The Legend of the Stygian Expanse and the
Tomb Ships
Spacefarers
speak of the Stygian Expanse like it is a defined place, but one which no star
chart can show you, no drift route takes you to. The Stygian Expanse is, if
anything, more of a concept…it’s the place between star systems, the area off
the grid, beyond the edge of known space. It is the dark between the stars.
One of the
phenomena attributed to the Stygian Expanse are the dreaded tomb ships. These
immense, ancient vessels have manifested in human space over the ages, and the
earliest recorded encounter with a tomb ship predates the Old Karthan Empire by
nearly five thousand years. The tomb ships are usually encountered alone
although in 7,791 a dozen tomb ships appeared in the Qualien system, leading to
a total quarantine followed by a dedicated glassing of the entire planet by the
Karthan Navy. This, unfortunately, is a distinct possibility even with one tomb
ship; the arrival of such a vessel can spell almost certain doom for a planet
if these horrible ships settle in to orbit.
Tomb ships
are ancient vessels, often of different design or origin, and sometimes
equipped with FTL drift drive and other times containing no FTL drive, or on
rare occasion some other means of FTL travel, usually in the form of unknown
alien technology. Many of the recorded tomb ship encounters demonstrate that
human or human-like entities must have crewed the ships, while other vessels
were clearly alien in origin. The smallest tomb ship recorded was a quarter mile
long, and the largest was an amazing thirteen miles in length.
The mystery
of the tomb ships is exaggerated by the horror of its inhabitants. All tomb
ships are ultimately devoid of life, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t crewed. Some
tomb ships are completely empty, containing only a hint of mystery or
displaying evidence of some ancient carnage, frozen in space, suggesting the
catastrophic final battle of the crew, long ago. These ships aren’t without
risk, for all ships contain the necrophage virus, a virulent necrotic
reanimating virus that is incredibly difficult to capture and study in any
safety. In such dead ships the virus is dormant, or mutated and no longer
highly virulent and transmittable.
When the
necrophage is active, such tomb ships arrive in system with a horde of
reanimated dead. The crew of the ship may or may not be conscious of their own
undead state, but those who display consciousness are the most dangerous,
capable of scheming to carry out an insane compulsion to destroy or subjugate
all life, and to spread the necrophage in their wake. The incident at Qualien
was such a situation, with a dozen such ships disgorging an army of millions of
undead warriors on the planet.
The Karthan
Imperial Research Division (KIRD) has worked closely with the Imperial Navy to
find a way to capture and study a tomb ship. They have considered targeting one
of the vessels that is moving at STL speeds on its transit between solar systems,
out in the void where it is safely removed from living solar systems. The
intent is to identify the origin of these ships, and to gain a chance to
properly study their construction, crew, and origins as well as the virus
itself. So far these efforts have had mixed results and more than one KIRD team
has perished in the process.
Despite the
difficulty, KIRD teams along with more conventional historical research have
identified the following interesting pieces of information about the tomb
ships:
Tomb Ship Crews
Most tomb
ships tend to carry undead crew that match the dominant species of the worlds
they descend upon. A vesk world visited by a tomb ship will contain undead
vesk, for example. It is presumed that this means that the ships have a
directive to pursue the conversion and/or destruction of the initial species of
the necrophage. No one has found a ground zero example to study, however
(origin of a tomb ship, and origin of its first choice of species for “crew.”)
Tomb Ship Designs
Tomb ships
do not have consistent uniformity of design, but they do reflect the
technological and sometimes cultural and architectural norms of the species
that inhabit the ship. A tomb ship of undead vesk will look different from a
tomb ship of undead humans, for example. All tomb ships seem to integrate the
funerary or ritualistic elements of the culture of origin for its crew,
however, often with thematic elements of ancient origin. Many tomb ships of
human origin seem to glorify interment in sarcophagi, coffins, or actual tombs
and crypts, for example; these serve as a maze of architectural anomalies
riddled throughout the hull of the ship, writ large as if serving as a monument
to the concept of death.
The Necrophage
Most species
to date appear to be at risk of infection by the necrophage once exposed. The
necrophage appears to have at least three states: an early, highly virulent and
transmissible state in which the virus can be exposed through air or touch; a
second state in which it is in the infected victim, dormant until the
individual dies at which time he or she returns as an undead animated creature;
and a third state in which the necrophage transmits to victims of the undead
through scratches and bites. Not all undead types recorded so far transmit the
necrophage, however, and no link between undead who remain intelligent and
free-willed and those who appear to be mindless has been identified as of yet.
