BattleLords of the 23rd Century
An Old-Fashioned Bug Hunt

Scene One: Spiders, Spiders, Everywhere

by John Wick

THE RUNDOWN

One Exit. One Spider. One Gun Locker. No Surprises.

THE SET-UP

The characters awaken to the sound of gunfire. They know nothing of their whereabouts, they know nothing of each other, they know very little about themselves. As they open their eyes, they see a small room filled with black billowing smoke and laser fire streaming through the smoke at their unprotected heads. There is the sound of human screaming and another sound , something that sounds like a giant rattlesnake and the thunderous cracking of a whip.

When they finally get a clue and start moving, they will see what's making all the fuss: a fellow merc, trapped against a wall with half of his body wrapped in a thick webby fluid. His right hand is stuck to the wall with his rifle locked in his fist, his finger has the trigger depressed, firing in random directions all about the small, circular chamber.

Perched on the wall before him is the most hideous arachnid-thing the mercs have ever seen. Just as they come into visual range of the spider, it's mandibles have fixed on the mercs fear-filled face and they rip his head clean away from his body. The severed member falls to their feet, the body on the wall twitches a few more times, and then the arachnid turns to face them.

THE ACTION

This Scene's action should be fast and furious. The spider is deadly and moves much faster than the mercs can. It is capable of spitting poison, delivering venomous bites and even skedaddling if it feels it's being overwhelmed. The spider is also part of a hive-mind, meaning that the instant it encounters danger, the three other spiders that are in other parts of the ship will come to its aid quickly. Our heroes don't have a lot of time to act.

There is a small bit of hope. just behind the spider is a weapons rack with three rifles on it. The spider has no idea what a weapon is, so it won't be too concerned about guarding it. However, the mercs have no idea that the rack is there; their memories have been wiped out by the ship's AI. They will have to make visual contact with the locker, see the rifles and make it past the spider to the rack. Clever players will figure out a way to do this. Unclever players will wind up as spider food. The rifles on the wall are PC-6 Pulse Rifles.

(NOTE: When the mercs use pulse rifles when inside the ship, any misses should be checked to see if they've breached the hull. The atmosphere outside is not very friendly [it's rich with oxygen, but it's also rich with sulfur, which will kill hapless mercs].)

You should give the party at least 3 rounds of combat to get to the weapons before the spider starts feeling overwhelmed and calls its friends. The other spiders will take another 3 rounds to get to the room. The party should have weapons by then. The spiders will try to enter the room until one of them has been killed. As soon as that happens, they take off, leaving the mercs to their ship.

THE FOLLOW-UP

The only way out of the room is through the only exit into the exercise area. The pressure door is open (no signs of forced entry ... curious) and perceptive mercs will notice that it looks like this cryochamber was added to the ship as a last minute feature. The rest of the corridors look battle torn and yet, the paint on the cryochamber is still very fresh without any signs of wear or chipping.

They may wonder why a drop ship needs a cryochamber. The answer is: it doesn't. The folks who hired the mercs for the job had no intention of allowing the mercs to remember this little incident, and with the money they were offering, the mercs were not willing to ask stupid questions about cryochambers.

BattleLords of the 23rd Century An Old-Fashioned Bug Hunt by John Wick, et. al.

Back to Shadis #23 Table of Contents
Back to Shadis List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines
© Copyright 1996 by Alderac Entertainment Group

This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com