Morpheus Unbound  |  Battletech

A Battletech Adventure by Morpheus Unbound

The bandit king Redjack Ryan has an outpost on a small world.

This world is a hot, tropical world with active vulcanism. It has two moons and a yellow sun.

Ryan's outpost is in a natural cavern, hidden by rock and tropical growth from orbital and most aerial surveillance.

A Clan scouting party consisting of a dropship, two recon lances (5 light, 3 medium ‘mechs) and a vehicle lance (2 light VTOL, 1 light hover, 1 medium tracked) landed on the planet. The crew was killed by a local life form (not native, but introduced by Ryan) and their equipment was captured completely undamaged by Ryan's people.

The life form is a strange parasitic creature. It has four life stages: spore, zygote, larva and adult. When two or more adults mate, a spore pod is created. The spore pod explodes, releasing millions of spores in to the atmosphere. These spores are virtually indistinguishable from bacteria or fungus to which humans are normally immune. However, when the spores contact a human animal, they quickly enter the bloodstream and take residence in the muscles of the heart. When several hundred to a thousand spores are present, they merge to form a zygote. The zygote gestates and grows for one to four days and pupates into two to five larva. The larva live in the host's heart, feeding on blood, and one to four days later they are large enough to cause massive coronary trauma and begin eating the host vascular muscle tissue. The larva eat their way to the outside of the host body and seek shelter outside the host body. They again pupate, and the resulting short-lived adults must mate within a few days to begin the process again. Only the spore life stage appears to have a life span of more than a few days.

The crew of the Clan dropship were the first to die, and the rest of the crew followed shortly thereafter.

Ryan's people are protected from the life form by a daily dose of tailored enzymes. The enzymes reside in the bloodstream and bond with the spores when the spores enter the body, thereby preventing the spores from taking residence in the heart and merging to form a zygote. The body naturally flushes the denatured spores through the kidneys.

Ryan and his people keep many secrets. The outpost, the life form, and now the fully intact Clan equipment are some of his tightest secrets.

– Adventure Seeds --

• Secrets are meant to be told, and someone has learned about the Clan equipment. That's where the Player Characters come in.
• The parent Clan will naturally send a party to investigate the disappearance of it's recon team.
• Rival bandit kings and mercenary groups will send parties to steal the equipment or substantiate rumors of it.
• The Houses of the Inner Sphere will send parties to steal the equipment or substantiate rumors of it.

– Game Mechanics –

• The planet has only 0.86g gravity. Thus, all ‘mechs and vehicles move faster.
• The Redjack Ryan compound is large enough for aerospace fighters to battle and still hide two dropships - the captured Clan ship, and one from Ryan's group. Outside the Redjack Ryan compound, the following rules are in play.
• +1 Heat per turn due to the temperatures of the planet.
• Light Rain is almost pervasive, and Heavy Rains occur several times per week.

This adventure was inspired by a pick-up game at University of Toledo BASH-CON sometime in the late 1980s.