"Master Race" © 1991, 1998-2005 by Craig Sheeley, originally appeared
in _Challenge_ #54 (pages 42-47), and is reproduced here with
the author's permission.
Text-entry & HTML:
Steve C.
The war with the Kafers has been inconclusive. But the Kafers seem to be gaining ground, advancing technologically thanks to the new equipment provided by the Ylii. Frightened by that prospect, a clandestine organization within the French government has contracted with the Pentapods to develop a new type of human, one capable of defeating Kafers on their own terms. (See page 47 for the PCs to be used in this adventure.)
Unfortunately, the PCs' names turned up on a list somewhere, and their services were "volunteered" for experimentation. They were told only that they were needed for a highly secret and patriotic mission, and that their services would be rewarded. The next thing they know, they wake up aboard a Pentapod ship, a living organism in space. They have been almost completely changed: They are now four-foot-tall, meter-wide parodies of humanity. Their perceptions have been warped to save them the shock of actually seeing the changes that have been wreaked upon them (thus, all measurements given are relative to the PCs, not to reality).
A search of the ship will reveal that the vessel is deserted - except for the PCs - and is coasting in deep space. The Pentapod ship is dying - even the ship's maintenance bio-constructs are dead, littering the vessel. It is shutting down, has a limited amount of power, and has lost all long-term memory, as well as internal repair systems and peripheral life-support. All escape pods have been jettisoned, and no small craft are left in the launch bays. The PCs can only make the ship do immediate things that use instinct programs - they can activate the stutterwarp engines (they have no real navigation capability; it's a matter of point-the-ship-and-pray) and use the ship's equipment (such as communications, sensors and weaponry).
While the PCs explore the ship, a few other abandoned inmates will wake up and prowl around - a group of Kafers kept around to test the new humans. Neither side has any weapons other than their bare hands/claws, but the new humans can squash a Kafer without much trouble (they're unbelievably strong and tough now). A lethal game of hide-and-seek ensues as the two sides battle for control of the ship.
Just as the last Kafers are dealt with, the PCs' ship is attacked, sustaining damage to the midsection! The attacker is another Pentapod ship, closing in with the apparent intent of destroying the already crippled space creature. The PCs must fight back or die, because the Pentapods answer no communications attempt and continue to attack the damaged ship. With clever weapons use, the PCs can drive off the other ship.
An unidentified star system is fairly close by, and there's enough power to stutterwarp the dying ship to it. If the PCs reach that system, they will be intercepted by a human privateer in an armed merchant ship. Horror of horrors, the creatures aboard it are hideous alien parodies of humanity, all tall and spindly (they are real humans, but the PCs' warped perceptions don't see it that way). These alien creatures react in similar horror, because they can see what the PCs really look like, and they attack. A desperate fight decides who owns the ship.
Radio traffic in the system proves that the system is inhabited by humans, a French military outpost! By this time, the PCs have proven their superiority in battles against Kafers, Pentapods and humans - and they may have realized that something is very wrong with them. If they take the privateer ship off into space, congratulations! They've won, because they survived. If they go to the military outpost, they'll be destroyed - the French invite them to shuttle down and send a shuttle full of explosives.
Why this wish to vaporize the PCs? The war with the Kafers is over, for now - a major push mashed the bugs back to their own stars. The need for these new humans is gone, and the French and the Pentapods are trying to tie up loose ends - neither conspirator needs the kind of publicity these new humans would generate if they lived.
You each wake with a vague, fuzzy feeling of disorientation. All you remember is that you "volunteered" for a secret mission to fight the Kafers. The mission is of the utmost importance, and great rewards await you upon its completion.
You are lying in a sweet-smelling, soft bed. Something warm and moist presses against your faces and body, like a hot towel laid over you. You can hear nothing except a low, long pulsing sound every minute or so. Do you wish to get up? The wet, fleshy blankets over you curl back when you push them. You are all dressed in minimal underwear, made of slightly stretchy, tough, fibrous, flexible material. You have no shoes, but the floor feels comfortable.
You are in a room with maroon walls and ceiling shot through with blue veining. The floor is dull pink-white, and feels like hard rubber, slightly ridged for good purchase. The room is perhaps 12 meters across by eight meters long. Dim light seems to radiate from the ceiling. The only furnishings are the half-dozen open cocoons, resembling Pentapod stabilizer units.
