Corrosive Questions

Who built the colossal derricks and hoists and all the abandoned superstructure that extend down, down below the surface of Ain 4, deep down for mile after mile? Were they building something that extended down to the core of the world, or were they trying to reach the surface? How many levels are there in all these dark, dismal and heavily polluted areas? Where are the builders? What happened to them? Who--what--lives down there now?

Dimsheen: The Deep Below

Deep below the curdled and scorched crustal wastelands of Ain-4, beneath even the fetid shade-swamps and crag bubblements there are deep tunnels and abandoned mine shafts left-over from the hey day of wildcatters and geological exploitation that ripped millions of tons of raw kiloov crystals and other riches from the uneasy bedrock of this world. Many of these places have been sealed-up, with now dim and whispery psi-casting warning signs and gaudy danger-tape that has mostly peeled away from the dank and mold encrusted walls. Few go this far down into the old sites any more.

It is said amongst the scrapmongers and scavenger-clans of the dustlands and crater-rimtowns both that there are things that have made homes for themselves down amongst the alkaline pools and blackspace galleries and subsidance caverns.

Former slave-laborers were often left down below when the major geo-exploitation corporations pulled-out. This is one of the dirty little open secrets all who dwell upon Ain-4 know all too well. Most of those slaves died out, their alien physiologies were not able to adapt or cope with the harsh conditions deep below.

But some did survive. Troggu and Vomph and the horrid Glingtish have become the stuff of urban legend and moralistic bed-time tales, having long ago displaced the Vrilyu and Hlutrim-progeny as bogeys that go bump in the night. The ultra-poisonous Garbler Fish have become a much sought after delicacy, despite the potent toxins saturating their flesh and the fact that they are the mutated tad-pole stage of a formerly intelligent species. Everyone knows of the tiny bands of Pasquine and Jerboans that all the Company Reps denied existed for decades before they burned down a string of settlements. Then there are the Filter Worms. One of the most indispensible unnatural resources upon Ain-4, the Filter Worms are the single most sought after free-range life-forms loose upon this world. They are living filtration systems. One modest-sized Filter Worm can keep a typical dome settlement or bubblefort livable for months, even longer if they are properly cared for, but who are we kidding?--this is Ain-4; nothing here has been maintained or properly cared for in centuries.

But worms and fish and rat-like pack-hunting pseudo-mammals aren't the only things down below in the black regions of the old tunnels.

One particular species has only lately been discovered, entirely through chance and happenstance. They are the H'lannikari and they are the degenerate descendants of a failed colony of beings from a distant star. The H'lannikari are vaguely bat-like, but entirely wingless, flightless and extremely cannibalistic. Their long isolation in the deep regions has changed these once gentle, conscientious laborers and technicians. They have mutated, degenerated, become a new and awful thing unto themselves that only vaguely resembles what they once were. Like so many things down below the curdled, pock-marked and toxin-riddled crust of this dismal planet...

Dimsheen: Events

Event Sub-Table for Dimsheen

1. Section of Dome collapses, exposing everyone in 4d100' to massive glare, heat and dessication effects.
2. Dust Blow-out at Smelter. Most of the explosion is contained by makeshift barriers. This time.
3. Dust Storm surrounds the entire dome-plex. No one is going anywhere for 1d6 hours.
4. Sumps back-up, cause flooding in alleys. Takes 1d4 days to get cleaned-up and drained.
5. Air plant malfunctions. Air supply doesn't get replenished for 1d4 hours.
6. Excessive Glare. Dome opacity fails. Interior exposed to harmful ultaviolet radiation.
7. Cybertribe raiding party strikes outlying domes.
8. Inspector arrives by way of ornithopter from South Polar Authority Complex.
9. Sewer-slugs (or incredibly large snails) break loose, go on rampage.
10. Riot amongst Dust Trawler crews working for one of the four main outfits.
11. General Strike called.
12. Anarchists sabotage the Alloy Works. Parts will need to be shipped-in.
13. Bar room brawl gets out of hand, 1d4 fatalities and Security is called.
14. Sinkhole forms within 1d100 miles of main dome.
15. Dust Trawler lost under mysterious circumstances.
16. Tramp trade-ship lands, against regulations.
17. Cultists celebrate major holiday--everyone else stays indoors.
18. Patch-crew blown away in gale force winds; hole in dome requires even more resources to repair now.
19. Temperature Inversion hits dome-zone. Heatstroke a real issue.
20. Special.

