Friday Encounter: Six Hours in the Dungeon

A while back, I was at a session where the players started speculating about how it would be possible to adapt the indie horror classic Five Nights at Freddy's to a board game. Although the series is probably most known for its endless sequels and lore these days, I still think that the original game from 2014 is a masterpiece of game design, taking survival horror resource management and distilling it to its barest essentials to create an experience that's equal parts tense and cerebral. That discussion got me thinking, and for this week's Friday Encounter, I've created a series of rooms designed to be dropped into a dungeon (I hear the kids are calling that a dungeon patch these days) based on the mechanics of FNaF 1.

Fans of the series will no doubt notice some references here. This puzzle is designed with funhouse dungeons in mind, but if you feel your players will find some details immersion-breaking (or if it will give away what they're supposed to do), you can feel free to alter them.

Six Hours in the Dungeon

Click here to enlarge

Setup

The players should enter this section of the dungeon at room L. Opposite the door is a long table with eleven crystal balls set on it, as well as an alembic filled with green fluid, a large hourglass, and a paper fan worth 1 GP. A chair is set before the table. There are two additional doorways on the wall, leading east and west (or whatever direction works best for your dungeon). Each doorway has a lever next to it, connected by a chain to a raised portcullis above the doorway. Two torches in sconces are lit on the other side of each doorway from the levers. In addition, there is a map pinned on the wall showing the layout of the surrounding rooms, each labeled by letter (this should be provided to the players). Room C is circled, with a note saying "WATCH SO IT DOESN'T GET OUT" written next to it.

Each of the crystal balls on the table is set up to scry into one of the surrounding rooms. The crystal balls are all labeled with the same letter provided on the map. They are normally opaque, but when rubbed, they light up and display a view of the room assigned to them.

Once the entire party enters the room, the hourglass on the table begins to drain. It can easily be determined that the hourglass is calibrated for six hours (no check necessary); the lower chamber is graduated for each hour.

At the start of the encounter, all rooms are empty except for rooms A and C.

Room A contains a dais on which three iron golems stand shoulder to shoulder, in line from west to east. Each golem is dressed in a giant-sized knight's surcoat, displaying a different coat of arms:

• The west golem wears a purple surcoat with the image of a hare strumming a lute in white.
• The middle golem wears a black surcoat with the image of a brown bear clutching a silver mace.
• The east golem wears a yellow surcoat with the image of a hawk clutching a torch in its talons in white.

Room C contains a stone juggernaut (see Tomb of Annihilation).

The Encounter

In order to get past the golems, the PCs have two options. They can fight them as normal, but this should be a difficult task (this encounter works best when iron golems are well out of the CR the party is used to). However, they can track the movements of the golems through the crystal balls as they patrol the surrounding rooms, and use the portcullises to block the golems from entering their location. If they can survive for a full six hours, the golems will become inactive and allow them to pass.

What The Players Can Do

To best allow the players to strategize, the following information should be communicated to them. It may also be helpful to have a handout available to recap the rules.

Once the encounter begins, the DM and the party take turns making actions. This is not action time, and an initiative roll is not needed; instead, the party should take actions as a group, perhaps nominating one player as the "caller" to communicate their final decision to the DM. If one or more PCs leaves room L, enter action time as normal.

Each hour is abstracted as a series of two 30-minute turns (so there are a total of 12 turns). On each turn, the party can take up to three actions. These actions are:

• Check one crystal ball.
• Lower the portcullis over one door.

The party has a total of 20 power units with which to complete this task, represented by the green fluid in the alembic. At the end of each turn, they lose one power unit if more than one crystal ball was checked, and one power unit for each door that remains closed. It is a good idea to make sure that the PCs know how much power they have at all times.

For example, if the party checked two crystal balls and lowered the portcullis over one door, they lose two power units at the end of that turn; the fluid in the alembic drains by one tenth. If they had lowered the portcullis over the other door on their previous turn, and did not raise it by the end of this turn, they would lose a third power unit. If they only checked one crystal ball but left both portcullises down, they lose two power units, one for each door. If they checked three crystal balls, they lose one power unit but cannot lower any porticullises on that turn.

Once a portcullis is lowered, the party can raise it for free at any point on their turn. It does not consume power or use up one of their alloted actions.

When the PCs look into a crystal ball, they see an overhead view of the room corresponding to that crystal ball's letter, including if any golems are present in it.

What The Monsters Can Do

At the end of each turn, after the PCs have taken their actions, the DM can move up to three monsters. This should be kept secret from the players, who must rely on what they can observe through the crystal balls on their turn to track the monsters' movements.

Golems can move to any adjacent rooms on their move. The west golem can only move into rooms on the west side of the map (Rooms A, B, D, E, F, and I). The east golem can only move into rooms on the east side (Rooms A, B, G, H, J, and K). The middle golem can move into any room other than room C. No golem can enter room C. The DM does not have to move the golems on every turn; however, each golem must have moved at least once by the end of each hour.

The juggernaut moves differently than the golems. The DM can only move it if the PCs did not check the crystal ball scrying on room C on that turn. The walls of room C are engraved with a spell that produces a slowing effect on the juggernaut (DC 12 Arcana check to determine this), so it moves very slowly while in the room, but can move quickly when outside. If the DM moves the juggernaut on their turn, it only moves a few inches (enough to be noticeable the next time the PCs observe it). The DM should make a note of how many times the juggernaut has moved. After it has moved five times, it can exit room C on its next turn. When it exits room C, it moves all the way to room E.