A pink-colored double-door at one end of the room is closed, and there are no visible knobs or handles on it. The atmosphere is breathable, but stuffy, and smells slightly of decay.
If you wish to examine the doorway, it opens automatically as you approach, the panels curling back to make a two-meter-wide opening. The doors appear to be flat muscle; once opened, they lock up, clenching and turning slowly blue-purple.
The hallway outside is a sickening purple-pink, about four meters wide and stretching off to the right and left. The lighting is very dim, emanating from glowing bulb-like ceiling projections at four-meter intervals. The ceiling is high and curved, strengthened by ribbed supports at 10-meter intervals. The floor is the same composition and texture as the room you came from. The air isn't quite as stuffy, but the smell of decomposition is stronger.
If the PCs decide to sit down and do nothing, they will eventually fall asleep and die: The walls slowly change color toward the darkest blue-purple. The air grows fetid and rank, filled with carbon-dioxide and the stench of busy bacteria. The door uncurls and hangs limp as the lights fade to darkness.
If the PCs head down the corridor, they find themselves headed for the stern. If they go left, they head toward the bridge. Either way, they encounter other rooms, monitoring stations, etc.: As you walk, the lighting gradually grows stronger. Other doors begin to appear on the same side of the corridor as the room where you awoke. Some of the doors are open, some are not. Peering into several of the open rooms, you can see things resembling sunken baths filled with stinking, fermenting slime, some obvious but seamless lockers, looking more like grown things than manufactured items, and furnishings protruding from the floor - meter-tall, coffee-table-sized, flat surfaces of various sizes. The walls and furniture are all the same blue-pink color, shot through with blue-veining.
Opening unopened doors reveals rooms featuring strange items: More "stabilizer pods" of all sizes and shapes, bee-hive-like structures (most of the compatments filled with curled-up, tentacled dead things; the stench here is unbearable). One door opens to a long, dark corridor that leads to a small room featuring a wall that is a window - this window looks out into deep space, an unfamiliar star-scape. The window is hard and cold, so cold to the touch that it almost freezes fingers to it.
Some doors will not open, and you can't try to force them, for there are no seams where you could gain purchase.
Something lurches down the corridor toward you. It seems to be walking, but drunkenly, weaving from side to side. It looks like a combination of crustacean and land-walking octopus, stumbling on six tentacles. It's about a meter tall, and has no visible sense organs, or even a mouth. It makes a strange sucking noise as it wanders toward you, but abruptly falls and collapses. Its tentacles twitch and then go limp.
The PCs may examine the fallen organism to their liking. It is one of the internal-function organisms of the ship, and it's dead. Each tentacle ended in a mouth; it was a floor-cleaner, licking residue off the floor and collecting it for reprocessing. If the PCs handle it too roughly, it vomits its collection all over them in one last muscle spasm. Yuck!
As the PCs continue to explore the ship's living quarters (the rooms with the slime-baths), growth labs (with the stabilizer pods), and internal organism storage areas (the places with the beehives), they meet more aquatic-looking corpses, all small, all grotesque, and all very dead and very smelly - the place begins to take on the aroma of a fish-market.
The doors that won't open lead to escape pods and small craft bays - the pods and small craft aren't there anymore.
Eventually the PCs are going to wander into a vital area, still alive and ticking: a gunnery station, the bridge or engineering. Unless they wander completely around the ship to the starboard side, they won't find the Kafers waking from their captivity.
One door is brightly marked with a series of red bands. It opens as soon as you push it - the door muscle is thick and tough. The walls are pearly and hard, and meter-tall consoles stand before each wall. The tops of the consoles feature simple touch-pads, which are a bit low, but still comfortable for use. Touching any button on any touch-pad makes the pearly-hard wall opposite it light up, showing deep space with target roundels (you know, circles inside circles, like a target) in the center of the wall screen, for such it seems to be.
There are very few buttons on the touch-pads, and with some experimentation, you find that several of them move the star-scapes around the roundels, like a video game. One button glows abruptly red when you touch it; if you touch it again, there is a flash on the screen, and the button stops glowing. It's no great feat of intellect to identify this place as a gunnery room.
