The Moon is dead, but there is life on and in it. Deep under the surface where the polyp-trees stretch their paralyzed branches and release reified madness in mercury drops to the sky, beneath the caverns and hollows made when the ground shifted and made room for lunar slugs and beetle-bears, there are deposits of a strange, hard material like ceramic but somehow more pliable. This is where the dead lie, the terrible secrets of eons past that have been buried under ash and layers of strange decay.
The deposits, if you were to exhume them (and exhuming them is what it would be, for you would be digging up tombs and coffins), would be ovoid, like squashed spheres of white plastic. Sometimes they'd have crushed and bent articulated legs. There are doorways and openings. They are huge, a few more than a mile across. You'd see the tracks they dig through the strata as they so slowly gravitate towards each others, at a geological pace. They grow into each other like mitosis in reverse. Inside, they are dark, deactivated, fractal, and incomprehensible. They each served myriad purposes, once.
This is the main arena of dungeon-delving on the Moon. Or at least the most ripe for plunder; a latticeman doesn't have much to offer adventurers than a pile of slimy spacesuits and some rotted bones. But the vampire catacombs are jam-packed: filled with strange equipment, surgical labs, esoteric weapons, and of course, vampires.
Lunar vampires aren't stereotypical eastern European counts. In fact, they look like slightly-shriveled, dead versions of your friends. Sometimes literally. There's a 25% chance that one of the vampires you fight or interact with is a doppelganger of someone you know. There's a 1% chance it looks like you. They actually come from a different version or timeline of the Moon and Earth. It doesn't really matter; they're stuck here now, just like you. They look utterly human externally, but they wear strange elastic jumpsuits, and arcane bits of machinery cover them occasionally. They look like extras from a 60s-70s scifi television show, and their tombs are built to match, all formica and plastic and curves.
Their bones are black carbon, scintillating with strange elements. Their blood is thick and greenish, more like sap than blood. It carries the vampiric germ; anyone who drinks it, or is fed it, or is injected with it in one of the ancient surgical machines will become a thrall-vampire in 1 week, unless their blood is cleansed before that. Vampires have blunt, human teeth. Biting does the same damage as a human does, unless they use tongue. Their tongues are coated in microscopic saw teeth that rip flesh with horrifying ease, and they use these terrible appendages like sponges to soak up blood. They are inhumanly strong, and magnificently hard to kill. Vampire wars were once fought with vibroblades and sonic canons that could disassemble you at a molecular level.
They once created a race of Renfields out of conquered people, enslaved on their millenia-long conquest of the universe. The DNA slurried and combined and restructured, extruded and recombined with more and more victims. Slowly creating the space ghouls that now wander these white, darkened corridors, maintaining the slow workings of their kidnapper-masters. Renfields are diminutive, like hunched men. Their translucent flesh displays their glasslike bones and pumping lymph. (The vampires removed the Renfields' need for blood so as to not eat their own slaves.) Renfields won't harm adventurers, prefering to lure them into traps or their sleeping masters.
***
Vibroblade
Extremely sharp. Does 1d8+1 damage. Has 50 charges in its tenebrovoltaic battery. Using one charge activates the vibration motor, causing an additional 1d8 of damage, sawing through limbs like butter and leaving heavily bleeding, ragged stumps.
Molecular Disassembly Canon
A mass of tubes and wires with a series of Nixie tube-like glass bells underneath, filled with Sonic Ooze. Must be fed blood weekly, or the ooze dies. Firing it causes an electric shock to agitate the oozes, which send out a metasonic vibration through the tubes. Does d12 damage, exploding on a 1 or 12.
***
Lunar Vampire
HD 3 ATK 12 DEF as leather MV 16’, 6’ fly once per day Tongue 2d6 Bite or Weapon 1d6/1d6 Save 8 Int 10, 15 if recently fed Morale 4
Emaciated, near-feral, and weak. Shadows of the dread cosmic vampires they once spawned from. Crave blood all the time, made mad by their hunger. Must be decapitated, have their hearts ripped out or staked, or be burned. Want to eat flesh and regain their opulence.
Vampiric: Regains 1d4 hp whenever it drinks blood.
