First Contact Team Color Version

First Contact Team
is published by Vajra Enterprises, Portland Oregon
ISBN 978-0-9855163-6-9
Written and Designed by Brian St.Claire-King
Cover by Alex Ries
Illustrations by
Josh Marlar (p.38, p.58, p.55)
Brian Murphy (p.163. p.140-1, p.142)
Jake Richmond (p.42-43)
Alex Ries (p.74)
Page Layout by Todd Crapper
Woman of Color on Laptop (p.194) released under a Creative

Commons Attribution license by Flickr user WOCinTech Chat
Physical Map of Moon (p.99) by United States Geological Survey
Twin Peaks on Mars (p.105) by NASA
Playtesting by
Tiffany St.Claire-King, Tenzin St.Claire-King, Grace Parsons,
Serena Bailey, Darren Gilliver, Chris Musgrave.
Nick “Eeyore!” Page and John Zaid
Special Consultation by Jack Berkenstock Jr. and Mike Fields
Copyright © 2019 by Vajra Enterprises
Rights reserved under the Universal Copyright Convention.

Small portions of this book may be reproduced for use during
play.
visit www.VajraEnterprises.com
Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Introduction
Introduction:
Going Beyond Forehead Aliens
Old school sci-fi is in my blood. As a child, living in a tiny apartment in Oakland,
California, our walls were covered in bookshelves made from boards and
breezeblocks, and these bookshelves were covered mostly with sci-fi novels.
I grew up surrounded by names like Pohl, Heinlein, Asimov, Lem, Harrison and
Saberhagen. Even when I was too young to read the books, I would pull them
out and read the back covers and look at the art on the front and imagine what
adventures were contained within.
When we had a TV, I also watched shows like Star Trek. On the covers of the sci-
fi novels, aliens tended to be weird, strange looking creatures, approached with
caution and awe by the human heroes of the books. On the TV, the aliens were just
people with funny haircuts or their skin painted a strange color or small fiddly bits
of prosthetic on their foreheads. I’ve heard aliens of this ilk called “forehead aliens.”
They can all speak English (thanks, often, to a universal translator, whose workings
are never really explained) and they act mostly like humans except for some
aspect present in human psychology or human culture accentuated to an extreme
degree. The forehead aliens always seemed to me to be a waste of potential. The
best episodes, it always seemed, were the ones where they met aliens that weren’t
forehead aliens or that the universal translator wouldn’t work on.
Today, I know enough about how entertainment gets made to know why sci-fi TV
relied so heavily on forehead aliens. One reason is the economics of special effects
at the time. The other reason is that a TV show generally can’t take the time needed
to tell the story of meeting, learning about and finding ways to communicate with
a completely alien species, as a novel can.
There is also a strong tendency in TV to keep things simple to avoid anything that
might potentially make the audience feel stupid. Truly alien aliens, then tend, to be
avoided because understanding them requires the audience to grasp complicated
concepts. It’s easy for TV viewers to understand a race of forehead aliens who are
“warlike” or “logical,” but less easy to understand aliens who lack any sense of self
or communicate solely via mathematics. Sci-fi novels, on the other hand, always
seemed to assume that readers could understand any concept that was sufficiently
explained to them.
The question, then, is whether role playing games are more like TV shows or more
like novels. There have been many great games that replicate the virtues of TV sci-
fi. However, I am willing to bet that RPGs can be more like novels: that players can
enjoy taking the time to understand beings that are truly different from us. The fact
that it is not easy will, I believe, be a positive for players. After all, who wouldn’t
want to take the time to try to solve what might be the greatest mystery humans
will ever face?
2
Introduction
Introduction:
First Contact Team in Brief
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or
we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” -Arthur C. Clarke
Style: Each First Contact Team scenario is an epic science mystery. The players
take on the roles of some of the world’s greatest minds, trying to understand and
communicate with an intelligent alien species. There may be danger, possibly even
combat, but the primary element of gameplay is unraveling the mystery of the
alien life form. First Contact Team eschews the sci-fi tropes of human-looking,
human-acting aliens and universal translators and instead seeks to create species
that challenge player with their sheer difference from humanity.
Characters: A new team is assembled for each first contact scenario. After being
given a brief on the current scenario, players take the role of a committee tasked
with assembling the team that will make contact. The committee must decide what
skills, specialties and backgrounds they want on the team. Also, what disabilities or
other flaws are the committee willing to live with in order to get the best possible
people? After the general details are agreed upon, each player creates a character.
Player Characters (PCs) are the world’s top scientists, diplomats, mathematicians,
soldiers and astronauts. Character creation involves choosing attributes, skills and
equipment, each from a pool of points. Advantages and disads can be taken to
round out each character.
Adventures: Each First Contact Team scenario assumes that this is humanity’s first
contact with alien life. The players have every resource that the governments of the
world can give them. Contact can take place in a wide variety of locations, familiar or
unfamiliar, safe or dangerous, on earth or beyond. The aliens may be friendly, may
be hostile, or may not to fall easily into these anthropocentric categories. Players
win if they come to understand enough about the alien beings to communicate
with them and/or understand their intentions.
Tech Level: First Contact Team is assumed to take place now or in the near future.
Therefor, science and technology is mostly the same as it is today. We can assume
that if some technology needs to be developed to make first contact possible (e.g.
to put the First Contact Team on the surface of Mars to investigate signs of alien life
there) that world governments have rushed the development of this technology,
but that not much else has changed.
Game Mechanics: First Contact Team uses Organic Rule Components Lite, a ruleset
designed for lite or live action simulationist play. The basic mechanic is to compare
one’s AV (attribute + skill + equipment) to either the difficulty for a task or to an
opponent’s AV. You then do something that gives you a 50% chance of winning (e.g.
a coin flip) until you lose a number of times equal to your AV or win a number of
times equal to the difficulty or to opponent’s AV.

Introduction
Table of Contents
Introduction Step 2: What is Their Tech Like?..............075
Going Beyond Forehead Aliens...............002 Brain-Computer Interfaces..................075
First Contact Team in Brief........................003 Terraforming..............................................076
Zero-Point Energy....................................076
Table of Contents..........................................004
Dyson Spheres...........................................077
Chapter One: Recruitment & Training Nanotech......................................................077
Element Construction............................078
History of the First Contact Team...........006
Mind Engineering.....................................079
Being a First Contact Team Member.....007 Technology-Biology Convergence....079
Simulated Worlds....................................084
Chapter Two: Assemble Your Team
Step 3: What Brought Us Together?.......087
Step 1: The Briefing........................................010
Motivations.................................................087
Step 2: Team Concept..................................011 Spaceships...................................................089
Step 3: Team Member Concept...............014 Step 4: Where Is First Contact?................090
Step 4: Attributes...........................................015 Earth’s Surface...........................................090
Step 5: Skills.....................................................017 Underground.............................................092
Underwater.................................................092
Step 6: Equipment.........................................025
Space.............................................................093
Step 7: Advantages & Disads.....................031 The Moon.....................................................097
Step 8: Hidden Agenda...............................034 Other Planets and Moons......................105
Step 9: Character Advancement..............035 Step 5: How Do They Communicate?...108
Step 6: How Do They See Us?...................113
Chapter Three: ORC-L Rules of Play
Step 7: Complications..................................115
What is ORC-L?..............................................040
Your AV..............................................................041 Chapter Five: Pre-Written Scenarios
Skills vs. Non-Skill Actions........................041 The Black Pool.................................................119
50/50s................................................................041 Gobstopper......................................................136
PC vs. Inanimate Object..............................046 Pathogen...........................................................154
PC vs. Being......................................................056
Appendices
Saves...................................................................046
Using FCT With Other Vajra Games.......180
Human vs. Human Combat.......................047
ORC-L to ORC-R Conversions.................187
Human vs. Nonhuman Combat..............051
Inspiration Bibliography.............................188
Chapter Four: Crafting First Contact Glossary & Index...........................................190
Step 1: What is the Alien Like?..................060 Character Sheet..............................................191
Dead Aliens.................................................062
Speed Differentials..................................063
Artificial Intelligence as Alien.............065
First Contact Via Information..............068
Extra-Dimensional Beings....................069
First Contact With Artifacts..................070
4
Chapter One
Chapter One
Title Goes Here
Recruitment and Training
“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, our goal this evening is to
choose the first team of researchers to investigate the Tehran
incident. Time is of the essence, so I don’t see us leaving this
room until we have a final list.”
“Do we really believe aliens “Given that Iranian society has
crashed in Tehran?” different… ah… rules for behavior for
women than in many of our member
“If you look at the dossier, you’ll see nations, perhaps male team
all the evidence we have so far. members would be preferable.”
Geologists say it doesn’t match
the pattern of a meteor strike and “Excuse me. Excuse me. I’d like to
our military experts say it doesn’t say something here. I, for one, am
not willing to cut out half of program
look like any known missile or
members…”
crashed aircraft. Does that mean
it’s alien? That’s for the team we “Actually, removing women from
are putting together to figure out. consideration would remove 53% of
Now, up on the big screen is our team members.”
list of all active First Contact Team “...am not willing to cut out more than
members. Who do we want?” half of team members just so satisfy
the locals’ prejudices. We’re not there
“If they’re interviewing locals, the
to make contact with backwards
ability to speak Persian would be
misogynists, we’re there to make
nice.” contact with aliens.”
“Okay. Clyde, please highlight all “I…”
members whose files indicate
Persian language proficiency. “And furthermore, let’s please not even
bring up sexual orientation, unless
Okay, thank you Clyde. Let’s try to
you think the world’s greatest minds
choose at least one from this list.” are going to mistake the greatest
scientific event of our lifetimes for an
“What about gender?”
opportunity for indiscreet hookups.”
“What about it?” “Are you done?”

“For now.” “Her personality tests show an

authoritarian interpersonal style.”
“Then might I suggest we focus on
the expertise we want? For instance, “If she’s the one enforcing biohazard
we have the unexplained illnesses protocols to prevent the spread of
that are being reported near the alien diseases, authoritarian might
crash site. That would indicate to be a good thing. I’ll remind you that
me that we want a medical doctor, she’s the only epidemiologist we’ve
specifically an epidemiologist. Do got. I say yes.”
we have any on the list?”
“Agreed.”
“We have one. Dr. Yekaterina
Tolokonnikova. I’ll pull up her file.” “Agreed.”
“Impressive research credentials, “Okay, what’s next.”

and she is certainly no stranger to “I’d day we include an astrophysicist.”
hazardous research sites.”
“Clyde, please show all astro-
“As a teenager she was hospitalized physicists. Thank you. Now who do
for manic depression and borderline we like best out of this group?”
personality disorder, and she is still
on psychiatric medication.”
“It doesn’t seem to have held her back
in her career. She’s got a condition
but she’s learned how to manage
it. The chances of it affecting her
ability to make rational decisions is
minuscule.”
History of the FCT

In 1964, a closed door meeting of world
Formed in 1964 leaders, including Lyndon B. Johnson f rom
by multiple the US and Alexei Kosygin from the Soviet
nations, the Team Union, was held to try to put together an
arms treaty. The delegates were not able
is a group of to agree to a treaty, but during the course
the world’s best of the meetings President Johnson added
scientists and an unexpected item to the agenda. His
other experts, scientific advisors had been urging him
to develop a program to deal with alien
to be called in life forms, should they be discovered
to make contact somewhere or should they attempt to make
with aliens. contact. Johnson wanted to put together
such a program, but didn’t want to give the
press and excuse to run headlines saying
the president believes in “little green men.” Johnson proposed a secret
arrangement among the nations that were present. Each would send
a few of their top scientists to a summit to discuss the possibility and
come up with a plan to deal with it should it ever happen.
6
The scientists met the following year in Geneva and came up with a basic
protocol for dealing with first contact with alien life, a protocol that was
then signed by nearly all of the nations involved. An international group
would privately recruit scientist and other experts from around the globe
and fly these experts in for training, one week each year, by fellow scientists.
These volunteers would make up a pool of experts that could be called
on to respond to a first contact situation. The signatory nations involved
agreed that should first contact happen on their soil they would call in the
multinational First Contact Team rather than try to monopolize contact
with the alien life forms.
Thus the First Contact Team program was formed and the first of many
generations of scientists and other experts recruited.
Being a FCT Member

To be recruited, you must have established
As a top yourself as one of the top people in your field.
person in your At some point some of your colleagues will
send you cryptic messages saying that if you
field, you are are approached with a job offer you should
asked to sign take it seriously. Soon after, a man or woman in
a suit and tie comes into your office saying he
an NDA and or she has a job offer for you, but that you must
then offered first sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
the chance After the NDA is signed, you are told about
to train once First Contact Team. You will be given a modest
a year to stipend, you will get so spend one week a year
in the company of some of the world’s top
possibly meet minds, and if humans ever make contact with
aliens. alien life you may get called on to be on the
front lines.
Perhaps you take the prospect of alien life seriously, and this is why you
sign up. Perhaps you don’t, and you sign up for the stipend and what you
think of as a yearly paid vacation. No matter why, you are now officially a
member of the First Contact Team, and you aren’t allowed to tell anyone.
The next summer you are flown out to a corporate retreat center in
Mendocino County in California. It is a beautiful and relaxing place to
spend a week. You discover that many of your most respected peers are
members of the program. Your fellow team members are often eccentric,
often intense, always brilliant and never boring. Meals in the dining halls,
from the welcome dinner on the first night, to the goodbye dinner on the
last, are a raucous mixture of discussions, debates, lectures and laughter.
Most of the day is spent in lectures given by members of the program’s

faculty (most of them alums from the program as far back as its inception).
There are lectures about computational linguistics, evolutionary biology,
negotiation techniques, information theory, relativity as it applies to
interstellar travel, etc. The content is highly theoretical: a bunch of guesses
as to what it may be like to encounter aliens. Pretty much every lecture
ends with “but we don’t actually know for sure.”

Some lecturers put their students to sleep (especially in the after-lunch

slots). Some lecturers are engaging and fascinating. Some are quirky and
lovable. The student favorite faculty member is professor Carla Harmon,
a short, round, mostly-blind, sixty-something Biologist who has spent
most of her career writing about what alien life forms might be like. She is
enthusiastic, funny, lovably eccentric and enjoys pointing out all the flaws
in the anthropocentric, Hollywood vision of aliens. Her lectures are full of
what are meant to be rhetorical questions, but that those who have heard
her lectures multiple times call out answers to as if they were attending a
showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. She gives a lecture listing out
all the things we assume will be true about aliens, at least some of which
are likely to be wrong, and this lecture is considered by many First Contact
Team inductees to be the most valuable lecture in the whole program.
In addition to academic lectures, you also listen to lectures from survival
experts on how to operate in a variety of environments. They even give
a very basic course on how to operate in a spacecraft or do an EVA
(Extravehicular Activity). There are tests of your basic abilities to hike, climb
and swim.
Then you fly or drive home and you await next year’s training. Perhaps
you daydream about what it would be like to actually get the call, the one
saying that alien life has been discovered and they need you to try to figure
out how it works or how to communicate with it. You know that, over the
program’s many decades, all of its hundreds of participants, nobody has
ever gotten that call. But what if?
Notes From Professor Harmon’s

“Assumptions About Aliens” Lecture
• Physically distinct units of a life form will consider

themselves, and will act as, separate autonomous entities.
• Life forms will be biological (as we understand it), their form
dictated by evolutionary pressures on their planet of origin,
and will utilize technology as something separate from their
biology.
• Life forms will subscribe to a moral system that respects the
right of an individual not to be destroyed, changed or held
against its will.
• Life forms will be physical entities (rather than, for instance,
information).
• Life forms will communicate via a symbolic language.
continued next page
8
Notes From Professor Harmon’s

“Assumptions About Aliens” Lecture
(continued)
• Life forms will consider themselves on equal level with
humans.
• Life forms will be interested in humans, and the actions of
humans will be capable of drawing their attention.
• Life forms will have life cycle where they experience birth, life
and then an irreversible state of death.
• Life forms traveling inside a vessel will be the intelligent
commanders of that vessel.
• Intelligent life forms will be made of some combination of solid
and liquid matter, and will use limbs for locomotion and to
manipulate their environments.
• Intelligent life forms (those capable of navigating through
space) will have narrative memories, the ability to adapt their
behavior to new situations, the ability to create concepts to
explain their surroundings, self-consciousness and the ability
to understand that humans are autonomous thinkers.
• There will be a clear distinction between sapient life forms
and the less-intelligent or non-intelligent technology, pets and
servants that they own and control.
• All adult members of the species will have similar cognitive
abilities.
• The way life forms’ minds work will not vary significantly
while we are dealing with them.
• Life forms’ actions that they use to interact with us will
be voluntary and conscious (as opposed to autonomic or
reflexive).
• Life forms will operate, think and communicate at the same
speed as us.
• Life forms will come from another planet in our visible
universe and our present.
• Each life form will be a member of a species and of a society;
will represent the interests of that species or society.