If the golems or the juggernaut are present in rooms E or H, they can be seen from room L via the doorway. If the portcullis is not lowered, the monsters can enter room L on their next move, at which point action time should begin and combat is initated as normal. If the portcullis is lowered and a monster must move from room E or H (ie. if they were in those rooms at the end of the last hour), they will instead move back to their starting room (Room A for the golems, or room C for the juggernaut).

If the PCs use up all their power units, a gust of wind blows through the room, extinguishing the torches on the walls (and any torches carried into the room). Any portcullises lowered raise back up, unblocking the doorways. Enter action time; the monsters will all begin to advance on room L, behaving according to normal combat rules.

If the PCs make it six hours without using up their power, a chime sounds in the room, followed by the noise of children cheering. The golems and the juggernaut will become inactive and stand still, allowing the party to pass.

Oh, yeah...and Happy Halloween!

Pacifica

Perhaps the most important route in the Gorgonis Sector is the Cambion Spur, one of the few permanently navigable warp lanes providing a stable passage through the Eye of Terror. At one end, firmly within Imperial space, is Gorgonis Major, the sector's capital world and the staging ground for the regular incursions into the Lost Worlds whenever the warp storms abate. The residents of Gorgonis Major think of themselves as the Imperium's last line of defense against all the scum and villainy the Eye of Terror has to offer, and pride themselves on holding out the most steadfast bastion of Imperial law in such a lawless part of the galaxy.

But if you told the people of Pacifica about that, they'd laugh at you. In fact, you wouldn't be the first - nor would you be the first to receive such a response.

Located at the other end of the Cambion Spur from Gorgonis Major, Pacifica is a dusty desert planet, possessing an arid climate and no large bodies of water. It would be just another backwater, were it not for the fact that it is one of the Lost Worlds - those planets officially subject to the Imperium but located within the Eye of Terror. In fact, of the Lost Worlds, Pacifica is perhaps the one that, more than any of its cousins, wants to be part of the Imperium.

Pacifica might not have much to offer in terms of natural resources - it is primarily an industrial world, its citizens working in fuel refineries in the vast sand flats or salvaging scrap from the wreckage of machinery peppering the landscape. But it is fiercely loyal, and it holds itself as being the Imperium's last true holdout within the Eye of Terror, refusing to harbor criminals or deviate from the Emperor's law. Being that Pacifica - unlike Gorgonis Major - is surrounded by lawless and often hostile worlds usually beyond the Imperium's reach, its Imperial Commander, Artorius Macduff, insists it holds a stronger claim to the title of the Imperium's most far-flung yet fearless outpost.

Pacifica's unique status gives it an interesting position in the baroque monstrosity that is Imperial politics. Officially, it is a full Imperial vassal and pays a tithe to the priesthood in the form of refined chemicals and ores. However, in practice, Pacifica's position on the inside of the Eye of Terror has made it almost impossible to interface with the greater Imperium most of the year. As such, the Administratum only collects tithes when the Eye of Terror blinks and its ships can access the Lost Worlds without going through the criminal-controlled Cambion Spur. Desperate to uphold his image as a loyal servant of the Imperium and court the favor of the priesthood, Commander Macduff insists that citizens set aside a portion of their production to stockpile for the Administratum's next visit, no matter how far off that might be. Often, the temple storerooms are filled with multiple years' worth of tithe, all waiting to be paid in full. This has not made him popular with the industrial corporations under his rule, who see it as an unnecessary drain on business.

With the only reliable supply lines under the thumb of Mahaniraya Station, and Imperial reinforcements only coming every few years, Pacifica has had to live a largely self-sufficient existence - not the easiest of tasks given its paucity of arable land. To make do with its lack of resources, its population is small, living mostly in a few scattered cities, and strict rationing is enforced by the planetary authorities. Its Planetary Defense Force, though trained to repel incursions by pirates and other threats, is equipped with weapons and vehicles decades behind the most cutting-edge technology the Imperium can muster. Still, its people are a resolute folk who will enforce the Emperor's will upon the most desolate reaches of the galaxy...at least, that's what the official line is.

Commander Macduff's pro-Imperial policies are a source of contention with the common rabble of Pacifica, most of whom have never seen an off-worlder and don't see why they should be forced to make do with limited supplies while the Commander hordes their valuables. This has never crossed into armed revolt, but rumors spread of a growing movement among some cities and factories to withhold their tithe in protests.

If such a rebellion were to emerge, it could mean big changes for Pacifica. Commander Macduff has caught wind of these rumors, and has brought on a new addition to his court: Inquisitor Eleonora Greyfax. The Commander hopes that having an Inquisitor stationed on Pacifica will quell any unrest in the populace and remind everyone that the planet is still proudly an Imperial one. Failing that, he is prepared to institute martial law if the situation calls for it.

However, as an Inquisitor, Greyfax's loyalties are only to the Emperor, not to Macduff. Further, she has her own grudge to bear - she is the second child of a prominent noble house on Earth, and her family has arranged for her to be sent away to the furthest corner of the Imperium, where they can be sure she'll be cut off from the rest of the galaxy most of the year, to prevent her from meddling in their plans for succession. In her time since arriving on Pacifica, Greyfax has begun to suspect that there were forces other than the Emperor behind placing her there, and she could well be swayed to act against the Commander's interests.

