d10 Improvised Weapons for Mothership

 

These weapons don't have costs, because I haven't settled on an economic system to use for the Axis Mundi yet. Every group on board is different, after all. I don't guarantee game balance - I'm throwing out ideas that sound good to me. Adjust these as much or as little as you need for your own games.

 

1. Rad Cleanser - Engine-cultists consider these unshielded gamma emitters the holiest way to kill; they're often seen in the hands of high priests and blackfingers. Victims rarely die from its "blessings" directly, but find themselves wracked by radiation sickness long afterwards.
1. 1d10 damage, range 5/10/40. On hit, Body save or reduce max Health by 2d10. On crit, save is at [-]. 6 shots, ammunition is heavy and radioactive.
2. Spring-Steel Bow - Commonplace in the dark corners of the ship, bows wrought from flexible metal and high-tension wire see frequent use hunting man and beast.
1. 2d10 damage, range (1/4*Body)/(1/2*Body)/(Body). Silent. 1 shot; 50% chance a fired arrow can be recovered.
3. Air Rifle - Nearly any scrapped machine with a moving part is a source for ball bearings. Find a source for compressed air and hook it all up to a tube, and you have a rifle without the pesky "gunpowder" bit.
1. 2d10 damage, range 10/50/100. Quiet. 10 shots; reloading requires pumping new air (5 shots per reload action) or affixing an oxygen canister (15 minutes of air per shot).
4. Spring Launcher - Firing anything from loose rocks to shaped charges, spring launchers are as simple as it gets.
1. * damage, range 15/45/90. 1 shot; two actions to reload. Damage depends on the launched projectile: blunt objects deal 4d10, Knockdown on crit. Explosives inherit damage, crit, and special traits from the payload.

5. Cryo Sprayer - The Frankenstein offspring of a pressure washer and a cryotube coolant loop. Not for use cooling off your friends.
1. 4d10 damage, range 5/15/30. On hit, inflicts [-] to Speed checks. On crit, the hit location is frozen. 8 shots. Fed from a pressurized backpack tank.
   

6. Flashtube - A few among the many tribes of the Axis Mundi have reinvented explosives. Nitric acid tapped from the ship's vast oxidizer tanks, sulfuric acid from its abandoned laboratories, cast-off paper from Gaia's orchards - the flash paper is potent, but unstable. The classic flashtube is a multi-barrel design that brings thunder to the halls.
1. 2d10 damage, range 5/15/30. 4 shots. May fire multiple barrels at once for +2d10 damage per barrel; 5% chance per additional barrel that the flashtube explodes, dealing the rolled damage to the wielder.
   
7. Jet Spear - These short spears see occasional use by Jackals and other clans on the war path. They're not the most practical of weapons, but the spray of fire when one's thrown is intimidating.
1. 2d10 damage, CQC only. Armor Piercing, -10% to armor saves. On crit, impale the target.
2. Single-use alternate profile: 4d10 damage, Range 5/10/30. On hit, impales. Can be refueled with a source of rocket fuel.
8. Scrap Shield - Thick enough sheet metal stops light projectiles and blades - and the weight matters less in zero-G.
1. Not actually a weapon, though it can be used as one - 1d10 damage, CQC only. Better than fists, but just barely.
2. +5% armor while held; using one action to defend increases the bonus to +15% until the start of your next turn, but reduces speed to half. Takes up one hand while in use.
9. Thermal Blade - The Knights Coronal carry these handheld fusion torches as ceremonial blades; they serve as much as badges of office as weapons. Once ignited, they spew jets of white-hot plasma, fed by an oxygen tank on the bearer's back.
1. 3d10 damage, CQC only. On crit, halve target's armor save for this attack. Uses one hour of oxygen per minute when ignited.
10. Saint's Rod - Sometimes wanderer-priests find their loose flocks threatened. A saint's rod is a reliquary held aloft, a symbol to those who venerate it - and a two-meter-long staff with weighted ends to everyone else.
1. 1d10 damage, CQC only. -10% to Combat checks with this weapon. Faithful who can see the Rod gain +10% to Fear checks in its presence.

d10 Cults Aboard the Axis Mundi

 