Rose-Devil
HD 2 ATK 14 DEF as leather MV 18’ Thorns 1d6 Tendrils 1d6/1d6 Save 8 Int 16 Morale 3
Ancient vampires whose flesh has finally dissolved away from hunger. Bendy and thorned. Heads look like skulls made of wicker mixed with rose blossoms. They bathe in blood to grow back flesh. Can only be burned, or utterly dismembered. Want to become whole again.
Regeneration: When bled on, gain 1 hp.
Renfield
HD 1 ATK 10 DEF unarmored MV 12' Bite 1d4 Save 6 Int 8 Morale 6
Translucent, jellylike. Born from vats in the cellships, reconstituted collected biomass. They eat flesh too, but don't hunt; they'll eat whatever's left after their masters finish. Want to faithfully serve the vampires.
Translucent: Advantage on stealth rolls while in dim light or darkness.
Showing posts with label moon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moon. Show all posts
September 28, 2019
February 24, 2019
Equipment on the Moon
So last time I wrote, it was about the Cat's Cradle, which is the easiest and most safe way of getting to the Moon, which is really saying something. This post is about what your players might find on the Moon, or should've brought with them in the first place.
Here you are. You've survived your trainride up the artery of the Cat's Cradle in one piece, and your train comes out into a vast, tiled room with many vaulted doors and people in bulky suits. The train belches one last bit of exhaust as the air is siphoned out of the room (to be bottled and compressed and sold as cheap oxygen tanks) and the huge doors open, the bright light of the sun cutting through the thin glow of shielded lamps along the walls. Your carriage judders as the rail's guage switches, and you're suddenly out, with a huge expanse of blackness above you and an endless plain of ash around you. You're finally on the Moon...
Spacesuits: They aren't exactly dedicated for space; a lot of people just modify diving suits, or vice versa. Anything that keeps the pressure, temperature, and oxygen inside roughly survivable will work. Some brave souls rely on magic or Breaking, but that kinda shit doesn't always work on the Moon (1-in-4 chance for Visitor artifacts to fail). Most of them take up a lot of inventory space and make it tough to move deftly, and the ones that don't are delicate beyond belief.
Euler Vacuum Suit
Cost: 200 slugs, 40 minutes
Bulky, metal, stolid. Reduces your Dexterity by 3, and every hour you spend walking wastes more of your reserves (gain a point of exhaustion, if you're playing 5e.) AC like plate. Takes up 6 inventory spaces, makes you encumbered, whatever; they fucking suck to walk in, but who wants to walk on the Moon anyway? It's weird, and cold, and haunted, and there's always a wind blowing that you can feel through your suit (its a metaphysical wind, tugging at one of your souls). Euler suits can utilize two tanks of oxygen at one time, and have slots for four more in reserve.
LeBeaux Walkabout
Cost: 250 slugs, 50 minutes
These suits are barely more than inflated, sealed leather and harnesses for your oxygen tanks, but they're very stylish and don't restrict movement. LeBeaux's is a famous department store back in the fractured land of Massachusetts, and they regularly shipped these designer suits up to the burgeoning lunar cities back in the early days of the colonization efforts, but most experienced spacers don't put much stock in their protection. No movement or Dexterity penalties, but you also can't put armor on under it. Any slashing or piercing damage you receive punctures the suit; you have 1d4 rounds before your air runs out to fix the leak or die. You also need to wear lots of layers of wool or synthetic fabric underneath, because the Moon is cold. Holds one tank, with one in reserve.
Hargrave Spikesuit
Cost: illegal, because whoever owns one must be a pirate
The pirate-lord Hargrave doesn't make suits, but his crews cobble them together from stolen suits. They usually scrub the blood out first, too. They weld nails and screws and razors to the outside of scavenged spacesuits, deterring predator beasts and lunar militia alike. They hug you to rupture your suits, if they can. Reduces your Dexterity by 1d3, and have similar exhaustion effects as the Euler suits. AC like studded armor, and they take up 4 inventory spaces. A critical hit against them knocks a piece off. Making a grapple or unarmed attack against someone while wearing a spikesuit does an additional 1d4 piercing damage on a success. Can hold 1d2 tanks of oxygen, with none in reserve except those you actually carry.
