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Spooktober 2020 #2 - Ghost Ships

#2 - Ghost Ships

Any spacer or teamster worth their salt can tell you the stories. Half'll pull out their PDAs and show you shaky camera footage of something off in space. Too compressed to make out anything definitive, but they'll swear it was the Nosferatu or the Halcyon. And you'll laugh and tell them they were just seeing things.

Problem is--they're right.

Something strange happens out in the Void. With so much emptiness, ships can just... disappear. Tragic, but something has to fuel the salvage trade. These ships are no mere derelicts.

No, the trouble starts when the ships come back.

Often, they're only found in dense nebulae, engines chugging along slowly. They won't appear on sensors until your ship is right on top of them. Hails return nothing. No life signs detected. Just an empty ship, a free meal ticket.

Old, with blast marks and large holes across the hull. Engines hanging on by the fuel lines, but still operational. O2 detected inside. Your ships electroncis start to cut out, vital systems seems to be failing.

Then the name comes into view. Chipped and dented metal, sure, but the name is clear. You know the stories. Everyone hesitates.

And then its gone, behind a dense patch of nebulic fog. Systems normal. No amount of searching will find it

If you're lucky.

 

1d8 Possible Ghost Ships

1. Nosferatu - Colony Ship, colonists frozen. All hands lost. Devours smaller ships to repair itself.

2. Halcyon Breeze - Small pleasure yacht, owner dead during solo voyage. Her young face will greet you. Ship disappeared 190 years ago. Needs to find someone to take her place in order to die

3. Electronic Zion - AI Core missing. Computer still responds. Reactor shutdown, no other power generation. Hologram Ghosts.

4. Silent Dutchman - Doomed to never make port. Ghostly crew will try to send messages back to port or recruit fresh hires. Crew may be souls lost to the vacuum.

5. The Matriarch's Revenge - Pirates cursed to never die. Just some good PR and a prototype cloaking device.

6. Encarnacion - Filled to the brim with hardium, platinum, and pure mithrilium. Only a incorporeal shadow on all but a full moon (no one is sure which)

7. Kriegsmarine - Ancient prison ship. Prowls the vac in search of blood. Rams ships to force survivors aboard it.

8. Black Coral - Once the fastest ship on the vac, rumored lost. Leaves no survivors, only appears to hunt pirates/privateers.

 

Or, for a take on a classic:

The Ghost Ship: An old cargo ship, rigged up for battle. Engines are on. It disappears and reappears at will in a cloud of nebulic fog or other space storms. Captained by a fearsome holo-ghost pirate, seeking immortality or a way to break their curse. Said to have a literal skeleton crew of cyber-enhanced skeletons or holo-ghost marines. It stocks its crew from the souls of those who die in the Void. Only the best are recruited, the chaff are used as fuel.

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