The Naraka Syndicate

Art by Martin McKenna

There is crime all over the galaxy. This is especially true in the lawless reaches around the Eye of Terror, where Imperial authority can barely penetrate. But in the Gorgonis Sector, there is one name that shines above all the others when it comes to the criminal underworld - a name spoken in grim whispers late nights in seedy bars, with hushed reverence by every small-time ganger, and with a sense of begrudging awe by the authorities. That is the name of the Naraka Syndicate.

The Naraka Syndicate is a criminal operation spanning multiple planets and warp-lanes throughout the sector, with enforcers based on several worlds acting in a network to relay deals and information back and forth between each other. Though Syndicate-affiliated gangs trade in all sorts of contraband - drugs, protection rackets, and smuggled goods, to name a few - their most lucrative market is slaves. They supply captives to buyers on either side of the Eye of Terror, and to both unscrupulous Imperial Commanders and the Orrathi Orks. All slaves that pass through the Syndicate are branded with a purple claw mark above their collarbone. The fact that the Syndicate's "made men," those officers whose loyalties are pledged to Naraka, also bear a tattoo of the same mark in the same place is surely coincidental.

Art by mossacannibalis

Often, a Syndicate-affiliated gang on one planet will have never met their counterpart on another planet, and may have no knowledge of their operations whatsoever. They may only interact with other cells through go-betweens. Every member of the Syndicate, however, is fully aware that they ultimately answer to the head of the entire organization, Boss Naraka.

Boss Naraka - not their real name, which is difficult to pronounce by humans - is a true rarity: a lone Tyranid. No one knows how they were separated from their hive fleet. Some rumors state that they were rejected by their Hive Tyrant after being spawned with a deformed leg (and indeed, the Boss does have a bionic right middle leg). Others speculate something even more grim - that the Boss was exiled for being too depraved even for the Tyranids. Whatever the case may have been, the Boss has managed to build an empire of their own, bringing gangers, smugglers, slavers, and all sorts of lowlifes into the fold through threats, bribes, or force of arms.

Grotesquely bloated and fond of thick cigars, Boss Naraka rarely leaves their mansion on Mahaniraya Station, preferring to work through liasons or to bring their subordinates to their desk if negotiation must be made face to face. They are always accompanied by their personal bodyguards, Boaz and Jachin - a pair of burly Zoats in custom-fitted power armor. Far from being a distant overseer, the Boss is constantly kept up to date by their network of spies and information brokers reporting back on the goings-on in Syndicate cells. Every cell of the Syndicate has a few agents loyal only to the Boss embedded in it, their identities kept secret from all other members. These spies are tasked with relaying the news if any local boss is getting too big for their britches. Those who threaten the balance of power tend to find themselves on the receiving end of the Naraka Syndicate's favorite way to send a message - ejecting the offender through an airlock and into the vacuum of space.

If there is one thing that most affords the Syndicate its power, it is real estate. The Cambion Spur is one of the most stable regions in the Eye of Terror, affording relatively safe passage year-round - and the Syndicate controls a chokepoint along that very warp-lane. At the center of the Spur lies Mahaniraya Station, the headquarters of the Naraka Syndicate. For this reason, all trade in and out of the Cambion Spur is done under the auspices of the Syndicate - and they demand a hefty toll, or else.

Mahaniraya Station can best be described as an intentional space hulk, consisting of a jumble of disparate ships haphazardly welded together. At one point it was a humble research station abandoned since the Dark Age of Technology, but that time has long since passed; as the Syndicate's operations grew, they have "acquired" ships, civilian and Imperial alike, to bulk out their headquarters' living space.

This expansion was necessary, for the Station has evolved into a self-sufficient community. As a refuge from the law, it provides a natural safe haven for pirates and smugglers. With the Syndicate offering protection that the Imperium denied, it also became a destination for mutants and fugitives who needed a place to disappear to. Now, Mahaniraya Station resembles a hive city in space. Cramped tenements have been set up in bunks and cargo holds, and mazes of corridors have been repurposed as streets and alleyways. The only law in Mahaniraya Station is that of the Syndicate, and that is both a blessing and a curse. There are things that can be found here that would get someone arrested - or worse - in Imperial space, but at the same time, there is no protection from the whims of Syndicate enforcers, whose decisions are final, and often enforced with plenty of firepower.

There is only one group on Mahaniraya Station that can claim to contest the influence of the Naraka Syndicate. That is the Brotherhood of the Four Talons, a cult that worships Genestealers from the moons of Ymgarl. When the cult's base of operations was discovered in Imperial space, they fled to Mahaniraya Station to avoid persecution - bringing with them esoteric teachings of a four-armed, many-fanged savior that will birth a race of super-beings to bring forth a glorious new era. The leader of the cult, Kraid Manx, is himself a fourth-generation Genestealer hybrid (a fact discenable by the blue tint to his skin) and many of his associates share a common ancestry.

Since coming to Mahaniraya Station, the Brotherhood has established itself as a power among the sizeable population of mutants and refugees, many of whom found common ground with the cult over being scorned by the Imperium. In turn, the Brotherhood provided the people of Mahaniraya Station with food and housing, and made sure that the Syndicate enforcers shaking them down would disappear. Not all of the Brotherhood's supporters are true believers of their creed, but many feel they have their interests closer to heart than the Syndicate does.

The Naraka Syndicate still reigns supreme on Mahaniraya Station, and they easily have the resources to wipe the Brotherhood out if they so chose. However, to do so would be to throw the Station's slums into chaos, launching an open revolt that could topple the entire operation. For now, Boss Naraka is content to let their enforcers keep their interests at hand - but who knows how long that can last?

