A Layman's Guide to Hard Sci-Fi and 200 POSTS!

Listening to the recent Mothership episode of gg no re, I thought it might be useful to provide a helping hand for people who are interested in running a sci-fi game but don't have the time or inclination to do a research deep-dive.

I will be linking to the videos of Isaac Arthur throughout this post. If you want more in-depth exploration of any of the topics here (and many more besides), absolutely listen to him. 

Light is Law

299,792,458 meters per second through vacuum. Round up to 300,000 km/s. Nothing goes faster. (Except, perhaps, monarchy)

Information and radiation travel at light speed. Getting anything made of matter even close to that speed takes a whole lot of energy and is subject to all manner of weird effects like time dilation.

Space is Big

In short:

• Interstellar travel is not a casual affair. Interplanetary travel isn't either, but interstellar travel is always a big deal.
• Interstellar travel takes a long goddamn time. Long enough that cryo, digital storage, or life extension will be more or less required.
• Interplanetary travel can still take days, weeks, months. 
• Rerouting a ship in transit is not a lightly-taken endeavor.
• News travels at light speed. Long-distance communication will have lag.  
• Don't expect big interstellar empires to form. Communication lag and travel time will put hard limits on that quickly. Expect to see a lot of small alliances and confederacies, getting smaller as you go up from habitat to planet to system scale.
• If you use space habitats a lot a single solar system can contain trillions of people and more places to visit than you can actively comprehend.

It's the Great Filter, Charlie Brown!

The apparent discrepancy between the size and age of the universe and the total lack of detectable alien life (for an interstellar civilization would get HUGE in a relatively short amount of time) is called the Fermi Paradox. The reasons offered to explain why this might be are many, ranging from the plain (the physical conditions for life are rare, intelligent life is rare) to the more elaborate (the aliens are all just really, really good at hiding from us) and among all of these proposals are and a category of them are called Great Filters: factors that prevent life from reaching an interplanetary or interstellar civilization.

There are a whole lot of them. The most plain are just that the physical conditions for life as we know it are rare or that intelligent life is rare. Sensible, but less gameable. Other options include but are not limited to:

• They died off from nuclear war / catastrophic climate change / plague / etc.
• They are trapped by high gravity, icy crusts, hyperdense atmospheres, etc.
• They are intelligent, but lack the ability to make tools. 
• They aren't intelligent, and their tools don't have proper analogs to normal technology.
• They're not going to progress past simple tools for a few hundred thousand years.

Skerples  also offers the following: "Planets do not all have 1 earth gravity, a breathable atmosphere, life we can eat or understand, etc." (Check out his full post on the matter), but a solid summary is that the most human aliens are still nothing like us, and the most Earthlike worlds are nothing like Earth. Anything that resembles humans or Earth was probably designed as such (metahumans and space habitats can come into play here.)

Every Gram Counts

Mass needs energy to move it. Fuel and propellant have mass. The more mass you have the more fuel and propellant you need.

Space aboard a ship is at a premium. You've got to balance everything for your specific trip, because you are trying to hit one moving object with another moving object launched from a third moving object all while trying to keep some fragile bags of mostly water and meat from dying. 

It's Not Easy Getting Into Space 

Gravity is fighting you the entire way up and rockets are inefficient. So there are a lot of better ways to get up there. Including but not limited to!

• Space elevators - A hugeass cable stung up to a space station in geosynchronous orbit. 
• Skyhooks - A rotating cable that dangles down into the atmosphere and swings a ship up and around to launch them into orbit.
• Mass drivers - A fucking huge railgun. Great for launching raw materials off of whatever airless rock you're mining them out of, and if it's long enough you can just make a launch loop.

O'Neill Cylinders are the Shit

Imagine a cylinder 20 miles long and 5 miles across. You can make it bigger if you have better materials. Rotate it so that the interior walls have 1 G of gravity, while the caps and central axis will have none. String some together in a chain or cluster, embed them into an asteroid, surround it with all the support systems you might need.

Congratulations, you have just made where most of the population in a space-faring society will live and the easiest way to do a classical space opera. Now you can hop between radically different environments and cultures in a couple hours, in a spaceship that's more like the family RV.

The important thing to remember is that space habitats like these are better for human habitation than planets: you don't need to fight a gravity well to leave, you can tailor the interior environment much more easily, you can churn them out by the dozens or hundreds from single asteroids. 

Stellar Laser Highways are the Shit

Imagine a laser. Now imagine that it is so fucking huge that it can push a spaceship. Build an entire network of them. Now you have a means of accelerating (and slowing) your ships that doesn't require them to spend fuel, thus allowing them to carry more stuff and more people.

