So it was a perfectly normal day.
Preachers were ranting about the end of days and of straying from the path. Men were smoking, talking about business and women and whatnot. Old housewives talked about the newest scandals, affairs, and children. Children were playing. Politicians, secret agents, intelligence agencies, doing their old dance of guile and violence. Border skirmishes between Ukraine and Russia.
And then, the sky was torn apart, as a gigantic mass of ships exploded from it, scattering electromagnetic radiation from all over the spectrum, momentarily overwhelming every single telescope in the solar system. It drifts in space for a while.... and then crashes onto the moon.
It is massive. Huge. It can literally be seen from the ground up, with the naked eye. A giant black mass, blocking nearly half the moon's face. And inside... so many secrets. Think about it as a combination of Space Hulk, Dungeon, Abandoned Secret Lab, Old Mage Laboratory, Haunted House, and Mordor. Inside, are all manner of horrors and wonders.
Inspirations include:
Warhammer 40k
Space Hulk
Dark Heresy
Eclipse phase
House of Leaves
Dead Space
Inside the hulk, there are rogue war machines, their masters long dead, following orders that have Long since gone obsolete. Their self-repair and self-maintaining systems means that they are deadly to any form of intruder or trespasser. Within the deep halls of long dead ships, the cries of Waaagggghh!!! ring out, barbarains wielding chunks of iron and rickety guns come crashing out to fight anyone whom is unlucky enough to get their attention. Clouds of self-replicating nanites, aka grey goo, float about, or lie scattered, waiting for the life signs of some unlucky sap to walk past them, before they spring for them, peeling away layers of space suit and armour before getting at the tender flesh beneath. Ghosts, Daemons, demons, and other more otherworldly monsters, lurk within. Some are trapped within items, artifacts, crystals, tomes, summoning circles, waiting for some hapless explorer to meet them and have his soul devoured and his body puppeted. Others, over the millennia have gotten free, and now stalk the halls of the Space Hulk, using their incorporeal bodies to leap through walls, taking their victims by surprise. Rogue war machines, descended from the A.I. Rebellion and produced by manufactures aboard the trapped ships, stalk them, their circuits burning with hatred of all organic life. Degeenrate monsters wander the interior of the hulks, their monstrous bodies composed of human corpses. What is more terrifying that the fact that they exist, is the fact that you will soon be made into one of them....
And the people there! Yes, there are people, of all sorts. And not just humans. Aliens, as well. Surviving within atmosphere, kept by still intact hulls and airlocks, or by fields that keep air in that are either powered by magic or science. There are degenerate cultists hiding within, their inbreeding and isolation leaving them with ghastly congenital defects and mutations, which make them horrifying to see. And the strange gods and beings they worship.... well, there is always a use for live humans. Strange clans, a mixture of alien and human, live aboard the space hulk. Whether or not they are friendly, or are simply a Trojan's horse to the human race is another matter.
Some have adapted to the environment. Some have adapted too well. Altering one's genes and DNA sequences to survive within a rotting hulk with poor food and water, to survive the perpetual darkness and aggression, and to live through decompression.... what came next out of the vats may be called human. But some third parties would disagree.
There are humans there, enhanced. Their superhuman biologies enabling them to survive in the hellish conditions of the space hulk, allowing them to ingest food and water that would leave a grown man twitching, and fighting prowess capable of wiping out nine-tenths of things they fight. The problem is two fold. Their compassion has long since been burnt out from endless battle. And their sanity has been destroyed by the soul-searing conditions of the Space Hulk. The presence of ordinary, sane humans who do not eat their fellows flesh or sacrifice them to dread gods would be a welcome surprise... if they were sane enough to recognise it.
Articial intelligences exist. Some, are simply quiet, only turning alive by the energy given off by gunfire, or when some archaeologist reconnects a broken wire. Others, are silent. Biding their time, before springing on some unlucky soul for his space suit to get spare components. Others, are still alive, crippled and weak, and are desperately trying to exterminate all organic life on the hulk with cold hatred. Cults have sprung up amongst these thinking machines. Strange rites and rituals, part ceremony, part maintenance. Most are broken, mad, insane, or evil. Some, are good. Though, the definition of good may be very different from the mainstream. For example, if the medical A.I. Of the medical suite in the starship "Hapzadon" truly wishes to improve and cure humanity, why does it have an excess of lobotomized cyborgs? And the medical suite having splashe of blood and scattered body parts?
Several ships of the hulk are not dead. In fact, they are alive. In the ordinary sense. Ships from the Zerg Swarm and the Tyranid Race have crashed here, their bodies wrapped up in the hulk's embrace. Their lesser Attack swarms now skitter within the space hulk. Hydralisks, Zerglings, Lictors, Gaunts, and all manner of beasts from the nightmares of man, the last thing many civilisations saw before they were gulped down the endless maw of a star-faring locust swarm. They would have to be burnt out, evaded, or survived. Take care that nothing tags along with you as you leave....
