Escape the Leviathan

Themes

This is intended as an introductory scenario to walk players through the implications of emergence. Circumstances would start with innocuous sounds before becoming ominous groans.

Structure

Exposition

The ship had been built in the Miasmic Astral around one of the first orbital manufacturing platforms. It completed a two week trial-run with all hands on board and performed as expected in regular space.
It then moved through the portal in a 2 hour transit and arrived at Bhulok to great fanfare.

Conflict

Ship Environment

Four days after passing through the portal, the first drone had apparently malfunctioned. A few people have been injured and may have even died according to some rumors. Although the crew numbers 900, the 4km long craft is largely automated, so any persistent glitches is going to be extremely taxing on them.
48 hours ago, the players were sent to complete maintenance on whichever units need their attention:

Change wheels on Kart
Unlock Manifolds
Sort Samples
Run Diagnostics
Fuel Engines
Fix Wirings
Fill Canisters
Empty Chute
Assemble Part
Replace a rail section
Upload Data
Start Reactor
Reset Breakers
Prepare Meal
Clean Corridor
Measure Environmental Nodes
Divert Power
Clean Plumbing
Restack Orbital Probes
Water Aquaponics
Submit Scan
Repair Tool
Lock Safe
Reboot Communications
Polish Hull
Decontaminate
Clear Debris

Whatever they are selected to do, would determine where on the ship they are when it starts to mutate.

Rising Action

First Stirrings

[◊] Oily water suddenly drips from the ceiling or pools around the characters' heels.
[◊] A breeze that feels like breathing passes through the corridors leading in every direction.

But the farther one follows it, the deeper into the ship they actually go.

[◊] A door slams shut, separating the player characters.
[◊] The semblance of a parasitic creature can be seen reflected in the water.
[◊] The lights flicker and die, leaving players in the dark with neon paint to guide them.
[◊] A broken tool lies abandoned in the corner of a hall. It is one of the emerging parasites, waiting to pounce.
[◊] One of the machines coughs to life and starts to operate.

The roar is ear-deafening and the enclosed space quickly fills with the poisonous fumes.

[◊] From all around, sounds of moans echo through the hull, accompanied by the scent of ozone.
[◊] A door leads directly outside into the Perron Barren.
[◊] Screams echo through cavernous rooms and the player character(s) recognize them.
[◊] The characters are blocked by a chamber half-filled with floating trash.

On the far side, they see a glimmer of daylight, but they must cross the sludge to get there.

[◊] The floor collapses. Characters fall through, tearing up their bodies on metal pieces.

One is impaled through the chest and they must tear themselves up further on the shard.

Climax

Mutatious Surroundings

The Honorius was initially a wide bodied vessel to accommodate 900 crew members and tons and tons of materiel. Post-transformation, its length stole from its width and elongated three times its original schematics into a mechanical leviathan:

Its engines burst forth and elongated into tentacles

Its long halls became intestines that digested the confused crews

The generator began pulsating erraticly like a quickening heart

The bridge crumpled and twisted and left a circle pattern at the former ship's crown that resembled an eye

PCs must succeed a DC 12 DEX saving throw or be knocked prone from the shaking. Then they must pass a DC 12 WIS saving throw or be frightened of the emerging creatures.

Locked in a Container

A cry for help sounds loud in the quiet. One crew member is sounding for help via the intercoms. He's locked himself in a cargo container to hide from the creepy crawlies that spontaneously came to life from his tools set. If the PCs decide to help, they can head that way themselves or persuade the hull workers to cut through the walls and pass along the rescue mission.

Trapped behind a Door

A vital door is jammed by the radical changes happened around it. A group of people are stuck behind it, with the walls closing in.

The smooth steel walls shuddered and spasmed. It appears to have taken a slow deep breath before contracting so quickly, it broke into several vertical panels like an accordion. The room looks to be smaller as the ribbonized walls continue to expand and contract.

Falling Action

Escape

Anyone the party managed to save will enter the escape pods with them, following it out of the escape chute and to safety.

You make it to the escape pods only to find several doors have collapsed. Most of the docked shuttles have either launched or are currently doing so while people desperately try to scramble aboard.

Let the players decide how they want to get passage or if they want to chance running through the path and jumping into the void. They'll be able to get onboard if they try, and will make their way out.

You make it out of the ship and come to the outer hull. There's a loud hissing noise as the soft contents inside the cargo holds are squeezed and force out through breaches.
Water, starch and algae substitutes float, mix together and partially harden into a gelatinous solution that congeals around your craft. However as you're watching, shadows resembling schools of fish coalesce into a vague hand that reaches for you.
As it moves, it seems to guide the surrounding protoplasm over the crumbling docks behind the launched crafts in a continuous stream that hardened into a crust.