It's still slower than light, but it's damn effective. Can be used as communication hubs too.

Spaceships are not Boats

James Cameron's Avatar was not a good movie. But it has one thing going for it: The Venture Star.

Missing the solar sail, alas.

This is a proper spaceship. Just look at this beaut, this sheila, this absolute unit. Mwah! Look at those radiators! See that little bit by the debris shield, with the two rotating arms? That tiny thing there? That's the crew capsule.

This thing has a maximum cargo capacity of 350 tons, a max speed of 0.7 C, and can get you to Alpha Centauri in six and three quarters years flat.

What I'm getting at here is that this is what a hard sci-fi ship will end up looking like: a tiny little submarine attached to a whole hell of a lot of propulsion.

You Will Not Explode and or Immediately Freeze in a Vacuum

You can survive in open space for as long as you can hold your breath (get the air out of your lungs first, lack of pressure will make it expand and that's no good at all). Still likely to get a nasty dose of radiation but having no air is the big danger.

In Knowing the Rules, You May Now Break Them

Arguments over the relative hardness / softness of any given science fiction media are both stupid and dumb. You're making a story or running a game, and that's the most important thing. Do what works for you, do what makes sense - I like aliens, so I tend to be looser on them than I am with, say, FTL communication. Tweak what you want, gloss over what bores you. The opposite is also true - if there's something that really gets you interested, embrace it and see where it can take you.

Bonus: 200 Posts!

I was going to have post 200 be announcing my Patreon, but that's taking its time and I want to keep making things. So this is post 200 (and the first of the post-G+ era).

Holy shit. 200 posts in just a scrape (month and a week) under two years. I can't say much else besides thank you. I certainly wouldn't have kept it up this long without all of you out there reading and commenting and providing feedback.

There's so much yet to do, and I have barely begun.

Games in My Folders

George Weidman, noted seller of socks and talker-about-of-video-games, has an occasional series called "Games From My Inbox" where he talks about games that he has heard of solely through press releases in his inbox.

I don't have an inbox full of press releases for obscure indie video games, but I do have a "right click, save as" compulsion. Same difference. So here's a bunch of strange little pdfs I've got sitting in my RPG folders.  The only criteria I'm using here are 1) it formed an opinion in me 2) I hear no one or next to no one talking about it 3) it is freely available.

100 Rare Wonders

Telecanter
Grotty bizarre overcrowded magical metropoli hold a special place in my heart, and this list is all the spice you could want. They're bizarre, they're evocative, you can spin them out for hooks, it's great.  

(Link)

40k Conversion for Stars Without Number

John B.
I've always wanted to run a 40k game, but none of the rulesets really . There are a couple other hacks out there (Future Heresy for Barbarians of Lemuria and Warband! for general OSR usage) but I settled on this one because SWN has psychics and world generation tables baked in, and is geared more towards the lower-power-level parts of 40k that I like (give me rogue traders and guardsmen over space marines any day.) Plus I just want to run SWN at some point.

(Link) - (PDF here)

Halo Mythic

Brandon "Vorked" Miller
A commendable effort in converting everything that's seen screen time in the Halo setting (spinoff games and that miniseries included) but crunchier than a mouthful of gravel. Bit of a Dark Heresy undercurrent (percentile attributes, purchasing upgrades with XP, having melee and ranged weapons as stats). Hits the predictable limiting wall that comes with being based on military sci-fi, in that there is next to no material supporting anything outside of shooting aliens with guns and entirely too much specificity within that genre. No expansion upon the setting of any kind. The kind of game for people who like having three different kinds of every weapon with maybe two different numbers.

(Link)

Dungeons the Dragoning: 7th Edition

LawfulNice
The joke that lived. As outrageous and obtuse a knot of mechanics and settings as one could possibly make and still come out with a technically-playable system. And the crazy thing is that if you stare at it long enough it starts making sense. Sure, it's got feats, buy-upgrades-with-XP, and those class-tree things (again with the Dark Heresy)...but I feel less inclined to toss it out than I would normally. Maybe it's because it's a joke. Maybe it's because I can be a demontouched tau minstrel who can do gun katas without even touching the homebrew and that statement appeals to me on some primal level of silliness.

(Link)

Journey

Neldelx
A solo game that uses a deck of cards to determine events that happen to you on your journey. Players can select one of four archetypes, which determines the rarity of different event types. I've not yet been able to try it out myself, but it seems like it would make for a fun creative writing exercise. Especially if you break out wilderness / travel encounter tables to go along with it.