All manner of artifacts lie within the hulk. Some are treasures, transported by ships before they were waylaid. Others, are the products of Long since dead civilisations. Others, are from the dead inhabitants, taken off their corpses or otherwise left there as their masters rotted away. There is great treasure there. Some are relatively simple and useless, like that shirt that lit up with an icon of the sun, sized for a small child, with no identifiable power source. Others are greater. Like cornucopia machines capable of building anything, to crystals and data disks that hold the equivalent of an entire civilisation's worth of technical knowledge. There is money to be made here. Money, and the power to make or break empires and planets.
And of course, people want this. After the first explorers found a gun that had a power cell that could recharge off body heat and light, and could hold a charge better than any battery on earth by light years, thousands of explorers have descended upon the Space Hulk. Men and women, given the best training possible, clad in white coloured space suits, clumsily holding guns, descending upon Earth's companion. Traveling through the cramped, claustrophobic, and cluttered interior of the hulk, trying to make a fortune or find something of worth. Most would not survive. Most would not come back. Some would come back, to the sorrow of all....
A dungeon that landed on the moon. Space Hulk. A conglomeration of Long dead ships from over the Millenia, from ships from the elder races to starships from a humanity of a parallel universe. Filled with alien monsters, mad cults, demons, magicians, killer robots, and other things. Meanwhile, everyone on the planet is eyeing each other, holding their guns, fingering the triggers. Whether or not nuclear war would erupt, wiping out the human race, leaving the only remnants of humanity to be the ones on the Space Hulk, remains to be seen.
Tl; dr. Space Hulk lands on the moon, with nightmares, monsters, and all sorts of nasties from nearly every sort of fiction and genre inside of it. Also inside of it, is lots and lots of goodies. From zero-point energy sources to medical nanites that can cure aging. It's also a nightmarish labyrinth. People come up, from Earth, onto the moon, and try and grab the good stuff, all the while surviving the monsters, the deadly environment (vacuum, urban ruins, and the chance for dead falls and traps and malfunctioning life support), and take their loot back to base to reverse engineer, sell, or just exchange for their freedom. Of course, whether or not that works, remains to be seen. That case of nanites to cure Aging may in fact, be grey goo.
I'll try and explain more。
Preachers were ranting about the end of days and of straying from the path. Men were smoking, talking about business and women and whatnot. Old housewives talked about the newest scandals, affairs, and children. Children were playing. Politicians, secret agents, intelligence agencies, doing their old dance of guile and violence. Border skirmishes between Ukraine and Russia.
And then, the sky was torn apart, as a gigantic mass of ships exploded from it, scattering electromagnetic radiation from all over the spectrum, momentarily overwhelming every single telescope in the solar system. It drifts in space for a while.... and then crashes onto the moon.
It is massive. Huge. It can literally be seen from the ground up, with the naked eye. A giant black mass, blocking nearly half the moon's face. And inside... so many secrets. Think about it as a combination of Space Hulk, Dungeon, Abandoned Secret Lab, Old Mage Laboratory, Haunted House, and Mordor. Inside, are all manner of horrors and wonders.
Inspirations include:
Warhammer 40k
Space Hulk
Dark Heresy
Eclipse phase
House of Leaves
Dead Space
Inside the hulk, there are rogue war machines, their masters long dead, following orders that have Long since gone obsolete. Their self-repair and self-maintaining systems means that they are deadly to any form of intruder or trespasser. Within the deep halls of long dead ships, the cries of Waaagggghh!!! ring out, barbarains wielding chunks of iron and rickety guns come crashing out to fight anyone whom is unlucky enough to get their attention. Clouds of self-replicating nanites, aka grey goo, float about, or lie scattered, waiting for the life signs of some unlucky sap to walk past them, before they spring for them, peeling away layers of space suit and armour before getting at the tender flesh beneath. Ghosts, Daemons, demons, and other more otherworldly monsters, lurk within. Some are trapped within items, artifacts, crystals, tomes, summoning circles, waiting for some hapless explorer to meet them and have his soul devoured and his body puppeted. Others, over the millennia have gotten free, and now stalk the halls of the Space Hulk, using their incorporeal bodies to leap through walls, taking their victims by surprise. Rogue war machines, descended from the A.I. Rebellion and produced by manufactures aboard the trapped ships, stalk them, their circuits burning with hatred of all organic life. Degeenrate monsters wander the interior of the hulks, their monstrous bodies composed of human corpses. What is more terrifying that the fact that they exist, is the fact that you will soon be made into one of them....