Chapter Two
Assemble Your Team
Step One:
The Briefing
First, the Game Master (GM) should give the players
Players hear a brief synopsis of what has happened that has led
a briefing the First Contact Team to be called in. Presumably,
on what the someone somewhere encountered something that
looked to be evidence of alien life, and enough smart
governments people agreed that the decision was made to call in
know so far. First Contact Team.
Character Creation Example -

Step One
The GM describes to the characters an incident where a copse
of strange trees was found growing around what appeared to
be a small impact crater in a wheat field in rural Russia. The
trees grew at an alarming rate, and a botanist from a nearby
university could not identify the trees as belonging to any
known species. An attempt to analyze the trees’ DNA showed
that they had none.
10
Assemble Your Team
Step Two:
Team Concept
Based on the details of the briefing, discuss with
Players decide your fellow players what kind of people, with what
kinds of skills and equipment, you would want
the makeup of trying to make first contact with alien life. During
their team, who this part of play, you take the role of First Contact
will play what, Team’s managing board. They have been given the
and if any team same briefing and are now tasked with choosing,
among all the talented First Contact Team members,
members will be who to call in to do the on-site investigation.
NPCs (Non-Player
Characters) Some choices will be fairly easy. If, for example, the
“alien” seems to be a set of fossilized remains, you
played by the would probably choose at least one team member
GM. with training as a paleontologist. If the contact is
taking place at the top of a mountain, you should
probably make sure you only choose people who
are physically fit enough to climb.
Character Archetypes
Character creation in First Contact Team is fairly free-form.

Feel free to define new roles or combine roles in unusual ways.
However, many PCs and NPCs will fall into a couple of roles:
Scientist: This is the prototypical First Contact Team member:

a renowned expert in his or her field, probably a professor at
a major research university, who is there to bring his or her
discipline to bear on understanding the aliens. Common types
include biologist, linguist, chemist, physicist or mathematician.
Doctor/Psychiatrist: This is someone with a dual role. They can

use their scientific knowledge and medical/psychiatric skills to try
to understand the aliens they meet. They are also there to care
for the physical or psychological health of the team members.
continued next page
11

Assemble Your Team
Character Archetypes
(continued)
Diplomat/Negotiator: This person’s role is to smooth things over
with other humans at the contact site (e.g. interfacing with a
paranoid local government) and, once communication with aliens
has been established, to try to negotiate a peaceful and mutually-
beneficial relationship with them.
Tech: This person’s role is to run, maintain, and (when bad

things happen) repair the tech that the rest of the team depends
on, including vehicles, communications networks, surveillance
and recording devices, and the mainframes that the scientists
are doing their calculations on. They may also be able to help
understand alien technology.
Astronaut: This person’s role is to help the other experts deal

with the challenges of operating space vehicles and living and
working in space.
Military/Security: This person’s role is to provide physical

security for the rest of the team, whether that means protecting
them from angry local humans at the contact site, from local
wildlife that might like to take a bite out of a sleeping scientist, or
from a threatening alien.
Other team makeup questions may be more difficult. Say the alien we encountered
seems to be communicating in complicated mathematics. Would you choose the
world’s most brilliant mathematician, even though he or she has some significant
flaw (e.g. a bad case of bipolar disorder), or would you choose the second-most-
brilliant mathematician who does not have a significant flaw?
While each player will create his or her own PC (player character), it is appropriate
to discuss characters as a team to make sure that every skillset you want is
represented. In other games this would count as unrealistic meta-gaming, but in
First Contact Team it is a realistic simulation of the work the First Contact Team
board does to put together the best team they can.
In some cases, players may determine that a certain type of expert is needed, but
no player has the desire or knowledge to play that type of character. The players
can build those team members (or ask the GM to build them) and then have the
GM run them as NPCs. Follow all the character creation steps except for Step
Eight: Hidden Agenda (the GM should create the Hidden Agenda for any NPC).
12
Assemble Your Team
When an NPC team member is given to the GM to run, the GM will run this
character as a competent expert in his or her field. The NPC will investigate, do
tests, analyze results and offer opinions. The NPC won’t, however, have creativity.
Most first contact scenarios require one or more moments where players look
at the clues they’ve found and put them together to create a new vision of what
the aliens are like. An NPC can find these clues, and present them to the PCs,
but should not assist in making the creative leaps to turn those clues into an
actionable new understanding.
Calling in Another Expert
When PCs get to the first contact

When realistic site they may decide that they need
to do so, someone of a specialty that was
players may completely unanticipated when the
create new team was first put together. Depending
characters in on where the first contact site is,
and how long it takes to get there,
the middle of
players may be able to put out a call to
a scenario to bring in another First Contact Team
provide needed member who is an expert in the needed
expertise. specialty. Generally, this new team
member would be played by the GM as
an NPC, just as when players create NPC team members during
initial character creation.
Another option would be for a PC whose skills are no longer

needed (“sorry Janet, those things we thought were trees are
actually robots, so it turns out we don’t need a botanist”) to leave
play and for that PC’s player to take on the newly created expert.
Players should avoid using knowledge of the situation to create

an unrealistically suitable character. Say the players go to a site,
only to find water-filled underwater ruins with Latin writing on
the walls and strange fish in the water. It’s probably not realistic
that the First Contact Team would happen to have a member
who has trained as both archaeologist and ichthyologist and who
does cave diving in her spare time.
13

Assemble Your Team

Step Two
After hearing the briefing, the players discuss what they want
in a team. They definitely want a botanist. A biochemist would
also be useful. In case they meet anything intelligent, they
want to have an anthropologist, and decide it would be nice
if that anthropologist have a background in ethnobotany. It
would be good for at least one of the team members to speak
Russian. They also think it would be good to have a mathemati-
cian along in case there’s data they need to analyze. One play-
er volunteers to play the botanist, another the anthropologist
and another the mathematician (who will also be the Russian
speaker). Each player will create the character they will be
playing. Nobody wants to be the biochemist, so one of the play-
ers volunteers to create this team member as an NPC and give
the character to the GM to run.
Step Three:
Team Member Concept
For the team member you are creating, try to come
Flesh out the up with a general idea of what that character is like.
idea for the Be prepared to describe:
character • Age, gender, ethnicity, nationality and

appearance.
you will
• General personality: how does this person
control. present himself or herself? Is the character
outgoing, shy, serious, funny, optimistic,
pessimistic, observant of the chain of
command or distrustful of authority?
• A brief biography of the character.
• The character’s general attitude towards first contact: what does
the character hope and fear contact with alien life will be like? Is
this something the PC has been dreaming about since childhood,
or something the PC never took seriously as something that might
actually happen?
14
Assemble Your Team

Step Three
The player imagines the character as Teresa Alvarez-Hernandez,
an older Hispanic woman, a Cuban, who favors close cropped
hair, no makeup, and business attire. The player envisions the
character’s personality as being mostly a kindly, calm, caring
grandmother. On the other hand, this is a woman who has had a
lifetime of dealing with stupid people (most disastrously, stupid
people in positions of power), and she has become a bit of a cynic.
The player figures the character grew up in Cuba, and was once
a proud Communist, and that she was lucky enough to study in
Russia with some of Russian academia’s best mathematicians,
but that her unwillingness to put ideology before logic left
her sidelined. Only since the fall of Communism, and opening
of Cuba’s relations with non-Communist countries, have her
contributions to mathematics been widely recognized.
Teresa believes there is most likely intelligent alien life in the
galaxy, but never believed she would be lucky enough to see a
time when humans would make first contact. She is excited to
find out more, but also deeply worried that human prejudices
and stupidity will cause humans to make a mess of it.
Step Four: Attributes

20 points You have 20 points to spread between 8 attributes.
You must put at least 1 point in each and you cannot
between 8 put more than 5 in any. Later Character Creation
attributes, options may increase attributes above 5 or bring
them below 1.
min. 1
The attributes are as follows:
max. 5.
Agility (AGY)
This represents limberness, coordination, balance and speed of physical reactions.
Agility is used when a character needs to move silently, keep his or her balance,
scale a wall or get through a small space.
15

Assemble Your Team
Awareness (AWR)
This represents the ability to notice things and be aware of important details.
Awareness is used whenever characters need to notice a clue, avoid an ambush or
sense attempts at mental manipulation.
Charm (CHM)
This represents likability, social presence, persuasiveness and ability to read people.
Charm is used when a character needs to put on an act, convince an audience or
seduce someone.
Endurance (END)
This represents stamina for intense
physical exertion as well as the body’s Character
ability to fight disease and resist toxins.
Endurance is used when a character needs Creation
to hold his or her breath, go on a long hike
or survive a serious illness.
Example -
Step Three
Intelligence (INL)
The player wants Teresa
This represents the speed at which the mind to be very smart (opting
reacts, ability with abstract thought, facility to go for 5, the highest
with learning, creativity and memory. level available), but also
to be willful, aware of
Speed (SPD) her surroundings and to
have some people skills.
This represents the ability to run and leap. The player doesn’t think
Teresa will engage in many
Strength (STH) physical activities, so
will leave physical stats
low. In fact, the player is
This represents upper body strength as considering giving Teresa
well as the character’s strength of grip the “Wheelchair User”
and back muscles. A character would use disadvantage (p.33) in
Strength to yank away someone’s weapon, Step Six, so will leave the
lift a heavy object or do damage with hand- SPD stat at zero (typically
to-hand weapons. it must be at least one). In
the end, the player divides
Willpower (WIL) up Teresa’s 20 points as
follows:
This represents the ability to resist
emotions, discomfort and psychological
AGY 1, AWR 4, CHM 4,
END 1, INL 5, SPD 0, STH
manipulation. WIL would be used
1, WIL 4
to control emotions, resist pain, stay
conscious or battle against mind control. We also note that Teresa
starts with 10 Hit Points.
The PC also starts with 10 Hit Points.
16
Assemble Your Team
Step Five: Skills

10 skill points, You start with 10 skill points to buy skills with.
Skills are bought in levels, with each skill
skills cost 2 to 5 having a different cost. The following lists all
points, min. 0 max. available skills, the cost per level of the skill,
5, 1-2 levels gives 1 the typical attribute used by that skill, and
specialty, 3-5 gives the possible specialties and the equipment
associated with each specialty (see p.23 for
2 specialties. more on specialties) of that skill.
Athletics
3 points per level
Typical Attribute: STH
Specialties:
Climbing: Free-climbing and mountain climbing with equipment. Example
Equipment: Climbing shoes, pitons and hammers, rope, belay devices,
oxygen tanks and tents.
Martial Arts: This skill corresponds to the combat styles Control and Exhaust
(see p.48). Example Equipment: Gloves, boots, collapsible baton, brass
knuckles, body armor.
Swimming: Includes swimming without gear, rescue swimming, snorkeling,
use of SCUBA gear and underwater vehicles. Example Equipment: wetsuit,
flippers, SCUBA gear, underwater scooter.
Wilderness Survival: Includes foraging, light sleep, navigation, finding and
making shelters, building fires, tracking. Example Equipment: Compass,
hatchet, canteen, water purification straw, flint and magnesium fire starter,
fishing line, fish hook, tent, space blanket.
Criminal
4 points per level
Typical Attribute: AGY
Specialties:
Theft: Includes lock picking, alarm systems, pocket picking, prowling, auto-
theft. Example Equipment: Lockpicks, slim jim, dark clothes, electronics tools,
crowbar.
Trickery: Includes disguise, impersonation, forgery. Example Equipment:
Disguise kit, x-acto knife, laminator, computer and color printer.
Underworld: Includes knowledge of the black market, organized crime, drugs
and gambling. Example Equipment: Stylish suit, small scales, disposable cell
phone, loaded dice.
17

Assemble Your Team
Hard Sciences
2 points per level
Typical Attribute: INL
Specialties:
Chemistry: Includes analyzing the chemical makeup of samples. Example
Equipment: Electronic scales, thermometer, pH meter, reference guides,
reagents, gas chromatograph.
Geology: Includes dating and analysis of the geological history of rock or soil
samples, as well as the theoretical geology of alien planets. Example Equipment:
Lenses, pointed hammers, microscopes, UV light, reference guides, drills and
augers, chemical reagents.
Physics: Includes Newtonian physics, astrophysics, particle physics, relativity
and quantum physics. Example Equipment: Calculator, reference guides,
laptop, lasers, high precision electronic clocks, cloud chamber, supercomputer,
particle accelerator.
Meteorology: Includes terrestrial meteorology and weather prediction, as well
as theoretical study of the weather on alien planets. Example Equipment:
Humidity and temperature meter, barometer, wind sensor, reference guides,
electric charge detector, portable solar-powered weather station, weather
satellite uplink.
Information Sciences
2 points per level
Specialties:
Cryptography: Includes knowledge of the creation of codes, of code
breaking, and of steganography (concealing messages). Example Equipment:
Laptop, reference guides, code breaking software, high-end workstation,
supercomputer.
Data Analysis: Includes statistical analysis (describing the data), pattern finding
(discovering patterns in the data), model fitting (creating mathematical models
that describe the data), inferential statistics (finding relationships between
variables in the data), predictive analysis (predicting what will come next
based on a set of data) and data visualization (making data visible as charts,
graphs, etc.). Example Equipment: Laptop, code breaking software, high-end
workstation, supercomputer.
Math: Includes algebra, calculus, statistics/probability, accounting, logic,
geometry/topology (including that dealing with theoretical multi-dimensional
space), combinatorics (enumerating all possible combinations that meet
certain criteria) and chaos theory. Example Equipment: Calculator, reference
books, graphing calculator, laptop, high-end workstation, supercomputer.
18
Assemble Your Team
Life Sciences
2 points per level
Specialties:
Biochemistry: Includes the study of organic molecules and the chemical
processes found in living things. Example Equipment: Reagents, PH meter,
reference books, centrifuge, liquid chromatograph.
Botany: Includes the study of the chemistry, anatomy and evolution of plants,
algae and fungi, as well as paleobotany (study of extinct plants). Example
Equipment: Magnifying lens, microscope, specimen bags, reference books
(including identification keys), tissue test kit, digital camera, clippers and
trowels, dissection kit, plant press.
Genetics: Includes the study of medical genetics, DNA sequencing, genetic
engineering and forensic genetics. Example Equipment: Sample containers,
swabs, blood collection needles, microscope, restriction enzymes (for cutting
DNA into pieces), electrophoresis unit (for separating and analyzing DNA and
RNA pieces), PCR workstation (for amplifying DNA or RNA samples), centrifuge,
reagents, agar plates and incubator.
Microbiology: Includes the study of plant and animal cells, immune systems,
parasites, bacteria, algae, fungi, protozoa, viruses and prions. Example
Equipment: Specimen collection tools and containers, microscope, agar plates
and culture incubator, centrifuge, stains, sterilizer, electron microscope.
Zoology: Includes the study of the evolution, anatomy, behavior and ecology of
animal species (both vertebrates and invertebrates) including extinct species.
Example Equipment: Magnifying glass, binoculars, digital camera, microscope,
dissection tools, various cages and viveria (for keeping live specimens),
paleontology tools (various hammers, trowels, brushes and sieves).
Leftover Skill Points
Sometimes it’s not possible to spend all of a character’s 10 skill

points during character creation. You might, for instance, spend 9
out of 10 and have one left over. What you can do with left over skill
points are:
• Buy a Nonstandard Skill, see text box p.23.
• Save it for later. Make a note of the extra point on the
character sheet, and use it later with skill points bought
during Character Advancement (p.35).
19

