Hostile: Alien - Part 2

 

The surface of planetoid LV426

Introduction

We're continuing the adaptation of Alien. Dallas, Kane and Lambert have stepped into the airlock, ready to traverse the forbidding dead landscape of planetoid LV426 in order to find the source of the mystery transmission they detected.

Let's create LV426 using Hostile's world generation system, which is based on that of Traveller. I don't know if any of it will come into play on the journey but it's fun to do anyway.

Universal World Profile

LV426 X111000-C Asteroid G

Starport

X: No starport.

Size

1: The closest size category which is 1600km in diameter. In the film the planetoid is only 1200km. Ash says the gravity is "0.86 - You can walk on it". This implies that it's 86% the strength of Earth's gravity. In Hostile a size 1 planet has 0.05 gravity, but we'll go with the film.

Atmosphere

1: Trace. This is a very thin layer of gases surrounding the planet, obviously enough to cause the horrible wind seen on LV426 but very harmful to human life, so vacc suits must be worn. No animal or plant life can survive here. I'm not sure how realistic these traits are but they're closest to what we see in the film.

We need to decide what will happen to characters exposed to this atmosphere in the case of a vacc suit failure. Since we have an atmosphere and it's not total vacuum and the planetoid does receive sunlight, we'll say the temperature is frozen: -50 degrees. Going by the Extreme Temperature table in the Hostile Setting book this results in 2D6 damage per hour of exposure.

If a character breathes the stew of poisonous gases here they'll have to make an average Endurance roll of 8+ to "resist poison", once per minute. Each time they fail they'll take 1D6 damage.

Hydrographics

1: 0%-5% water coverage. As we know the company establishes a colony here years later it probably does have some water, maybe underground or frozen. It's almost completely dry though.

Population, Government and Law Level

0: None as it's uninhabited.

Tech Level

12: While this doesn't really apply to this planet since it's barren, the Hostile setting has a tech level of 12 across all the colonies. We'll include it here for completeness.

Trade Codes

Asteroid. It's almost an asteroid so this is the closest tag I can find. It basically means it's a ball of rock with a non-existent or very thin atmosphere.

Gas Giant

The G at the end of the universal world profile denotes a gas giant in the same system. In Alien lore, LV426 is in the Zeta Reticuli system, orbiting a gas giant called Calpamos which in turn orbits the second of the binary stars there. In real life astronomers have detected no planets but a possible belt of debris in a ring around them.

The Adventure

The trio are wearing their vacc suits. I haven't made them do a Vacc Suit skill roll for this as it's a totally routine procedure. Putting on a vacc suit while trapped in a shuttle with a sleepy alien however, would be quite different.

The airlock cycles and the harsh atmosphere of LV426 floods in before the doors clunk open revealing a cold hellscape of rocky outcrops blasted by black dust blown against them by the endless wind. A small sun is rising over the horizon, spreading cold blue-tinted light over everything.

Looking at the Dirtside book for Hostile, a tiny planetoid like this has local hexes of 13km. The Nostromo landed only 2km from the signal which probably doesn't even warrant a roll on the events table, but let's do it anyway.

6: Narrow valley.

There isn't actually an entry for this in the details under the tables, so I'll go with "Rough valleys and canyons". The rugged nature of this environment reduces travel in the hex to half speed. I'm going to abstract the time and distance here a bit since the Dirtside rules talk about travel time in terms of weeks. A bit of research online reveals the characters might be able to cover about 2km in one hour over rough terrain, and our result on the table doubles that time to two hours.

The Hostile rulebook says vacc suits have six hours of oxygen included in their tanks, so that gives Dallas, Kane and Lambert two hours of exploration time before they have to head back to the ship. Let's say they've worked this out and set timers on their old-school Casio digital watches for four hours, to remind them to head back on time.

So, they begin the traverse across the alien landscape. They carry first aid kits and Yoshiko T78-45 harpoon grapnels in case they need to climb up or down great distances. These use compressed air to fire a spring-loaded grapnel up to ten metres and a small powered winch to haul the user up or down.

While moving through a narrow valley Lambert remarks "I can't see a goddamn thing."

"Quit griping!" Kane replies.

"I like griping." She says, before Dallas cuts in, "Come on, knock it off!"

Back onboard the Nostromo Parker and Brett do a series of checks to make sure the ship will be ready to take off again, Ash monitors the video feed from the trio of explorers and Ripley sits down with a coffee to study the distress signal with help from Mother. Jones joins her on the bridge and seeing her hard at work, decides to busy himself by having a bath.

Let's do an average Comms roll to see if Ripley can work out the nature of the signal's message. She'll get a +1 DM due to using Mother.

Ripley makes a check (Difficulty 8)

9 +1 Comms +1 Help from Mother = 11. Success!

We'll come back to that later. Outside, let's do a routine Vacc Suit roll for each character as they're in danger of being blown over by the endless wind and tearing their suits on a sharp rock.

Dallas makes a check (Difficulty 6)

9 +1 Vacc Suit = 10. Success!

Kane makes a check (Difficulty 6)

10 +2 Vacc Suit = 12. Success!

Lambert makes a check (Difficulty 6)

8 +1 Vacc Suit = 9. Success!

All of them navigate the harsh landscape expertly, until they arrive on top of a ridge and spot some kind of structure in the distance. It looks like a huge dark ring jutting out from the ground at a strange angle, with a break in the surface making it more of a horseshoe shape.

"Ash, can you see this?" Asks Dallas.

"Yes I can." The science officer replies over the radio. "I've never seen anything like it."

Of course we know what it is, but the characters will have to wait til next time to find out.