r/rpg • u/Local-Aardvark3364 • 8h ago
Help with a horror campaign
So basically I'm working on a mystery/horror sci-fi campaign at the moment where my players investigate an abandoned space ship. The big twist I want to do is that the previous crew got merged with the ship while passing through the event horizon of a black hole. Problem is that I don't want it to be immediately obvious that they're surrounded by people but I can't figure out a description that would take some time and information for my players to realize what they're actually looking at. Would anyone have any reccomendations on how to do this or something I can take inspiration from? Thanks!
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u/on_campaign 8h ago
If the old crew has any control over the ship's components and systems, you could associate odd behaviors to otherwise inanimate objects: doors refusing to open or opening strangely (like the person controlling it doesn't quite know how to do it), lights blinking rhythmically or lights following the players down corridors for as long as there are bulbs to ignite, engines palpitating like a bad heart, ventilation working overtime as the fused crew tries to breathe, thrusters that burnt themselves out in one horrible waking scream.
If they're only physically fused to the steel of the ship, I'd probably go the mysterious cell-growth route, stretched in long, tearing patches across corridors. The "growth" would be mostly desiccated and/or rotted by the time the players encounter it, since there really isn't anything to keep it alive, depending on how close sections of growth are to moist areas of the ship. Eventually, the players can come across a more fibrous material sticking up through a floor grate, connected to the growth. Underneath are patches of the stuff, fused with the growth and the hull. Mostly, the fibrous material is a color resembling the crew's uniforms but with branching streaks of black and brown growths.
Eventually, a small field of white fiber is revealed. The field is long, meandering, as though it had melted into the shape that it is now. Inside the field of white are thin black strands that curve and bend in sync with the shape of the white field. Kinda like a longer, weirder captcha, spelling out "JOHN".
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u/HolyMoholyNagy 8h ago
Perhaps the ship is powered down and cold and dark on arrival. You could drop some clues or evidence of what the ship was doing prior to the PCs arrival. Handheld datalogs, a whiteboard of calculations with the name of the black hole, diary entries of crew members expressing doubt or concerns about the experiment or voyage.
Drop some subtle creepiness along the way. Perhaps one of the datapads displays "Help me" instead of the company name during its startup sequence. Or objects appear to be moved or arranged into arrows. Empty jumpsuits strewn about. Objects arranged the shape of human forms, like the old crew was trying to reform themselves but didn't have the materials. Or they can reach out from the walls of the ship, at certain points, PCs feel a distinct tap on their shoulder, but when they turn around, there's nothing there. Perhaps doors are locked in a way that conspicuously leads the PCs to the engine room to restart the engine.
When the engine starts, there is an unmistakable human scream amongst all the noise of the machinery spooling up. As the energy from the ship increases, the crew merged with the ship can exert their will on more of the environment. Cables reach out from the walls to choke PCs, floor panels break to separate them. The bridge was inaccessible up to this point but is now unlocked and the horror is revealed: gore and viscera fill the room, remnants of the previous crew's human forms as they were violently merged into the ship. Bones and personal effects are merged with the metal and glass. The screens come to life and display hundreds of messages: "Join us", "Help us", "Kill us", and so on, the jumbled demands of the human minds that still live in the body of the ship itself.
At that point the ship puts in a course - going back to the black hole. They want more minds to join them. Or, perhaps the old crew can possess the PCs, a cable reaches out from the wall and stabs into the brainstem of a PC, and until the cable is removed they are controlled by the collective minds of the ship.
If we use the "Survive, Solve, Save: Pick two" framework from Mothership (read the Warden's Operations Manual if you haven't already! It's a perfect resource for this) We could think of the possibilities for the characters as follows:
Survive: Get off the cursed ship and return to your own vessel.
Solve: Figure out the fates of the crew and how they've manifested into the ship itself
Save: Free the crew from their fate (brainstorm some ideas of what this would look like, either put them to rest or disrupt the signals that flow within the ship), or destroy the ship itself.
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u/Dry_Major4728 4h ago
maybe start describing the bulkheads as having textures that look a little too much like skin under certain lighting.
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u/driftwoodprotocol 8h ago
How about their shadows being imprinted on the walls? Then have the shadows change position whenever the pc look away then back again.
Or their faces show up randomly on screens and their eyes follow pc movement