Resolution

Rescue

A vessel to escape the doomed ship will quickly get the players back to the closest settlement. As they get away from the animalistic ship, metallic tentacles appear and emit nuclear pulses which destroy the craft's electronics and spook the passengers, sending it hurtling out of control. Roll Initiative

Components

Goals

Changing Objectives

The purpose stated to the players is to serve onboard the Honorius in its mission to explore Manidweepa. Its maiden voyage is a sensor run to determine the surroundings in an unexplored area of the Perron Barren.
Players can be doing any number of things before the true adventure starts (See Conflict). Whereby the goal is to escape the ship as quickly as possible, either via a smaller craft or 'hard transit'.

Stakes

Protoplasmic Radiation

A unique radiation is emitted from protoplasm during energy extraction. This radiation is attributed as being the cause of protoplasmic infusion, that greatly distorts and mutates an organic body. Player characters with less flesh (i.e. cyborgs and talocin) would be less susceptible to this type of radiation.

— Radiation Tracker

Poisoned: Suffers from the poisoned condition.
Weakened: Movement speed is halved and only deals half damage with an armed or unarmed attack.
Blinded: Suffers from the blinded condition.

Intensity	Save DC	Damage	Constitution Saving Throw
1	10	Nill	1/turn
2	13	Nill	1/turn
3	15	Nill	1/turn
4	18	Nill	1/turn
5	20	Poisoned	1/ 2 turns
6	23	Poisoned	1/ 2 turns
7	26	Poisoned, Weakened	1/ 2 turns
8	28	Poisoned, Weakened	1/ 2 turns
9	31	Blinded, Poisoned, Weakened	1/ 3 turns
10	34	Blinded, Poisoned, Weakened	1/ 3 turns
11	36	Blinded, Drained, Poisoned, Weakened	1/ 7 turns
12	39	Blinded, Drained, Poisoned, Weakened	1/ 7 turns

Drained :

On a roll of 1-2, permanently loses 2 points of Strength

On a roll of 3-4, permanently loses 2 points of Dexterity

On a roll of 5-6, permanently loses 2 points of Constitution

Moral Quandaries

The players will need to escape the ship before it fully transforms into metallic living thing. As the ship itself becomes increasingly dangerous, many crew have become trapped. If the players attempt to rescue anyone, they'll need to pass a challenge to do so, and failure will result both in them getting harmed and the rescuee getting killed. Bare in mind that the characters were neighbours and friends from their training days so should not be so quick to abandon them.

Sufficient Space

Dox

A one-person, barebones escape pod with meager means of manuving

Shuttle

Waiting shuttles can cram 20 people at a time or you can customize them to have one-less berths than their are members in their parties.

Fighter

A 1-2 people seater equipped with guns, advance sensors, communication systems and fuelled to fly directly to civilization.

Cruel Tricks

Impossible

Dox

If the person failes their initiative, they may find themselves off course and too damaged to manuve properly.
With luck they may still find their way to safety at the start of another scenario or simple vanish into the green void.

Shuttle

The tragedy here is that all shuttles are just behind the Honorius in their transformation.
So anyone using them to escape would find themselves crushed to death just after clearing the mothership.

Fighter

If the PCs make for a straight shot away from the doomed vessel, they will survive.
But, if they use their weapons for anything- be it to clear debris or save someone from a monster -then the Honorius will attempt to one-shot it with its body.

Relations

Protagonists

Hidden Agendas

Characters have the 'option' of getting a hidden agenda that can be beneficial or detrimental to their group as a whole. These can include:

Bring back one of the parasites for study at an orbital lab

Save as many people as possible

Flee alone

Escape with a dataset downloaded from the main frame

Attract the romantic attention of a crewmate

Transmit a S.O.S.

Overload the protoplasmic reactor to degrade as many people as possible

Map as much of the ship layout as possible

Steal a fighter

Allies

Security Guard

A brave NPC who choses to sit in the monitoring room and watch the cameras so to guide the PCs as they move through the changing hall to avoid dangers.
They will surely die at the end.

Shuttle Pilot

A few of Honorius' shuttle pilots were already outside in their crafts overlooking the android maintenance workers as part of their jobs.
From a safe distance, they give radio updates on the ship's transformation and are the first clue as to what is happening.

Android Assistant

A companion NPC who is unaffected by the protoplasmic radiation or the consequences of any stressful situation.

Neutrals/Bystanders

Outside Maintainers

Thetían workers drive talocin on the ship hull in order to clean it. In no time, the supervising pilots will pick them up and carry them to safety. These same workers can be cajoled into cutting into the hull to make impromptu emergency exits for characters.