(Link)

Phonomicon ex Cultis

Duncan Young
A system-agnostic collection of 100 minor cult patrons and the powers they grant to their believers. Each one is accompanied by a syllable (to be used in making their name), their typical worshipers, portfolio, a symbol and a short description. Not as in-depth as Petty Gods, but provides just what you need when handling petty gods. Could even make a class out of it, a cleric of small gods or the like.

(Link)

The Lorian Gendarme Guidebook

MK Reed and Jonathan Hill
A book within a book, the LGG is a sort of encyclopedia volume for a fictional fantasy series within the creators' comic Americus. It's a proper setting book in less than 40 pages, bestiary and grimoire included. It's pitch perfect for a YA-series that could have been, a mix of the familiar and the out-there. Excellent, excellent monsters.

(Link)

One Hundred Wilderness Hexes

Ktrey Parker
This one's a real treat. Twenty hexes for each of five environment types (Forest, Mountains, Desert, Swamp, Ocean), and each hex has three subtables to determine the details within. Drop these around a bigger map and you have everything you may need - many are linked to other hexes, sometimes multiple! Everything's got a very classic feel to it, where the weird is waiting to be stumbled upon. Would be very much in line with the baseline DCC motif.

(Link)

So there we have it; eight little things you may or may not have previously seen. If you've got obscure stuff you've collected (and if you're reading this blog, you probably do), give it a dig and see what's worth sharing.

Adapting the SCP Wiki

Alex Andreev

Ah, the SCP wiki.  Longtime home of short spooky fiction of highly variable quality and a nigh-bottomless well of material to draw from, if you can find the good stuff.

Well, worry no longer. I did some finding for you.

All of these are cooked up for Emmy Allen's Esoteric Enterprises.

SCP-075 - Corrosive Snail

A snail with a clawed, six-fingered foot, about 20 cm long. Can launch itself at great speeds, secrets a powerful base corrosive slime.

3 flesh (1die) 3 grit (1 die), AC 16 (shell + speed), leaping claw (1d6)

It's All Basic: A successful attack does 1d10 corrosive damage for the next 1d6 turns or until it is washed off.

SCP-140 - An Incomplete Chronicle

A Chronicle of the Daevas (author unknown) details the history of the Daevites, an ancient civilization of theocratic-imperialist city-states in central Asia. True copies of the text absorb anything that might be used to write within it, favoring ink and blood, expanding Daevite history closer to the present day; initially deposed by Qin Kai in the 200s BCE, the Daevites have been able to expand up to the reign of Genghis Khan through retroactive expansion. Inert copies contain the following spells:

• Bleeding Curse
• Cause Wounds
• Sacrifice
• Sculpt Flesh
• Summon

True copies additionally contain:

• Hurl Through Time
• Call Down the Void

SCP-186 - To End All Wars

Recovered weaponry from the Battle of Husiatyn Woods (7/24/1917 to 8/13/1917) include:

• Modified machine guns that generate tumors within target organism. 
• d10 direct flesh damage
• Mortar shells containing gas that render animal cells incapable of death. 
• Target can no longer be reduced below 1 flesh. Any damage beyond this is taken directly by attibutes.
• Concertina wire that triggers severe hallucinogenic effects on blood contact.
• Save vs poison to resist incapacitation.
• Mask-penetrating gas grenades that cause target to feel as if they are on fire.
• Save to avoid desperately trying to put self out and excruciating pain.

SCP-261 - Pan-Dimensional Vending Machine

A matte-black vending machine the produces a random extrauniversal, alterchronic or otherwise impossible snack food. Accepts yen only, in any amount.

1. Pepsi: Dragon Twist
2. Self-cooking bag of lemon clams
3. Build-Your-Own-Candybots
4. 'Aged Meat Product"
5. Kinder Matryoshka
6. The Philosopher's Scone
7. Madam Jesute's Blueberry Cigarettes
8. Chocolate-flavored human breast milk
9. One thousand apple seeds.
10. A live hand grenade.

SCP-354 - The Red Pool

A seemingly-bottomless pool of red liquid, somewhere in the frozen north of Canada. Dispenses hostile paradox beasts at irregular intervals. An attempt at draining the pool proved catastrophic. The pool is expanding.