And the people there! Yes, there are people, of all sorts. And not just humans. Aliens, as well. Surviving within atmosphere, kept by still intact hulls and airlocks, or by fields that keep air in that are either powered by magic or science. There are degenerate cultists hiding within, their inbreeding and isolation leaving them with ghastly congenital defects and mutations, which make them horrifying to see. And the strange gods and beings they worship.... well, there is always a use for live humans. Strange clans, a mixture of alien and human, live aboard the space hulk. Whether or not they are friendly, or are simply a Trojan's horse to the human race is another matter.
Some have adapted to the environment. Some have adapted too well. Altering one's genes and DNA sequences to survive within a rotting hulk with poor food and water, to survive the perpetual darkness and aggression, and to live through decompression.... what came next out of the vats may be called human. But some third parties would disagree.
There are humans there, enhanced. Their superhuman biologies enabling them to survive in the hellish conditions of the space hulk, allowing them to ingest food and water that would leave a grown man twitching, and fighting prowess capable of wiping out nine-tenths of things they fight. The problem is two fold. Their compassion has long since been burnt out from endless battle. And their sanity has been destroyed by the soul-searing conditions of the Space Hulk. The presence of ordinary, sane humans who do not eat their fellows flesh or sacrifice them to dread gods would be a welcome surprise... if they were sane enough to recognise it.
Articial intelligences exist. Some, are simply quiet, only turning alive by the energy given off by gunfire, or when some archaeologist reconnects a broken wire. Others, are silent. Biding their time, before springing on some unlucky soul for his space suit to get spare components. Others, are still alive, crippled and weak, and are desperately trying to exterminate all organic life on the hulk with cold hatred. Cults have sprung up amongst these thinking machines. Strange rites and rituals, part ceremony, part maintenance. Most are broken, mad, insane, or evil. Some, are good. Though, the definition of good may be very different from the mainstream. For example, if the medical A.I. Of the medical suite in the starship "Hapzadon" truly wishes to improve and cure humanity, why does it have an excess of lobotomized cyborgs? And the medical suite having splashe of blood and scattered body parts?
Several ships of the hulk are not dead. In fact, they are alive. In the ordinary sense. Ships from the Zerg Swarm and the Tyranid Race have crashed here, their bodies wrapped up in the hulk's embrace. Their lesser Attack swarms now skitter within the space hulk. Hydralisks, Zerglings, Lictors, Gaunts, and all manner of beasts from the nightmares of man, the last thing many civilisations saw before they were gulped down the endless maw of a star-faring locust swarm. They would have to be burnt out, evaded, or survived. Take care that nothing tags along with you as you leave....
All manner of artifacts lie within the hulk. Some are treasures, transported by ships before they were waylaid. Others, are the products of Long since dead civilisations. Others, are from the dead inhabitants, taken off their corpses or otherwise left there as their masters rotted away. There is great treasure there. Some are relatively simple and useless, like that shirt that lit up with an icon of the sun, sized for a small child, with no identifiable power source. Others are greater. Like cornucopia machines capable of building anything, to crystals and data disks that hold the equivalent of an entire civilisation's worth of technical knowledge. There is money to be made here. Money, and the power to make or break empires and planets.
And of course, people want this. After the first explorers found a gun that had a power cell that could recharge off body heat and light, and could hold a charge better than any battery on earth by light years, thousands of explorers have descended upon the Space Hulk. Men and women, given the best training possible, clad in white coloured space suits, clumsily holding guns, descending upon Earth's companion. Traveling through the cramped, claustrophobic, and cluttered interior of the hulk, trying to make a fortune or find something of worth. Most would not survive. Most would not come back. Some would come back, to the sorrow of all....
A dungeon that landed on the moon. Space Hulk. A conglomeration of Long dead ships from over the Millenia, from ships from the elder races to starships from a humanity of a parallel universe. Filled with alien monsters, mad cults, demons, magicians, killer robots, and other things. Meanwhile, everyone on the planet is eyeing each other, holding their guns, fingering the triggers. Whether or not nuclear war would erupt, wiping out the human race, leaving the only remnants of humanity to be the ones on the Space Hulk, remains to be seen.
Tl; dr. Space Hulk lands on the moon, with nightmares, monsters, and all sorts of nasties from nearly every sort of fiction and genre inside of it. Also inside of it, is lots and lots of goodies. From zero-point energy sources to medical nanites that can cure aging. It's also a nightmarish labyrinth. People come up, from Earth, onto the moon, and try and grab the good stuff, all the while surviving the monsters, the deadly environment (vacuum, urban ruins, and the chance for dead falls and traps and malfunctioning life support), and take their loot back to base to reverse engineer, sell, or just exchange for their freedom. Of course, whether or not that works, remains to be seen. That case of nanites to cure Aging may in fact, be grey goo.
I'll try and explain more。