Backdrops

Locations

The adventure takes place on board the Honorius Dreadnought. It is tasked with exploring an isolated part of the Green Desert, decently distant from Bhulok.
In addition to experiencing the ship's final hours as an inanimate machine, any survivors can get lost while trying to make it to the safe point.

Encounters

Emerged Creatures

Mechanical mutations extended to Honorius' component hardware. Many loose fitting components, stored tools, stacked probes and parked drones gained inexplicable mobility alongside the ship.
While these creatures do eventually get names in the timeline, it is encouraged for players to navigate without then to better simulate the panic in dealing with unknown species.

Encounter	Morphology	Currently Doing	CR x Amount of Creatures
1	Nuts and bots grew legs of the own	ignoring PCs	1
2	Scampering probes with layered outer shells	crawling about the walls	1
3	Needle-like scavengers	nothing	1
4	Stretched out humanoid drones whose hands creep along the ceiling and feet drag along the floor	fighting each other	1
5	Hull panels that crumple into aerial screws	moving lazily about	2
6	Small vampiric knives	embedded in the wall	2
7	Heavy set hand drills with long protruding beaks and wiggly worm-like cords	mutating	3
8	Former hammers swing their head back and forth in patrols	swimming through the air	3
9	A thick bulky suit that splits open at the seams	consuming a person	4
10	A nozzle that spits fire	caged/trapped	4

Past Events

Hard Pull

Upon first traversing through Miasmic Astral, the crew of the Eurydice unexpectedly disappeared from communications with the rest of the Old Fleet.
Whereby, after some unknown temporal phenomenon had seemed to have 'sped up' the travel schedules of the alphi, the delphi and the thetíans behind them in a great crash that disabled the majority of their respective crafts.

Plot type

Simple One-Act Cinematic Scenario

Related Characters

• Leviathan

Related Locations

• Manidweepa
• Miasmic Astral
• Opal Portal
• Perron Barren

Character Agency

Cannonically, there were very few survivors who managed to return to Bhulok and relay what happened. As a game:

Personalization

Let players decide their sub-level accommodations and to personalize it to their whims. Crew quarters are standardized to have a bed, a fresher and a tiny kitchen area. Each room can accommodate up to two.
Further there are messes, theatres and breakrooms to serve as simple entertainment.

Pick up Items

It takes one additional turn to search one room. Only one PC can roll, but others can help. It is successful when ( Roll a 6 [3, 1, 4, 6, 5]). Then, roll only once on the following table.

Roll Observation	Searchable Gear
1	Non-reloadable Gun
2	Knife
3	Ax
4	Extinguisher
5	Cutting Torch
6	Heavy Tool
7	Canister
8	Medical Kit
9	Power Cell
10	Three Heavy Work Overalls
11	Motion Tracker
12	Incinerator Unit

It is entirely possible for any of these found gear to also mutate into mechanical monstrosities, at the discretion of the DM.

Panic

It is a failure if you Roll a 1 [1]. Then, roll on the following table.

Roll Panic	Description
1 - 6	Barely hold your panic
7	Twitch (+1 stress)
8	Tremble (-2 modifier for agility)
9	Drop Something (+1 stress, lose one item decided by GM)
10	Freeze (+1 stress for you and everyone around you, lose one turn)
11	Hide (-1 stress, +1 stress for everyone else who sees you hiding) See Cover Table
12	Scream (-1 stress, +1 stress for everyone who hears you screaming)
13	Flee (-1 stress, +1 stress for everyone you run pass)
14	Berserk (Panic roll for every other character around you)
15+	Catatonic (Paralyzed until seen to by a medic, companions would need to carry you)

— Stress Tracker

Unless the PC is an android, characters can attempt a previously failed action one more time, with a +1 to additional stress.

Cover

The cover table is most used when you roll a 11 on a panic roll.

Cover	Hits
Potted Plants	2
Furniture	3
Door	4
Inner Hull	5
Outer Hull	6
Armoured Hull	7+

Bear in mind that the hit points also correlate to the amount of damage these objects' mutated form can inflict on a character.

Damage to the Android

For keeping track of the optional android NPC:

Area	Damage	Effect
1	Ruptured Hydraulics	1 Lost Slow Action
2	Damaged Leg Servo	-1 Movement, -1 Strength
3	Damaged Arm Servo	-1 Dexterity, -1 Strength, Can only use one-handed gear
4	Dislocated Head	-2 Perception Fast Actions Become Slow Actions
5	Chassis Breach	Immobilized but both the PCs and the android can take a turn to Roll a 1 that regains one health point per roll.
6	System Shutdown	Irreparably Immobilized but can still be communicated with through comms, if Roll a 1

— Health