Specials

1. War breaks out between two major cybertribes.
2. Bounty hunters clear-out the lower levels until they run into Gralf the Grimjaw.
3. Chelation systems breakdown. People begin dying in one hour...
4. Air Plant sabotaged with nerve agent.
5. Bomb planted in main airlock.
6. Cult uprising, fanatics stage simultaneous take-over of all of the dome's major control centers.
7. Dust Trawler crashes into Dome-Zone. The cab is filled with glistening xeno-eggs.
8. Toxic gas discharged from septic-subsystems.
9. Major subsidence, some domes ruptured.
10. Ship crashes out in the Dust.
11. Dutchman's Trawler spotted within 1d4 miles of Dome-zone.
12. Take-over attempt by minor competitor Lordling and 2d20 recently hired mercenaries.
13. Trawler Crews attempt to unionize.
14. Smelter-Teams go on strike. Ruin the Smelters. Total replacement necessary.
15. Fungal bloom in lower levels gets out of hand.
16. Macro-Blob unleashed within Main Dome-Zone.
17. Plague breaks out.
18. Arsonist using industrial accelerants on rampage.
19. Agent Provateur captured and hung in main hydroponic park as an example.
20. Site closed down with no further explanation.

Dimsheen: Common Encounters

Common Encounters within Dimsheen

1. (1d4) Dusters going on-shift
2. (1d6) Latchkees
3. (1d2) Prowling Limb-Bandits
4. (1d4) Dust Handlers
5. (1d6) Proles
6. (1d4) Robots going to next workstation
7. (1d4) Dusters coming off-shift
8. (1d4) Doxies
9. (2d4) Roustabouts
10. (1d6) Mercenaries (out of work)
11. (1d8) Bully-boys
12. (1d4) Slidge
13. (1d6) Domerats
14. (1d4) Drop-Slugs
15. Scav-Swapper
16. Cymek Peddler
17. Cymek Customizer
18. Wandering Graffitti
19. (1d12) Dust Mites
20. Event

Astronaut Shrines: Dimsheen

There is only one viable settlement within the entire Griffsilv Crater Region and that is Dimsheen, a tumble-down series of scored, pitted and constantly malfunctioning domes squatting on the very lip of the crater-rim at the South-most point.  The dust smelters and alloy-works are the only industry in Dimsheen, not counting the usual service-sector professions that always spring up to cater to and prey upon lonely populations of isolated workers. Conditions within Dimsheen are grim, demanding and dangerous. There are constant fatalities out on the dust, and everything is patched together and recycled or jury-rigged to get by on a budget dictated by absentee overlords of commerce who only ever read the production reports.

The Dust Trawlers cannot hire enough workers fast enough to keep up with the demand, let alone the injuries or casualties, which has acted as an incentive for standards to be relaxed quite a bit within the Region. Crude, hand-crafted, hand-me-down cymek prosthetics have become an almost totemic mark of pride amongst the Dusters who treat the glitchy prosthetics as their only real legacy to their offspring or co-workers. A single arm or leg or eye unit will have been passed along from one host to another more than seven or eight times before it gets overhauled and sold off to some prole or cybertribe scav-swap.

Astronaut Shrines: Griffsilv Crater

Roughly 800 miles in diameter, the Griffsilv Crater is located near the equator of Ain 4. The entire central region of the crater is one massive hyper-xeric-desert composed primarily of a peculiar silvery titanium-aluminum dust that is suspected of being left-over from the Second Imperium, at least according to the cybertribes and Dust Trawlers who know this place better than just about anyone. The cybertribes are convinced that the Dust is all that remains of the sacred ship of their forebears, that they claim was dismantled by molecular-level mechanisms unleashed by their enemies.

Nothing of the sort has ever been reported in all the centuries of prospecting and Dust Trawling, but that doesn't stop the cybertribes from telling their ancestral tall tales to anyone who'll listen. Especially if they are buying the liquor.

Conditions within the crater-desert are incredibly harsh, even for a wasteland like Ain 4. The moonlight reflected off of the dust can permanently blind unprotected eyes in just minutes, during the day it literally cooks anything that isn't suitably protected. Foilsuits are most common amongst the Dust Trawler-crews, the cybertribes have other, more exotic solutions.

