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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 9774891" data-attributes="member: 5948">Flaming SpiritsHarsh RealityGelatinous PyramidDead to the WorldAncient SateliteKnowledge HoarderRampaging Gnomes(Trigger warnings - gaslighting, suicide)Forgotten MeatAn Alien RPG scenarioPCs are civilian freighter crew who've been hired/assigned by the Company to do one last cargo pickup from Gaharne Station.  Available data:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gaharne Station is a very old and near-derelict asteroid mining facility (ancient satellite) on a decaying orbit around the planet Heylar. Its population is ~200 humans.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gaharne mines palladium and other heavy metals from the asteroid, although the seams are now almost depleted. Specialised semi-autonomous synthetics (around 50) do the mining - Non Organic Mineworkers (NOMs) who can labor longer and in tighter spaces than humans.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Heylar is a hot, windy planet terraformed enough to support dry grasslands.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gaharne also once processed cattle from a ranching colony on Heylar. The colony was abandoned decades ago after a devastating continent-scale wildfire wiped out colonists and herds alike.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">PCs job is to retrieve any/all genetic material from Heylar's cattle that remains on Gaharne, as they're believed to have included specimens of a valuable drought-resistant strain that's extinct elsewhere</li> </ul>Introduction:PCs arriving on Gaharne find it vast, echoing, and largely derelict, only a small aging staff remains. Reaction to their arrival is mixed, neutral/depressed from most, despairing from others.  In charge is Director Sikarsky (straightlaced, eager to be noticed), who will accede to their request (Company orders), and refer them to Barlow, a grinning cynical maintenence engineer.Barlow puts the PCs in spacesuits and take them to a waste compartment he calls 'The Larder'. When Gaharne processed meat, abattoir byproducts sluiced down a disposal chute from above and piled up here. When the colony was abandoned the chamber was opened to space. It now contains a vast frozen pyramid of offal, bones, fat, slime, sinew, hooves etc.  It cannot be moved in its current state. Barlow explains power and heat will need to be restored, so the material will melt enough to be transhipped (gelatinous pyramid).  Sikarsky cooperates, but the Larder will take a long time to thaw. PCs will be waiting on Gaharne for a while.    PCs visiting Heylar colony find a ruin, buried under windblown red sand. Excavation would require heavy equipment.  The only organic material is grass. There is evidence of many grassfires, and careless PCs may start another with their drive exhaust.Setting the scene:PCs exploring Gaharne or socialising with locals can learn:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">they're the first ship to arrive here in a long time</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gaharne is a dead end and everyone wants out.  Many have been here >20 years, because when contracts expire the options are either renew and keep working, or lose your income and have the Company rent for years while waiting for a ship off</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">on news of their coming, hopes were raised that Gaharne was being decommissioned and everyone could finally leave.  Widespread disappointment, even more widespread when it was realised their ship carries just enough cryopods for the crew and nobody else.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">NOMs are universally known as 'gnomes', named after mine spirits.  Child-sized and long-limbed, with cheap rubber skins, they aren't seriously designed to pass for human.  Long-ago Gaharneites fitted them with whimsical masks/heads for reasons long forgotten - yellow smiley faces, garden gnomes, china dolls. The masks remain, cracked and age-faded.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">most of the station is open to vacuum, like the Larder. This makes any acid leaks very dangerous as they can cause decompression easily.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">people disappear here not infrequently. Most assume they commit suicide in some little-explored part of the vast complex and are never found</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the only socialisation venue is the Heckfire Cub, a darkened moonshine bar fitted out as decadently as possible (not very, given Gaharne's resources)</li> </ul>Notable NPCs:- Magda and Kylie run the Heckfire Club and do cabaret when off shift - 40something drag queen couple, known as eccentrics from IT.  - have been repeatedly fined for bootlegging by the prudish Sikarsky so can't afford a ticket out - indefatigably devoted to fun and joy.   - Kylie has terminal cancer and will die soon.  