Light sources: The Moon is cold. It's also dark. Even during the day, it's a doomed adventurer who forgets about light. There's no (or at least very little) atmosphere on the Moon, and the sun shines with an intensity not known on Earth, but the Moon is riddled with rocky outcroppings and caves and forests of strange, petrified madness-trees, and you can be plunged into absolute darkness at any time. Ash-storms roil about on the surface, and the ancient halls of the dead beneath the ground have long been abandoned and rendered dark.
Arc-Lamp
Cost: 50 slugs, 10 minutes
You can clip these lights to your suit. Provide them with a charge, either thaumaturgic or via a battery, and they produce a bright blue beam that cuts through darkness like a knife for 60-70'. They get hot. It takes about 6 hours before you would even start to feel that through a suit, but if you're just holding one, it's too hot to hold after about an hour of continuous use. They need to be hooked up to your oxygen supply, but they don't consume an about to be appreciable.
Moonstone
Cost: 175 slugs, 35 minutes
Veins of luminescent silicate flow beneath the surface of the Moon like silver blood. It has a similar composition to the reified madness produced in an aurora by the polyp-trees. Most scholars agree that it is the same thing, but acted on by the miniscule pressure of the Moon over billions of years. Either way, the chunks of it glow brighter when shaken, so a lot of people put them in cages attached to their suits and power them that way. They're toxic, so don't touch them with your bare hands. If you do, roll on your favorite mutation or madness table and gain a random effect. Some people grind them up and snort them. They produce a soft white light in a 20' radius, or 40' if shaken vigorously, which then fades away after 3 rounds.
Plutonium Orbiter
Cost: 100 slugs, 20 minutes
A bit of Plutonium, struck from an elemental. It circles your head and emits an etiolated orange light in a 5' radius, leaving tracers and emitting sine-wave sparks as it does. If someone casts a mind-reading spell on you, they catch some of the Plutonium as well, and it's pissed. Looking at it too long gives you a headache. You can cast the spell light (even if you don't know it or have spellcasting normally) on anything made of metal, as long as you keep ahold of it. The orbiter does 1 point of radiation damage every day you have it equipped, and after every month that passes, gain a cumulative chance to mutate.
Vial of Lunar Slug Oil
Cost: 20 slugs, 4 minutes
Glass bottle with a steel stopper. A substance that isn't really oil, harvested from Lunar Slugs (creatures that aren't really slugs). It smells like lemons and graveyard wind, and glows intensely when fed meat. The oil is actually the slugs' way of reproducing, each drop containing millions of microscopic lunar slugs that are usually hibernating. When a food source is introduced, they begin feasting and fighting, causing the chemical reaction that makes them glow. After 5 feedings, the glow is dimmer as the slugs die, and after 10 one slug remains, large enough now as to fill the vial with no room to spare. When you find it, the vial has been fed 1d4+1 times already.
Here you are. You've survived your trainride up the artery of the Cat's Cradle in one piece, and your train comes out into a vast, tiled room with many vaulted doors and people in bulky suits. The train belches one last bit of exhaust as the air is siphoned out of the room (to be bottled and compressed and sold as cheap oxygen tanks) and the huge doors open, the bright light of the sun cutting through the thin glow of shielded lamps along the walls. Your carriage judders as the rail's guage switches, and you're suddenly out, with a huge expanse of blackness above you and an endless plain of ash around you. You're finally on the Moon...
Spacesuits: They aren't exactly dedicated for space; a lot of people just modify diving suits, or vice versa. Anything that keeps the pressure, temperature, and oxygen inside roughly survivable will work. Some brave souls rely on magic or Breaking, but that kinda shit doesn't always work on the Moon (1-in-4 chance for Visitor artifacts to fail). Most of them take up a lot of inventory space and make it tough to move deftly, and the ones that don't are delicate beyond belief.