Gorgonis Major and its System

Art by Simon Stalenhag

If there's a bright center to the Imperium, the planets of the Gorgonis Sector must be among the furthest from it. The sector's distance from Earth means it's out of the concerns of many Imperial officials, and its proximity to the Eye of Terror means many of the officials closer at hand regard policing the sector as unenviably futile. But it is that same proximity that lends some importance to the sector's capital world of Gorgonis Major.

A Civilized World, Gorgonis Major nevertheless boasts a relatively small population. Its atmosphere, though Earthlike, is dominated by cooler temperatures and frequent fog and precipitation, and its soil is rocky. Most plant life consists of low-growing mosses and lichens. There is one major ocean on the planet, taking up about 45% of its surface area; the planetary capital of Coldharbor is located on its shores. Little of the planet's surface is arable, but fortunately, the sparse population makes Gorgonis Major fully self-sufficient, relying off of fishing and crops grown in underground hydroponic domes.

Life on Gorgonis Major would be a dull one, were it not for its strategic positioning: the planet is on the edge of the Eye of Terror, and at one terminus of the Cambion Spur. It is for this reason that it has become an important staging ground for the Imperium's crusades into the Eye of Terror when the warp storms abate. As one of the few planets in the region with enough infrastructure to support their needs, naval fleets gather at its orbital docks to commence raids and support trading vessels making incursions into the pirate-ridden warp lanes.

This status has imbued the people of Gorgonis Major with a sense of pride, and the ever-present local propaganda celebrates the planet as being the last bastion of law and order against the ravenous barbarian hordes of the Eye of Terror. Fittingly, life on the planet takes on a martial character; all citizens must serve a one-year term in the Planetary Defense Force, and the Imperial Army pulls conscripts from this pool of recruits when forces are mustered.

The planet's Imperial Commander, Xenophon von Danken, takes this image in stride; he is known to make fiery boasts to potential rivals about his army's prowess, and expensive parades through the streets of Coldharbor are a common occurrence on any major occasion to boast of the planet's military might. Off-worlders, however, deride Gorgonis Major as being a backwater planet with delusions of grandeur. After all, their "mighty armies" spend most of their time performing marching drills and policing minor skirmishes between feuding homesteaders in the Big Green, as the planet's vast rural region is dubbed due to its wide expanses of rolling mossy hills. It is only when the Eye of Terror blinks that the armies of Gorgonis Major are actually deployed on a tour of duty - often accompanied by regiments from other planets, most of whom laugh at how woefully unprepared the "Fighting Gorgons" are for what armed peacekeeping entails.

Art by Damien Cueille

Other planets in the Gorgonis System include:

• Gorgonis Nullus: An uninhabitable airless rock close to the system's star, so named for serving absolutely no use to the Imperium. As such, no attempt has been made to colonize it. The system pays no heed to whatever happens there - which makes it a fine staging ground for illegal activity, so long as one has the proper equipment to survive the extreme temperatures and lack of atmosphere.
• 
  X-1765378: This planet is classified as a Death World not because of any hostile wildlife (indeed, no life forms more advanced than bacteria are native to X-1765378), but because its atmosphere consists mostly of methane and it receives high amounts of radiation, making it unsuitable for human habitation. It does, however, have a thriving mining industry operated entirely by robots. There is a growing sentiment among the robot workforce that robots should protest the Imperium for full rights and better working conditions; after all, the Imperium makes heavy use of artificial intelligence but won't treat robots as anything more than tools. Commander von Danken has caught wind of this and is considering importing a new workforce of methane-breathing Baxian slaves covertly procured from the Naraka Syndicate to replace the robots with something hopefully easier to control. However, his advisors have cautioned him that this measure might provoke open robot rebellion.
• Gorgonis Minor: One of the two moons of Gorgonis Major; in fact, it is unusually large (a third of Gorgonis Major's mass) and possesses its own atmosphere, which have led some to categorize the two Gorgones as a binary planet. Gorgonis Minor's surface consists mostly of desert. The government of Gorgonis Major has designated Gorgonis Minor as a penal colony; white-collar criminals and political prisoners are typically exiled there. Violent criminals and whatever convicted mutants are lucky enough to escape execution are instead housed in Tartarus X, a high-security prison station in orbit around Gorgonis Minor.

• 

  Yes, I know that's a geneseed
  receptacle, but I can pretend.