Denizens: Hlannikari

H'lannikari
Alien Degenerates of the Deep Regions
No. Enc.: 2d4 (6d20)
Alignment: Inimical
Movement: 120' (60')
Armor Class: 6 (some specimens have been seen to wear crude forms of armor)
Hit Dice: 2
Attacks: 1 (weapon, claw or psychic attack)
Damage: by weapon, 1d4, or by ability
Morale: 11

The H'lannikari are tall, lanky, and incredibly pale. Their hearing is on par with shaft bats and they have three eyes that are fully coordinated so as to give them extremely good depth perception, even in the darkest areas. They have shaggy, partially-feathered manes and waterproof coats of fur that seem to be resistant to oils, resins, toxic spills and the like. Approximately 40% of any given group of H'lannikari will have some form of mutation ranging from the innocuous to the most extreme forms of genetic or psychic modification run amok. There are rumors of unfortunate H'lannikari who have become little more than writhing masses of tumors that prey upon their own kind from ventilation shafts and ambushing them from the ceilings of caverns, but the descriptions of these things are woefully incomplete and the information fragmentary at best. It is suspected that these horrific mutants are what drove the small group that was recently exterminated in Griffsilv Crater to the surface. Perhaps an academic/punitive expedition will be assembled to investigate this unsavory matter once and for all? It is rumored that the H'lannikari are descended from a long-lost subterranean nest of survivors from an ill-fated group of colonists from Eta Orionis, but this has ye to be confirmed.

Astronaut Shrines: Intro

Due North of Griffsilv Crater there are several clusters of mostly abandoned and decaying Astronaut Cult Shrines where ancient girders groan and flake away under the cruel ministrations of the acid rains and howling winds whipping through these ruins like remorseless banshees. Few of the scavengers and scrap-gatherers ever go to these contaminated and haunted places. The necessary corrosion protocols alone are enough to deter the poorest and meanest of those who would otherwise attempt to strip such sites bare in their pursuit of old alloy and recovered trinkets. Bloat-Puffers, Sizzlers and Reducing-Blobs are far too common in the area for weaker, less well-armed parties of would be archaeologists or documentarians, though the occasional college freshmen, self-selected suicide-lottery contestant or demented crew of a dust-trawler gone mad with the unending repetition of their dreary routine run off to prove to an uncaring world that they can succeed where no one else has, with understandably predictable and usually dire results.

Three drones have returned from this region in as many centuries. The satellites can't -- or won't -- map the area due to strange interference and unexplained hot-spots that may or may not be Nexus Points left behind by the more dangerously deranged of the old cults.

It's a dangerous place, over and above the usual day-to-day hazards of eking out a miserable life in the dust and debris of Ain 4.

But if you have the means, and the fire-power, there are rumors of fabulous treasures buried deep beneath the fungi-infested scaffolds, mold-covered gantries and lingering shrines of the old Astronaut Cults. Maybe you can be one of the lucky ones and succeed where everyone else has failed before?

Astronaut Shrines: Prologue

They were meticulous in their attention to technical details. Each of their Sacred Sites dutifully recreated the ancient structures of their scientific brethren down to the very rivets, girders and other visible aspects of the Gantries and Pits and Towers. But beneath it all, just behind the carefully compiled facade of scientific adherence to the Stated Principles, hypocrisy lurked. Everything looked like the ancient Holy Places of the Old Guard, but they were not exact replicas after all. Underneath the peeling paint were panels of fome, girders were not crude steel-alloys, but more modern materials better suited to the harsh environment of Ain 4. The more anyone knew the truth, the more obvious it all became. They were building a lie. The compromises of the Executives, the meddling by Management, the in-fighting between claded and casted Technical Services, not to mention the Unions representing the humanoid robots and other autonomous systems all contributed to the final Melt-Down. It all fell apart. Scientific Brethren waged war upon one another using weapons of exclusion and exception. In a short span of time all that remained were their Great Works, the various Shrines left behind in the dusty wastes of a world no one wanted.

Experiment 4b

They came to Ain-4 for the exotic and abundant mineral and metal resources that protruded from the curdled crust as if eager to leave this place behind. Even the ore wanted to get out of here. We should have taken the hint.