Things that go bump on the hull...

[Spinward Scout]

This is Scout Courier Red Moon Rising,
Calling anyone...
Mayday, Mayday...
We were surveying an outlying system with a low-TL mainworld.
Our Engineer died in an accident and the engines have failed.
And the Captain blew herself out of an airlock without a suit.
I am the only one left.
Alone in the dark.
And something keeps tapping on the hull.
Calling anyone...
Please help...
This is Scout Courier Red Moon Rising,
Mayday...

Breaking off a bit from the "what would happen if" thread...

"Things that go bump on the hull" could be a collection of creepy ship-based adventures, that mostly don't end with the crew being eaten by a 8 foot alien or something. Or maybe they do.

What are your favorite creepy adventures or adventure ideas?

 

[Cryton]

In a CT adventure based in a Lab Ship, "Werewolf Disease" I think it was, The players were sent to investigate a Lab Ship that had failed to check in.

Unbeknownst to the PCs, the lab ship had been conducting experiments with new forms of Combat Drug, and things had gone horribly wrong.

A combination of the ships damaged flickering lights, wrecked rooms, horribly mutated bodies of the ships crew, the presence of small hostile escaped lab animals... and the main antagonist, (a scientist driven mad by a dose of the new Combat Drug) the GM managed to created a nicely horrific atmosphere.

The scientist would use of the ships intercoms to menacingly laugh and taunt the PC's at every opportunity. With the ships ring shape, and use of an empty below the floor fuel tank that ran the ships ring like a Star Trek Jefferies tube, he was able to keep ahead of/behind the PCs.

Combine that with the faintly seen in the dark movements of small viscous animals...well, to say the least, the PC's were shooting at things that weren't there, and more than a little on edge.

It was all very fun.

 

[CosmicGamer]

This is Scout Courier Red Moon Rising,
Calling anyone...
Mayday, Mayday...
We were surveying an outlying system with a low-TL mainworld.
Our Engineer died in an accident and the engines have failed.
And the Captain blew herself out of an airlock without a suit.
I am the only one left.
Alone in the dark.
And something keeps tapping on the hull.
Calling anyone...
Please help...
This is Scout Courier Red Moon Rising,
Mayday...

It's the captain. The body got snagged on an antenna or sensor and is bouncing against the hull.

 

[Supplement Four]

This is Scout Courier Red Moon Rising,
Calling anyone...
Mayday, Mayday...
We were surveying an outlying system with a low-TL mainworld.
Our Engineer died in an accident and the engines have failed.
And the Captain blew herself out of an airlock without a suit.
I am the only one left.
Alone in the dark.
And something keeps tapping on the hull.
Calling anyone...
Please help...
This is Scout Courier Red Moon Rising,
Mayday...

It's a disease, spread by persperation, that acts on the body's systems like uber alcohol. Look for the steward. He's probably frozen to death while taking a shower completely clothed.

 

[aramis]

It's the pest you picked up in the last system. Easy to kill... let it in the airlock, and hit it with 2 bar of atmospheric pressure. It looks like a flatworm with a pair of pincers per segment. It's photosynthetic, and likes warm - the ship was warm. Unfortunately, it's laid eggs over the radiators, and overheated them, triggering the shutdown. And it is hungry. It needs some asteroidal bodies or dirt to feed upon. (Calling it the vacuupede.)

Or, it's a hitchhiker with a thumb. Unfortunately, it sucks the fusion reaction nearest to power its teleport - He'll help restart it if you let him in.

 

[Timerover51]

In a CT adventure based in a Lab Ship, "Werewolf Disease" I think it was, The players were sent to investigate a Lab Ship that had failed to check in.

Unbeknownst to the PCs, the lab ship had been conducting experiments with new forms of Combat Drug, and things had gone horribly wrong.

A combination of the ships damaged flickering lights, wrecked rooms, horribly mutated bodies of the ships crew, the presence of small hostile escaped lab animals... and the main antagonist, (a scientist driven mad by a dose of the new Combat Drug) the GM managed to created a nicely horrific atmosphere.

The scientist would use of the ships intercoms to menacingly laugh and taunt the PC's at every opportunity. With the ships ring shape, and use of an empty below the floor fuel tank that ran the ships ring like a Star Trek Jefferies tube, he was able to keep ahead of/behind the PCs.

Combine that with the faintly seen in the dark movements of small viscous animals...well, to say the least, the PC's were shooting at things that weren't there, and more than a little on edge.

It was all very fun.

It was Double Adventure 3, Death Station. And I would agree that is a creepy one, and well-written. The author is Marc Miller.

 

[ShapeShifter]

A near omnipotent being in human guise with a fondness for military history kidnaps the crew and forces them to fight to the death. :rofl: Gee, where have I seen that before?

 

[Timerover51]

Breaking off a bit from the "what would happen if" thread...

"Things that go bump on the hull" could be a collection of creepy ship-based adventures, that mostly don't end with the crew being eaten by a 8 foot alien or something. Or maybe they do.