1. The outer hull of the Axis Mundi is covered in hand-etched star charts, sketches of constellations' true meanings, and nigh incomprehensible texts on the deep vacuum and its meaning. The astronomer-monks tend the hull, watching the stars for omens of the future and living spartan lives in hard vacuum. The boldest among them spacewalk freely without a tether, trusting the void to deliver them safely to their destinations. They also happen to make excellent guides to the ship exterior.
2. The Axis Mundi's engines are long dormant, but its reactors never fell asleep. Engine cultists worship the "cleansing" radiation and give themselves to holy cancers as signs of blessings. The engineers among them may be blistered with rad-burns and half blinded, but they're daring workers who will go where no others would with little more than overalls and a wrench. Little reliance on electronics compared to the rest of the ship, they keep maintenance records on tanned skins and take pride in the jury-rigged repairs that have accumulated over time.
3. The Keepers of the Oracles are a small clan, surviving through a combination of security and their particular idol. A trio of damaged machine shells wired together serves as their object of worship, spitting out garbled predictions that diviners interpret to holy scripture. So far the machine shells have been surprisingly helpful in keeping the clan alive and on the move; their next steps of "building a power base" are undermined by a lack of actual power, as the shells' batteries slowly run dry. Plus, those shells are somebody's family - and they want them back.
4. A brotherhood of hackers runs against Axis Mundi security systems nightly. Outcasts of a dozen tribes gather around faded terminals to watch their "paladins" fight against the "dragons" in the system. Every so often one succeeds, cutting a node of the ship's grand and tangled networks away from the AIs' control (and often breaking something in the process). Those nights of revelry relieve the pain of weeks of tense survival. The hackers are consolidating their gains, but not for material wealth; they see an eternal afterlife waiting for them as uploads, if only they can build it.
5. Most everyone on board the Axis Mundi is a cyborg of some form by now, but the Undying are something else. Like the machine shells, much of their old body is long abandoned; unlike the machine shells, what replaces it is horrifying. Conglomerations of rusty metal and poisoned flesh twist into inhuman forms that stalk the ship's corridors with followers in tow. Despite their appearances the Undying are usually harmless; true to their name, they've been around a long time, and they know they can simply outwait most threats. Nonetheless, the various Undying cults are entangled in the cold warfare of immortals, and their more human agents sometimes hire for work off the records - and out of their master's sight.
6. Somnus is not the only psychic on the ship, just the only one who happens to be an AI. The products of Gaia's careful engineering have slipped into the general populace of the ship. Psychic bloodlines have formed over the years in all strata of society; few carry any real power, but those who do often garner a following impressed or terrified by their abilities. The forms these cults take are as myriad as the powers that give rise to them.
7. Everyone wants closure, and some people promise it. The rogue cyberpriest Links has spread word round the upper decks that he can speak with the dead and channel them to those who will pay enough. In reality, he simply taps into the ship's sensor logs and reconstructs the looks from there; the rest is nothing more than the usual "medium" quackery. He's still managed to amass a small following and live large. Under the table, he's exploring new ways to use his panopticon.
8. Unsurprisingly for a ship chock full of theists and cults, there are anti-theists aboard the Axis Mundi too. Their forms and actions are many, but they're united in creed - cutting God to see him bleed. Most prominent thanks to propaganda feeds are the Dead Stars, a loose band of - frankly - terrorists scattered around the fore half of the ship. Anonymous in action, they rally behind the figurehead of Dex, a young firebrand who somehow manages to evade Apollo's clutches over and over... likely because he's a plant who prevents the worst of the damage from even reaching the planning table.
9. The Knights Coronal are the descendants of Vulcan's last strike teams, still upholding their last given orders... sort of. They've made their headquarters in "the Sunroom", the vast glass dome atop the Axis Mundi - once filled with gardens, now accompanied by fortresses. Their military rank structure has degenerated into a caste system over the centuries; when strike teams sally forth now, the dwindling power-suited knights are now escorted by barely-armored serfs aspiring to one of the coveted few suits left. Serfs have been known to go "sun-mad" in the dome's gardens, graced by warm light in a ship so full of cold darkness. As far as they're concerned, this is a blessing. Literally everybody hates these guys, since their idea of "fulfilling Vulcan's commands" usually involves smash-and-grab jobs on local infrastructure and burning out entire compartments of the ship "in the name of the Holy Sun". They're responsible for a lot more of the damage to the Axis Mundi than they'd willingly admit.
10. The Brethren of the Flock are a rarity aboard the ship - actual charity, or something approaching it. They welcome outsiders with a fresh meal, spread their message, and wait for visitors to come. The public face is well-respected even on the upper decks. The Brethren hold on to you, after all; you'll be cared for in their arms. You'll just have to work like hell for it. It's a hard life, but they're fast-growing and rapidly gaining influence on the ship... even as budding schisms loom in their future over what should really be done with outsiders.

