THE RUN-DOWN Baby spiders on the floor, mommy on the ceiling... and a warning. Six doors: Two are locked and cannot be opened. The others must be opened manually. The north door leads to the bridge. The other doors lead to Engineering (the door at the end of the corridor is locked) and the recreation hall (empty except for pool tables and rotten food). THE SET-UP The living quarters (where the crew eats and entertains itself) are a vast open area. Once again, the actual space in the room is concealed by masses of webbing that make the whole place seem like a labyrinth. However, upon entering the room, the mercs should notice a single red flashing panel on the wall furthest from them. They'll have to make their way through a lot of webs to get there, but once they are there, they can read the vid screen and the words that flash there: EMERGENCY HTTR SYSTEMS SHUT DOWN EMERGENCY HTTR (dubbed "Mad Hatter" by the crew) has crashed. Hatter runs everything on the ship. It runs the engines, the doors, the defense systems, even the cryo-tubes. When the spiders invaded, Hatter tried repelling them, but there were too many. The damage the spiders did to the ship caused Hatter to crash. The emergency AI ("Alice") booted up as soon as the Hatter crashed. While Hatter has instructions to wipe out the mercs' memories and even kill them if anything goes wrong, Alice does not. Her only programs give her instructions to keep the mercs safe and to wake them if security procedures fail. That's why the mercs woke when they did, and that's why the door was open. Unfortunately, the mercs will only able to remember the fact that Hatter and Alice are the main and emergency Artificial Intelligences on the ship. They will not know of the secret priorities of Hatter, but they will know that the only way to communicate with either of them will be on the bridge. There are many spiders in this room. All of them are small except for one, and that one is on the ceiling, watching the mercs. This large spider is about the size of a couch and the tiny spiders running over the room (there are a dozen of them) are her children. She will remain perfectly still unless the mercs try anything against the tiny spiders. The tiny spiders will run and hide if the mercs come close to them. They aren't stupid. They've all seen what the mercs can do and they have decided that the best course of action is to remain hidden. THE FOLLOW-UP There are three doors exiting this room. Two of them are locked. The third door - leading to the bridge - should get the mercs where they need to go. Once again, the door must be opened manually. BattleLords of the 23rd Century An Old-Fashioned Bug Hunt by John Wick, et. al. GM Information Scene One: Spiders, Spiders, Everywhere Scene Two: Jane Fonda's Nightmare Scene Three: The Living Quarters Scene Four: Lost Little Alice Scene Five: Waking Up Hatter Scene Six: Goodies Scene Seven: Putting The Hatter To Sleep Scene Eight: Getting Some Wheels Map of Starship Gamera (slow: 103K) 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