aniseandspearmint:

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!)

Water World: The planet’s icecaps underwent a sudden and swift melting and flooded most or all the worlds land. Sometimes there’s a surviving population so be careful! Excellent salvage as long as you don’t mind getting wet, or the occasional attack by roving pirates.

Overtaken: Some damn-fool opened a portal to some step to the side and down dimension and the world was fatally overrun with denizens, sapient and not, from another plane. Upside is that with the right kind of personal containment gear and a good team there’s often a lot of fantastic tech to salvage. Downside? At least half of these worlds are still crawling with terrifying and sometimes mind-warpingly strange beings that have developed a taste for humans and or a disdain for their continued existence.

There are several types of Overtaken world that have their own slang names;

 – Shroomworld: The planet is slowly being consumed in otherplannar fungal growth. The air is gritty with toxic spoors and the entire world is silent end still because every other living thing is dead. Occasionally combines with a Deadworld and there are fungal zombies, but that’s rare. Make sure you’ve got the best air filters money can buy before attempting one of these worlds, and keep a constant eye on your stats.

 – D00M World: Demons walk and the screams of the dying fill the air. Or, well, they did for a week or so after the portal opened. Now everything’s pretty quiet. Maybe all the demon critters went back home once there were no more people to eat? One can hope. Make sure to be armed to the teeth just in case, ey?

 – Mistworld: The entire planet is shrouded in an opaque mist from pole to pole. Where did the people go? No one knows. But if you stay down there long enough people say you start seeing things. Shapes in the mist, hands reaching for you out of the corner of your eye and whispers in your ears that the comms don’t pick up. Make sure you count your team members and do occasional sound offs, it’s not uncommon for a crew member or two to walk off into the mist and never be seen again.

 – Jewelworld or Gemworld: A bit like the Shroom world, but this time it’s rapidly advancing crystaline growth. Very pretty, until you notice that some of the mounds of glittering color have what’s left of people in them. Also, it’s imperative that your team is in and out within a set amount of time as visiting this kind of world often sets off another surge of growth. Be careful of you and your ship will end up encased in a shiny tomb along with every other living and moving thing on the planet.

 – Eden(s): Characterized by rapid plant growth that swallowed everything and everyone. Usually very beautiful. Half the time these worlds are pretty harmless. The other half… Well, be on the look out for carnivorous plants, giant animals, toxic spoors, pretty orchids that shoot poisonous barbs, etc. Extra tough containment suits and big guns are usually a safe bet. These worlds often have slightly less than sane scientific researchers in residence too, so be on the look out.