acceptableduraz:

sj-flemings-writing:

prokopetz:

prokopetz:

Concept: a dungeon-crawling sci fi game, except instead of wandering space pirates, you play as a crew of legitimate salvage operators retrieving valuable goods from abandoned or evacuated cities on formerly populated planets that have been rendered uninhabitable by various civilisation-ending disasters. The different “dungeon types” would reflect whatever disaster killed that particular planet: plague, increasing solar intensity, nuclear war, continent-shattering meteor, etc. Long-dead worlds have already been picked over by your competitors, of course, so in most cases you’re going in while the world-ending catastrophe is recent – and in some cases still ongoing! – offering plenty of opportunities for potentially fatal misadventures. If you need an overarching plot, maybe you eventually discover that all of these apparently unrelated disasters have some sinister common thread.

A few of the odder fates that might befall a world, as well as salvage operators’ slang terms for such worlds:

• Deadworld: A world whose inhabitants have been rendered irretrievably non-sapient by a contagious neurological disease, parasitic fungus, basilisk meme, or other similar vector. Though in many cases their bodies are alive and kicking, they’ve been declared legally brain-dead, leaving the world open for salvage. Describing these unfortunate remnants as “zombies” is considered both unscientific and insensitive, which stops basically no-one. Sometimes an apparent deadworld turns out to actually be a nascent planetary-scale hive mind, which just gets awkward for everybody involved.

• Eight-Ball: A world that‘s experienced a hard-takeoff singularity, a sudden asymptotic acceleration of cultural and technological development that certain worlds undergo for reasons which remain unclear. Nobody’s 100% sure what happens to the inhabitants of such worlds; some believe they transform into beings of pure information, transcend to another dimension, or simply die off, their civilisation achieving its zenith, decline and extinction in a matter of hours. Whatever the truth may be, one thing’s for sure: they don’t need any of their stuff anymore. Eight-balls are highly sought after by salvage operators because of all the physics-defying Weird Shit the planet’s former owners tend to leave behind in the wake of their apotheosis, and are among the most dangerous assignments imaginable for the exact same reason.

• Locker:  One of the oddest fates that can befall a world, a temporally locked civilisation – or “locker”, for short – is literally frozen in a single moment, usually as a result of some damn fool messing around with time travel. With fewer than a dozen known cases in the whole of galactic history, lockers present a unique salvage opportunity: the retrieval not of property, but of people. No means of reversing a temporal lock exists, so the world’s inhabitants must be rescued one at a time, by crews equipped with containment suits that allow them to move about in frozen time – a task frequently contracted out to established salvage operators. Lingering on such worlds is not recommended; though there’s no scientific proof of their existence, rumours persist that temporal locks are known to draw the attention of things that live sideways in time.

(Feel free to add your own!)

• Uncloaked biosphere: Some scientists propose a theory that our world has a “shadow biosphere” constructed of creatures we do not believe to be alive, or cannot observe properly due to the extreme conditions they live. These creatures, supposedly, are silicon based. Despite the constant assurances that silicon-based creatures cannot, in fact, harm carbon-based lifeforms, there are still planets that exist where the population has vanished, and where there was once forests there are now vast quartz fields and crystal growths over statues that seem entirely out of place with any sort of artistic vision. Of course, the civilization died of entirely different causes, we assure you. 

• Debris field: Sometimes there isn’t a planet left, strictly speaking, but your clients still need something from the ruins.  Slip into a space suit and get to work!  Your target could be a stupendously durable artifact, simple raw materials that were unique to the planet, or even a byproduct of its destruction.  (These should be pretty rare, and maybe you’re starting to get a creepy feeling about how your clients are finding so many!)
• Post-Biome: Occasionally, “green goo” scenarios don’t turn planets into a sea of biological soup.  These worlds have become whole new alien biospheres full of strange lifeforms and terrain types.  Often, you will be coming at the behest of people who want to study them.  Much like the Deadworlds that turn out to be hive minds above, ethical salvage crews should remain alert for signs that the inhabitants of the planet are still around, just in a new form, which would render salvage rights void.
• Berserk: These planets were the sites of cataclysmic robot wars, not as a result of machines attaining sapience, but due to malicious (or astoundingly incompetent) programming.  The danger of these operations vary on whether the machines are able to maintain themselves, and what they have been programmed to destroy.  As always, watch the machines for signs of growing independent intelligence, and leave if you suspect you may be trampling a new civilization.
• Question: Some of the highest commissions you can get are for exploring planets that don’t appear to have anything wrong with them.  Everyone is just… gone.  You won’t know what to prepare for, or what signs of danger to watch for, so good luck.  You may or may not need it.  And isn’t the uncertainty the worst of all?