Assemble Your Team
Medicine
2 points per level
Specialties:
Emergency Medicine: Includes the diagnosis of patients and the stabilization
and treatment of emergency medical conditions. Includes some knowledge of
veterinary emergency medicine. Example Equipment: First aid kit, automated
external defibrillator, fully stocked paramedic case, pulse oximeter.
Pharmacology: Includes pharmacology, psychopharmacology (drugs for the
treatment of mental disorders), toxicology, anesthesiology, pharmacogenetics
(study of how different genes affect drug reactions) as well as veterinary
pharmacology. Example equipment: Common medications, reference books,
syringes, spectrophotometer.
Surgery: Includes neurosurgery, plastic surgery, microsurgery (surgery using
small robotic devices), autopsy and veterinary surgery as well as knowledge
of human anatomy. Example Equipment: Field surgical kit, local anesthetics,
anatomy guides, CPB pump (aka heart-lung machine), fully stocked operating
room, microsurgery robots and scopes.
Military/Law Enforcement
3 points per level
Typical Attribute: AWR
Specialties:
Armed Combat: This skill corresponds to the combat styles Kill and Ruin (see
p.48). Example Equipment: Knife, pistol, kevlar vest, grenades, rifle, helmet and
body armor, submachine gun.
Investigating People: Includes knowledge of interrogation, brainwashing,
torture, criminal law and use of law enforcement databases. Example
Equipment: Handcuffs, sodium pentothal, laptop with background-check
database access.
Crime Scene: Includes knowledge of crime scene forensics, forensic pathology,
and autopsies. Example Equipment: Evidence collection kits, microscope,
field gunpowder residue tests, autopsy tools, laptop with access to fingerprint
databases.
Explosives: Includes knowledge of creating explosives, disarming explosives
and using explosives in a combat situation. Example Equipment: Electronics
tools, fuses, lighter, timers, remote detonators, chemical ingredients for making
explosives.
Military Vehicles: Includes knowledge of piloting and basic upkeep of tanks,
ATVs, helicopters, military airplanes and military watercraft. Example
Equipment: Reference guides for various vehicles, navigational charts, GPS,
mechanics’ toolkit
20
Assemble Your Team
People
2 points per level
Typical Attribute: CHM
Specialties:
Anthropology: This is the knowledge of human cultures, past and present,
including their religions, systems of government, economics, medicine, art,
technology and lifeways. Example Equipment: Voice recorder, reference
books, laptop computer, digital video camera, small gifts (e.g. chocolate
bars, knives, sunglasses).
Arts: Includes knowledge of and facility with photography, sculpture,
painting, drawing, filmmaking and music. Example Equipment: Sketch
pad, pencils, pens, paint, brushes, acoustic instrument, books of sheet
music, camera, movie camera, carving tools, clay, electric instrument with
amplifier, laptop with video and music editing software.
Diplomacy: Facility with diplomacy, negotiation, arbitration, contracts,
family and couples counseling, treaties and various judicial systems, and
history of same. Also includes knowledge of what is considered polite/
respectful and impolite/disrespectful across various cultures. Example
Equipment: Reference books, white-board and markers, lockable
diplomatic pouch.
Linguistics: Ability to read, write and speak multiple foreign languages, as
well as study of the composition, evolution, acquisition and neurobiology
of language. Example Equipment: Foreign language phrasebooks,
dictionaries, pocket translators, laptop with language analysis software.
Psychology: This is the study of human and animal minds, and the
various factors that influence development, learning, social behavior,
perceptions and psychological well-being. Includes knowledge of forms
of psychological therapy (counseling, hypnotherapy, cognitive-behavioral
therapy, psychopharmaceuticals). Example Equipment: Reference books,
tablet with various psychological assessments (e.g. personality tests),
digital voice recorder, common psychopharmaceuticals, EEG, laboratory
rats and various cognitive/behavioral tests (e.g. mazes), MRI machine.
Social: Includes knowledge of and facility with oratory, storytelling,
seduction, fashion, makeup, etiquette and of the customs and mores
of various groups worldwide. Example Equipment: Various outfits
for different occasions, makeup kit, skin creams, perfume or cologne,
reference books.
21

Assemble Your Team
Space
2 points per level
Typical Attribute: AGY
Specialties:
EVAs: This is knowledge of working outside the protective environment of a
spacecraft. Includes knowledge of the operation and maintenance of space
suits. Example Equipment: Space suit manuals, toolkit, space suit emergency
patching kit.
Low G: This is the ability to operate efficiently in low or zero gravity situations.
Example Equipment: Anti-nausea pills, velcro straps, zero-g food and water
pouches, magnetic toolkits.
Vehicles: This is knowledge of piloting and maintaining vehicles associated
with space travel, including rockets, space shuttles and moon rovers. Example
Equipment: Manuals, repair kit.
Technology
2 points per level
Specialties:
Computer Programming: The creation of algorithms and computer programs.
Also includes knowledge of using software, of internet publishing and of
computer security. Example Equipment: Smart phone, laptop, various
programming software packages and libraries, satellite internet hotspot, high-
end workstation, supercomputer.
Construction: Includes knowledge of construction engineering, creating and
reading blueprints, use of CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs, laws related
to construction (e.g. building permits), welding, use of explosives in demolition,
various construction materials and use of heavy construction equipment.
Example Equipment: Laptop with CAD software, hard hat and safety goggles,
bag of various hand tools, laser distance meter with level, oxy welding/cutting
torch, safety flares, various power tools.
Electronics: Knowledge of and experience with AC and DC electronic systems.
Includes knowledge of electronics repair, computer hardware and computer
networks. Example Equipment: Electronics tools, reference books, voltmeter,
spare parts, laptop with network diagnostic software.
Mechanics: The design, creation and repair of mechanical systems (including
motor vehicles). Also includes knowledge of blacksmithing, welding, carpentry
and plumbing. Example Equipment: Leatherman multi-tool, tool kit, spare
fuses, tape measure, duct tape, acetylene welding torch.
22
Assemble Your Team
Character Creation Advice:

Go With What You Know
For best results, choose skills that you have some knowledge
of, even if only at a hobbyist level. For instance, if you choose
to make your character a mathematics expert it is best if you,
as a player, have at least a passing knowledge of what kinds of
things mathematicians do. You don’t have to know exactly how a
mathematician might go about solving a particular problem, but
you will make best use of your character if you know what kinds of
problems mathematicians are known to work on.
Specialties
For every skill you have at least one level in, choose one specialty (specialties are
listed above). For each skill you have at least three levels in, choose two specialties.
When using a skill, specialties act as one extra level in that skill (see p.41 for more).
Each specialty can be taken only once.
Note that there is often overlap between skills and skill specialties. For instance,
the Life Sciences: Zoology specialty, the Medicine: Surgery specialty and the
Military/Law Enforcement: Crime Scene specialty all allow PCs to do dissections or
autopsies. This is by design.
Nonstandard Skills
This list of skills was designed to focus

on the types of skills the First Contact
For other Team might look for in recruits or that
odd skills, would be useful in the field. This is not,
however, an exhaustive list of skills.
work with
Say a character (either a PC or an NPC
the GM. the players happen to have with them)
is an accomplished rodeo roper and
bull rider. This is a skill that might
possibly become useful in some situations.
continued next page
23

Assemble Your Team
Nonstandard Skills
(continued)
A GM can just write this skill onto an NPC’s character sheet. A
player should consult with the GM to determine the typical
attribute and the cost (typically 1 skill point per level) for the
skill and cost for equipment packages (if there are any available).
Nonstandard skills have no specialties.
In the example above, a player wants his or her PC to have been a

rodeo bull rider and roper. The player and GM decide this would be
an AGY skill, costing 1 point per level, and that the PC can buy a one
level skill package (rope, boots, jeans) for 1 EP.

Step Four
The player definitely wants Teresa to have math skills, so buys 3
levels of Information Sciences. At a cost of 2 points per level, that
costs 6 skill points. Those three levels give Teresa two specialties.
The player chooses Math and Data Analysis.
The player wants Teresa to be multilingual, so buys 1 level of
People (costing 2 skill points) and chooses Linguistics as the
specialty.
The player also wants Teresa to know her way around a computer.
The Information Sciences skill has already given Teresa
knowledge of how to use a computer to do math, data analysis
and cryptography, but the player would like her to know how to
do other stuff as well. Thus, the player buys 1 level of Technology
(costing 2 skill points) with a specialty in Computer Programming.
This uses all of Theresa’s 10 skill points.
Teresa’s Skills are recorded as follows:
• Information Sciences OOO (Specialties: Math, Data Analysis)
• People O (Specialty: Linguistics)
• Technology O (Specialty: Computer Programming)
24
Assemble Your Team
Step Six: Equipment

At the beginning of the campaign, the GM will
GM gives out EP. announce how many Equipment Points the PCs start
Buy packages that with (generally 10). Equipment points can be used
go with certain to buy Equipment Packages or special equipment.
skills, including Note that while some of the items a PC buys may be
combat skills, personally owned by the PC, the majority of it will be
or other miscl. owned by the First Contact Team or will have been
equipment. Package bought/rented/appropriated from other agencies.
level determines
size. Equipment Packages
These are kits that correspond to a skill specialty. An equipment package is the
tools and reference materials that help a person use a skill. Equipment packages are
bought in levels, from 1 to 4. The level of an equipment package can be added into
a roll using that skill (see p.41). In other words, a level 1 equipment package gives +1
to most skill rolls using that skill specialty, a level 2 gives +2, etc. Players should list
the types of items they have in their equipment package.
There may be situations where equipment does not apply. For example: If a PC sees
a friend about to eat a mushroom and must make a snap judgment whether to slap
the mushroom out of the friend’s hand, the fact that the PC has an entire botany
lab and a huge library of reference materials does not help the PC with this snap
decision. The GM should decide when the bonus from having equipment does not
apply.
The cost for equipment packages, and the size for typical packages, is as follows:
Cost Level Size
1 EP 1 level Takes up a large pocket.
3 EP 2 levels Takes up a backpack or case.
Takes up a trailer.
6 EP 3 levels
(spend +2 EP to make it a motorized vehicle).
12 EP 4 levels Takes up an entire building.
Equipment Size Example: A Medicine: Emergency Medicine package at level

1 would be a pouch with disinfectant wipes, gauze and a suture and thread. At
level 2 it would be an EMT’s trauma box (a large orange case which can be carried,
although not easily, by a single individual via a shoulder strap). At level 3 it would
be an entire ambulance’s worth of emergency medical equipment. At level 4, it
would be an entire hospital with emergency ward and other related departments,
labs, etc.
When choosing equipment, PCs should keep in mind that equipment only helps if
they have it with them. If PCs must hike up a mountain to reach the first contact
site they would be best served to buy 1 or 2 level equipment packages that they can
bring with them, rather than larger packages which they can’t.
25

Assemble Your Team
Do I Have a…?
Each equipment package should be

It is sometimes listed on a character sheet with a short
appropriate summary of what is included in that
package. However, it may become
to roll a skill crucial to ask whether a certain piece of
roll to see if a equipment is in that package or not. For
PC packed a example: the players decide that they
want to plug the leak in the gas cannister
useful item. using duct tape. No player has duct
tape specifically mentioned anywhere
on his or her character sheet, but one character has a Technology:
Mechanics OO equipment package.
If it seems reasonable that the equipment package would contain

that item, the GM can declare that it is there. If the GM is
unsure, the player can make a roll of the appropriate skill (the
more knowledgeable the character is, the more likely he or she
anticipated needing this item and packed it) plus the level of the
equipment package versus a difficulty set by the GM representing
the rarity of that item.
For the example above: the GM is not sure that the Mechanics
package would contain duct tape, so she asks the player to roll INL +
level of Technology skill +1 if the player has the Mechanics specialty
+ the level of the package (2) versus a difficulty of 2 (the GM doesn’t
think duct tape is a very rare piece of equipment). If the player
wins, the package contains duct tape.
Combat Packages
Like other skills, one can purchase equipment packages for the combat skill
specialties (Military/Law Enforcement: Armed Combat and Athletics: Martial Arts).
For hand-to-hand packages, the cost is the same as that shown above for regular
equipment packages. To make a combat package ranged, double the cost. This
could include throwing knives, a bow and arrows, pistol, or sniper rifle.
A Military/Law Enforcement: Armed Combat (1) package might be a combat

knife while Armed Combat (1) ranged might be a throwing knife. Military/Law
Enforcement: Armed Combat (2) might be a bulletproof vest and two katanas or, if
ranged, an assault rifle.
Level 3 and 4 weapons are not portable (level 3 ranged might be a howitzer, level
4 ranged might be a missile launching bunker) and generally not available to PCs.
26
Assemble Your Team
Special Equipment
Some pieces of equipment can be bought outside of any skill equipment package.
These include Vehicles, Drugs, Animals, Electronics, Explosives and Protective Suits.
Drugs
Only recreational drugs are listed. Plain medical pharmaceuticals should be
purchased as Medicine: Emergency Medicine or Medicine: Pharmaceuticals
packages.
If more than 1 dose of a drug is taken, double the bad effects and keep good effects
the same. Withdrawal from a drug (the side effects when a habitual user stops
using the drug) is, unless specified otherwise, the opposite of any good effects from
the drug.
The cost listed for a drug is the cost for 1 dose per day, meaning a PC with one of the
following should always start play with enough doses for the PC’s anticipated time
in the field.
Alcohol (costs 1 EP): +1 vs. pain/fear, -1 AGY, -1 AWR, -1 INL, Addiction OO.
Caffeine (costs 1 EP): +1 vs. unconsciousness.
Cigarettes (costs 1 EP): Addiction O.
Cocaine/Crack (costs 2 EP): +4 vs. unconsciousness, Addiction 6.
Deleriants (costs 1 EP): These are various dangerous alkaloids that can cause
psychotic behavior. Delusions OOOO, Amnesia OOO, +1 END, +1 Hit Points,
-1 AWR, -1 WIL, Heart Attack O.
Ecstasy (costs 2 EP): Euphoria OO, -5 vs. hallucinations/delusions, Addiction
OO
Hallucinogens (costs 2 EP): These are various chemicals (e.g. LSD) or plants
(e.g. peyote, ayahuasca). Hallucinations 7, Delusions OO, +1 AWR.
Heroin (costs 3 EP): +5 vs. pain, +4 vs. fear, -1 AGY, Euphoria 5, Addiction 6.
Inhalants (costs 1 EP): Euphoria 5, +2 vs. pain, -2 AGY, -2 AWR, -2 INL,
Addiction OO.
Marijuana (costs 2 EP): -2 to memory rolls, -2 INL, -2 AWR, +2 vs. fear/anger/
pain, Addiction O.
Meth (costs 3 EP): +2 vs. unconsciousness, Addiction 5.
Opiates (costs 2 EP): +2 vs. fear, -1 INL, -1 AGY, Euphoria OO, Addiction OOOO.
Psychedelics (costs 1 EP): These are chemicals or plants that have a milder
effect than hallucinogens. Hallucinations O, Euphoria O, +1 AWR.
27