The room at the rear of the ship is huge, well-lit, and filled with machinery. The assemblage resembles stutterwarp drive machinery, although it is subtly changed, rounded and streamlined. There are no wire or power connections; instead, the drive machinery seems to be directly grown into the ship, with living connections and power conduits. Several consoles, similar to ones found in the gunnery station, stand before pearly viewscreen walls. You seem to understand that the symbols on the console touchpads are concerned with arcane and inexplicable engineering functions. Henri can translate some of them.
Task: For Henri to call up engineering data.
Difficult. Ship Drive Engineering. 3 minutes.
If Henri succeeds in defining some engineering data, this is what he learns: The stutterwarp drives are in good shape, but that's about all that is in good shape. Very little power is left in the reserves, perhaps enough to move half a light-year. The normal reaction drives have almost no power and life-support is slowly powering down. The main "powerplant" is completely shut down, and the ship is working on battery power. (No, Henri has no idea how to reactivate the powerplant. It doesn't look possible.)
The bridge is a large room (20 meters by 15 meters). Three walls appear to be some hard, pearly material. The fourth wall, looking forward, is a huge window. A half-dozen small meter-high consoles outfitted with complex touchpads stand facing various walls; two face directly forward, looking like helmsmen's posts.
The touchpads are defined in Pentapod writing, which you seem to understand instinctively (that is, you know what the glyphs mean, but you would be hard put to translate). Most of the consoles seem to be information-oriented; one of the forward consoles is definitely concerned with navigation and piloting the ship, while the other controls engineering and gunnery.
Task: To determine the ship's navigational position.
Difficult. Pilot, Int. 90 seconds.
The ship is between systems and has been for awhile. The last navigational program entered into the helm was a directive to head straight out into deep space. The computer seems to have no idea of the passage of time and has to struggle to even remember that last directive. At the moment, a star system is about 1/5 light-year away. Unfortunately, there is no memory in the computer to identify it from star-charts.
Task: To activate the stutterwarp drives and point the ship in the
right direction. Difficult. Pilot. 5 minutes.
Referee: If all goes well, the drives will have the ship cruising
through the star system in about four hours.
Task: To call up computer readouts of the ship's status.
Routine. Int. 30 seconds.
The ship is in terrible shape. The normal-space reaction engines (maneuvering drives) are dead, the power plant is completely shut down, life support is failing in peripheral areas, the only power left is diverted to vital spots, and the computer/brain is losing function. In short, the ship is dying. Its last instruction was to shut down!
No information about the ship's past can be found in the memories; that data has been lost as the ship shuts down.
Task: To monitor the inside of the ship.
Formidable. Int. 6 seconds.
Turning the internal bio-monitors on reveals little (most of the monitor nodes are already dead, as are the internal bio-organisms that supplement them). But they do reveal motion in the starboard areas of the ship!
While the PCs have been exploring, another group of castaways have awakened. Eight Kafers were stored on the opposite side of the ship. Two officers are with them, one of almost human intellect (even when he's not working on adrenalin - wait until he gets frightened!). The officers have been trying to wake the soldiers, but there are no pressing dangers and the vitalized intellects soon dull. To make matters worse, the officers don't have anything to clobber the soldiers with except their bare pincers.
If the PCs don't explore the starboard side of the ship first, the Kafers find them, either at the bridge or in engineering. A pair of Kafers will approach the doorway and peer in; unless the PCs posted someone to watch the door, they won't see the Kafers. Roll 1D10. On a 1-2, the Kafers are frightened and gain intellect after about 10 seconds. They then split up, one going to fetch the others, while the second one hides by the doorway to ambush anyone coming out. On a 3-8, they stand there dumbfounded until someone notices them. On a 9-10, they experience a flash of actual thought and slink off to report the incident to the officers.
