or less disregarded when you have such a difference in pressure between 'space' and 'body within ruptured void suit'. Any bodily fluid or mositure would abruptly evaporate (to desublimate seconds later) and the resulting evaporative (heat) loss chill you rather fast. I read somewhere a while ago that - if exposed to space - a body freezes in about an hour.

This is an interesting link by the way: http://www.slate.com/id/2171522/