Assemble Your Team
Animals
Animals come in three basic types: untrained, trained and highly trained.
Untrained animals are habituated to human presence but don’t know how to
follow any commands. Trained animals can follow basic commands common to
that animal (e.g. a horse knows “giddyup” and “woah”). A highly trained animal has
been specifically trained in one specialty skill, e.g. a bloodhound is trained to track
people by scent.
Dog: Untrained (costs 1 EP). Kill AV 2, Hit Points 6.
Dog: Trained (costs 2 EP). Kill AV 3, Hit Points 6.
Dog: Highly Trained (costs 4 EP). Includes seeing-eye-dogs, bloodhounds,
attack dogs. Kill AV 4, HP 6.
Horse: Untrained (costs 2 EP). Ruin AV 2, Hit Points 8
Horse: Trained (costs 4 EP). Ruin AV 2, Hit Points 8
Horse: Highly Trained (costs 8 EP). Includes horses trained for hunting,
racing or war. Ruin AV 3, Hit Points 8
Explosives
The PC starts with one explosive per game session.
Explosive O (costs 1 EP) will destroy anything in 5 ft. Pocket sized.
Explosive OO (costs 2 EP) will destroy anything in 20 ft. Paperback book
sized.
Explosive OOO (costs 3 EP) will destroy anything in 50 ft. Textbook sized.
Explosive OOOO (costs 5 EP) will destroy anything in 250 ft. Briefcase sized.
Explosive OOOOO (costs 10 EP) will destroy anything in 1000 ft. Duffel bag
sized.
Vehicles
Bicycle, Kayak or Junker Car (costs 1 EP).
Moped (costs 2 EP).
Motorcycle, Motorboat, RV, New Car or All-Terrain Vehicle (costs 3 EP).
Small Aircraft or Armored All-Terrain Vehicle (costs 6 EP).
Helicopter, Research Submersible (costs 8 EP).
Protective Suits
Fire Proximity Suit (costs 2 EP): This is a silver colored (aluminized) suit with
a self-contained breathing apparatus. Gives +6 to any END or WIL roll to
resist brief exposure to very high temperatures.
Crime Scene Suit (costs 1 EP): One per day. This is a disposable paper suit
with booties, designed to be worn over regular clothes and to prevent
contamination of the area by hairs, fibers, skin cells, etc.
28
Assemble Your Team
Level C HAZMAT Suit (costs 1 EP): This is a suit (typically bright yellow tyvek)
with clear faceplate designed to protect the wearer from being splashed
by toxic or biohazardous fluids. It is not fully airtight. It has a built air
purifying respirator (e.g. gas mask) and a short-range voice activated radio.
+1 EP to give it radiation shielding.
Level B HAZMAT Suit (costs 2 EP): Like the Level C suit, except it has a self-
contained breathing apparatus, with air tanks (1 hour’s worth of air supply)
accessible from the outside of the suit. Rather than air tanks, the suit can be
hooked to an umbilical in a lab to provide air. As there are seams where air
tanks or an umbilical are connected, the suit is not 100% air tight. Includes
a short-range, voice activated radio. +1 EP to give it radiation shielding.
Level A HAZMAT Suit (costs 3 EP): This is a suit meant to protect against toxic
or biohazardous vapor. It is completely air-tight and has a self-contained
breathing apparatus, with its air tanks within the suit. Although this allows
the suit to have no seams through which toxic gases can enter, it means
that gas tasks can’t be changed while the suit is in use. Includes a short-
range, voice activated radio. +1 EP to give it radiation shielding.
Miscl Equipment
Binoculars (costs 1 EP)
Bug (costs 1 EP): Either an audio/camera bug or a tracking bug. Comes with
receiver or tracker.
Digital Camera (costs 1 EP)
Flashlight: Heavy Duty (costs 1 EP)
Gasmask (costs 1 EP)
Generator (costs 2 EP): This generator is portable (barely), runs off gasoline,
and one tank can provide up to 24-hours of electricity.
GPS (costs 1 EP)
Handcuffs (costs 1 EP)
Musical Instrument (costs 1 EP)
Laptop (costs 2 EP): Comes with cellular access to the internet in any urban
area. +1 EP to give it satellite based access anywhere in the continental US.
Nightvision Goggles (costs 2 EP)
Poison: Deadly (costs 1 EP). Victim dies within 5 minutes without medical
intervention.
Poison: Debilitating (costs 1 EP). Victim takes -4 penalty to all rolls.
Poison: Knockout (costs 2 EP). 5 difficulty save vs. unconsciousness, -3
AWR, -3 INL.
Smartphone: High End (costs 1 EP): Can connect to the internet in most
urban areas.
Spraypaint (costs 1 EP)
29

Assemble Your Team
Sterilizer (costs 2 EP): Portable unit that uses steam to kill any (known Earthly)
micro-organisms on small objects.
Tent & Sleeping Bag (costs 1 EP)
Video Camera (costs 2 EP)
Walkie Talkies (costs 1 EP/each). Comes with hands-free headsets.
Free Equipment
The following very minor or very common equipment costs 0 EP: Shoes, clothing,
a hat, gloves, cheap jewelry, a cell phone, a backpack, sunglasses, condoms, a
handkerchief, a jacket, glasses, a cane, a walking stick, a cheap flashlight, a few
books (nothing sophisticated enough to act as a skill package), paper, pens, pencils,
a padlock.

Step Five
The GM tells the players that they have a pool of equipment points equivalent
to 10 points per character. The players agree to split the points evenly. The
GM tells them that the Russian army is going to fly the PCs in via helicopter
and that each PC can have one large backpack full of equipment. The Russian
army, they are told, will be bringing food and shelter. Within 24-hours, a fleet
of vehicles will arrive with whatever equipment was too large to bring on the
helicopter. Teresa will need power during the period where they are waiting
for the vehicles to arrive, but another player has said his character will be
bringing a generator.
Teresa buys an Information Sciences: Math OO equipment package for 3

equipment points. The player describes this as a bulky high-end laptop full of
advanced mathematics software. She also buys Information Sciences: Math
OOO at a cost of 6 equipment points. Equipment packages at 3 levels are
generally trailer sized, so Teresa describes this as trailer full of mainframes,
configured to do heavy-duty data analysis, which will arrive with the other
vehicles. Teresa has 1 equipment point left and decides to spend it on
Caffeine, describing this as several thermoses full of cold-brew Cuban coffee.
30
Assemble Your Team
Step Seven:
Advantages & Disads
The PC can gain Bonus Points by taking disadvantages
Buy advantages or by reducing normal character creation points;
with BP, get BP and can spend Bonus Points on disadvantages or on
additional character creation points or additional
for disads. 1 BP Equipment Points.
= 1 attribute,
3 skill points 1 BP = 1 attribute point, or 3 skill points,
or 3 Equipment Points.
or 3 EP.
A PC cannot have more than 8 points of disads
without special permission from the GM.
Available advantages and disadvantages follow.
ADVANTAGES
Fame (Costs 1 BP): The PC has gained some renown with the general public (as
opposed to fame solely within the community of his or her specialty), enough
so that about one quarter of the people the PC might meet from the industrial
world will recognize the PC by sight and almost all will have heard of the PC’s
name.
Mentor (Costs 1 BP): The PC has a strong relationship with someone who is an
even bigger expert in the PC’s field than the PC is. The PC can call on this contact
for advice and can expect confidentiality.
Photographic Memory (Costs 2 BP): +4 to INL rolls to recall any details the PC has
personally witnessed.
Physically Attractive (Costs 1 BP): +1 to Seduction rolls.
Special Equipment Package (Costs 3 BP): The PC has spent many years putting
together an equipment package for his or her specialty, and has one that is
especially well suited to his or her needs. This is a level 3 Equipment Package,
but is the size of a level 2 package.
DISADVANTAGES
Addiction: Alcohol (Gives 2 BP): 3 difficulty WIL roll to abstain.
Addiction: Amphetamines (Gives 3 BP): 3 difficulty WIL roll to abstain. -2 Hit
Points.
Addiction: Cocaine (Gives 4 BP): 4 difficulty WIL roll to abstain.
Addiction: Heroin (Gives 4 BP): 3 difficulty WIL roll to abstain. -1 vs. disease.
Addiction: Nicotine (Gives 1 BP): 3 difficulty WIL roll to abstain.
Addiction: Opiates (Gives 2 BP): 3 difficulty WIL roll to abstain. -1 vs. disease.
31

Assemble Your Team
Allergy: Deadly (Gives 1 BP): Choose a common thing the PC is allergic to. If
exposed (consumption or a sting), the PC will be incapacitated within 10
minutes, dead within 1 hour without medical intervention.
Blind (Gives 5 BP): -4 to combat rolls.
Deaf (Gives 2 BP): The PC cannot hear. The PC knows American Sign Language,
and can buy the ability to read lips for 1 skill point.
Hemophilia (Gives 2 BP): Any Hit Point damage is done again every 2 minutes
until PC dies or receives medical treatment.
Mental Illness: Treated (Gives 1 BP): The PC has a mental illness, but keeps it
under control using psychopharmaceuticals and cognitive-behavioral therapy.
If the PC cannot take his or her meds, or is badly stressed, the PC suffers from
one of the following (all as WIL vs. 2 rolls):
• Compulsions (failure means the PC must do repetitive, ritualized
actions)
• Panic (failure means PC is paralyzed by fear)
• Delusions and Hallucinations (failure means PC experiences and
believes things which have no basis in reality)
• Depression (failure means the PC cannot be motivated to do anything)
• Mania (failure means the PC cannot sleep and acts recklessly and
impulsively)
Mental Illness: Untreated (Gives 3 BP): As above, but the PC has never been
officially diagnosed and has only barely kept his or her mental illness secret.
The PC must save vs. Compulsions, Panic, Delusions and Hallucinations,
Depression or Mania, as described above, at WIL vs. 3, at least once per game
session (more often if the PC is put under severe psychological stress).
Minor (Gives 4 BP): The PC is not yet an adult, and cannot quite pass as an adult.
The PC is only in the program with the permission of his or her parents. -2
Attribute Points, -1 Hit Point.
Missing Arm (Gives 2 BP ea.): STH is halved for most rolls.
Missing Eye (Gives 1 BP): -2 to judgment of distance or peripheral vision rolls.
Mute (Gives 3 BP): The PC cannot speak. The PC gets American Sign Language
free.
Nightblindness (Gives 1 BP): Double darkness penalties.
Secret (Gives 2 BP): The PC harbors a secret which could get the PC kicked out of
the First Contact Team program, among other negative consequences, if it was
discovered. Perhaps, for example, the PC once murdered someone and was
never caught, or the PC has run up huge gambling debts with the mob.
Senile (Gives 2 BP): -4 to saves vs. unconsciousness, regular 5 difficulty saves to
remember what’s going on.
Terminal Illness (Gives 4 BP): The PC is dying of something that there is no
known cure for. The PC starts with -1 END, -1 to Seduction rolls (from physical
signs of the disease, e.g. gauntness or rashes), -1 to memory rolls and -2 to save
vs. disease. Each month choose either -1 END or -1 Hit Point.
Wheelchair User (Gives 2 BP): The PC can only get around via a wheelchair
(or, in an emergency, by crawling). The SPD stat is zero. The PC starts with a
non-electric wheelchair (use STH for movement speed) or electric wheelchair
(movement as per a SPD of 1).
32
Assemble Your Team
Special Character Option:

Autistic
This character creation option neither gives nor costs BP. The PC is a
person with autism, able to excel in his or her field despite being strongly
non-neurotypical. While the PC has had many challenges living in a largely
non-autistic society, the way the PC’s mind functions may be an advantage in
solving the challenges of first contact.
Choose a number of challenges that the PC faces from the following list. The
more challenges, the more non-neurotypical the PC is. (Note that while
these are common features of autism, they don’t represent every person
with autism.)
• Interpersonal Difficulties: -3 to any rolls that involve social queues with
other humans. This can include CHM, INL or AWR rolls to do with body
language, subtleties of language, deception, acting, hiding or reading
emotions.
• Emotional Lability: -2 to WIL rolls to deal with anger, sadness or
anxiety
• Repetitive Behavior: Choose a behavior that the PC engages in
repeatedly when stressed (e.g. rocking, flicking fingers, jumping,
repeating phrases). PC can make a WIL vs. 4 roll to resist.
• Routine: Choose a behavioral routine the PC engages in on a regular
basis, such as eating the exact same breakfast each day. Deviation from
the routine will cause stress (either setting off other stress-triggered
challenges or causing a WIL vs. 3 save vs. panic).
• Insomnia: PC must make regular WIL vs. 3 saves to avoid sleep
deprivation.
• Sensory Over-Responsiveness: PC must make saves vs. pain (WIL
vs. 3) when exposed to certain visual, auditory or tactile (choose one)
stimuli
• Sensory Under-Responsiveness: -4 to AWR rolls to notice (choose one):
visual, auditory or tactile stimuli.
Next, chose a number advantages, equal to the challenges chosen above, that
PC gets from being Autistic:
• Hyperfocused Learning: Choose one specific subject the PC is intensely
interested in (e.g. baseball stats). Treat knowledge of this specific
subject as a level 5 skill.
• Pattern and Detail Talent: +3 to INL rolls to remember details, solve
visual/spatial/auditory puzzles and perceive patterns.
• Scientific Focus: Additional 6 skill points to spend in Hard Sciences,
Information Sciences, Life Sciences, Medicine, Space, and/or Technology.
• Math Talent: +3 to rolls involving math or counting.
• Diverse Empathy: The PC is good at using empathy to figure out what
is going on in the mind of a creature that does not communicate the way
most humans so (that does not use human-like language or nonverbal
communication). Gives +3 to rolls to figure out non-human psychology.
• Musical Prodigy: +3 to rolls involving music, pitch and discerning small
differences in sounds.
33

Assemble Your Team

Step Seven
Looking at the advantages and disadvantages, the only one the
player is really interested in is Wheelchair Bound. The players
notes down this disadvantage (and notes the one, free, non-
electronic wheelchair in Teresa’s equipment). Teresa now has 2
Bonus Points. The player opts to convert these to skill points. At
a ratio of 1 bonus point to 3 skill points, this means Teresa now
has an extra 6 skill points. The player buys 2 more points of
Information Sciences (bringing Teresa to 5 points, the maximum
one can buy) for 4 skill points, and buys Teresa one more level of
Technology (costing 2 points).
Step Eight:
Hidden Agenda
Decide on some agenda the character has that the
Decide on First Contact Team management and the character’s
one agenda fellow team members do not know about (and might
not agree with if they did). Examples include:
the PC has
• Wants to take a selfie with an alien and send it
that nobody to his or her significant other.
else knows • Wants to make sure his or her country of origin
about. gets first crack at any alien tech with potential
military applications.
• Wants to convince aliens that Jesus is their lord and savior.
• Wants to take home a souvenir.
• Wants to be in history books as the first person ever to communicate with
aliens (not just a member of the first team to do so).
The hidden agenda might not have anything to do with alien life. It might be to
try to keep some disadvantage (e.g. an alcohol problem) secret from the rest of the
team, or it might be an infatuation with a fellow team member, etc.
Depending on what the hidden agenda is, it might be easier or harder to achieve,
and might be easier or harder to keep it secret. Keep in mind, though, that achieving
one’s hidden agenda can earn the PC BP (see next section) based on how difficult
it was.
34
Assemble Your Team