What are your favorite creepy adventures or adventure ideas?

Hmmm, you do have both Worm Weather (Nuri Worms) and the Vatches of Witches of Karres, which would be interesting to work into Traveller in some form. Vatches could give Psionic characters fits, and really drive the Zhodani nuts, if you substitute Psionics for Klatha. Having their ship moved several hundred parsecs by something else, or tossed a few thousand years into the past by an outside agent with no certainty of what would happen next would be sufficiently creepy.

Someone like Morbius in Forbidden Planet being a passenger onboard, and when he falls asleep, his dreams take substance and wreak havoc with the ships crew and the ship itself.

Andre Norton's Plague Shp would be another good one, where you have an alien lifeform get aboard the ship without being spotted, and gradually incapacitate most of the crew.

The you have the area of space where Grandfather has pinched off his pocket universe with 3 star systems in it. You have have that been an area where, as a result of the making of the pocket universe, the space-time continuum is distorted, with the result that ships crossing that area may be subjected to odd occurrences, such as mis-jumps in the middle of a jump, popped out and then back into Jump-Space, but in a random direction and distance, or the ship and crew finding themselves in an alternate universe, which may or may not resemble what they left.

 

[77topaz]

"Things going bump on the hull" reminds me a bit of the Twilight Zone with a gremlin on the wing of a plane, "Nightmare at 20'000 Feet".

 

[Timerover51]

For those interested, "The Werewolf Disease" was an Amber Zone article in the JTAS, and appears in the Best of the JTAS for volumes 5 to 8.

 

[JimMarn]

The movie 'Alien' arc. I found the first one and 'Alien Ressurection' to be the best. Aline was my first encounter with a movie where the main characters died.

Harlan Ellison wrote some scary sf. Like 'I have no mouth and I must scream'.

A movie I saw on Cinemax, 'Promethius', a horror/sf movie when a team goes to a planet and finds the beings who started humanity.

 

[aramis]

The movie 'Alien' arc. I found the first one and 'Alien Ressurection' to be the best. Aline was my first encounter with a movie where the main characters died.

Harlan Ellison wrote some scary sf. Like 'I have no mouth and I must scream'.

A movie I saw on Cinemax, 'Promethius', a horror/sf movie when a team goes to a planet and finds the beings who started humanity.

Prometheus is the prequel to Alien.

 

[BlackBat242]

"Things going bump on the hull" reminds me a bit of the Twilight Zone with a gremlin on the wing of a plane, "Nightmare at 20'000 Feet".

My favorite non-Trek Bill Shatner role.

 

[coliver988]

What, no love for Shatner in the Six Million Dollar Man where he could talk to dolphins?

 

[Cryton]

It was Double Adventure 3, Death Station. And I would agree that is a creepy one, and well-written. The author is Marc Miller.

Thank! you have saved me the laborious process of digging through boxes in my closet!

 

[Timerover51]

Thank! you have saved me the laborious process of digging through boxes in my closet!

You are welcome.

 

[JimMarn]

Prometheus is the prequel to Alien.

Ah, thanks for the info. I somewhat ignored the promo and just watched it on Cinemax when I got the chance.

 

[aramis]

Ah, thanks for the info. I somewhat ignored the promo and just watched it on Cinemax when I got the chance.

There is supposed to be a sequel to Prometheus in the works, as well... Prometheus explains the Aliens of the franchise as the biotech weapons wielded against the giant guys.

 

[Timerover51]

While this does not "bump on the hull", in the JTAS number 24, you have basically a "Mary Celeste" village adventure.

 

[LiamKerrington]

Hello.

I am not certain about "my" favorite storyline/type ... But:

Alone in the dark.
And something keeps tapping on the hull.

What, if there are several sources for this tapping?
- The engineer died in an accidant? What, if this accident happened to losen parts from the engines, which are still under pressure; and every now and then the pressure release systems make things shift or move and thus "bump" into the hull - from the inside and yet "outside" the vicinity of the solemn survivor;
- someone or something caught in some kind of loose wiring outside the ship and he/she/it bumps into the hull occasionally;
- the ship is in a mini-meteorite section in space; whatever source might be the reason for the mini-meteorites (maybe they led to the engine failing which in the end killed the engineer?), again and again small meteorites hammer onto the ship's hull.

I would like to think of a story in which there is not a single solution to the bumping, but several at least possible ones. The survivor and the ship should be able to rescue themselves with aid from the outside. Especially the micro-meteorite-idea might lead to a deserted space-station in the vicinity the survivor would have to visit in order to find the parts to make his ship run again. And there, on that station the character would have the opportunity to understand some of the things having happened or still happening.

Important for me would be to have some mysteries left for debate and speculation, but especially a solution for the story that allows to think of a non-pessimistic, and yet dangerous science fiction. The death of the engineer was a natural result, the Captain suicided 'cause he failed to keep sane, and all the trouble should have a 'natural' or 'realistic' cause solvable. Something like that ... Hard to put it into words ...

Best wishes!
Liam