d20 + d10 Mutations for Gaia's Beastmen

Aboard the Axis Mundi, the frankly-insane AI Gaia has grown a following of beastmen and creatures from a mixture of human stock and vast reserves of animal DNA. They're potentially allies, potentially threats, and excellent set dressing for just how weird the Axis Mundi gets. I've rolled up a pair of tables of mutations for them; the d20 table is (almost entirely) derived from real-world animals, while the d10 list is derived from Greek myth (which Gaia remembers, if fragmented and twisted). I took a bit of liberty with the original writeup's description of Gaia's genetic banks for the sake of more interesting beastmen to put into my game.

d20 Beastmen

1. Sick horns and a tangled beard.
2. Long, shaggy fur and hair, either matted or partly shorn off
3. Webbed feet and hands
4. Transparent skin
5. Defensive bone spines
6. Featherless wings (flightless)
7. Bull horns
8. Prehensile tail
9. Wide-set eyes, 360 degree vision
10. Zero-G gas-bags
11. Electric touch, takes time to recharge
12. Manipulatory tentacles
13. Bioluminescent, good as a guide but bad at hiding
14. Echolocates, nearly blind
15. Oversized forelimbs, quadrupedal gait
16. Double-jointed and unnaturally flexible
17. Slick and oily skin, hard to grab and stains everything
18. Oversized fangs; speaks with a lisp
19. Overlapping protective scales, not very flexible
20. Giant eyes, nocturnal and light-sensitive

d10 Mythical Beastmen

1. Satyr-like legs
2. Toxic breath
3. Way too many goddamn eyes
4. Snake-like lower body
5. Perfect vocal imitation, no voice of their own
6. Deep green skin, photosynthesizes
7. Sharp talons for fingers and a birdlike tail, poor dexterity
8. Projectile feathers
9. Dog-headed
10. One central eye

The Maw and the Rocks

On its slow crawl through space, the Axis Mundi has harvested countless asteroids, comets, and other raw materials to fuel its growth - along with its stripping of the Nero's Fiddle's carcass. What was once a sleek and clean machine just barely small enough to be launched from Earth has grown into a lumpy monstrosity of hand-welded steel, raw rock, and every other material the scrappers can get their hands on. Large portions of the ship's interior that once held now-expended supplies have been hollowed out, their bones repurposed into living and working spaces for the slowly growing population of the ship. Feral scrappers fight Apollo's androids over material, and sometimes these "clearance" projects knock over an entire tribe's home. The largest of these is the Maw; once the gleaming prow of the Axis Mundi, the Maw now gapes open like ragged teeth encircling a vast salvage and mining bay. Here, trusted workers break down the largest chunks of scrap to repurpose and keep the upper decks' lives going. Stolen point defense lasers keep the bay clear of any unwanted debris - and intruders.

 

Clustered around the Maw are the Rocks, the scrappers' homes away from the main decks. Made up of hollowed-out asteroids mined for their worth and lashed together with sealed tunnels and structural struts, the whole thing would never hold together under much acceleration, but it's a precarious settlement of the few Apollo trusts to see space as it really is. Since arriving in orbit around Eden, there's been talk of the Rocks crew spearheading efforts to reach the planet, which Apollo has silently opposed until he has full control. Agitators for colonization tend to meet with unfortunate industrial accidents, leaving the movement disorganized. The rest don't push it, knowing they'll come to their new home eventually.

 

"On the Rocks" is hardly a celebrated phrase nowadays. The workers employed out in the vacuum are trusted, but like the rest of Apollo's agents, their knowledge is kept segregated. The Rocks are generally a one-way trip for anyone who meets the android bearing transfer papers; "returning" means a memory wipe, showing up back home with months missing and just a deeper pocketbook to show for it.

 