Step Eight
The player decides that, despite her cynicism about
communist leaders, Teresa still believes that capitalism is
a corrupt, unfair and unsustainable system. Her hidden
agenda is thus to convince alien life, if it exists, that
capitalism is just a temporary malady under which the
planet is suffering.
Step Nine:
Character Advancement
Earn BP via Gaining BP Via Experience
achievements. PCs earn BP (as described in Step Six) by achieving
Spend BP things:
when PCs have • A clever hypothesis, whether or not it turned
down-time or out to be right: ½ BP to 1 BP
give them to • A clever means of testing a hypothesis or
the next PC gaining more information: ½ BP to 1 BP
the player
• Surviving a dangerous situation: ½ BP
creates. 1 BP =
1 attribute or 3 • Good teamwork: ½ BP
skill points. • Succeeding at one’s Hidden Agenda (previous
page): ½ BP to 2 BP
GMs should award BP at the end of each game session for the PCs’ performance in
that game session.
Using BP
BP can be used to buy additional skill points, equipment points or attribute points
as described in Step Six, above, for the PC who earned that BP. BP can only be spent
when PCs have significant down time. This is time the PCs are not actively engaged
in first contact, and can instead study, train or shop.
If a PC is unable to spend all of their BP during the course of the adventure, that BP
can be given to that player’s next character.
35

Assemble Your Team
Unused BP can be inherited by a new character in the same scenario. For example:
The player’s character, Nasrudin, earns 2 BP from experience in a scenario, but dies
before that BP can be used. The players decide that the First Contact Team will
bring in a new team member to take Nasrudin’s place. As the player is creating that
character, the player can use that BP to buy more attributes, skills or advantages for
the new character.
Or, BP can be transferred to the next character in the next campaign. For example:
The player plays the archaeologist Edvin in the first contact scenario taking place
in the underground city of Cappadocia. First contact is successfully made and a
new post-contact era of history dawns. Edvin’s cleverness earns him 2 BP. Next,
the GM creates a new first contact scenario (in a world where the Cappadocia first
contact never happened). While creating the new character for the new scenario,
the player can use that 2 BP to enhance the new character.
36
Chapter One
Chapter Three
Title
RulesGoes Here
of Play
Nasrin Rashidi: Rashidi to Artemis. I’m at the opening.
Commander Brent Yamamoto: We read you, Nasrin. What do
you see?
Nasrin Rashidi: I see a small Nasrin Rashidi: A clear liquid is

chamber inside. Cubic in shape. spraying into the room from small
The walls are made of the same holes in the walls. My suit is giving
translucent crystal material as me a warning. Surface temperature
the rest of the ship. The pattern readings are fluctuating rapidly, are
that looks like circuitry is visible more than a hundred degrees below
in these interior walls as well, and zero. Ow... my hands are getting
is even denser here. There is no really cold.
light in the chamber, except for
that from my flashlight. Opposite Dr. Lewis Hirschfeld: Nasrin, this
the opening is another iris-like is Doc. I want you to pull up the
opening. It’s closed. heating and cooling subsystems
menu on your suit.
Commander Brent Yamamoto:
An airlock? Nasrin Rashidi: Okay. My hands
are a fairly numb, getting stiff, but…
Nasrin Rashidi: That’s what I’m okay, I’ve got it.
thinking, yes. I’m going to touch
the side of the ship. Dr. Lewis Hirschfeld: Turn on internal
heating. Turn it up to 75.
Go ahead. Nasrin Rashidi: Got it. I’m already
starting to feel the warming.
Nasrin Rashidi: Okay. No
noticeable effect. I’m going to pull Dr. Lewis Hirschfeld: Now turn off
myself into the chamber. Okay, the sublimation cooling, otherwise
I’m inside. Oh… the iris is closing you’re just venting most of the heat
behind me. Are you still getting your suit is producing.
my signal okay? Nasrin Rashidi: Got it.
Commander Brent Yamamoto: Dr. Lewis Hirschfeld: Adjust your
Yes, you’re coming in loud and heat level as necessary.
clear.
37

Rules of Play
38
Rules of Play
Nasrin Rashidi: Will do. The room start looking for an exit strategy.
now appears to be completely filled
with the clear liquid. There are Nasrin Rashidi: Yes, but if that
bubbles forming rather violently on outer door opened because
my suit. It’s making it difficult to see. something saw us and decided to
Thoughts? let us in, then it might only open
again if I can convince whoever is
Commander Brent Yamamoto: in here that I want back out. I’m
Hold on. [pause] Nasrin, we think it’s swimming to the opening. There’s
probably liquid ethane. The exterior a corridor, square cross-section,
of your suit is warm enough to boil it. with other corridors branching off
It should look like you’re the bottom of it on each of the four walls. I… I
of a pan of boiling water. saw something flit by around the
corner.
Nasrin Rashidi: It does, yes. Ah… it’s
getting difficult to breathe. Commander Brent Yamamoto:
Can you describe it?
Pressure? Nasrin Rashidi: No, it went by too
quickly. I’m following it.
Nasrin Rashidi: Yes, a very high
pressure, it feels like. Dr. Lewis Hirschfeld: Slow,
measured breaths, dear.
Dr. Lewis Hirschfeld: Nasrin I want
you to immediately go to your Nasrin Rashidi: I’m trying. I’m
air system controls and switch to approaching a corner. Damn,
Trimix. Otherwise, you’ll risk oxygen there it goes again. I saw…
or nitrogen narcosis. something like a squid or octopus.
Except maybe segmented, like
Nasrin Rashidi: Done. an armadillo. They move quick.
Dr. Lewis Hirschfeld: I’m glad Sadie It disappeared around another
suggested including Trimix in your corner.
suit. Now, the pressure inside your Commander Brent Yamamoto:
suit will equalize with the pressure Have you considered that they
outside your suit, and sensations of might be leading you into a trap?
pressure on your chest and limbs
should go away. Breathe slowly and Nasrin Rashidi: I’m not worried, not
calmly. When you get a chance, find about that anyway. If they want
your suit’s pressure readings and let to hurt me, I’m already at their
me know what they are. mercy. They don’t need to lead
me down a dark alley. Hold on…
Nasrin Rashidi: Looking… 2,900 kPa. wow, there were a lot of them and
Dr. Lewis Hirschfeld: Okay. [Pause] they scattered. I’m in a chamber.
Nasrin, you’re a wee bit outside the There’s a three-dimensional lattice
safety range for Trimix. I’m going to of what looks like black beads on
need you to limit yourselves to ten cables.
minutes on the ship. [silence]
Nasrin Rashidi: Understood. I… oh. Commander Brent Yamamoto:
Commander Brent Yamamoto: I really think you should start
What is it? heading back and seeing if you
can get the airlock open.
Nasrin Rashidi: At some point the
other door on the airlock opened. I Nasrin Rashidi: Hold on.
can see the interior of the ship. Commander Brent Yamamoto:
Commander Brent Yamamoto: No, Nasrin, I think you should go
Nasrin, you heard Doc. You need to now.
39

Rules of Play
Nasrin Rashidi: Respectfully, Commander Brent Yamamoto: I’d

commander, shut up and let me run.
think for a second. What do we
know about these aliens? They live [silence]
in liquid ethane. Any water in their Commander Brent Yamamoto:
bodies would be ice, so ethane is What are you doing?
probably their biological solvent.
Which means what? Their planet Nasrin Rashidi: I’m turning off my
must be in what we would call lights and I’m turning off the heating
the outer solar system. Very cold, elements in my suit.
very little light. They seem to like Dr. Lewis Hirschfeld: Nasrin, you’ll
a lot of pressure, so they probably freeze.
live deep in their ethane lakes or
oceans. There were no lights on Nasrin Rashidi: My eyes are starting
to adjust to the darkness. Oh, I was
inside the ship, so they’re used to it
being very dark and very cold. wrong about the circuitry in the
walls. It does have lights, they’re just
Commander Brent Yamamoto: very faint. Wait…
And that helps you out how?
Nasrin Rashidi: Imagine you Nasrin? We’re getting very worried
opened up the door to the Artemis about you. Nasrin?
and some kind of… lava monster
came in. It tromps around Nasrin Rashidi: They’re coming
superheating the air around it back. [pause] Praise Allah, they’re
and shining a light bright enough beautiful.
to permanently damage your
retinas. What would you do?
What is ORC-L?
ORC-L stands for “Organic Rule Components – Lite.”
ORC-L is a It is a version of Organic Rule Components designed
light rule for light or live-action play. ORC-L characters and
gameplay can easily be converted to regular ORC
system meant (see p.187 for more).
to answer
ORC and ORC-L are what some would call
“what would “simulationist” game systems. The idea is that a GM
happen if I…” (Game Master) simulates reality, and tells players
questions. what happens when their character do or try to
do things, with the rules there to help answer any
questions that the GM and players are not sure
of. The rules can answer questions like “can I lift this rock?” or “can I disarm this
bomb?” The rules should only come into play only when uncertainty exists, when
the GM isn’t sure what the result would be of what the players is trying to do.
40
Rules of Play
Your AV
Your Action Value (AV) for any non-combat action
AV = you try to take is computed as follows:
attribute applicable attribute
+ level of applicable skill (if you have one)
+ skill +1 if there is an applicable skill specialty
+1/specialty + the value of any applicable equipment package
+equip Example: Dem’s AV for climbing is 3 (his AGY) +3

(his Athletics skill) +1 (he has an Athletics specialty
in Climbing) +2 (he has an Athletics: Climbing OO
package), a total of 9.
Skill vs. Non-Skill Actions

Some actions don’t require a skill, although a skill
Sometimes can help. This includes lifting objects, sneaking
you can roll around, seducing someone, etc. Other actions
just your can’t be attempted without at least one level in the
appropriate skill, e.g. programming a computer,
attribute when speaking a foreign language, picking a lock. When
you don’t have in doubt, the GM decides what actions require a skill.
a skill, other
Example: A character with no Athletics skill can
times you need climb just using AGY. A character with the Athletics
a skill. skill could add in his or her level of the skill (and the
Climbing specialty if he or she has it) to AGY for the
climbing roll. On the other hand, a character without the Technology skill can’t
attempt to write a computer program, no matter how high his or her INL.
50/50s
50/50s are any random procedure by which a player
has an equal chance of succeeding or failing.
Anything Example 1: The initiator of an action takes out a coin
where you and flips it, each heads is a success, each tails is a
failure.
win half the
Example 2: The initiator of an action pulls out a 6
time. sided die and rolls it, each odd number is a success,
each even is a failure.
Example 3: The player plays rock-paper-scissors
against another player, or the GM, ignoring any ties.
Example 4: The players take turns dealing out cards. For each turn, whoever gets
the highest value card is the winner. Ties are ignored.
41

42
Rules of Play
43

Rules of Play
Using Science Skills
When it comes to figuring out alien life

Instead of forms, science skills cannot simply be used
using skill rolls to “find the answer.” Scientific discovery
takes creativity, luck, and moments of
to “find an inspiration which can’t and shouldn’t be
answer”, use handled by a mere skill roll. Here’s what
them to find out science skill rolls can do for a PC:
about what’s Answering Questions About Known
known, what Facts: If a player has some question about
what is known in that field, on a successful
fits with current skill roll the GM should answer the PC’s
theories, how question. For instance, if a player asks: “Is
to use scientific this chemical only found in the presence
equipment and of living organisms?” then, on a successful
roll, the GM should say yes or no, based
interpret test on current human scientific knowledge.
results. However, keep in mind that just because
something isn’t known to modern science
doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
Does a Hypotheses Fit With Known Science: A player can make a
hypothesis and ask the GM if it fits with what scientists in the field know.
This doesn’t tell the PC is the hypothesis is correct. A hypothesis may
be plausible, but not correct, or a hypothesis may not fit within standard
theories about how things work, but those theories may be wrong.
Example: a player asks “Could this creature be using copper instead of
iron as the molecule that moves oxygen through it’s bloodstream?” and
the GM should answer with “That sounds plausible, given what is known
about biochemistry” or “That doesn’t sound plausible, given what is
known about biochemistry” or “Not enough is known to know whether
that’s plausible or not.”
Using Scientific Equipment: Use a science skill roll to use any sort of
scientific equipment, or to know about the general procedures that those
in the discipline have used to gather evidence or do testing.
Interpreting Test Results: This is when the PC does various scientific
tests and then uses a skill roll to interpret the results. A successful skill
roll doesn’t tell the PC exactly what’s going on, but can tell the PC if the
test results are consistent with their hypothesis. For example, the PC
might run some tests on blood extracted from the alien life form and ask
“are these results consistent with a creature that uses copper instead of
iron to carry oxygen in its blood?” The GM might answer that the test
results are consistent with that hypothesis, are inconsistent with that
hypothesis, or are inconclusive. Even if the results are consistent, that
doesn’t necessarily mean that the hypothesis is correct. There may
be something else going on which could cause the PC to get same test
results.
44
Rules of Play
When The GM Doesn’t Know a

Fact
There will come a time in gameplay when
Feel free to a player asks a question or says his or
guess, but her character is doing something, and to
consult with properly respond requires the GM to know
some bit of science that the GM doesn’t
players to avoid know.
giving them For example: The player of Britta the
false clues that chemist says “I’m going to pour hydrogen
will make the peroxide on a piece of the residue to see
game less fun. what happens” but the GM has no idea what
the result of pouring hydrogen peroxide on
that type of substance would be.
First Contact Team is meant to be a fun and exciting science mystery,
but it shouldn’t require someone to be an actual professional scientist
to play. It’s okay to fudge the science, to guess or make things up, when
needed to keep the game going.
The one thing a GM shouldn’t do, though, is give clues that mislead the
players. A mystery is no fun to solve is one is being given incorrect
clues. Perhaps the player knows that yeast-like organisms cause
hydrogen peroxide to bubble strongly, and is using this to test to see if
the residue is a yeast-like organism. If the GM doesn’t know this, the GM
might say the substance bubbles or doesn’t bubble in a way that causes
the player to come to the wrong conclusion.
What the GM can do if unsure about a science fact is:
• Ask the player what he or she expects to happen. In the example
above, knowing the player expects yeast and hydrogen peroxide to
bubble will tell the GM what to do next.
• Guess what will happen, but let the players know what this result
means, from a scientific standpoint. This might not match the real
science in the real world, but in the confines of the game it’s fine.
• Skip the details of what happens, and just say what information the
player was able to glean from his or her tests. It doesn’t always help
to get in-the-weeds on scientific details when what players really
want is some overall information.
The GM can also correct players if they start talking about what they’ve
found and this doesn’t jive with reality. For instance, if the player starts
saying to the other “I poured hydrogen peroxide on this and it bubbled,
therefor this residue must be yeast-like” the GM can interrupt and say
“actually, in the game world, hydrogen peroxide also bubbles if poured
on an ammonia-rich substance.” This will prevent the player from going
too far down the wrong path.
Remember that First Contact Team is meant to be a fun puzzle, not a
science test.
45