If the PCs explore the starboard side of the ship first, they meet the Kafers stumbling around after emerging from stasis: You see something moving ahead. It could be another of the strange dying creatures - but it's not quite the right shape and seems bigger in the dim light. As you approach, you see another one behind it. They don't seem to see you, When you're about 10 meters away, you can realize they're Kafers - sort of. They're way too tall and spindly to be regular Kafers, almost twice your height and somehow fragile looking. At this point, the PCs have the advantage. The ship's lights are too dim for effective Kafer vision - the pair doesn't even see the PCs. If the PCs make much noise, there's 50% chance the Kafers will hear them (footsteps make little sound on the rubbery floors). If the PCs want to ambush the Kafers, they may strike the first blow without Kafer response - after that, it's every being for itself. Of course, if the PCs want to sneak away quietly and plan, they can, the Kafers never the wiser.
Wherever they meet, if the PCs and Kafers end up fighting, the sounds of combat will attract the other Kafers in a minute. If the PCs don't see the Kafers first and the other Kafers come to do battle, the fight will be between eight stimulated Kafers (the officers have been rather free with their fists) and the surprised PCs.
The Kafer officers aren't stupid, and they see the PCs as they really are: short, wide, ugly and formidable - worthy opponents. If the PCs succeed in killing or knocking out a couple of Kafers, an officer sounds the retreat and the Kafers run off, faster than the PCs can follow on their short legs.
The Kafer leader then takes up guerilla warfare, positioning his forces in two equal-sized groups with an officer in charge of each, waiting to ambush the PCs. They will use tricks: Hiding in doorways; lurking in the foul pools in the rooms; sending a single aroused Kafer out as a decoy, then having him flee in simulated panic to draw a few PCs into an ambush. One group will definitely be sent on a flanking maneuver, through engineering, to strike from the other flank. Don't worry about mapping out the confrontations; the ship is so large that the Kafers have plenty of room to maneuver. Their only limit is the fact that the ship's living areas are divided into the port corridor (and the rooms attached to it), the starboard corridor and its rooms, the engine room at one end and the bridge at the other end. There's more to the ship than that, of course, but the cargo and boat bays below can't be reached at the moment.
On the way through engineering, the Kafers stop to try to dismantle parts of the engines for weaponry! This action registers all sorts of pain sensors on the bridge, alerting the PCs there to the danger. They will have to drive off the Kafers before they blow up the ship or shut down the stutterwarp drives.
The PCs have to kill the Kafers. The bugs won't sue for peace, fighting to the last, er, man. After the PCs have won (and perhaps sustained a few wounds themselves), give them a few minutes before: The ship shakes violently, throwing you off your feet. As you struggle to regain your footing, the ship shakes again, less violently. There is a sound too familiar to space warriors, the noise of momentary decompression.
PCs on the bridge or in a gunnery station can see what is happening. A strange, pearl-pink creature is matching course with the ship. It resembles a squid to some extent, with a grayish shell covering its nose, broken only by a glowing golden dome, like a huge compound eye. Its tentacles trail behind in a streamlined mass, each arm tipped with what appears to be a thruster jet. As you watch, light beams stab out from the peculiar creature and your ship shudders. The wall displays tell the story: You're under attack!
What the PCs do not know is that the creature cruising alogside them is a dead ringer for the ship they're in. They are under attack from a Pentapod battlecraft, the size of a battleship (but only armed like a cruiser). The PCs may use their ship's weapons from the bridge, trusting automatic responses, or they may take control of the guns from one of the gunnery stations (there are two on the starboard corridor and two on the port corridor). While they frantically try to activate the weapons, the other ship continues to take pot-shots, trying to destroy the engine room.
For purposes of gunnery, assume that both ships are within the same 600,000-kilometer hex. Actually, they're separated by about one kilometer, making this a completely point-blank range battle!
Task: To activate the ship's weapons from the bridge:
Difficult. Gunner. 1 minute.
Referee: Once a gunner has figured out how to activate the lasers, he
may fire either a x1 laser at the enemy using standard gunnery rules, or he
may make the gunnery task a Difficult one and fire a 5x1 laser group at the
enemy. Up to three gunners may man lasers at any one gunnery station.
Task: To prepare and fire a death missile.
Difficult. Gunner. 1 minute.