Euler Vacuum Suit
Cost: 200 slugs, 40 minutes
Bulky, metal, stolid. Reduces your Dexterity by 3, and every hour you spend walking wastes more of your reserves (gain a point of exhaustion, if you're playing 5e.) AC like plate. Takes up 6 inventory spaces, makes you encumbered, whatever; they fucking suck to walk in, but who wants to walk on the Moon anyway? It's weird, and cold, and haunted, and there's always a wind blowing that you can feel through your suit (its a metaphysical wind, tugging at one of your souls). Euler suits can utilize two tanks of oxygen at one time, and have slots for four more in reserve.
 |
| Chester E. McDuffee's patented diving suit - 1911 |
LeBeaux Walkabout
Cost: 250 slugs, 50 minutes
These suits are barely more than inflated, sealed leather and harnesses for your oxygen tanks, but they're very stylish and don't restrict movement. LeBeaux's is a famous department store back in the fractured land of Massachusetts, and they regularly shipped these designer suits up to the burgeoning lunar cities back in the early days of the colonization efforts, but most experienced spacers don't put much stock in their protection. No movement or Dexterity penalties, but you also can't put armor on under it. Any slashing or piercing damage you receive punctures the suit; you have 1d4 rounds before your air runs out to fix the leak or die. You also need to wear lots of layers of wool or synthetic fabric underneath, because the Moon is cold. Holds one tank, with one in reserve.
 |
| I tried to find one that fit more with the idea, but "vintage leather suit" was a bad idea to google |
Hargrave Spikesuit
Cost: illegal, because whoever owns one must be a pirate
The pirate-lord Hargrave doesn't make suits, but his crews cobble them together from stolen suits. They usually scrub the blood out first, too. They weld nails and screws and razors to the outside of scavenged spacesuits, deterring predator beasts and lunar militia alike. They hug you to rupture your suits, if they can. Reduces your Dexterity by 1d3, and have similar exhaustion effects as the Euler suits. AC like studded armor, and they take up 4 inventory spaces. A critical hit against them knocks a piece off. Making a grapple or unarmed attack against someone while wearing a spikesuit does an additional 1d4 piercing damage on a success. Can hold 1d2 tanks of oxygen, with none in reserve except those you actually carry.
 |
| Like this, but somehow more horrifying |
Light sources: The Moon is cold. It's also dark. Even during the day, it's a doomed adventurer who forgets about light. There's no (or at least very little) atmosphere on the Moon, and the sun shines with an intensity not known on Earth, but the Moon is riddled with rocky outcroppings and caves and forests of strange, petrified madness-trees, and you can be plunged into absolute darkness at any time. Ash-storms roil about on the surface, and the ancient halls of the dead beneath the ground have long been abandoned and rendered dark.
Arc-Lamp
Cost: 50 slugs, 10 minutes
You can clip these lights to your suit. Provide them with a charge, either thaumaturgic or via a battery, and they produce a bright blue beam that cuts through darkness like a knife for 60-70'. They get hot. It takes about 6 hours before you would even start to feel that through a suit, but if you're just holding one, it's too hot to hold after about an hour of continuous use. They need to be hooked up to your oxygen supply, but they don't consume an about to be appreciable.
Moonstone
Cost: 175 slugs, 35 minutes
Veins of luminescent silicate flow beneath the surface of the Moon like silver blood. It has a similar composition to the reified madness produced in an aurora by the polyp-trees. Most scholars agree that it is the same thing, but acted on by the miniscule pressure of the Moon over billions of years. Either way, the chunks of it glow brighter when shaken, so a lot of people put them in cages attached to their suits and power them that way. They're toxic, so don't touch them with your bare hands. If you do, roll on your favorite mutation or madness table and gain a random effect. Some people grind them up and snort them. They produce a soft white light in a 20' radius, or 40' if shaken vigorously, which then fades away after 3 rounds.
 |
| This is gallium. Moonstone is like this but glowy |
Plutonium Orbiter
Cost: 100 slugs, 20 minutes
A bit of Plutonium, struck from an elemental. It circles your head and emits an etiolated orange light in a 5' radius, leaving tracers and emitting sine-wave sparks as it does. If someone casts a mind-reading spell on you, they catch some of the Plutonium as well, and it's pissed. Looking at it too long gives you a headache. You can cast the spell light (even if you don't know it or have spellcasting normally) on anything made of metal, as long as you keep ahold of it. The orbiter does 1 point of radiation damage every day you have it equipped, and after every month that passes, gain a cumulative chance to mutate.