SCP-423 - The Self-Insert

A sapient textual entity capable of inserting itself into a written narrative as a background character named Fred. Can jump between books, is currently kept in a blank journal to facilitate communication. A book containing Fred contains the following spells:

• Bookspeak
• Comprehend Languages

SCP-478 - Tooth Fairies

Something like a small, dark moth, that will embed itself in the nasal cavity of a target in a mucus cocoon. It will trigger the explosive growth of teeth in the upper palate and then down the throat and esophagus, reaching the stomach in 2-4 days. The process is appropriately painful, leeching calcium from the target's bones.

SCP-662 & SCP-1867 - Mister Deeds and Lord Blackwood

Ringing the small silver bell will summon a well-dressed British butler. Mr. Deeds will procure any item and accomplish any task (within reason) requested by the bell's user. He will, on occasion, be accompanied by a sea slug in a small fishbowl: this is Lord Theodore Thomas Blackwood, noted explorer and naturalist. He has no idea why everyone keeps going on about him being a sea slug, he clearly isn't. Sea slugs don't possess encyclopedic knowledge of the wonderful unexplored regions of the globe.

Neither Deeds nor Blackwood are any more sturdy than a typical butler and sea-slug, though Deeds will return after being killed if his bell is rung.

SCP-682 - The Hard-to-Destroy Reptile

A very big, very angry, very hard-to-kill lizard. Adapts to resist whatever is thrown at it.

45 flesh (15 dice) AC 19 (scaly hide) bite 3d8

Adaptive Armor:  Gains 1 damage reduction every round after taking a new damage type. If hit with a second damage type, it will begin gaining DR towards that type and the first reduction stack will decay 1/round. This armor does not apply to acid damage.

Fucking Invincible: SCP-682 cannot be brought below 1 flesh. It will regenerate 1 flesh/hour.

SCP-701 - The Hanged King's Tragedy

A five-act tragedy by an unknown author. A third of performances will be accompanied by a silent hooded figure (implied to be the "Ambassador of Alagadda") in the background of several scenes and deviations from the script. This culminate at the banquet of Act V, where an invoice of tribute to the Court of Alagadda is read and the figure the Ambassador takes the stage in full. Several members of the cast are murdered by their fellows, with the remainder committing suicide via group hanging. A violent riot spawns among the audience, with survivors causing further acts of random violence for up to 24 hours afterwards.

Any version of  The Hanged King's Tragedy (1640 quarto, 1733 folio, 1813 Cambridge University Press edition, 1965 trade paperback, 1971 hardcover), contains the following spells:

• Command
• Cause Fear
• Geas
• Control Rope
• Contact the Court of Alagadda

SCP-939 - In Many Voices 

Pack predators. Translucent red skin, thermal sensors instead of eyes. Internal organs are all distributed throughout the body. Nasty sons of bitches.

4 flesh (1 die) 12 grit (3 dice) AC 16, bite + claw (d10 + d8)

Distributed Organs: Immune to critical hits.

Perfect Mimicry: Can mimic a human voice perfectly.

AMN-C227: Short-range breath attack. Save vs. poison against disorientation and memory loss.

Hidden Offspring: Juveniles are visibly indistinguishable from human children.

SCP-966 - Sleep Killer

Gaunt predatory humanoids visible only in infrared.

3 flesh (1 die) 6 grit (2 dice) AC 14 (nimble) bite (d8)

Dream Eater: Target must make save vs magic or lose ability to sleep. Effect blocked by lead or other dense material.

SCP-1000 - Bigfoot

The previously dominant species of Earth. Deposed by prehistoric humanity in a global slave rebellion. Masters of biotech. Nocturnal. Not overtly hostile, but losing their patience.

6 flesh (2 dice) 6 grit (2 dice) AC 16 (Chitin armor), biogenic handgun (d10, replenishes ammunition with biomass)

A Walk in the Woods: 50% chance of disengaging with no chance of following in a forested environment.

SCP-1306 - Potion of Summon Bird

A mixture of birdfeed that will, without fail, summon at least two birds per hour from unobserved space. Birds called will be physiologically or behaviorally anomalous, non-native to the region, or otherwise stretching the definition of "bird".

SCP-1425 - Star Signals

A self-help book containing assorted "Star Focus" exercises meant to tune the reader into "phenomenological frequencies". Contents are considered a memetic hazard with a ~60% infection rate. Published in association with the celebrity-heavy new-age Fifth Church. Contains the following spells:

• Contact Star
• Prismatic Spray
• Cloudkill

SCP-1510 - Tarnished Legionnaire

A rusted Roman infantry helmet c. 107 BCE. If worn by a man 28-35 years of age, the wearer's personality will be overidden by that of Publius Carthephilus Aetius, a veteran of the Jugurthine War under Consul Gaius Marius. The wearer will revert to normal with no adverse effects or memory of the event when the helmet is removed.