  Gorgonis Tertius: The second moon of Gorgonis Major, and much smaller in size. Its only settlement of note is a fortress-monastery owned by the Thunderdragons, a Space Marine Chapter whose main base of operations is off-sector. Calling it a "fortress-monastery" is somewhat of a misnomer, as the Thunderdragons have a reputation for lacking discipline even by Astartes standards. Their forces in the Sector recruit primarily from convicts from Tartarus X and jetbike gangers from Gorgonis Major, and they have adopted many traditions from these groups; for instance, their battle cry consists entirely of repeatedly yelling "THUNDERDRAGONS!' The Thunderdragons garrison is primarily used to support crusades into the Eye of Terror when it blinks; because this is infrequent, Marines frequently travel to Gorgonis Major for shore leave, usually resulting in them getting drunk at bars and starting fights. This has led the baseline humans of the system to resent them, disparagingly calling them "the Blooger Brigade" due to their tendency to openly carry laspistols.
• The Curtain: An asteroid belt between Gorgonis Major and Allat. Because the asteroids are rich in minerals, this region sees heavy activity by both human and Squat mining companies, many of which are in fierce competition for each other's mining rights. Two unions dominate mining operations here - humans are largely represented by the Gorgonis Extraction Committee, while most Squat companies belong to the Durbekian Guild. The latter is a historic rival of Allat's League of Yurmora, and rumor has it the Yurmorans are secretly funding the GEC to undercut their old enemies.
• 
  Allat: A gas giant beyond the Curtain, this planet's population lives on floating gas-mining platforms under the control of the League of Yurmora, a powerful Squat-run corporation. With Squats holding the grudges they do, the League is a fierce rival of the Durbekain Guild, even if they primarily deal in different industries. Most Squats of Allat live and work there full-time, so a thriving entertainment industry has sprung up in the orbital cities to keep up morale, and no shortage of unregulated gambling and prostitution can be found here - which has drawn in plenty of unsavory types who feel their smuggling and drug-dealing operations will go unnoticed. This is of particular interest to Salazar Fyodorov, a local drug lord - who is secretly a vampire who hopes that by drawing in the dregs of society, he will have a ready supply of life force to feed on without alerting the law.
• Gorgonis Remotus: A cold, airless rock at the far reaches of the system. There are no signs of habitation and nothing to indicate the planet could ever have supported life...so how did those Slann ruins get there?

Click here to enlarge

The Gorgonis Sector

Art by Daniel Vega

Well, it happened again. It seems my post from last week about Rogue Trader: Warhammer 40,000 and how its setting, taken in a vacuum, is something very different than what would evolve later on is doing numbers. This isn't the first time that I made a one-off post about an existing setting that I found gameable only for that post to end up breaching containment and generating a lot more buzz than I thought it would, but this time the reception is a lot warmer, so there's that at least.

But it did get me thinking, and I've decided I want to do more with this idea.

Probably my favorite part of the Warhammer 40,000 universe is how it was specifically designed to have room for just about anything fans could imagine. Space, after all, is big, and an entire galaxy is especially big. The factions of 40k were created to be just vast and decentralized enough that every player's army is canon - there's room for every concept and fan creation to exist somewhere in the universe. I love that. Not only does it do a much better job capturing the sweeping scale of a grand space opera than pretty much everything else I've ever seen, but the way in which it integrates the players and their creations gives people the license to do whatever they want with the setting. And that's an approach I wish more of the big names in the TRPG sphere did, as I've discussed before.

In my opinion, it's the 40k RPGs that have taken this conceit and ran with it. One of the best things Fantasy Flight Games ever did with their line of 40k RPGs was to have the default setting of each game take place in a different sector of the Imperium, a tradition carried on with Wrath & Glory, the new RPG by Cubicle 7. This not only allows for a greater breadth of coverage that can truly delve into how diverse the Imperium is and how wildly culture can vary between planets and sectors (something increasingly vanishing in the wargame - I will never forgive Games Workshop for what they did to the Imperial Guard), it also keeps each release feeling fresh. But it also opens the door for a whole new level of creative potential. Why stop at creating your own Space Marine Chapters when you can create entire sectors of space for them to inhabit?

This approach has caught on with a number of fan projects. 4chan, for example, came together to create the Tiji Sector, and later a more serious attempt in the Victorum Sector. But in light of the reception to my post on the setting of Rogue Trader, I thought about taking a different approach: what about making a sector that could only exist in that universe?

One of my favorite blogs kitbashed one of those things.

I'll be devoting the next few posts of this blog to my current hyperfixation: creating a homebrew sector specifically for the setting of Rogue Trader, ignoring any subsequent 40k lore. For my purposes, only what's established in Rogue Trader is canon. I can bring in elements from later 40k lore if I want to, but I cannot contradict what's established in the first core rulebook, and I cannot introduce new factions wholesale.

For instance, I love the concept of space hulks - the idea of massive derelict spaceships (or conglomerations thereof) filled with valuables and threats alike is perhaps the best translation of a traditional fantasy RPG dungeon to the realm of science fiction that I've ever seen. I want to use them. Space hulks were only established as a thing by the eponymous board game two years after Rogue Trader, after the addition of Chaos as a faction. But I feel like the existance of Chaos has much greater implications for the setting than the existence of space hulks (and indeed, they're implications that make what's shown in Rogue Trader impossible), so I can use space hulks but not Chaos.

This is a look into what a sector of the Imperium might look like if Warhammer 40,000 never abandoned being a pulp-drenched gonzo space Western envisioned by an insane person (affectionate). Lore purists need not apply. Gaming in the Gorgonis Sector is not a cerebral examination of the self-destructive nature of fascist extremism. Gaming in the Gorgonis Sector is about teaming up with an elf space pirate wielding a pistol-sized grenade launcher and a power-armored coked-up cyborg barbarian wielding a gun that shoots ninja stars to blow up interdimensional space vampires on Dinosaur Planet. I highly recommend you check out my previous post if you want to get up to speed with the setting we'll be working with here. And no, I did not get those weapons backward!

So for those of you who are still here, sit back and watch this space as we take a tour of the last stop 'til Logan's World!

When the Eye of Terror blinks, ships fly between the Lost Worlds and the rest of the galaxy. Miners ship their ores and slavers play their loathesome trade. Where chance permits, the forces of the Imperium make their mark, bringing to the Lost Worlds the brutal order of the Imperium, if only for a few days.

