Forbidden Science of the Second Imperium

[veltyen]

Yup.

Experimental jump design involving torturing a powerful psionic. A misjump had caused the "powerplant" to only partially exist in the reality the rest of the ship was in. The ship had no jump fuel tank.

Lots of nightmares about being trapped.

Crew blacking out and trying to sabotage the ship while the PC's were trying to salvage it.

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by flykiller:
anyone ever run a haunted spaceship? or are we just too sci-fi to do that?

Yep, several times.

There was a "scientific" reason behind a couple of them - although energy beings, psionic imprints and the like may not be considered to be too scientific

"Real" ghosts have shown up too though...

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />They though that their new house was haunted!

anyone ever run a haunted spaceship? or are we just too sci-fi to do that? </font>[/QUOTE]Go watch "Event Horizon". It is, essentially, a haunted spaceship. With a mind of its own, perhaps.

 

[kafka47]

First part of Event Horizon looked like a great SF movie like the original Alien. Then once all the blood started flowing, EH, quickly fell apart. There are plenty of precidents for haunted starships with scientific explainations.

Why do they have go around and create a really good mood piece but hide the monster leaving it for the viewer to guess about how horrible something actually is. I guess, films have been influenced by the Monster film genre of the 1950s, for me I prefer psychological horror...and there is not much of that on the Silver Screen.

 

[Golan2072]

The System Shock computer game series had a "haunted" space station (taken over by a rogue AI) and a "haunted" starship (taken over by psionically-capable parasites).

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by kafka47:
[QB] First part of Event Horizon looked like a great SF movie like the original Alien. Then once all the blood started flowing, EH, quickly fell apart. There are plenty of precidents for haunted starships with scientific explainations.

Um, haunted ships by definition DON'T have scientific explanations. That's what makes them haunted.

Why do they have go around and create a really good mood piece but hide the monster leaving it for the viewer to guess about how horrible something actually is. I guess, films have been influenced by the Monster film genre of the 1950s, for me I prefer psychological horror...and there is not much of that on the Silver Screen.

I think you somewhat missed the point of EH. The ship was the monster. It became something else when it went into jumpspace/hell. The crew went mad and killed eachother/themselves there, and the ship became tainted by that so that anyone who entered it when it returned also went mad.

I thought the horror was very 'psychological' in places myself. The bit where you just hear this banging that gets closer and closer and then scares the living crap out of the woman in the sickbay was a perfect example of that. The whole point of that sort of horror is that you don't know what is scaring you.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

I rather liked EH. Dumb, yes, but spooky and well-made.

System Shock 2 was seriously spooky (and had a Traveller-style chargen IIRC).

 

[Ran Targas]

^ I wrote up an adventure once where the PC's come across a primitive exploration vessel, several kilometers long. The crew are humanoid and in defunct stasis tubes (with a twist).

The tubes were actually incubators holding clones of the original crew. The crew's psyches were copied from the original bodies and stored in the ship's computer for later implantation. This is a unique solution to the long term hibernation problem; instead of freezing adults, they found it easier to freeze embryonic tissue for an extended period, then thaw it out and grow it into a functioning adult. If a few die; not a problem, grow another. The original crew actually never left their homeworld and died several hundred years ago (a fact the cloned personalities seem to be very aware of; sort of spirits without souls or conscience

).

It all takes on a very "ghost in the machine" type plot from there with the now insane crew members trying to use the ship's systems to get a PC close enough to a computer interface to download themselves into a warm body. And sometimes a warm body doesn't need to have all its parts or faculties to be better than living in a hard drive.

This could be another example of a 2nd Imperium technology not thought all the way through. Storing personalities as data for later download into cloned bodies; over time the data corrupting or the personalities waking up trapped in the computer mainframe without bodies, slowly going insane ...

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Or, Ran, the uploaded personalities have been come into contact with (and mutated/merged with) something akin to Virus.

 

[flykiller]

I really like this thread.

 

[parmasson]

Haaaa . . .it is the allure of the forbidden.
It entices you, attracts you, seduces you.

. . .the uploaded personalities have been come into contact with (and mutated/merged with) something akin to Virus. [Embarrassed]

If I recall Virus is released when a faction raids a research station.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

And, Virus mutates because it takes a while to overwrite processors. If the uploaded personalities affect the Virus as it is trying to overwrite them....

 

[Michael Schulz]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
Or, Ran, the uploaded personalities have been come into contact with (and mutated/merged with) something akin to Virus.

Heck, if you're feeling like it, you could always have this scenario take place in the New Era (or 1248) and actually have it be Virus. You could make it a Beedling (you know, those low berth loving apocolyptic weirdoes mentioned in Survival Margin) ship or something

**I'm seriously thinking about throwing together a brief article (1 to 5 pages) of some of the stuff that's been put out here--particularly the Heritage Division stuff--over the next two days for Stellar Reaches. Mostly, I think it would be a quick 'handy hook for tossing strange science into a Traveller campaign' using the Heritage division as a useful patron/campaign springboard. I would do my best to avoid directly swiping anyone on the boards ideas, but I thought I would give everyone a heads up/invitation for input. What say you?**

 

[flykiller]

(well feel free to swipe the meson rifle. though I'm sure that someone somewhere thought of it before I did.)

you might want to consider this first. this subject has enormous potential for a dozen full-scale traveller adventures, all of them tied together by the imperial illuminati theme. rather than spit out bits and pieces perhaps we can put it all together and put out a formal product.

 

[Chaos]

I´m all for it.

And feel free to include both variants of the King Arthur idea.

 

[mike wightman]

Cad Lad,

if anything I have added to this discussion is of any use to you ar your article than feel free to use it.

Cheers.

Mike

<and don't forget the cyber-zombies

>

<I wonder if Hunter could do a cyber-zombie avatar???>

 

[Ran Targas]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
Or, Ran, the uploaded personalities have been come into contact with (and mutated/merged with) something akin to Virus.

I guess the concept of soul-less human psyches trapped in a torturous existence for several hundred years, willing to do literally anything to get out, isn't grizzly enough?

 

[parmasson]

If I can help in any way let me know.

I wonder if Hunter could do a cyber-zombie avatar

Mmmmm...cyber-zombies.

 

[signless]

What a GREAT thread...just in time to begin my plotting for the annual "Helloween" Traveller Adventure from Beyond. Heh.
The crew of the "Corsican Wind" managed to survive last year's ordeal...but hmmm...I'm getting some good ideas for a few crunchy, tasty bits to toss on the salad this time.
Heh.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by signless:
What a GREAT thread...just in time to begin my plotting for the annual "Helloween" Traveller Adventure from Beyond.

Good idea... So what do you want next? A "mad AI" scenario (I'll build the TL15 or 16 AI and her "slaves" for you, CT-LBB8 style)? Bio-Psionic haunting (think the Martian Gothic computer game)? Strange alien monstrosities (such as converting the D20 SRD Aboleth to T20)?