Referee: A gunner working at a gunnery station may try to use the
toxin missile controls at the station. He has to puzzle out the correct
touchpad sequence and define the target correctly; this is represented by the
task. If successful, a death missile is launched at the enemy. A death
missile is self-targeting; at this range it hits on a roll of 5+. The enemy
will try to shoot it down, succeeding on a roll of 7+. If a death missile
hits (and if it gets past the armor), roll 1D10 each turn, per missile. On a
5+, the enemy ship dies. Completely. Along with every life-form on board.
The enemy ship is a husk, filled with dead meat.
The death missile is a stutterwarping, living organism that carries millions of tiny submunition spores loaded with a devil's brew of short-lived viruses and organic poisons. Any carbon-based lifeform with a circulatory system dies moments after being hit by one of these spores; this includes Pentapod living ships. There is no antidote since a hospital of antidotes couldn't cover every poison and virus included in a single spore submunition. The PCs' ship has been death missiled repeatedly, but its own slow death has stopped the outer circulatory system and prevented the spread of the weapons' deadly cargos.
The enemy Pentapod is a fairly large ship. It has 50 hull hits and an armor factor of 4, thanks to its shell. Armor prevents damage; any weapon hitting an armored ship must roll 1D10 higher than the armor factor of the ship to damage the hull. Surface features such as sensors, thrusters and weapons mounts are not protected by armor. To drive it off, the PCs have to do 25 hits worth of damage to it, or hit it with a death missile.
In the meantime, the PCs are in danger. Roll 1D10 every turn to determine what important damage occurs: On a 1-7, nothing vital is hit. On an 8, the bridge is hit. Roll for one PCs at random on the bridge to sustain crewmember damage. A result of 9 means gunnery station hit. (There are four gunnery stations; roll at random to see which one is hit. If there are PCs in that station, they all suffer crewmember damage, +1 on the die roll.) A result of 10 means engines hit. (Test for engine failure; there is a 10% cumulative chance per engine hit for something irreplacably vital to be hit, which kills the stutterwarp drives.)
Should the PCs manage to drive off or kill the Pentapod ship without sustaining critical stutterwarp engine damage in the process, they can continue their voyage to the nearby star system (this system is actually DM+27 28217, an occupied system and French outpost) and try to find habitable worlds.
Task: Using the ships' sensors to scan the system.
Difficult. Sensors, Int. 6 minutes.
Success indicates that the PCs have swept the system and found nothing even resembling a habitable world, just some asteroids and planetoids. However, one planetoid is broadcasting radio traffic, and there is a gravity-disturbance resembling a stutterwarp drive in action about three million kilometers away, headed their direction at a warp efficiency of about 1.5. If the PCs are not successful, they learn little, trying to puzzle out how to make the sensors work. By the time they'd get to try again, they have company.
The other ship parallels your course, drawing to within visual range. It's heartbrakingly familiar - an old, use-streaked Anjou-Class freighter! It flies alongside, making no maneuvers, as if the crew is studying you. To communicate with the new ship, the PCs must find and activate the communications network of the perishing vessel.
Task: Using the communicators.
Routine. Communications. 30 seconds.
The communicators are not working perfectly; the link is sporadic and filled with static. Furthermore, there is no visual signal, only audio (the ship's pretty far gone, and that battle didn't help it any). The voice on the other end speaks French with a slight twang to it, and is strangely high and squeaky. "Hello, alien vessel. This is the SS Bounty. Can you hear me? Please respond."
If the PCs ask where they are, the Bounty's man tells them, "In the DM+27 28217 system. Didn't you know that?"
If the PCs tell the Bounty they are in need of assistance, they are directed to turn off their stutterwarp drive and stand to for docking. Otherwise, the Bounty's man requests them to shut down and stand to for docking so they can investigate the strange and unique vessel (most Pentapod ships look like fish - this is a large battlecraft). Either way, if the PCs want to dock with the Bounty, they have to take a moment to discover where the docking bay is aboard the alien craft.
Task: To prepare the ship for boarding.
Routine. Pilot. 1 minute.
Referee: This shuts off the stutterwarp drives, stops the ship's spin
and puts the interior into freefall (the entire craft has been rolling to
create a gravity simulation; the PCs have been walking on the inside of the
outer shell) and opens the docking bay amidships.
