The Fourth Weird Thing: A Post-Apocalyptic Vignette

 The Fourth Weird Thing: A Post-Apocalyptic Vignette

From a Cypher System one-shot I ran!

The players see a distant shooting star that grows ominously large, and crashes somewhere nearby. On investigating, they find a starship, out of which emerges a cosmonaut who claims to have been part of an experiment to test a ship that could travel close to the speed of light. The cosmonaut’s ship left Earth orbit in 2070.

Cosmonaut: Eugevney Ilyetski (Level 4) speaks some English, closest to commonspeak.

Complication 1: the craft was equipped with very powerful weaponstech, including experimental laser weaponry and a fusion reactor engine. 

Complication 2: the ship lands in the Necropolis, a vast and contested ruined city which is thick with mutant abominations and radiation.

Complication 3: Eugevney offers up his ship's "3D printer" as a peace offering or to save his life, showing how it works....put material in, and out spits anything, including weaponry.

Threat one: Marauders led by The Dark and Mighty Razer are closing to seize the salvage. They have some "Jerries" cars.

Threat two: Abominations are being drawn to the ship's leaking radiation core. Also, the LEAKING RADIATION CORE!

Threat three: An abandoned military base that still functions in the mountains detected the crash and sent a Retrieval Wardrone to secure the prize. The wardrone is large, and will stop at nothing to secure the pilot and his tech.

Goal: Ilyetski will try to convince the group to save him, and explains he needs to get to the "retrieval zone," which his portable computer shows is seventy miles east, near the coast of the Desert Sea. He explains that, "his people" had a contingency for if his ship "deviated" from its timeline, a way to escape....but the device to do so should be at the indicated location, or so his computer detects.

Act II: the location,  at the edge of the desert sea, turns out to be the marker for an abandoned, beach nuclear sub from a lost Russia. The sub is overrun with zombies, but not until Ilyetski pops the hatch and they swarm out.