Vial of Lunar Slug Oil
Cost: 20 slugs, 4 minutes
Glass bottle with a steel stopper. A substance that isn't really oil, harvested from Lunar Slugs (creatures that aren't really slugs). It smells like lemons and graveyard wind, and glows intensely when fed meat. The oil is actually the slugs' way of reproducing, each drop containing millions of microscopic lunar slugs that are usually hibernating. When a food source is introduced, they begin feasting and fighting, causing the chemical reaction that makes them glow. After 5 feedings, the glow is dimmer as the slugs die, and after 10 one slug remains, large enough now as to fill the vial with no room to spare. When you find it, the vial has been fed 1d4+1 times already.
Oxygen tanks: This is the main thing you need to survive on the Moon. Oxygen is so important that the entire lunar economy is based on how many minutes of it you have. In Cambridge and the Harvard Lunarium are quantum-paired banks that will exchange your slugs for minutes (represented by paper scrip), usually at a rate of 5 slugs to 1 minute (although this depends on your trustworthiness as a creditor). This might get complicated when calculating XP (I use currency as XP) so I might just make it 1:1, but I want oxygen to feel even more valuable than magic or food on the Moon.
There aren't that many variants with oxygen tanks. They all contain about an hour's worth of air, and they all plug into the same adapters on your suits. However, the quality of oxygen differs, and some people pay more for air from certain parts of the world below. A shitty tank will only cost about 5 slugs, but if you get attacked and the to-hit is more than 18 the tank will leak. A good tank will set you back about 20 slugs.
Some more loose adventurers add applicators to their tank supply, vials of gas that can be added to their oxygen to give them short-lived bonuses, like nitrous in cars.
Laughing Gas
Cost: 20 slugs, 4 minutes
Anaesthetic and dissociative vapor, allows you to shrug off pain for 1d6 rounds. You can't stop laughing. When you take damage during this time, it is put off until the time that the gas wears off. You suffer no fear effects, and if an attack would kill you, you ignore it. If you recover that HP before the gas wears off, you live. Otherwise it all comes at once.
Ghost Haze
Cost: 30 slugs, 6 minutes
Distilled from the souls of the dead found clustered on the Moon. Lets you and everything you're carrying become incorporeal for 1d4 rounds. If you're phasing in something when the effects wear off, you become stuck, and take 3d10 radiation damage. Otherwise can't take or deal damage in the ghost-state.
Fumes of Leto
Cost: 60 slugs, 12 minutes
The Mad Mage Leto produced this vapor formula before he died and converted his mass into writhing bunches of worms. It allows you to see approximately 3 seconds into the future for one minute. The sensory ghosting and overloading is intense (Wisdom save or temporary insanity) but if you power through you can anticipate any incoming attacks, and your attacks do an additional 1d4 damage as you can target them more precisely.
This is starting to get long, so I think I'll end it here. But I still have some ideas about weapons and stuff, maybe transportation.
Cost: 20 slugs, 4 minutes
Anaesthetic and dissociative vapor, allows you to shrug off pain for 1d6 rounds. You can't stop laughing. When you take damage during this time, it is put off until the time that the gas wears off. You suffer no fear effects, and if an attack would kill you, you ignore it. If you recover that HP before the gas wears off, you live. Otherwise it all comes at once.
Ghost Haze
Cost: 30 slugs, 6 minutes
Distilled from the souls of the dead found clustered on the Moon. Lets you and everything you're carrying become incorporeal for 1d4 rounds. If you're phasing in something when the effects wear off, you become stuck, and take 3d10 radiation damage. Otherwise can't take or deal damage in the ghost-state.
Fumes of Leto
Cost: 60 slugs, 12 minutes
The Mad Mage Leto produced this vapor formula before he died and converted his mass into writhing bunches of worms. It allows you to see approximately 3 seconds into the future for one minute. The sensory ghosting and overloading is intense (Wisdom save or temporary insanity) but if you power through you can anticipate any incoming attacks, and your attacks do an additional 1d4 damage as you can target them more precisely.
This is starting to get long, so I think I'll end it here. But I still have some ideas about weapons and stuff, maybe transportation.
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