Friday, January 24, 2014

Outer Veil Meets Space Hulk

Outer Veil marine campaigns just clicked in the shower, while considering Space Hulk and recent events.

In the skies above a hundred worlds, abandoned and decrepit habitats built by the corporations during the first colony rush rust in their orbits, ripe for salvage.  Forgotten vaults once the scenes of gruesome survival and misjumped ships now inhabited only by mutant cannibal rats hold lost treasures and unknown perils.  But sometimes the civilian buzzards aren't prepared for what they find, and it falls to a few good men in powered armor, skilled in boarding, zero-g combat, and demolitions, to make these habitats safe for reclamation, or to destroy them if this is deemed impossible...

But it doesn't take a battalion to clear your average ghost ship or derelict orbital, especially when the opposition is usually small (but vicious) mammals or unarmored (but vicious) degenerates with primitive weaponry, and so the units deployed for this purpose in small, fast starships are typically platoon-sized or smaller and under the command of a junior officer or NCO.  Tours aboard these "bughunter boats" last between six months and a year (followed by a similar period of shore duty), during which time they proceed through inhabited space along a flexible patrol route, serving both to show the flag and assist local authorities as necessary in addition to their primary mandate of habitat-clearing.  Of course, the usual cases, with the small mammals and the unarmored degenerates, are not the interesting ones...

3 comments:

  1. I totally like this idea! I think, though, that it would be best to set this campaign about 25 years before the standard OV timeline, in the early-mid 2130's. The Space Crash is finally over; the Civil War is over. The ISTO fascists lost - Humanity won. Now, the new FNH government, desperate to kickstart the shaky economy, sends its best men and women to salvage the lost hulks of the now-dead Space Bubble, and re-contact colonies abandoned when it burst.

    Combine Space Hulk with Traveller: New Era's Space Vikings. And maybe the old System Shock computer games. Illegal research - illegal even under the ISTO - abounds, rogue AIs with nefarious plans, biological experiments gone awry, crazed survivors, ISTO holdouts who don't know the war is over, fanatical colonial independent activists.

    But these stars belong to Humanity and we are taking them BACK!

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    1. Makes good sense. Did definitely have some plans for abandoned/covert/illegal labs, and holdouts are a great idea too. Will have to look up System Shock and TNE.

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    2. System Shock 2 is a computer game from 1999 you can get from STEAM for a cheap price. It is one of the best games ever. System Shock 1 is more difficult to get legally. Traveller: New Era you can get from DTRPG or buy the CD from Far Future Enterprises.

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