Rules of Play
PC vs. Inanimate Object

When a human wants to do something to an
50/50s until inanimate object, e.g. lift a barrel, pick a lock, climb a
you fail your wall, hack a computer, etc. compare the human’s AV
AV’s worth for that action to the object’s difficulty for that action.
Difficulties can range from one (an average untrained
of times or person can usually succeed at this) to seven (even the
succeed the world’s most capable person would often fail at this).
difficulty’s Then do 50/50s until one of two things happen:
worth of times. • If the human fails a number of times equal to
his or her AV, then the human loses.
• If the human succeeds a number of times equal to the object’s difficulty,
the human wins.
Example: Tim has an AV of 6 to pick locks. The lock he wants to pick has a difficulty of
3. Tim does 50/50s until he either succeeds a total of 3 times (and successfully picks
the lock) or fails a total of 6 times (and is unable to pick the lock), whichever comes first.
Tim takes out a coin and flips it, getting heads (a success), then heads (2nd success), then
tails (failure), then tails (2nd failure), then tails (3rd failure), then heads (3rd success). At
this point he stops because he has 3 successes and has picked the lock.
PC Vs. Being
When two beings are opposing each other on
AV vs. AV. something (e.g. both have a grip on a briefcase and
First person to are trying to pull it from the other’s hands) then
compare the first being’s AV vs. the second being’s
win opponent’s AV. The first person to get a number of successes
AV’s worth equal to the opponent’s AV is the winner.
of times is Example: Andy and Petra are trying to beat each
winner. other in a sprint. Andy’s AV for sprinting is 2 and
Petra’s is 3. They do 50/50s until either Andy wins
3 times (and Petra fails 3 times) or Petra wins 2 times
(and Andy fails twice). Whoever meets their target number of successes first wins.
Saves
A save is a roll to prevent something bad from
Attribute vs. happening, e.g. hallucinations, unconsciousness.
difficulty to There are only rarely skills or equipment that help
with a save. Typically the AV for a save is the attribute
stop something alone. The exact effect of failing a save is determined
from by the GM but a failure typically incapacitates the PC.
An incapacitated PC is unable to contribute anything
happening. useful to the gameplay for the duration of the effect.
Some failed saves result in death.
Example: Tim, who had WIL 2, takes a drug which causes hallucinations (3). If he
succeeds at 3 50/50s he is not debilitated by hallucinations, if he loses 2 he will be.
46
Rules of Play
Human vs. Human Combat

Combat uses essentially the same system, except for two changes: AV is calculated
differently and even the loser has an effect on the situation.
Combat AVs
There are four different styles of combat: Kill, Control,
Attribute 1 Ruin and Exhaust. Each are a specialty of either
+ Attribute 2 Athletics or Military/Law Enforcement, although any
character can attempt these combat styles without
+ skill any skill. The AVs for each style can be calculated
+specialty ahead of time. AVs are calculated as follows:
+combat pkg First, add together: Attribute 1 + Attribute 2
(or half if not + Combat Skill +1 if Specialty +appropriate
appropriate), Equipment package level*
all divided by 2, Second, take the sum and divide it by 2,
rounded down. rounding down. The result is the AV for that
style.
*An Athletics: Martial Arts package is appropriate for Control or Exhaust. A Military/
Law Enforcement: Armed Combat package is appropriate for Ruin or Kill. If using a
combat equipment package appropriate to the wrong style, you can add in half the
bonus, rounded down. Example: Sheila has a Military/Law Enforcement: Armed
Combat OO package (ballistic vest and a combat knife) but is trying to use Exhaust.
She can add in a +1 to her AV (two levels of the equipment package, divided by two)
for her AV.
The attributes for each combat style are as follows:
Kill: WIL + AGY Control: AWR + AGY
Ruin: INL + AGY Exhaust: STH + AGY
Example: Tim has WIL 3, AGY 2, AWR 3, Military/Law Enforcement OO (Specialty:

Armed Combat) and has a Military/Law Enforcement: Armed Combat OOO
equipment package. His AV for Kill is 5: WIL (3) + AGY (2) +2 (skill) +1 (specialty) +3
(weapon), all divided by 2. His AV for Control is 3: AWR (3) + AGY (2) +1 (weapon/2),
all divided by 2.
A Combat Round
As per normal First, the combat initiator must declare what style
he or she is using and what his or her AV is. Next,
AV vs. AV, with the defender must next declare his or her style and
success effects AV. The opponents then do 50/50s against each
based on AV other until one player wins a number of times
and effects by equal to the opponent’s AV, as per usual person vs.
loser based on person rolls.
half AV.
47

Rules of Play
Kill
For each point of AV (or half AV if you lost) you do 2 Hit Points damage to the
opponent.
Example: You have a Kill AV of 3. If you win a combat round you do 6 Hit
Points damage to your enemy. If you lose a combat round you do 3 Hit
Points damage.
Ruin
For each point of AV (or half AV if you lost) you do 1 damage to opponent’s combat
AVs.
Example: You have a Ruin AV of 4. If you win a combat round you reduce all
your opponent’s combat AVs by 4 points each. If you lose a combat round
you reduce all your opponent’s combat AVs by 2 points each.
Control
For each point of AV (or half AV if you lost) you can protect yourself from 1 point
of damage to your Hit Points or combat AVs. Also, if you won, you now have the
opponent in a hold (meaning the opponent cannot attack).
Example: You have a Control AV of 5. If you win, you protect from 5 damage
done that round to your Hit Points or Combat AVs and you now have your
opponent in a hold. If you lose you protect from 2 damage to your Hit
Points or Combat AVs.
Exhaust
For each point of AV (or half AV if you lost) you can protect yourself from 1 point of
damage to your Hit Points or combat AVs and for each point of AV you do 1 damage
to the enemy’s Hit Points. Also, if you won, you do exactly 1 damage to the combat
AVs of the enemy, damage that cannot be protected from in any way.
Example: You have an Exhaust AV of 3. If you win a combat round you
protect yourself from 3 points of damage to your Hit Points or AVs and you
do 3 Hit Points worth of damage, plus 1 damage to the enemy’s combat
AVs that cannot be protected from. If you lose, you protect yourself from 1
point of damage to Hit Points or Combat AVs and do 1 Hit Point damage to
the enemy.
After a combat round is over and the results are calculated and applied, the
opponents can continue with a new combat round, or one of the opponents can
try to end combat (e.g. by running away, trying to talk to the enemy, see p.56).
48
Rules of Play
Narrative Descriptions of
Combat Styles
Kill: You’re trying to do as much damage as quickly as possible. You
go right for vital organs. You go in fast, hit hard, pay little attention
to defense. You don’t want to scare them or hurt them, you want to
kill them.
Ruin: You’re here to fuck up your opponent. You want to poke
their eyes out, break their fingers, cut their tendons, smash their
kneecaps, cause them so much pain they can’t think. Your goal is to
destroy their ability to fight.
Control: You stay calm. Your first goal is to prevent them from
hurting you. You dodge and deflect attacks, when they move into
weapon’s range you move out. All the while you looking for an
opportunity to grab and twist a limb, put them in a hold they can’t
get out of.
Exhaust: You are here to outlast your opponents. You are going to
wear them down. You block their attacks, you force them to keep
moving and keep blocking, and whenever they drop their guard you
cause them some pain. Block, hit, block, hit, again and again until
they are too exhausted to keep fighting, and then you take them out.
Ranged Combat
Some combat equipment packages are ranged (see
Ranged p.49), meaning they use projectile weapons to do
weapons vs. damage. If all opponents are using ranged weapons,
non-ranged you can generally do combat as normal. However,
if one opponent has a ranged weapon and the other
means one does not, then while the two opponents are not in
opponent can do hand-to-hand combat range, the opponent with
damage before the ranged weapon can do damage while the other
the other. opponent cannot. The non-ranged combatant can
sprint to bridge the gap, and this will take one or more
combat rounds based on the combatant’s Speed.
Example: Shaniqua has a Kill OO combat package (a hunting bow). Her opponent,
Rudolph, has an Exhaust OOO package (body armor, perspex shield, baton). They
start combat 20 feet away from each other. The GM determines that at Rudolph’s
SPD it will take him one combat round to reach hand-to-hand combat range. For
the first combat round they do Kill vs. Exhaust. Any damage Shaniqua does from
Kill happens normally. For Rudolph, any damage reduction from using Exhaust is
applied, but any damage to Shaniqua from Exhaust is ignored this round.
49

Rules of Play
Incapacity and Death

If a human combatant’s Hit Points are reduced to 1
4 or less HP to 4 that means the PC has received mortal injuries,
means mortally but the PC can continue to fight for his or her
wounded, 0 END’s worth of rounds (or until HP is reduced to
means dead, 0). After his or her END’s worth of rounds the PC is
incapacitated: cannot fight or do anything else that
0 combat requires a roll.
AVs means
incapacitated. A PC whose Hit Points are 1 to 4 can be saved by
medical intervention (Medicine: Emergency
Medicine specialty) within the PC’s END worth of
minutes. PCs at 0 Hit Points cannot be saved.
If a PC’s combat AVs are all brought to 0 by use of the Crippling or Exhaust combat
styles, the PC is incapacitated and can no longer fight, but the PC is not in danger of
dying. The PC stays incapacitated until medical care is given.
Injuries are halved every week (round up to the nearest Hit Point).
Facing Multiple Opponents

When two or more opponents make a concerted
A PC facing attack on one person, the person who is being
multiple ganged-up-on must split his or her combat AV
opponents between the opponents. Although each combat
must split his is 50/50d separately they are considered to have
or her AVs for happened simultaneously (damage done to fighters
is not applied until the end of that combat round).
the combat The gangee can divide points however he or she
round. wants.
Example: Kawahara, who has Control 8, is being

attacked by Billy (Ruin 3), Carla (Kill 2) and Josiah (Exhaust 4). Kawahara decides
to divide his Control as follows: 3 against Billy, 3 against Carla and 2 against Josiah.
Combat is rolled 3 times with 3 different AV vs. AV combinations: 3 vs. 3, 3 vs. 2 and 2
vs. 4. Only after all 3 are rolled is damage to HPs and AVs applied. If he is extremely
lucky, the round might end with Kawahara having all three of his opponents in a
hold simultaneously, which Kawahara’s player should describe in an appropriately
badass manner.
Blindness & Darkness

Partially Blinded: -2 to combat AVs
Fully Blinded: -4 to combat AVs
50
Rules of Play
Human Combat Example

Doktor Smash (Kill AV 5) and Chubby Pete (Exhaust AV 4, Control AV 4) are fighting.
Round 1 – Doktor Smash, who initiated combat, declares he will be using Kill (5).
Chubby Pete says he will use Control (4). They do rock-paper-scissors for 50/50s.
Smash gets a success, then Pete gets a success, then Pete gets a second success, then
Pete gets a third, then Smash gets a second, then Pete gets a fourth, then Smash gets a
third, then Smash gets a fourth success. Smash has racked up four successes (Pete’s
AV) before Pete can rack up 5 successes (Smash’s AV), so Smash wins the round.
As the Winner, smash does 10 damage (2 times his AV), enough to kill Pete. As a
loser, Pete can protect himself from 1 damage to HP or AVs times half of his AV,
rounded down (half of 4 is 2). Therefore, he protects himself from 2 of Smash’s
damage, and takes only 8. He has received mortal injuries but can still fight for 2
(his END) more rounds or until his Hit Points are reduced to 0.
Round 2 – Doktor Smash will use Kill (AV 5), Chubby Pete will use Control (AV 4).
Pete gets a success, then a second, then Smash gets a success, then Pete gets a
third success, Smash gets a second, Pete gets a fourth success, then a fifth (equal to
Smash’s AV).
As the loser, Smash does 4 damage (2 x half his AV), but as the winner Pete protects
from 4 damage (1 x his AV), so takes no damage. Also, as the winner, Pete now has
Smash in a hold, meaning combat is over.
Human vs. Nonhuman Combat

When human PCs try to engage non-human things
Fighting (animals, alien life forms, machines) in combat,
non-humans the ability of humans to successfully affect their
requires a opponents depends on two things:
weapon capable • Having weapons capable of harming the opponent.
of affecting • Having guessed correctly how to affect the
the opponent opponent.
and correctly
guessing how The Right Weapon and Style
to affect the
Say a human is “fighting” a car. A human with bare
opponent. Some hands is not going to be able to do anything that
non-humans can harms, or even stops, the automobile. To affect the
soak damage car requires, at the very least, something capable
points. of puncturing a tire (e.g. a box cutter). While a Box
cutter might work for Ruin, it’s not going to work for
Kill (slashing tires won’t bring the car closer to being
“dead”). It would take something that can cut or dent the hood (e.g. a cinder block,
a plasma torch, a pistol, a very strong sword) to be used for a Kill attack.
51

Rules of Play
Non-humans with natural armor might be able to “soak” a certain amount of

damage from certain sources (even when not actively defending themselves). If
an alien’s armor gives it the ability to “soak” 1 damage to AV and 4 damage to Hit
Points from cutting, piercing or smashing weapons, then any given attack (even if
unopposed) must do more than 1 AV damage or more than 4 HP damage to affect
the non-human opponent. Example: a PC with a baton is fighting an armored alien
who can soak 3 Hit Points of damage from smashing weapons. The PC uses Kill
with an AV of 5. The alien also uses Kill. The PC wins, and so would have done 10
Hit Points worth of damage, but instead only does 7.
Non-human opponents may be completely immune to certain damage types.
Cutting or slashing or piercing weapons (including firearms), no matter how much
damage they are capable of doing, may have no effect against something like a
gelatinous blob. A PC would have to have something like a flamethrower or acid
spray to damage the opponent.
Non-human opponents may also be completely immune to certain combat styles.

For instance, a non-human being in the form of a swarm of stinging insects is not
susceptible to Control because it cannot be put into a hold that renders it harmless.
A being that does not have its energy levels depleted by heavy action or successive
minor injuries is not susceptible to Exhaustion.
It’s up to the GM to determine what weapons and styles can actually harm the
opponent.
Guessing How To Hurt The Opponent

Even with the right weapon, the player must describe what they are doing that they
think will hurt the opponent. Even if the PC wins the combat round, the PC only
affects the opponent if the PC guessed right on how to affect the opponent. For
example: a person fighting a car, using Kill, says she is firing into the front hood
where she thinks the engine block is. If she is correct she may harm the vehicle,
taking away the car’s Hit Points, and if Hit Points are reduced to 0 the car’s engine
will die. If, on the other hand, the car has its engine in the rear of the vehicle, that
Kill roll, no matter how successful, will have no appreciable effect.
For biological opponents, the prerequisite to successfully using the four combat
styles is as follows:
Kill: Figure out where the alien’s vital organs (or major arteries, if they have
such a thing) are.
Ruin: Figure out where to hit the alien to destroy functionality or to cause
debilitating levels of pain (if the alien can be debilitated by pain).
Control: Figure out what parts of the alien’s body pose a threat and how to
hold those so they can no longer be used in combat.
Exhaust: Figure out a place to aim strikes at the alien that will force the
alien to either defend itself against the strikes or take cumulative damage.
52
Rules of Play
Similarly, incorrect assumptions about a non-human opponent’s physiology or

engineering might cause the PC to do more damage than intended. A PC using
Control might describe putting an alien in a headlock, but the GM might decide that
such a move would break the creature’s fragile spine, killing it.
The GM should cancel the effects on the opponent of the PC’s chosen combat style
when the PC has not correctly guessed how to hurt or hold the opponent. Effects
can be reduced by half if the PC was partially correct.
Guessing How to Defend

Some guesswork is also needed for the damage reducing effects of the Control and
Exhaust styles, except that it is generally easier to figure out how to defend oneself
against an alien in combat: try not to get hit. If an alien makes an unanticipated
attack that the PC can see coming (e.g. the alien suddenly attacks with a retractable
tentacle) the alien should get a +3 surprise bonus to its combat AV for that round
only. If the alien attacks in a way that is unanticipated and that the PC was unable to
see coming, cancel any damage reduction from the PC’s chosen AV style.
Some attacks may not be blockable or dodgeable by normal means. If an alien emits
a toxic gas, or a deadly burst of radiation, then conventional defense (e.g. in Control
and Exhaust and the armor included in their advanced equipment packages) will
be useless.
Alien Profiles
GMs are advised to figure out the following, in advance, about the aliens they create:
• How many Hit Points does the alien have (the bigger the alien is, and the
more damage it can take, the more Hit Points).
• What types of damage (e.g. cutting, smashing, fire, acid, etc.) can hurt the
alien, and thus what weapons are required used for Kill, Ruin or Exhaust.
• If an alien has natural armor that reduces any damage of a certain type,
what type and how much damage is soaked (e.g. “Soak 2 AV damage and
4 Hit Point damage from cutting, piercing or smashing weapons.”)
• Where the alien’s vital organs, sensory organs and dangerous parts are.
• What the alien’s combat AVs are.
All of the rules above apply to non-humans trying to hurt us: they must have
weapons capable of affecting humans and must successfully guess how to do so.
Nonhuman Combat Example