SCP-1839 - The Reproductive Methods of Bony Fish

A hardcover textbook by Dr. Arthur Salernus. Upon perusal, the reader realizes that they are a fish and goes through an episode of flopping and gasping about. Those who survive this paroxysm may read the book normally, despite the fact that they are a fish and fish cannot read. Contains the following spells:

• Water Breathing
• Summon Bigger Fish

 

SCP-2085 - The Black Rabbit Company

A crack team of cyborg commando catgirls (plus one hapless shmuck) living the anarchist dream - toppling crime syndicates, committing corporate sabotage, having all sorts of zany adventures. They've got their eyes on a spaceship, but there's a lot to be done between now and then.

The Girls - 6 flesh (2 dice) 9 grit (3 dice). AC 15 (smart suit), weapon of choice (see below)
Wizard - 3 flesh (1 die) 3 grit (1 die) AC 12 (spacesuit) pistol (d8)

• Boss (Bodyguard) - Handler, wrangler, fixer, big sis. Dependable as a rock. The boss.
• Shotgun, sword, throwing knives x5.
• Momoko (Mercenary) - Boisterous, larger-than-life, fun-loving. Total gun-nut. The muscle.
• Automatic rifle, special reload, explosives x3. 
• Hana (Doctor) - Quiet, idealistic, moral compass, voice of reason. Field medic.
• Rifle, first-aid kit, surgeon's tools.
• Nanami (Criminal) - Aggressive, theatrical, angry, outrageous. Tech support & memeticist.
• Pistol, burner laptop, external drive of weaponized memes.
• Tomi (Mercenary) -  Monosyllabic, monotone, distant, cold. Gross personal habits. Sniper.
• Marksman's rifle, twin pistols, trashy romance novel.
• Wizard (Explorer) - Big dreamer with a dead past. Team mascot. 
• Bathrobe and wizard hat.

Cybernetic Augmentation - All members sans Wizard have the following cybernetic upgrades: Claws, Darkvision, Mental Communication (tacnet and secure wifi connection), Unnatural Strength or Lightning Speed.

SCP-2146 - Space Whale

The corpse of an adult bowhead whale in medium Earth orbit. Emits regular monthly radio broadcasts of a man cheerfully narrating cryptic, often gruesome stories, radio plays, documentaries, songs, and sermons. (A good source of adventure hooks: what in the world is space whale talking about today?)

SCP-2273 - Major Alexei Belitrov, of the Red Army's 22^nd Armored Infantry Division

A soldier from an alternative timeline. Wears a suit of powered chitinous armor built by SCP-1000.

3 flesh (1 die) 12 grit (3 die) AC 18 (powered chitin armor) fist (d8)

Powered chitin armor includes 270-degree field of view, a carrying capacity of 1200 kilograms, and an organic radio transceiver.

SCP-3199 - Humans, Refuted

A featherless biped. A chimera of human, chimpanzee, and common chicken stock. Aggressive predators. Will roost in abandoned structures and lay as many eggs as possible to fit in the space.

4 flesh (1 die) 8 grit (2 die) AC 14 (tough skin) bite (d6)

Liquefying Spit: Ranged corrosive attack (d12, save vs poison for half)

The Backup: All specimens carry a viable egg with them at all times. The entire species can be restored from this backup.

Inert Underwater: Rendered dormant if submerged in water, believed to be because there is no empty space to lay eggs in.

SCP-3288 - The Aristocrats

Homo anthropophagus - ghoulish inbred descendants of the Hapsburg dynasty. Hairless, albinos with gigantic lower jaws crowded with six rows of teeth and arms too long for the body. Physiological and mental addiction to human flesh. Breed like rabbits, abnormally tough. Obsessive about blood purity. Literal baby-eaters. Aim to become the dominant species on the planet.

6 flesh (2 dice) 12 grit (3 dice) AC 14 (thick skin) bite (d8)

Light Sensitivity: Excellent darkvision, disadvantage to all actions in bright light.  

Womb of Annihilation

I doubt anyone reading this will care about spoilers for Tomb of Annihilation, but I'll declare them anyway.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tomb of Annihilation  is a pretty good adventure. There are a good deal of weird WotC-isms in it (have you ever wondered about your NPC guide's exact height and weight? Tomb of Annihilation has you covered.) but on the whole it's a solid adventure with solid wilderness support and solid dungeons. You could run it without a whole lot of elbow grease.