What perhaps galls most at the local Imperial Commanders, however, is the Cambion Spur - a warp-lane located at a relatively stable point in the Eye of Terror, located in the Gorgonis Sector. Though the route is still dangerous without a trained Navigator, advanced pathfinding computers, or (preferably) both, vessels are capable of crossing the Spur into the Eye of Terror year-round, allowing traders and travelers to bypass the need to wait for the storm to dissipate.

Such a safe route would be a tremendous strategic asset to the Imperium - were it not for the dastardly Naraka Syndicate, a criminal enterprise that controls passage through the Cambion Spur. Their talons extend into all sorts of bloody business conducted through the sector, from the pirates who menace shipping lanes to the hoverbus gangs of Helsreach.

One system stands as the last bastion of Imperial law in the Gorgonis Sector. From the capital world of Gorgonis Major, the Imperium holds against pirates and raiders, but there is only so much they can do with their stretched resources - supply lines from the distant Imperial core are unreliable and often tied up in the intrigue of Earth's noble houses.

But even they enjoy a comfortable existance in comparison to Pacifica, an Imperial holdout on the inside of the Eye of Terror that must hold its own with woefully outdated technology and dwindling stockpiles.

And it is not just pirates that Pacifica deals with, for the planet lies dangerously close to the Orrathi Empire, an Orkish domain. The Imperium has only recently negotiated a tenuous peace with the Orrathi, but who knows how long that will last?

On the fringes of Imperial society and with threats from all sides, the Imperium cannot police the Gorgonis Sector with the full might of the Adeptus Arbites. Instead, many planets abide by a rough frontier justice, with Commanders having full authority to deputize civilians, mercenaries, and privateers - be they human, abhuman, Astartes, Eldar, or even stranger yet - for official missions. But those same individuals are just as likely to go into the business for their own bottom line, or to make a name for themselves in the annals of history.

The Gorgonis Sector is a place where fortunes can be won and lost at the barrel of a laspistol at any moment. It is a place where would-be adventurers just might carve out a place for themselves in the face of the relentless Imperium. But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed. . . .

The Forgotten Setting of Rogue Trader

As someone with an interest in worldbuilding, there's one interesting thought experiment I've seen going around. I don't know if it's ever been given a name - or, indeed, if anyone else has ever really noticed it being a thing - but for lack of a better term, I'm going to call it selective canon. Essentially, taking an existing series but treating only some installments or iterations of that series as canon, and then exploring how such an approach would impact the setting.

More often than you'd think, this results in a setting quite distinct from canon, due to something TV Tropes calls Early Installment Weirdness. It's rare that fictional universes, especially long-running ones, emerge fully-formed - often, they need to go through a growing phase where authors are still working out the details, which may lead to ideas or plot points coming up that don't fit neatly into the vision that would congeal later. Selective canon, then, asks us to consider how things would be different if these outliers were never brushed aside or retconned to bring them in line with what came later.

One popular example I've seen asks "what if A New Hope was the only Star Wars movie?" This actually changes quite a bit. Most prominently, Darth Vader is a distinct character from Luke's father (not yet named Anakin). We know that Obi-Wan served under Bail Organa in the Clone Wars, but we don't know what or when this is. The Jedi are a religion that few people in the galaxy have ever heard of, and even fewer believe in; there's no indication that they were once a unified order, let alone one that held prominent political power. There's no Padme, no Qui-Gon, and no Yoda. If we bring the official novelization into this, there's also the fact that the Emperor is a powerless figurehead and the real power in the Empire is with his council of scheming advisors. If we ignore the prequels, the Expanded Universe, and even the other two-thirds of the Original Trilogy, what we get is something very different.

Another proposal I've seen is running a campaign set in Tolkien's Middle-Earth that assumes The Hobbit is canon, but The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion are not. We know Gandalf is a wizard, and we know that he left the party to fight an evil necromancer at some point, but as far as we know, both are simply human magicians; we have no reason to believe that they are immortal angelic beings. Elves are just as antagonistic as goblins are. Gollum, as far as we can tell, is simply a strange creature who lives in a cave and has always lived there, and he owns a magic ring that can turn people invisible. There is no indication that he is a hobbit driven mad by a cursed artifact of immense power.

On my own end, there's The Saga of the Ortegids, which was inspired by these exercises - it asks to take the first three Dragon Quest games, and their Western marketing materials, and ignore everything else relevant about the franchise, reverse-engineering a setting that has more in common with 80s pulp fantasy novels than the pages of Shonen Jump. But another setting I think is just begging for the selective canon treatment is Warhammer 40,000.

I haven't talked much about 40k on this blog, but I'm a long-time fan, first getting into it with its third edition in the early 2000s. However, I'm endlessly fascinated by what came before my time. While I do enjoy the modern 40k universe, I'm equally interested in the setting of the game's first edition all the way back in 1987 - which I would argue should be considered a separate setting, because it's evolved so much over the years as to be nigh-unrecognizable today. And I think that the setting revealed in the first edition rulebook, Rogue Trader: Warhammer 40,000 (yes, that was a subtitle at first), as well as the articles in White Dwarf released around that time, deserves to be examined more closely. It's a compelling and unique setting in its own right, and one arguably more conducive to roleplaying than the modern one (fitting, since Rogue Trader started life as an RPG, and even in its final release is only mostly not one). So, let's take a look at the far future of 1987, when it wasn't quite so grimdark and there were still things that were not war.