Sgt. Mona Delaney has combat experience and a sidearm, giving her the following
combat AVs:
Kill 6 (ranged) Ruin 3 Control 6 Exhaust 3 Hit Points 10
53

Rules of Play
Mona is trapped in a barn with a long limbed quadrupedal creature, with thick
greenish-grey skin, that just emerged from an egg and is snapping and hissing at
Mona. The creature has the following:
Kill 1 Ruin 1 Control 1 Exhaust 1 Hit Points 14
Soaks 3 AV or 4 Hit Points damage from piercing/bashing/burning weapons.
The creature is using Kill and has successfully guessed which parts of Mona to attack
to do killing damage. Mona doesn’t want to hurt the thing, so she declares she is
using Control. The GM asks Mona’s player to describe how she would put the thing in
a hold and what parts of its body she is trying to avoid. The player says that Mona will
try to wrench the creature’s two front legs up so that the creature’s chest is against
the ground, and then will get up on the creature’s back and try to hold the legs aloft.
She says she will try to avoid, primarily, its snapping jaws and, secondarily, the claws
on the ends of its limbs.
Mona’s Control AV is 6 and the creature’s Kill AV is 1. Her guess about how to hold
the creature to render it temporarily harmless was correct, but her assumptions
about what parts of the creature were dangerous were incomplete. The creature
has a barbed tongue which it can strike out with. As Mona did not correctly predict
the creature’s offensive anatomy, the GM increases the creature’s Kill AV by 3 points
(making it 4 for this round only). Combat is rolled and the creature gains six successes
before Mona can gain four. As the winner, using Kill with an AV of 4, the creature
does 2 x 4 (8 total) damage to Mona’s HP. As the loser, using Control with an AV of 6,
Mona protects against 3 points of damage. In total, Mona takes 5 points of damage, a
serious but not lethal injury.
The next round, Mona decides to escalate things a bit and use Ruin, which will hurt
the creature but hopefully not kill it. To use Ruin, Mona would have to figure out
where to hit it to disrupt its senses, cause it pain or cripple its limbs. Mona’s not
sure about senses (it doesn’t have anything she can say for certain is an eye) and she
doesn’t know if it is even capable of pain, but she’s fairly sure that if she breaks its
front limbs its maneuverability will be damaged. Mona declares she is doing Ruin,
trying to snap one of the creature’s front limbs with a kick. The creature will use Kill
again. They roll AV vs. AV and Mona wins.
Although Mona’s guess was correct (breaking the creature’s front legs would indeed
reduce it’s ability to fight) Mona’s kick is not strong enough to do so (the 3 AV damage
she does is all soaked up by the creature’s damage resistance). Mona’s attack, even
though she won, thus has no effect on the alien.
The alien, on the other hand, even though it lost, still does 1 HP damage, reducing
Mona’s Hit Points to 4. She is now lethally injured, but can continue to fight for her
END’s number of rounds (3) before being incapacitated.
So far, Mona has not come an closer to containing the creature and has become
seriously injured, so she decides to change her tact again: pulling out her pistol and
using Kill on the creature. The GM asks Mona what kind of strike she thinks might
kill the creature. Mona reasons that the creature has a bulbous head and that seems
to be evidence of a brain, so she describes firing into the head above the mouth. The
creature will continue with the strategy that it has been using and attempt Kill. They
roll their 50/50s and Mona easily wins, getting 1 success before the creature can get
6. As the winner, Mona does 12 damage (AV x 2) to the creature, and as the loser the
creature does 1 Hit Point damage (AV/2 x 2) to Mona. Mona now has 3 HP left and
the creature has 2. At this point, the creature decides it will play dead rather than
continue to fight. Mona sees the creature fall to the ground. She considers putting a
few more rounds into the thing’s head to make sure it is dead, but instead decides to
put her efforts into first aid for herself.
54
Rules of Play
55

Rules of Play
Combat that Doesn’t End in

Death
In ORC-L, of the four combat styles, only Kill
There are is significantly likely to cause an opponent’s
multiple ways death. This is good for First Contact Team
members, because killing an alien life form
to end combat might be a tremendous setback (it could
without an mean losing the chance for meaningful
communication with an alien, or it could
opponent mean that a technologically superior
dying. species now considers humans to be a
threat to be annihilated).
Even when Kill is being used, it does not necessarily mean the combat
will end in death. When an opponent realizes he or she or it is losing
(typically at the end of a combat round, but occasionally in the middle
of one) it can opt to:
• Try to surrender.
• Try to run away.
• Try to play dead.
At this point, the opponent who is winning should be given the
opportunity to cease his or her or its attack.
Live Action vs. Tabletop Play
All rules included herein are suitable for both live action and tabletop play.
Live action play may necessitate a few extra rules and conventions, most of
which are common sense:
Everything any player says or does is something their character says or does
unless:
• The player is a GM not playing an NPC.
• A player is referring to or making notes on a character sheet.
• The player has indicated he or she is acting or talking “out-of-
character.”
Players can interact (even fight if they are comfortable enough with combat
rules) without requiring a GM be present. Players should generally make
sure a GM is present when they affect the environment (e.g. pick the lock on
the mysterious storage locker), unless a note has been provided to tell a PC
the result of an action (e.g. the locker has a note-card taped to it listing the
difficulty to pick on one side and the contents of the locker on the other).
56
Chapter One
Chapter Four
Title Goes
Crafting Here
First Contact
August 17th, 2:33am: We’re just returning to camp after a very
interesting night observing the hexapods.
As noted before, we haven’t yet together. Tonight we observed them
seen any of the hexapods that we heading off together, away from the
could identify as juvenile. All were drug store parking lot and towards
roughly the same size, overall. the motel. We followed. Here they
However, we noticed in some that found a small basement room used
one of the three segments was for storage of janitorial supplies. They
significantly smaller than the shut the door behind them, but a
others. Mostly, the smaller third hole was left in the door where they
section’s pair of legs was too small cut into it to bypass the lock. I pushed
to be used in locomotion. Instead, a single glow stick into the room
these hexapods used their four through this hole, and although they
full-sized legs to carry their weight. stopped to inspect it they eventually
However, we did note that the decided it was harmless.
smaller third segment’s eye was
functional: the hexapods react to Next, we observed Cookie Monster
things we do that could only have use one of its pincers to cut into the
been seen by the shrunken side’s cleavage between two of Hal Jordan’s
eye. We theorized that the smaller segments. Hal Jordan made some
segment may be a congenital low huffing noises we’ve never heard
deformation, may be the result of a hexapod make before. (Once we’re
insufficient nutrition during youth, back to a place where electronics will
or may be the result of some work, I will record myself mimicking
sort of injury. This evening we these noises for the record). A fair
witnessed compelling evidence amount of circulatory fluid, at least a
that has caused us to rethink this liter, was spilled For a bit, we worried
hypothesis. we were witnessing a murder, but
Hal Jordan made no attempt to fight
For the last few days we observed back. When Cookie Monster had
the hexapod we’ve nicknamed cut through the cleavage, it went to
“Hal Jordan” and the hexapod the other side of that segment and
we’ve nicknamed “Cookie started cutting through that as well.
Monster” spending a lot of time After about five minutes of cutting,
57

Crafting First Contact
58
Cookie Monster physically removed The three went back to the hexapod’s
the now detached segment, camp in the parking lot. There the
setting it carefully on the floor. The new hexapod, which I will hereafter
detached segment appeared to call “Cookie Jordan” seemed to
be breathing, but made no other communicate with several others.
noises or movements. For the The others helped Cookie Jordan
first time, we were able to observe find and break into a vehicle to
the anatomy of the interior sides sleep in.
of a hexapod segment. Most of
it seemed to be a soft white flesh Our theory is that this is how the
with sticky fluid on it, with a pattern hexapods reproduce. They do not
of holes that we can only guess have babies. A pair cuts off one of
contains bundles of nerves and each of their segments and merges
blood vessels. them, creating a new fully adult
being. Our guess is that each of the
Next, the remaining two-thirds of three will now begin growing a new
Hal Jordan started to do exactly the third segment.
same thing to Cookie Monster as
Cookie did to Hal. As we noted with The advantage to this system of
the small-segmented Hexapods, reproduction is awesome. The new
Hal Jordan was able to balance hexapods are “born” more-or-less
perfectly well on just four legs fully capable. The question is: do
while cutting into Cookie. Then Hal they inherit all of the memory and
Jordan pulled the severed segment knowledge of their parents, or only
from Cookie Monster. Hal set the a subset? And what knowledge
Cookie Monster segment next and memory is transferred to the
to Hal’s own segment. Hal and new third segment when it grows?
Cookie worked together to press the Is it possible that the hexapods
segments tightly together. Then have knowledge and memories,
Hal and Cookie (or, again, what passed from segment to segment
was left of them) hunkered down to along the neural links, and so have
watch their two pressed-together memories dating back to whenever
segments. They sat and watched their species first evolved sentience?
for about three hours. During this
time they occasionally did the If each species inherits knowledge,
behavior (looking at each other there would be much less
with one eye, then both turning to evolutionary benefit to being able to
look at each other with a different learn quickly. This may explain why
eye) which we have theorized the hexapods have had such a hard
accompanies (or is the means of) time learning to interact with us. To
their communication. them, our ability to learn language
and technology in a few decades
At the end of the approximately would seem miraculous. To them,
three hours, the conglomeration of we are prodigies.
Hal and Cookie Monster’s excised
segments rose up on its four legs, Tomorrow, we plan on following
shakily at first, and seemed to Cookie Jordan around and seeing
communicate with Hal and Cookie. what behaviors we can observe that
Then the three of them left the Cookie Jordan shares in common
room. Where two whole three- with its forbearers.
segmented hexapods entered the
room, three two-thirds hexapods
(technically quadrupeds) left.
59

Step One: What is the Alien Like?

First, create the alien life form. The challenge of the
Decide what game comes from creating an alien life form that is
the alien’s so different from us that it’s a challenge for the PCs to
are made of, figure out what the life form is all about, what it wants
how they live, and how to communicate with it. If the characters
board an alien vessel and can’t, at first, even tell the
what they intelligent beings from everything else on the ship,
look like. then you have done your job well.
Our advice is to take at least one of the things we assume about aliens on p.8 and
make it not true.
Some questions that are good to answer about your aliens include:
• What form do they take and what are they made out of? Are they computer
programs? Energy beings? Microscopic microorganisms or nanobots?
A hive of tiny creatures? Living spaceships? Things that appear, at first
glance, to be celestial bodies?
• What is their place of origin and what is like? (See box on p.71 for more.)
• Are the aliens’ current forms a product or evolution, were they engineered
by other beings or have they engineered themselves?
• Do the aliens have anything comparable to morality or ethics or laws or
compassion that would prevent them from using force (or manipulation) if
we stand between them and something they want?
Biology Options
From life on Earth, we have seen that there are many options, many
evolutionary paths that a species might take. Each choice has its own
advantages and disadvantages.
Symmetry: A species can have bilateral symmetry (like humans and
most land animals), radial symmetry (like jellyfish), some other types
of symmetry (e.g. trilateral) or no symmetry at all. Evidence from the
animal kingdom suggests that it is easier for a species with bilateral
symmetry to adapt its physiology to new circumstances than for species
on other plans.
Skeleton: A species might have no bones or cartilage at all (although
this seems to be best for sea creatures who don’t have to support as
much weight), have an exoskeleton (like insects, although this reduces
flexibility and can cause problems with heat dispersion and growth)
or have an endoskeleton (like humans, although this leaves us more
vulnerable to cutting damage).
continued next page
60
Biology Options
(continued)
Single Creature vs. Symbiotes vs. Colony: A surprising number of life
forms on Earth cannot survive as lone autonomous entities but require
the partnership of other creatures, sometimes of the same species and
sometimes of other species, that work together and my even share the
same body. Human beings, for instance require certain gut bacteria
to be healthy. The advantage of cooperation is that one can capture
the advantages of multiple strains of evolution in a single entity, but
the disadvantage is that there are more things that can go wrong (as
humans find out when something kills our gut bacteria).
Small vs. Big Babies: The advantage of having small babies (seeds,
eggs, spores, etc.) is that it takes little resource investment to create
each one. The species can thus spread offspring all over the place and
only need a few to survive and reach adulthood to continue the species.
There is no obligation to care for one’s offspring. The advantage of
having big babies is that they come out more sophisticated, more
capable, closer to their adult form, and so are much less likely to die
(wasting the resources spent creating them) before reaching adulthood.
For species that teach their young how to survive, the big baby strategy
seems to be the only one that makes sense.
Sexual vs. Asexual Reproduction: Sexual reproduction mixes up genes
from the population, speeding up adaptation. It also gives more than
one parent a vested interest in keeping the offspring alive. Asexual
reproduction means that a being doesn’t risk having its line ended
just because it cannot find a mate. Some species have the best of both
worlds: they reproduce sexually when they can, but are capable of
asexual reproduction as well.
Synthesizing vs. Eating: Creating one’s own energy (e.g. via
photosynthesis) means not having to be dependent on other life forms
for one’s survival. On the other hand, it severely limits the ability to
concentrate energy into a small package. Even if a tree, for instance,
had the physiological ability to run around it would not be able to gain
enough energy from photosynthesis alone to be able to do so.
Warm vs. Cold Blood: The benefit to having warm blood is that
an animal can survive and stay active in a much wider range of
temperatures. The downside is that the creature has to eat much
more than a cold blooded counterpart. Warm blooded animals must be
constantly on the search for food, and can starve much more easily. The
lower-level metabolism of cold blooded creatures is likely to be reflected
in their brain activity. Much as they spend most of their days physically
inactive, cold blooded animals spend most of their days with little brain
activity.
Forelimbs: The advantage of going from being quadrupedal to being
bipedal is that it frees up a set of limbs for manipulating objects. A
limb can be use for walking on, or it can be used for manipulation, but
it cannot do both well (the heavier the animal is, the more true this
becomes). Most assume that a prerequisite for a species to develop
technology is at least one limb capable of fine manipulation of tools.
continued next page
61