Tomb Ship Invasions
Tomb ships
move through space, sometimes slower than light, sometimes using obscure and
alien warp drives, and sometimes through the drift, though at least one scout
vessel which tracked a tomb ship in the drift discovered that the tomb ships
appear to enter a region of the drift distinctly different from the more
conventional “space lanes” most normal vessels travel through. Indeed, it is
suspected that there may be tomb vessels traveling indefinitely in the drift,
waiting for centuries or more before dropping out in to a suitable habitable
world.
When a tomb
ship does target a world, it have a number of unique approaches. Some ships
have been recorded to arrive and immediately fire what are known as Cenotaph
Clusters, smaller drop-pod like ships carrying anywhere from one to an entire
squad of undead invaders. There is no consistency here; the invaders might be
armed with heavy weaponry and armor, or they might be unarmed and unarmored,
set only to spread the necrophage through their bites and scratches.
Some vessels
arrive in-system and take up orbit with no hostile action….until the locals
poke their nose in to the ship and decide to board it, thinking they’ve
stumbled on a salvage boon. Despite the reputation of these vessels, there are
still thousands of systems that have never heard of the danger of tomb ships.
A few tomb
ships are especially dangerous, and are equipped with active defenses as well
as snub fighters and drop ships, along with devious, free-willed undead who
express their intense desire to destroy or subjugate all life. The Qualien
incident was headed by one such undead, a lich called Karidais the Eternal, who
claimed he was the chosen priest of Death Incarnate. Unfortunately his recorded
exchanges provided little detail on his origins, though the fact that he spoke
the standard galactic basic of the Old Karthan Empire with just a trace of an
unknown accent was telling.
Folklore of the Tomb Ships
Spacers are
known to fill in the blanks when they lack information, but a few of the
legends, rumors and folklore of the tomb ships tend to get repeated often
enough that KIRD investigators have taken that as a sign that there may be more
than a grain of truth to some of it.
One of the most
famous stories is one in which a famous freighter captain, who name changes
from one tale telling to the next, stumbled in to an unknown world on a drift
jump failure and found a dead planet with hundreds of tomb ships in orbit
around it. He escaped, but not (so the story goes) before seeing dozens of tomb
ships leave to chase him. As the story goes, when this mysterious captain
appears in your system, telling his story, then the tomb ships will soon
arrive.
A scholar
and madman named Erintos Pathaer, who is recorded as being a famous
astrophysicist and xenocultural researcher back in the pre-empire days, wrote
many books on the subject of the tomb ships. He claimed that the source of the
tomb ships might be an actual entity from beyond the edge of the galaxy, which
creates the necrophage and then utilizes its dark energy to manufacture the
ships and send them in to living space specifically to subjugate and destroy
entire civilizations. This entity, which he never identified the name of, had
decided that it was literally “death, the destroyer or worlds,” and had chosen
the necrophage as its tool.
A third popular
story is that the necrophage originated with an ancient human empire, one
founded at the dawn of the space age nearly eight thousand years ago, and that
this lost empire rose to power but was destroyed by its enemies with the
necrophage. The unintended side effect was the rise of a powerful undead army
seeking to slay all life and make the universe a tomb for all beings. The
planet of origin is a cenotaph world somewhere out beyond the galactic rim…or
according to some stories just next door….but cloistered away by the ancient
tech used by the old empire’s enemies to hide the evidence of what they had
wrought on the universe.
Adventures
within Tomb Ships
Adventurers
who encounter tomb ships may well find one entering some region of inhabited
space, perhaps threatening a local colony. The colonists may have few
resources, or be located in the Vast, such as the region of the Conarium
Expanse, where the hope of Imperial intervention is nonexistent. In these cases
their first choice may be to hire expendable mercenaries such as the PCs to see
if something can be done about the tomb ship before it becomes too late.
Escaping a
tomb ship can be as simple as infiltrating the vessel and finding a way to
destroy it before becoming infected to as complex as evacuating an entire
colony or station to the safety of another system. If the colony is too large
or has grown world-wide then this pay not be a feasible option. Direct
confrontation with a tomb ship could be a viable option if it is a lesser ship
with few defenses or assault capabilities, but a well-armed tomb ship could be
capable of handling its own against an entire flotilla of the Karthan Navy.