If the PCs don't want to be boarded by the Bounty's crew, they can change course to prevent it. The Bounty will take umbrage and open fire with several heretofore concealed weapons: two double x1 laser turrets, a masked x3 particle gun mount, and a 5x1 laser array, with +1 ship's targeting. Obviously, this ship is only an Anjou on the outside. Roll for damage on the PCs' ship as before.
If the Bounty's crew boards the PCs' ship, or the PCs board the Bounty, a new horror becomes quickly apparent. The crew of the Bounty looks human. Sort of.
The Bounty has obviously been taken over by aliens! They look like thin, spindly, stretched-out parodies of humanity - easily three and a half meters tall - shouting with squeaky, high voices when they see you. And they're armed, carrying guns that look vaguely familiar. One of them points an instrument at you, and a bright photo-flash fills the room.
The half-dozen crewmembers who meet the PCs (either on the PCs' ship or on the Bounty) are armed - two have Model 57 9mm pistols, three have M-2 assault rifles and one has a Model 10 riot gun. They wear nonrigid armor vests. They're terrified when they see the PCs - test for panic. If they don't panic and run, they open fire. One of the Bounty boarding crewmembers is a Veteran NPC; the rest are Experienced. One Bounty crewmember took a picture with a self-developing digital camera; it prints out a photo at the touch of a button.
The aliens gape, their long, skinny mouths opening inhumanly wide. Some run, some level their weapons at you and fire! The PCs must fight or die; the range is not long, perhaps 10 meters. If the PCs grab the guns, they can use them, although they seem large and ungainly. If they defeat the Bounty crewmembers, they can invade the Bounty. There are only another five crewmembers aboard her, and they have only Arno Five-Fifteen pistols with which to defend themselves. These remaining crewmembers fight as Green NPCs.
By this time, the PCs may have pieced together the clues and realized that they have been drastically altered from their former selves. If the PCs look at the picture that was taken of them, they will see the truth: They're ugly, squat, vile-looking grotesqueries that would look normal in a freak show.
Now the PCs have to decide what to do. They can take the Bounty and stutterwarp away to a life of free piracy; they can get away from the Bounty once they've killed the boarding crew; or they can go to the French planetoid outpost in-system.
If they choose the first option, they're home free. The Bounty has a lot going for it. If they choose the second option, they're almost out of time, for their ship is nearly dead. If they choose the last option, the French are very cordial about the whole thing and offer to send up a shuttle to rescue the PCs; this shuttle is remote-controlled and contains a single fusion bomb big enough to vaporize the entire now-dead Pentapod battleship.
Measurements given in the adventure are twice the actual distance. The PCs are shorter now, but still think they're normal. If you want real distances, divide the stated distance by two. To avoid tipping the players to the fact that their characters are more than human, their stats are given in letter form. Conversions are: A=10, B=12, C=15, D=18, E=20, F=25, G=30, H=35. Some of these statistics are high - the Pentapods had to modify the base humans quite a bit. The PCs cause blunt weapons trauma when they strike with their strengthened, spike-knuckled hands. They may not realize this at first, rationalizing that their outsized, skinny opponents are fragile. Likewise, their strengthened frames and musculature, augmented by cartilaginous plates over joints, neck and other vulnerable areas, give the PCs an armor rating of 0.5 on all locations.
Size: 18 Det: 15
Melee: 1/5
Str: 12 Int: 2/12 (8/14)
Armor: 0.8 (from the back only)
Dex: 12 Cons: 7
End: 16 Life: 14
Numbers separated by slashes indicate the difference between stupid Kafers and aroused Kafers. When aroused, one of the officers has an Int of 14 (this fellow has an Int of 8 otherwise).
For the PCs to be used in this adventure, see the Master Race Character Sheets on the following page.
This adventure served as the 2300 AD RPGA event for GenCon '91.
The following character sheets contain information for the referee only. Before showing them to the players, the referee will need to block out the the Att. Number and Task Modifier column on each sheet. See Referee on page 46 for more information.
Att. Att. Task
Code No. Mod.
Skills
Att. Att. Task
Code No. Mod.
Skills
Att. Att. Task
Code No. Mod.
Skills
Att. Att. Task
Code No. Mod.
Skills
Att. Att. Task
Code No. Mod.
Skills
Att. Att. Task
Code No. Mod.
Skills