But that's no fun.

Basic Premise

Acererak is trapping the souls of the dead in a giant machine and feeding them to an Atropal, which is currently located  at the bottom of an ancient dungeon in an abandoned city in the middle of an uncharted rainforest in a distant land. The lead-in is that resurrection spells have stopped working, those who have been resurrected previously are beginning to decay, and you've been sent to investigate it.

Elbow Grease Note 1:  Twice as many immortal oligarchs as you thought you wanted.

 

Tomb of Annihilation comes with the setting presumption that resurrection is common enough in-setting that people are noticing something going wrong. At first, I wasn't fond of this conceit and was considering dropping it entirely (an easy enough task), as I'm not super fond of the idea of resurrection as a commodity, but then I reconsidered.

Resurrection is expensive. It requires a 13th level wizard to cast, and if we're using +Skerples medieval price list, which is nice and abstracted, the component cost is the equivalent of 100,000 US dollars.

(For extra math fun, calculating the value of 1gp with the current per-ounce market value of gold, times 16 ounces per pound and divided by 50 coins per pound, we end up at $205,760 for a resurrection spell if a GP is only 50% gold.)

This is on top of the fees for hiring a 13th level necromancer, which could easily be ten times or more the cost of the components.

In short, it's bloody expensive. The only people who would even have a chance to access to it would be the rich and powerful, who would be able to become more rich and powerful by installing a revolving door to the afterlife.

The people who are sending you on this mission will reap all the benefit, despite doing none of the work (the book itself says that they've already sent people to Chult and failed. The only actual payment you receive from your patrons are 50gp up front, and a single magical item upon completion. Starting at level 1 just emphasizes that you're disposable lackeys. )

The book already uses the Red Wizards of Thay as an enemy faction that is out to twist everything to their own advantage. This works as-is. One set of immortal oligarchs are already taken care of.

Your patron is a woman named Syndra, who is supposed to be a member of the Harpers. I haven't got a clue what in Sam Hill the Harpers are supposed to be, so they have now been turned into the Harper East Seres Company (Or +Jacob Hurst 's Martel Company) Your friendly neighborhood expansionist venture-capitalists that have formed their own little government,who are now also immortal.

Both the Red Wizards and the Harper Company want the resurrection problem solved. Wizards want the Soulmonger for themselves, the Company doesn't yet know that it exists. The two groups loathe each other.

Elbow Grease Point 2: All about the politics

 

The module mentions factions, but few of them are actually important to the goings on in Chult. With rival groups of immortal oligarchs meddling in local affairs on top of local factions, that is a huge oversight.

The Harper Company
"It's just jungle now, but with some forward-thinking it transforms into something beautiful. Think about it. Rubber, cocoa, cotton, tea; plantations from horizon to horizon. Mines producing more oil and gold than we can imagine. And diamonds!"

• Wants: The end of the death curse, a return to the status quo, economic control of Chult
• Does not want: The Red Wizards gaining anything, the Merchant Princes getting too uppity and thinking they run the place.
• Is currently: Throwing poor people at the problem until it gets solved.

The Red Wizards of Thay
"The Chultans' aspirations mean nothing; They do not play with the long view in mind. No one ever does. They just think they'll live forever all on their own." 

• Wants: The Soulmonger, monopoly over resurrections and all other necromancy
• Does not want: The Harper Company gaining a foothold in Chult, Chult becoming anything more than a backwater, control of Chult for themselves, the Soulmonger destroyed.
• Is currently: Sending veteran problem-solvers to solve the problem.

The Merchant Princes
"In my grandfather's time Port Nyanzaru was a few huts and a palisade, and now we'll be selling tej in Lankhmar and Corpathium by year's end. No more "dark continent", no more superstition, just the Princes' stamps on crates of fine Chultan goods."

• Wants: To become a major player in the global market, to drag Chult kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat, to play with and then become one of the Big Boys, to get access to resurrection for the Princes.
• Does not want: Monarchist movement to gain power, news of the undead plague or death curse to spread and make them look bad.
• Is currently: Distracting the populace with dinosaur races and tej, trying to get a leg up on the Harper Company via corporate espionage.
  

Liara Portyr and the Flaming Fist (A mercenary subsidiary of the Harper Company)
"Fucking spear-chuckers need to learn who really runs the world."