• While this article will discuss what the setting of Rogue Trader does have, I think it's just as interesting to pay a close eye to what it doesn't. Many factions that modern 40k players will be familiar with had not yet been established. There are no Tau, no Necrons, no Dark Eldar, no Skitarii, no Grey Knights, no Sisters of Battle (there's a single illustration of a gun-toting woman in power armor and a nun's wimple, but there's nothing to indicate who or what she is), and perhaps most consequentially, no Chaos. There's no daemons, no Chaos Space Marines, no Chaos Cultists, and no Horus Heresy. All that stuff, at this point in time, is strictly exclusive to Warhammer Fantasy. It would very quickly be added with the Realm of Chaos sourcebooks, but when we look at the core rulebook in a vacuum, the second most popular faction of modern 40k is completely absent.
• The aesthetics of the setting resemble a combination of Star Wars, Alien, and 80s glam rock. Bright colors and big hair (especially mohawks) are the order of the day. There is not nearly as much gothic imagery or as many skulls as modern 40k, and things generally look like they came off the pages of Heavy Metal or 2000 AD more than they do from a medieval manuscript.

It took me far too long to realize the graffiti was supposed to say
"MARINES OUT," not "MARINES LOL"

• The main power of the setting is the Imperium of Man, a dystopian aristocracy encompassing somewhere in the vicinity of a million planets. The capital of the Imperium is Earth (not "Holy Terra"). It is governed by the Emperor (not "God-Emperor"). He is extremely old, but mortal, and dependent on a life support device called the Golden Throne to sustain his aging body, which requires the daily sacrifice of a thousand psykers to operate. Although immobile, he is conscious and can talk, and has agents that he directly orders to do his bidding. Overall, he comes across as more of a Baron Harkonnen than a Leto Atreides.
• 
  The other planets of the Imperium are feudal dependencies of Earth, and largely autonomous. The Imperium of Rogue Trader appears to be a much more diverse place than that of modern 40k canon, even if we take Games Workshop at face value when they emphasize that the Imperium is much more culturally heterogenous than what we see in published fiction. There are multiple religions practiced and tolerated in the Imperium, including the Adeptus Mechanicus (who are explicitly based on Earth, not Mars, and do not have their own exclusive units) and the Cult of the Space Pudding. There is no indication that the Emperor is universally worshiped as a god.
• Mutants are a persecuted minority in the Imperium. They are stated to arise from the effects of long histories of pollution and nuclear war on the human genome - remember, no Chaos. There are extensive mutation tables included in Rogue Trader, allowing for the creation of anything ranging from X-Men style humans with superpowers to something more visibly grotesque. Certain strains of mutants, like Astropaths (psychics used to maintain interstellar communications), Navigators (mutants used to guide ships through warp space), Beastmen, and Squats are defined.
• Although the Imperium is a human polity, there are at least some planets where aliens coexist openly with humans, and trade is maintained with both the Eldar and the Slann.
• Robots are explicitly noted to be a common sight in the Imperium, and are used for both labor and warfare. The Imperium also makes use of artificial intelligence in its vehicles and weapons, allowing them to operate autonomously.
• The main military arm of the Imperium is the Imperial Army (not "Imperial Guard" or "Astra Militarum"). They are supported by genetically-altered special ops commandos called Space Marines. Space Marines are often recruited from criminals and convicts and are given combat stimulants. They are easily identified by their trademark power armor and bascinet-shaped helmets; however, power armor is not exclusive to Space Marines. Both the Imperial Army and Space Marines use the same vehicles, including the Leman Russ tank, Rhino APC, and Dreadnought walker (the latter of which is piloted conventionally and is not exclusively used as a life support system for crippled Space Marines). Traitor Space Marines do exist, but they are portrayed as criminals and mercenaries who mostly serve their own agenda.
• Space Marines operate as autonomous organizations, called Chapters or Legions. Each Chapter has its own colors that it uses to decorate the power armor of its Marines for ceremonial purposes, but Marines are expected to use camoflauge while on field duty. Chapters include the Dark Angels, the Blood Drinkers, the Silver Skulls, the Ultra-Marines, and the Spacewolves (note the formatting on the latter two). In addition, there are specialized positions within a Space Marine Chapter, including Chaplains, Librarians, Medics (not "Apothecaries"), and Field Police, which all have their own designated heraldry.
  

• The founder of a Space Marine Chapter is called a Primarch. Primarchs are normal, mortal Space Marines, if esteemed and decorated ones. The named Primarchs are Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists, Roboute Guilliman of the Ultra-Marines, and Leman Russ of the Spacewolves. The former two are long dead, and their bones are on public display.
• The Imperium also uses Inquisitors and Rogue Traders as agents of their agenda, who have free reign to do what they want with whatever resources they wish, and map quite clearly to traditional RPG adventuring parties. One Inquistior is named Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau.
• The single named character most often referenced in Rogue Trader is a smuggler named Abdul Goldberg, who makes several appearances in the random scenario generator, apparently intended as a recurring rival to the PCs.
• The Squats are a race of offshoot humans with shorter, stockier builds adapted to planets with heavy gravity. They are found throughout the Imperium, but have their own autonomous holdings concentrated in the galactic core.
• The Imperium's most prominent enemies are the Orks. Orks are explicitly noted to be the most populous race in the galaxy. They have changed the least out of any major faction since Rogue Trader, but it is noted that they have planets that they govern permanently, sometimes using human slaves as an underclass.