1. The Maw - Jagged hull edges frame an intricate array of gantries and clamps. Netting and grab-lines crisscross the open bay, catching any cast-offs from the asteroid drilling operations around the edge. It's cold vacuum with no gravity and no air - come prepared. The latest prize nestled in the Maw is an armed dropship from the Nero's Fiddle; the pruned fork of Vulcan on board has resisted any attempts at electronic subversion, so Apollo's new orders are to simply cut it to pieces and reuse the salvage. The fork, even pruned as it is, is immensely valuable to anyone who would recognize what it actually is; most of the salvage crews at least recognize it as a "small god" in contrast to Apollo himself, but the implications are largely lost on them.
1. The Maw itself is run by Foreman Vander, an old scrapper who's taken the position by sheer attrition. Hoarse voice, creased eyes, bare scalp latticed with tattoos. Vander is the point of contact for PCs looking for work on the Rocks; he'll pay anyone willing to do hard labor drilling asteroids or scrap-breaking, and even "graciously" comp their oxygen for the time worked. With clearance from on high (hard to get), Vander may even task the PCs with a salvage run to the Nero's Fiddle alongside the veterans.
2. Tawnee is a younger scrapper with a knack for computers and a hot-headed streak. Under the tutleage of the Rocks' "guardian spirits", he's learned the trade of data recovery - a trade he keeps very separate from his regular work. Why bother? Tawnee has one of Vesta's memory fragments, barely functional enough to talk, and a dead goddess's "return" has engendered a crisis of faith in him. Tipping off Apollo would carry a reward, but also seal Tawnee's fate.
2. Delta Block is the closest thing that Apollo has to a prison on the Axis Mundi. Several strung-together asteroids form a honeycombed structure full of coffin cells and common spaces. No humans are trusted enough to watch over their fellows; the isolation of hard vacuum does the job for them. Rather than waste processing power and limited hardware on android breaker crews, upper deckers who fall afoul of Apollo's draconian security policies are "transferred" out here to prepare new salvage for the scrappers. Clad in shoddy vaccsuits (with a hidden kill-switch on the oxygen supply, if they meet Apollo's definitions for "threatening the ship") and sent out with nothing more than a saw or a drill, the "inmates" get the nasty work of dealing with explosive, radioactive, or toxic materials (sometimes even all three) and the most dangerous parts of the breaking process. Vulcan's fork has already killed four inmates that tried to start processing work, and that's unlikely to be the last of them.
1. Kim-15 is the android warden of Delta Block. Military frame with the holo-projected face of a middle-aged woman glowing translucent blue. She's been delegated control of the kill-switches on inmates' suits; any potential breakout starts with the the codes she has on tape. Her rule is hardly the swift iron fist of Apollo, and events within Delta Block transpire effectively undisturbed as long as the inmates keep everything internal (the androids are well outnumbered and would rather asphyxiate a riot than fight it; any peaceful resolution would take an outside force).
3. Along the outer walls of the Maw are a pair of salvage hangars, where the two cargo shuttles left in Apollo's stable reside. Crewed by upper deckers in Apollo's inmost circle, these shuttles are the lifeblood of the Maw, capturing salvage from elsewhere in the fleet or asteroids from local space and hauling them in. In theory, the shuttles could still make a one-way landing on Eden, but it's naturally never been tried. Apollo isn't willing, and the hangars are locked down harder than anything outside Apollo's core. Neither shuttle is armed, but on at least one occasion Gaia's habitation domes have met attack by handheld weapons fired from the open cargo bays…
4. The throat of the Maw is its foundry complex, a great glowing cavity where everything fed is smelted, separated, and worked. Some of the construction equipment intended for building the first steps of the Eden colony have been repurposed here to turn raw materials into new hull plates or repair parts; elsewhere, artisans work in family workshops, crafting goods by hand. Oddly, here alone Apollo affords Gaia's followers a presence in "his" territory; a small enclave monitors what they call "Hephaestus' Forge" and arrange frequent trades of technology for the bounties of Gaia's gardens. This enclave is the only sign most will ever see of her beastmen.
1. Althea leads the enclave at Hephaestus' Forge. Deep green skin, suitable for photosynthesis - Gaia labeled her as a "dryad". Soft-spoken and slow to act. May offer the PCs work escorting supply runs towards the ship's aft (and/or the reverse), in exchange for "blessings" or other rites.
2. Leander is one of the few who venture out of the Forge. A hulking man crowned by twisting horns, Leander fights like the devil in the Pit as an "exotic" challenger, walking away with blood in his tangled beard. His daily rituals have slowly turned darker - others hold silent concern, afraid to speak up directly to him. There's whispers the bloodlust is starting to poison him, though.
5. Every settlement needs its entertainment, and out here it's fighting. There's no pretense around the Pit; it's just brutal hand-to-hand combat. Fights aren't to the death, but they get damn close, especially with the number of cyborgs among the Maw crews. Upper deck body shops occasionally use Pit footage to advertise for their works when a particularly vicious winner emerges.
1. Mace is the Pit's current champion. Brain-tampered and scarred up, implanted rigging gun in the right arm (mostly replacing it) and incidentals for replacement. Weirdly honorable in combat, to some outdated code of honor. Displace him to take the title and a lot of respect from the Rocks' inhabitants.

What's all this, then?

 I'm starting this blog back up to dump some of my Mothership thoughts and writing where others can make use of it. The vast majority of my thoughts/writing are derived from Arnold K's Axis Mundi setting, hands down my favorite RPG setting ever put out there. It's a decaying generation ship with thousands of years of history, feuding AIs, space tribes, weird mutants, memory twists... what's not to love? So as I get coherent things written up I'll be posting them occasionally.