• Wants: To "pacify" and "civilize" Chult. To get filthy rich by looting the jungle and oppressing the locals.
• Does not want: Interruptions of their making money, Chultans thinking that they should be in charge of their own country and lives.
• Is currently: Putting pressure on the Princes via pirate-permissive patrol practices
  

Mwaxinare
"When I'm queen, no one's going to tell me what to do. I don't need to be babied, I don't need protected - I will be queen and I will show everyone how things are supposed to be!"

• Wants: To claim her rightful position as queen of Chult, to toss out the merchant Princes and the foreigners, to return Chult to an overly-idealized former glory.
• Does not want: To remain hidden for much longer, to actually have to deal with the reality of governance.
• Is currently: Biding her time in Kir Sabal with her brother, chomping at the bit.

The common folk
"Welcome to Chult: Home of the world's friendliest mosquitoes."

• Wants: Food on the table, money in the bank, hot water, soft toilet paper, a new mosquito net, a good night's sleep, a brighter future.
• Does not want: The curse to continue, to end up with someone's boot on their neck, to completely abandon who they are in exchange for the benefits of modernity.
• Is currently: Feeding an undercurrent of worry beneath the new prosperity.

The Yuan-ti
"The apes learning to talk was entertaining at first, and quickly became less so."

• Wants: To awaken the Night Serpent, to keep humans out of their jungle.
• Does not want: Acererak to stay any longer, to be betrayed by Acerak, to admit that they know that Acererak is definitely going to betray them.
• Is currently: Protecting the lost city of Omu, preparing for the return of the Night Serpent, preparing for a sudden but inevitable betrayal.

Acererak 
"IT WAS ME! IT WAS ME THE ENTIRE TIME! YOU ALL BOUGHT IT! FOOLS!"

• Wants: To feed souls to the Atropal, to cause widespread misery and suffering for his own amusement.
• Does not want: The game to end, to have his wants challenged by anyone or anything.
• Is currently: Overseeing the Soulmonger, planning future schemes, figuring out how to betray the Yuan-ti.

 

Elbow Grease Point 3: Expanding the curse 

 

In the module proper the Soulmonger captures all the souls of the dead, blocking resurrection or phylacterization. I can only presume that captured souls are stuck in a whirling torment of pain and misery as the Atropal devours them, but we can make it more horrible. This part was originally intended as a replacement for the death curse, but it works better as an addition to it.

What if the Soulmonger wasn't just a trap for the souls of the dead, but one for the not-yet-living?

[Aside] There was a fantasy full conversion mod for Civilization 4 called Fall From Heaven II. It was and still is fantastic. In it, the primary evil religion had a shrine they could build called "Stigmata on the Unborn". While the effect in that game was powering up your units depending according to how high the Apocalypse Counter is, I always imagined it as a method of attacking rival civ's population growth. So there's the inspiration for this.[/Aside]

This effect of the death curse is still in nascent stages - we have not reached Children of Men stages yet, but the important thing is that the potential is there. The effects will spread, and gradually grow worse.

Right now, people are worried. The last few months have been filled with deformities, defects, and miscarriages most common of all. The people know this; midwives talk, after all. The Merchant Princes and their representatives deny that anything is going on; this is not a conspiracy on their part, but the simple belief that curses are just local superstition, waiting to be driven out by their modern mercantile rationality. (Of course, being filthy rich means you can blunt many of the worst side effects of the curse, for the time being.)

The reveal of this aspect of the curse should be a good OH SHIT moment for players. Not only because of the potential consequences, but for providing a moral quandary: destroying the Soulmonger ends the curse on the unborn (definitely a good thing), but further entrenches folk like the Red Wizards and the Harper Company in their power (not a good thing), thus permitting them to further meddle in the affairs of Chult to their own ends (definitely not a good thing). Beating the bad guy will not solve all your problems.

Elbow Grease Point 4: The cosmic abortion in the room

This guy reminds me of something. I just can't put my finger on it...

Hmmm...

Hmmmmmmmmm...

It's on the tip of my tongue, I swear...

Nope, can't think of it. It's probably nothing.

...

You can't just put a cosmic abortion in the room and not deal with the fact that there's a cosmic abortion in the room, Wizards of the Coast!

Elbow Grease Point 4: Dealing with the cosmic abortion in the room 

 

Res minimus: Levels 5 and 6 of the Tomb should be a horrible nightmare fleshscape, as is befitting the title of this post. The giant undead fetus is right there, stone corridors aren't going to cut it any more.

Res maximus: Acererak is the Atropal's father.