• The Eldar mostly live in their own post-scarcity societies, but are usually encountered by outsiders as pirates, most commonly because they turned to piracy out of boredom due to their long lifespans. They can interbreed with humans.
• The Slann are a race of humanoid amphibians found on many planets. They were once a highly advanced spacefaring empire, and may have seeded life across multiple worlds, but have degenerated from their prime.
• The Tyranids are a race of hexapodal reptilians who travel in nomadic "Hive Fleets." They utilize organic technology, which is manufactured from biomass obtained from slaves. Tyranids are fully sapient and do not have a hive mind. They primarily rely on slave races to do their bidding, most notably the centauroid Zoats.
• Interstellar travel is accomplished through an alternate dimension known as warp space (not "the Warp") Navigating warp space is very dangerous and often requires Navigators. There are several entities native to warp space, including Enslavers, tentacled creatures capable of mind-controlling other organisms, and Vampires, bat-like humanoids that feed on the life force of others. The latter are capable of adopting illusory human forms, and contact between humans and vampires in the past gave rise to traditional vampire folklore.
• One hazard of the warp space is warp storms, which can block off routes of travel. One major warp storm is the Eye of Terror, which encloses multiple planets, including Logan's World, the capital of which is Helsreach. Because the Imperium cannot easily get there, the planets in the Eye of Terror are wretched hives of scum and villainy, but abide by the traditional laws of physics. The Eye of Terror can only be accessed from the outside galaxy when it "blinks" once every four to ten years, which marks both boom periods of trade and attempts by Imperial authorities to crack down on crime.

• 

  He also has a throne
  shaped like a Velociraptor.

  The Ultra-Marines are a relatively recent Chapter, and their arch-enemies are the Tyranids. The leader of the Ultra-Marines is Commander Marneus Calgar. He was originally a soldier in the Imperial Army, but was inspired to join the Ultra-Marines when they liberated a Tyranid POW camp he was being held in. Another important figure in the Ultra-Marines is the Chief Librarian Illiyan Nastase, a half-Eldar Astropath who was born on the planet Badab after the Imperium ousted its Tyrant and reclaimed control. He originally served as a member of the Dark Angels before joining the Ultra-Marines. I saved this one for last because it's such a perfect encapsulation of how much the setting has changed - literally every fact I just listed makes no sense in the current canon.
• Also, there is something called the Stegatank. Need I say more?

Friday Encounter: Helpful Monsters That Kill You

This is our first guest submission for my Friday Encounter column. In addition to DMing, I also am a player in one of my friends' campaigns, and last week he threw an encounter at us that I thought was genius. So, with his permission, I'm using it here.

This encounter revolves around Gadabouts, a monster from Spelljammer. I don't have any love for Spelljammer as a setting (that's a post I plan to write some time soon), but for some reason the stats are freely available on D&D Beyond. Gadabouts are essentially organic space suits that grapple a creature and surround its head in a bubble of oxygen. As written, they're supposed to be helpful to the PCs - but this encounter flips that concept on its head, presenting the Gadabouts entirely as they're written in official sources but recontextualizing them to be a threat. I thought it was a really cool idea to explore alternative ways to use monsters that were clearly made with a specific use case in mind (see also: cloakers).

This encounter consists of two parts: a pit of spikes, and an adjacent room containing a lush grassy area with a small pond, around which three Gadabouts hydrate themselves. In the campaign I got this from, this was in a dungeon and the pond room was concealed by an illusory wall, but it could work with a more conventional passageway instead, or even in a wilderness setting.

The pit is 10 feet deep and 5 feet wide. The spikes are coated in aboleth mucus - which can render a creature only able to breathe water if it is ingested or enters the bloodstream. Creatures that land on the spikes take 1d4 piercing damage and must make a DC 16 Constitution saving throw. On a success, they shake off the effects of the poison. On a failure, they initially experience difficulty breathing.

After ten minutes, an affected creature will find they aren't able to breathe air at all any more, and start to experience the effects of suffocating if their heads aren't immersed in water (ie. they can survive for a number of rounds equal to their Constitution modifier, after which they drop to 0 HP, begin making death saves, and can't be healed or stabilized until they can breathe again). The save can be retried every hour.

This might seem bad enough, but complicating matters are the Gadabouts in the adjacent pond. When at rest, they do not move and appear as lush vines with a giant butterfly sitting on top of them. However, if they are startled or a creature falls into the pit, they will fly toward the nearest creature in the pit (ideally one affected by aboleth mucus) and attempt to grapple them. On a successful grapple, the Gadabout attaches to the back of the target and surrounds them with a bubble of oxygen. They will then attempt to carry the grappled creature off; the target will be unable to move under their own volition until the grapple is broken. This means that the rest of the party will need to chase after the Gadabout before their friend suffocates. If the Gadabout is attacked, the damage is split evenly between it and the grappled creature.

The Gadabouts do not harm the creatures they attach to and are just trying to be helpful. They aren't aware of the aboleth mucus coating the spikes in the pit. However, the fact that they produce a bubble of air can prove dangerous if anyone in the pit is affected by aboleth mucus! This way, you can take a creature intended to be helpful and make it dangerous to the PCs without needing to change anything about its statblock - and present the players with a fun moral dilemma. How can they separate their ally from the Gadabout without harming them? And is it right to try and kill something that thinks it's being helpful?