Spacers
could encounter tomb ships in strange locations or trajectories, too:
Chart I: Appearance of the Tomb Ship (D12)
1 – one tomb
ship floating, seemingly powerless, in an asteroid field where belters are
active and mining for ore (roll on chart II)
2 – one tomb
ship seemingly resting, frozen, at the edge of a star system in the Kuiper Belt
region
3 – on tomb
ship captured on a slowly decaying orbit near a local gas giant
4 – one tomb
ship drifting in a sling-shot effect around a local star, seemingly
uninterested in approaching any nearby colonies
5 – one tomb
ship moving through the plane of the ecliptic in a strange angle that would
seem to suggest it’s heading out of the local galactic area
6 - the tomb
ship sets up orbit around the local inhabited world but then proceeds to power
down and take no action
7 – the tomb
ship appears with a bang, plowing in to a major orbital station or L5 colony
and plows in to the station, lodging itself in the process
8 – the tomb
ship appears in orbit over the habitable world or in a parallel flight with the
local station and immediately attacks using cenotaph drop ships.
9 – 1D3 tomb
ships appear in orbit and begin an immediate invasion using shuttles, cenotaph
drop ships and fighter craft
10 – A flotilla
of 2D8 tomb ships appear! They begin a full scale invasion of the system
11 – a tomb
ship appears, unchanging in its trajectory, and appears to be on a dangerous
collison course for the nearest inhabited world
12 – a
single tomb ship that has crashed on a local world, but which remains mostly
intact, has been discovered; it is either buried in a desert, in a frozen sea,
or possibly largely exposed on an otherwise dead world
Chart II: Contents of the Tomb Ship (D8)
1-2 – the vessel
is empty, but contains the nanophage; only hardsuits will protect from exposure
3-4 – the vessel
contains evidence of a massacre, many dead bodies, but no evidence it is
infected with the nanophage; 25% chance the bodies in the vessel reanimate
after awakening from a deep torpor after 1D6 hours
5-6 – the
vessel contains an undead horde, but the horde is small (2D100 undead of
various types) and sequestered away in deep holds within the ship
7 – The vessel
is fully crewed by thousands of undead, and has a 40% chance that there are one
or more free-willed, intelligent undead directing their actions
8 – the vessel
is a worst case scenario, packed with an army of the undead, both intelligent
and malign as well as mindless infectors and soldiers
Exposure to the Necrophage
Exposure to
type I necrophage means that the individual comes in to physical contact with
an object on which the necrophage rests (the dust on the ship’s hull, a
computer console, etc) or breathes in the air after the dust has been
disturbed. Exposure requires an immediate DC 15 Fortitude save which must
continue every round until medical treatment can vacuum the contaminated dust
out of the individual’s system (if breathed in) or decontaminate his or her
skin (if touched, or both). Proper treatment can save the person from
conversion to the undead.
One save
failure leads to infection and a progression to the Type II virus. The person
will now be at risk of spreading the virus and also will turn in to an undead
(usually a zombie, but there’s a chance of a ghoul or worse) on death. If the
save was critically failed then the person sickens and dies within 1D10
minutes, returning as an undead 1D6 rounds thereafter. While a living person is
carrying the type II necrophage anyone who remains present around the infected
has a chance per hour of becoming infected as well. If a person spends more
than 10 minutes within 15 feet of an infected living they must make a Fortitude
save DC 15 or also become a carrier. The moment any carrier dies, they become an
undead infected with the Type III necrophage.
Exposure to
Type III necrophage means being bitten or scratched by an infected undead or an
infected living being with the Type II exposure who is a carrier. As above, a
DC 15 Fortitude save can protect against the necrophage, but the target must
make 3 successful saves in a row (one per round) to be free of risk, otherwise
the necrophage enters the system. In Type III then the effect is more dramatic:
the necrophage will convert the infected within 1D6 hours to undead unless the
individual is killed, at which time conversion is immediate (1 round after
death). Conversion is usually to a zombie or ghoul, at the GM’s discretion.
Ghouls are intelligent undead. Individuals with arcane potential are much
likelier to convert to more advanced forms of undead, as are more prominent and
powerful individuals (of level 5 or higher).
Suggested
undead denizens of the tomb ships can include skeletons, zombies, ghouls,
mummies, grave knights (armed with suitably powerful solarian technology),
liches, wights and even wraiths and vampires.