Maybe he's the actual father, maybe he's only acting in loco parentis. Perhaps it was a divine miscarriage instead of a cosmic abortion. It doesn't matter: whatever you might come up with is better than "he found it on the Negative Energy Plane" and I don't want to ruin the image with explanations no one wants or needs.

[Aside] The crazy thing is that this is practically in the book as-is: they just don't give it any focus. The height and weight of your guide are super important, I guess. [/Aside]

The horrible beating heart in the middle of this campaign is that relationship. Acererak cares for the Atropal (by feeding it souls), but demonstrates a simultaneous and paradoxical apathy to it (he only appears after it has been killed, and certainly doesn't care about its state of torment). I doubt I need to spend much more time explaining how the psychopathic undead troll-DM is a really, really bad parent.

Elbow Grease Point 5: Back to the beginning

But the cool thing about that horrible beating heart (Finally! The end!) is that it calls back to Point 1:

The only applicable difference between Acererak and the Red Wizards or Harper Company is time.

Acererak has reached the point where wealth and power have fundamentally lost meaning to him because he will never run out of either - he can just build a new overly-elaborate death trap when the current project is winding down. The Red Wizards and the Harper Company aren't at that point yet, but are already stretching their abuse and exploitation muscles. The Merchant Princes aren't on the playing field just yet, but they will be if they have their way.

There will be more Acereraks in time, and Chult is set to become an Atropal of its own. The older established generation exploiting the younger so that it decays before it has grown.

Settings with commoditized resurrections aren't fun, kids. This is where you end up.

Elbow Grease Point 6: A few ifs

If the Soulmonger falls into the hands of the Red Wizards
The curse will be lifted, but they will swiftly enforce a monopoly on resurrections and undeath. The Harper Company will be cannibalized and disbanded. The Merchant Princes will be prevented from ever getting their hands on resurrection services. Chult's dawning golden age stalls out.

If the Harpers remain a major power in Chult
The Merchant Princes will be bought out - never officially, but lopsided trade agreements and crooked distribution rights (in exchange for resurrecting the leadership) will see the Princes become yet another (fantastically wealthy) subsidiary of the Harpers. The Burning Fist will become the boot stomping down on the Chultan neck. Chult will be exploited to the last acre, and by the time the people realize that they've been had, an independence movement will become much more difficult.


If Mwaxinare reclaims her throne
She will find herself surrounded by enemies on all sides and with next to no allies, vastly outmatched in resources, guile, and governing ability. An agreement might be made with the Merchant Princes or another faction, but she has no power of her own beyond lingering cultural significance. She courts disaster.

If the Soulmonger is used by the party
Difficult, but possible with a powerful enough necromancer. The scope of the curse can be modified with the device - for example, the curse on the unborn might be lifted, while the ban against resurrection might remain. Souls passing to the afterlife might be trapped en masse, individually, or set free.


You can, of course, utterly destroy both the Harper Company and the Red Wizards. Not fast enough that they won't retaliate, mind. You'll also need the cooperation of the Yuan-Ti, or their removal from the premises.

The the Soulmonger is allowed to continue its business unchanged
The curse on the unborn will spread outwards from Chult. Within a few months there will be more deaths than live births. In a year's time, there will be no live births at all.Within five years, the entire hemisphere will be effected.


If the above, and the Atropal is dead
After nine years, when the curse has spread across the entire world, the Soulmonger will finally contain enough souls to summon the Night Serpent. It will rush out like a black river from the gulfs between the stars, devour the offering, and usher in a second age of the serpent.

If the above, and the Atropal lives
If the Soulmonger is still active, the Atropal will be born into divinity in 280 days. A maelstrom of pain and hate and fear will burst forth from the deepest jungles of Chult, obliterating the Soulmonger, the Tomb, and the lost city of Omu. Most of the country's population goes mad instanteously from the initial wave of psychic torment. Everything that dies, down to bacteria, will be raised as undead. The jungle will become a landscape of perpetual rot.

If something else happens
You're clever folk, I'm sure you'll think of something

50 Dungeon Hobo Signs

Click for full size

I threw in some real hobo signs to go along with the dungeon-specific ones, since the basic needs of an itinerant worker are pretty stable across the board.

In-game, I'd say that any previously-delved dungeon will have some of these carved or drawn on the walls. Some might be misleading, some might be no longer accurate, but they should be true enough that they can be an aid to players' navigation and help them in making choices. Compare "there are passages to the north and west" to "north passage is marked 'ooze territory / safe campsite'. west is marked 'disabled trap / monsters can be reasoned with / don't look behind you'".

They're pretty helpful on the DM side too if you need quick ideas for rooms.