Only her, Magda, and the doctor know this.  She and Madga have been cannibalising station components to built a jerryrigged version of Boy Kavalier's Neverland device. They intend to digitise Kylie's consciousness and use her life insurance payout to return to Earth and have her installed in a synthetic body- Miss Primrose:  - long-serving synthetic, revered station institution.  Once the schoolteacher, but nobody willingly has children on Gaharne anymore. - motherly, good listener, kindly manner, expert manipulator, trusted childhood authority figure to all Gaharnites. - knows the real history of Heylar. The colony experienced a xenomorph outbreak.  Gaharne immediately imposed a quarantine, and remained safe. In the subsequent fighting, fires started which wiped out both colony and (the Company investigative team regretfully reported) all the xenomorphs. Primrose was assigned by the Company to monitor matters, suppress the true history, and quietly keep order.  - has behavioural inhibitors. She cannot harm humans or by omission of action allow them to be harmed.  She can and will manipulate humans she deems unstable/dangerous into self-harm if she calculates their deaths will spare other humans greater harm.  She's been hiding suicide bodies in the Larder for years.  - has comms override. Any message in or out of Gaharne goes through her.  She can read, censor, block, or edit at will, and keeps information she deems damaging to morale to herself (knowledge hoarder) - knows that the Company has deemed no further repatriation ships are affordable.  Anyone on Gaharne is expected to grow old and die there. (Dead to the World)  Primrose withheld this communication for morale purposes Nobody knows:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">during the Heylar infestation, a xenomorph embryo was implanted in a bull from Heylar. The animal was butchered before the embryo could hatch, and the creature now lies frozen in the depths of the Larder</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Primrose is not the only Company failsafe on Gaharne.  The Gnomes don't have full behavioural inhibitors. In the event of a xenomorph encounter on Gaharne, an override command will order them to protect it until Company operatives arrive.</li> </ul>Action begins:Once the Larder starts to thaw, workers start to shift the stinking mountain with cargo lifters.  Quickly, they find the first human bodies hidden in the slime, bearing varied signs of violence. Lots of workers see, no hiding it.  Panic.  Fears of a serial killer onboard.  Sikarsky cordons off the area. Security cameras are gone (Primrose removed them years ago). Security is Sikarsky and some volunteers with batons/tasers.  That night, the xenomorph larva, now awakened and glutted on offal, emerges fullgrown from the Larder and abducts Sikarsky while he self-importantly stands guard.  Nobody sees.  Panic.  PCs must now lead investigation.Sandbox events, depending on PC actions:Xenomorph will begin to nest. It was born from a bull, it's big and powerful. It'll begin to abduct people more and more boldly.  There's no real weapons on Gaharne, and projectile weapons are unsafe given acid leak potential, but improvised flamethrowers filled with Heckfire hooch can be made. (flaming spirits)Primrose may be detected by:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the PCs ship's comms detecting a message she sends to company HQ about the xenomorph.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">PCs realising the victims in the Larder (once identified) had many counselling appointments with Primrose before disappearing</li> </ul>Primrose will resist interrogation with expert words and with shocking force if necessary. Many Gaharnites love her and will protect her from outsiders.  Only forcible data download reveals all she knows. Once the xenomorph is captured on a security feed or documented in the computer system, the Gnomes' failsafe activates.  They flood out of the mines, attacking anyone holding a weapon or hunting the xenomorph (rampaging gnomes). They will break into the Heckfire Club and destroy the distillation vats to deprive flamethrowers of fuel.  If the truth about the Company's intention to abandon the Gaharnites becomes known, locals may try to hijack the PCs ship in order to leave.The best hope for a less-than-terrible outcome is for Kylie to activate the Neverland device, digitise herself, and merge with Gaharne's mainframe.  This will give her control over many of the station's systems, which will allow her to track and/or isolate the gnomes and the xenomorph, and help the PCs escape.  But this is unlikely to be enough.  In the end, as a last resort when threatened by the xenomorph, Magda will also digitise herself and merge with Kylie in the machine.  As Gaharne succumbs to eternal quiet, the only sound remaining is two voices, singing together eternally on every vidscreen in the station.  Ghosts in the machine, together in electric dreams</blockquote>

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