Biology Options
(continued)
Specialization vs. Generalization: Species generally fall on a spectrum
between specialization and generalization. A highly specialized creature
might live in only one type of forest and eat only a few types of bamboo.
A highly generalized species might be an omnivore capable of living
in many different ecosystems. The advantage of specialization is that
it makes one better, and more efficient, at surviving in the chosen
ecosystem, but the disadvantage is a susceptibility to ecosystem change
and a difficulty in spreading.
Dead Aliens
One general difference between terrestrial animals
Aliens might and terrestrial technology is that technology can
not have the be “off” for quite a long time but can still be turned
clear “live/dead” back on. For most animals, “off” is a permanent
dichotomy state called death. This poses problems when we
that we do. consider the hundreds or thousands of years it may
Death might be take to travel to other worlds. Do we set up giant
reversible for generation ships, outfitted with everything humans
them, or they will need to survive the long journey, and hope that
the humans who are on the vessel when it reaches
might be able
its destination have the same priorities as those who
to continue to started the journey? Or do we try to invent some sort
do some things of “suspended animation” state, a reversible version
after death. of death?
Alien life forms might, naturally or technologically, be free from this weakness. They
might be able to go into metabolic states that use little or no energy, stay in them for
years, centuries or millennia, and come back out again. Thus, First Contact Team
members may encounter entities that they think are dead, but who may only be
sleeping. An alien vessel may land on Earth and turn out to have “sleeping” aliens
inside, or it may be that the aliens landed long ago and have simply been waiting for
a being from a sufficiently advanced race to discover them. Given the Civilization
Timescale Problem (p.83) the latter may be more likely.
Where aliens can be “woken” from death, the question is: what triggers that
awakening? It may be that something in the alien’s body senses a change in
conditions that represent a good time to come back to life (much as brine shrimp
eggs can be dormant for years but come back to life when exposed to water).
Perhaps the aliens have set their bodies to wake up/come back to life periodically
to check on conditions, and then go back to sleep/death if nothing interesting is
happening. Perhaps some sort of “alarm” (e.g. a movement sensor on the ship)
62
is capable of waking up/bringing the alien back to life. On the other hand, the
alien may need humans to provide it with the influx of energy it needs to restart
its metabolic processes. Dormant aliens may even leave instructions on how to do
wake them. The alien may have been in a dormant state for eons, just waiting for a
species smart enough (and curious enough) to wake it up
Alternately, aliens might have a state that, like death, is irreversible but unlike death
does allow them to do certain things. There may be decay or mummification of
some tissues, and the main metabolic processes by which the aliens power their
bodies may be permanently offline, but there may be energy reserves or secondary
metabolic processes that can support less-taxing bodily functions. An alien “corpse”
may be capable of small, slow movements. Or it may not be capable of movement
at all, but may have some limited awareness and ability to think, perhaps paired
with a brain-computer interface (see p.75), allowing it to control its ship or other
technologies. It may operate at only a limited state of awareness and intelligence
(much as we have only some of our waking mental faculties while in a dream state).
The corpse may even be able to give birth to live offspring (specially if the alien has
small babies, requiring minimal energy investment, as discussed on p.61).
Speed Differentials
We may meet aliens and find they don’t experience
Aliens may time on the same scale as we do. If we meet
think and aliens, for instance, whose intelligence is based on
communicate something much slower than the propagation of
at a much neuronal action potentials (perhaps osmosis) then
faster or this alien may move, think and communicate much
more slowly than us. Full speed communication
slower speed may be unintelligible to them and we may need to
than we do. purposefully slow down our interactions.
It is even possible that a first contact scenario might take the entire lifetimes of
the First Contact Team, starting with young team members in their twenties and
thirties and ending with meaningful communication finally being achieved only
when First Contact Team members are at the end of their lives. While they wait for
aliens to respond to communications, the PCs may advance through their careers,
have families, witness or be part of political change and make other scientific
discoveries. The long-term effects on human society of contact with alien life (see
p.117) can be played out even while we struggle to communicate with the aliens.
Alternately, the aliens may be much quicker than we are, may have to slow down
their communications and then wait entire lifetimes for us to respond. When First
Contact Team members respond, their response may go to the descendants of the
aliens that were first encountered, perhaps descendants that have a very different
view of humanity. Or, perhaps the fast aliens may not want to wait for us and may
wish to speed us up (perhaps by simulating us in a computer, see p.84) so we can
communicate at their speed.
63

Why We Look the Way We Do
When deciding what an a biological life form looks like, it’s perhaps a
good idea to review why we look the way do. Note that the following is an
oversimplification.
We are squishy because we are mostly water (the chemical processes that
drive life using water as its solvent).
We have bilateral symmetry because it’s a simple design that allows a
minimal set of instructions (DNA) to build a fully functioning animal. It
gives us some redundancy of parts but not more redundancy than is
efficient (as would be the case with trilateral or radial symmetry).
We have skin, rather than exoskeletons, primarily because growing
in exoskeletons is slow and inefficient. We have little hair on our
bodies, because our ancestors spent time on the savannah in danger of
overheating as we chased down prey. Our skin has melanin, making our
skin dark, to protect us from the harmful effects of UV. Some of us have
lighter skin because our ancestors lived in shady woods and needed more
lights to penetrate our skin to create Vitamin D.
Our limbs are as thick as they are because that is what our mass and the
Earth’s gravity requires. If we weighed less, we could have more spindly
limbs, if we weighed more we would have shorter and thicker limbs. The
fact that a fall won’t necessarily kill us (as it would if we were much taller
or lived with much higher gravity) allows us to have a bipedal form. We are
also bipedal because it was useful for our ancestors living on the savannah
to look up over the tall grass for prey. We walk the way we do because it is
a very energy-efficient gait, allowing us to follow wounded prey over large
distances. We don’t have tails because the situations in which they would
be useful (while climbing, situations where our life depended on balance)
were fairly rare for our ancestors, and didn’t justify the expenditure of
nutrients on a not-very-useful appendage.
We have brain, ears, nose, mouth and eyes in the same package (head)
because it is advantageous for the sensory organs to be high and easily
moveable, and it is best that the brain be as close to the sensory organs as
possible (shorter connections are less likely to be severed). The mouth
is there because it is convenient for the mouth to be close to the eyes
(imagine how much harder it would be to eat with your anus). Our eyes
are inside of our head (rather than on stalks) because the added versatility
of having eyes on stalks is outweighed by the protection against accidental
blindness that comes from having the eyes partially-protected by a skull.
Our eyes are facing forward, rather than on the sides of the head, because
we were more often predators than prey, so binocular vision was more
important than seeing predators in our peripheral vision. Emotion shows
on our faces mostly because our faces are the one part most likely one seen
by the other humans we are interacting with.
Our feet are wedge shaped because they are adapted to our walking gait.
Our hands look the way they do because of the time our ancestors spent
brachiating (swinging from limb to limb) in forests (and we probably would
never have evolved into intelligent life without those brachiating hands
allowing the smartest of our ancestors to pick up and use tools).
continued next page
64
Why We Look the Way We Do

(continued)
Our males and females look different, because different body designs suited
the roles men and women commonly took in our ancestry. For women,
breasts to feed babies and wide hips to allow for birth were important. For
men, being larger and having more upper body strength was important. Yet
we had to evolve so that the same bodies could be “turned” male or female
with just a few hormones, which is why men have nipples and women’s
clitorises are anatomically similar to the glans of the penis.
Nature is conservative, so we have very little on our bodies that didn’t serve
some important purpose for our ancestors. We don’t have superfluous
limbs, spikes, ridges, antennae, etc. because there would be no reason to
have the additional weight and nutritional requirements.
Not everything about us has an evolutionary purpose. Some of it is
arbitrary. Hair color and eye color probably had little effect on the
survivability of our ancestors, and are thus probably just an accident of
genetics. The fact that men have more facial hair than women is probably
another one of those accidents. The fact that we have facial expressions is
evolutionarily important, but the exact nature of those expressions (one set
of muscles tense for a smile, another for a frown) is probably arbitrary.
Artificial Intelligence as Alien

The intelligence that First Contact Team members
“Alien” have been sent to meet, and hopefully come to
intelligences understand and communicate with, may not be
from an alien world but may be a newly emerged
may actually intelligence from this world. Artificial intelligence
be newly experiments may be the most likely source of a
emerged strange new intelligence.
earthly AIs. It may be possible to create a program that can
reprogram itself to make itself smarter. Or, in other
words, to create an intelligence that evolves and/or learns. The problem with
doing it this way is that the AI researchers may find themselves dealing with an
intelligence whose workings and capabilities are unknown even to the creators.
Once an AI proves itself intelligent, and if it is unable or unwilling to communicate

with its creators, First Contact Team members may be sent in to try to make
contact. The questions that are most important will be the same as in any classic
extraterrestrial first contact scenario:
• What are its mental capabilities?
• What does it want?
• How does one communicate with it?
• What does it think of humans?
65

Strangest Life Forms on Earth
Anyone looking to create a truly strange alien species could start by

looking at some of the bizarre life forms found on Earth:
Zombie Fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis): This parasitic fungi
infects ants and changes their behavior, causing them to climb upwards
and latch themselves to the underside of leaves with their mandibles.
The ant’s mandibles stay locked even when it dies, and when fruiting
bodies grow from the ant’s head they are in an ideal position to spread
spores and infect other ants.
Devil Worm (Halicephalobus mephisto): These microscopic nematodes
(roundworms) live 2 miles underground, lower than any other
multicellular animal ever discovered. They were first discovered
in a South African gold mine. They survive by eating subterranean
bacteria and can withstand low oxygen, high heat and high pressures
that would kill most other animals.
Immortal Jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii): This jellyfish can react to
damage or starvation by reverting back to a polyp stage (essentially,
becoming a child again) from which it can resume its life cycle. By
repeating this cycle, the jellyfish may (barring accident) be able to live
forever.
Water Bears (Tardigrades): These microscopic, eight-legged, plump
creatures are the most hardy multicellular creatures on earth. They
can survive radiation, decades without water and extreme high and
low temperatures. They can go into a state of suspended animation
for years and come back to life when conditions are right. Tardigrades
have even survived the vacuum and radiation of space.
Mantis Shrimp (Stomatopoda): These small marine crustaceans strike
at their prey with their front claws at extreme speeds (equal to that of
a .22 caliber bullet), breaking open the shells of other animals. Mantis
shrimps can accelerate their claws so quickly that it creates cavitation
bubbles that create shockwaves when they collapse. These shockwaves
can damage prey even if the claws miss and also create small amounts
of light. The Mantis Shrimps have the most complex visual system
known: compound eyes, on independently moving eye stalks, are made
up of thousands of small eyes, each with trinocular vision, the ability to
see ultraviolet and infrared light, the ability to discern the polarization
of light, and 16 types of cones (as opposed to our three). The Mantis
Shrimp communicate by changing the polarization of light they reflect
off of their bodies.
Desulfotomaculum: One strain of this genus of bacteria, recently
discovered in a South African gold mine, has been found to survive
off of the radiation produced by uranium, making it’s food chain
completely independent of energy from the sun.
continued next page
66
Strangest Life Forms on Earth

(continued)
Star Nosed Mole (Condylura cristata): This small mole has 22
tentacle-like appendages surrounding its nose. The mole is functionally
blind, but its nose-appendages are extraordinarily sensitive, letting it
track prey through vibrations in the ground and to feel things in front
of it with a level of detail equal to that of vision. The star nosed mole
can process sensory information and react to it incredibly quickly. It
can feel a thing and decide whether to eat it or not in 120 milliseconds
(a human blink is 300-400 milliseconds). The star nosed mole is also
the only mammal known to be able to smell underwater. It does so by
blowing out bubbles, then sucking them back in and smelling them.
Tongue Eating Louse (Cymothoa exigua): This parasite enters fish
via the gills, removes the fish’s tongue and then latches itself in
place, becoming the fish’s new tongue. This is the only known case
of a parasite taking over an organ and fulfilling that organ’s general
functionality.
Movile Cave Life Forms: This cave in Romania has been completely
cut off from the outside world for the last 5.5 million years. The air
inside is toxic to humans: thick with carbon dioxide and hydrogen
sulfide, ammonia and methane but with very little oxygen. The cave
has an entire ecosystem of life forms, with bacteria that perform
chemosynthesis: oxidizing methane and sulfur to create energy. The
bacteria, in turn, support 48 other species, including fungi, insects,
water scorpions and leeches. Many of these species are eyeless albinos,
all evolved to deal with the cave’s toxic conditions.
Siphonophorae: These deep-sea entities are actually a colony of
animals. There are animals with different roles in the organism
(e.g. locomotion, attacking prey), all connected and incapable of
independent existence. Many siphonophorae form long chains, up to
130 ft. long, that drift through the darkness of the deep sea. Long thin
tentacles hang down, creating a long curtain of stinging cells that inject
paralytic poison into any animal that brushes up against the curtain.
Some siphonophorae use bioluminescence to attract animals to the
stinging cells.
Bdelloid Rotifer: These microscopic animals live in ponds and can
survive for several years in a desiccated state when their water
sources dry up. Their DNA tends to get damaged while in this dry state
and the Bdelloid Rotifers have evolved means of repairing their own
DNA. One of their methods is to take DNA from other creatures. Up to
10% of their DNA seems to be borrowed from other species, including
plants, bacteria and fungi. The rotifers have gained abilities from
these stolen DNA strands, such as an enzyme taken from bacteria that
breaks down cyanide.
67

First Contact Via Information

One strong possibility is that aliens will travel not as
Aliens might physical beings, but as information. Given the huge
propagate energy cost of moving physical matter between
themselves stars, aliens may find it more efficient to transmit
through the themselves as a set of instructions and hope that
someone somewhere will decode and act on those
galaxy via instructions.
instruction
sets. The instructions could code for some robot or some
biological entity or for some AI program capable of
running on Earth computers. The alien being, once
assembled and turned on, might have all the knowledge and wisdom of the alien
species that sent it, or (depending on bandwidth available to the aliens) it might
contain only the bare essential knowledge needed to complete its task (whatever
that is, see motivations p.87). The alien might, like a human baby, start knowing
almost nothing, but may be programmed in such a way that it learns what it needs
to know to complete its mission as it interacts with its surroundings.
It is even possible that there are species that propagate themselves through the
galaxy by broadcasting instructions, much as a fungus reproduces by releasing a
cloud of millions of spores and hoping that at least one will reach fertile ground.
As any IT documentation writer knows, it’s extremely difficult to write good

instructions without knowing what tools and what level of knowledge your readers
have. It’s possible that aliens might broadcast their instructions into space hoping
that one of the planets that receives it happens to be at the right technology level to
act on them. In that case, we may receive instructions that we cannot even act on
without generations of research, development and discovery.
Or, an instruction set may contain various primers meant to get us up to the needed
tech level. (“Don’t know how to make steel? See section 128.2.5. Don’t know how
to build a cold fusion reactor? See section 19.72.8.”) Even with such useful hints, it
still might take decades to follow a set of instructions.
Things become much easier if the aliens have some method for two way
communication. Typical electromagnetic communication (e.g. radio waves) takes
centuries or more to reach other star systems, so makes for poor human-life-scale
communication. If, however, aliens learned to send and receive messages through
wormholes, this interval could be greatly lessened. With two-way communication,
we could send aliens a copy of the latest version of Linux, and they could send
back a computer program already formatted to work on our operating system.
If we send them technology catalogs, they might send back instructions to build
a machine complete with manufacturer’s part numbers and helpful Ikea-style
assembly diagrams. If we send them a copy of the human genome they might send
back some new genetic sequences to add to an embryo to create a human-like
thing capable of speaking on behalf of the aliens (with possibly wonderful, possibly
terrifying results).
For more on aliens that don’t just propagate via information but are information
see p.85.
68
Extra-Dimensional Beings
We experience space in three dimensions, but there
Beings that have been models in theoretical physics that posit
exist in, and the existence of more dimensions. Nothing points
move through, to the possibility that beings could access these
additional dimensions in ways we can’t, but it is an intriguing
dimensions possibility, and could make for a challenging first
would seem contact scenario.
very strange to Much has been written about what beings living in a
us, seem to have two-dimensional (a flat) universe would experience
miraculous if they could interact with us and our ability to move
abilities, and (and to move things) through three dimensional
be very hard to space. The flat beings would experience beings that
fight. seem to be able to break every natural law, because
of the 2D beings’ inability to perceive, and difficulty
conceiving of, a third dimension. The same problems could hamper First Contact
Team members trying to understand an extra-dimensional being.
Such a being may seem, to our experience, to be able to appear and disappear at
will (to them they are simply moving in and out of the narrow slice of reality where
we live). If our space is folded or stretched and compressed from their point of
view, then the beings may appear to us to be able to move incredible distances
(even interstellar distances) at incredible speeds (to them they are moving normally,
just taking efficient routes). They could also potentially grab a human and move a
human through those dimensions. The human would experience being moved
through strange (and likely inhospitable) planes of existence, before being put back
in our existence, maybe feet away or maybe light-years away.
The multi-dimensional beings would be able to see inside, appear inside or

manipulate the insides of anything in our 3D world (just as a Flatland bank vault
would only have walls covering four of its sides, allowing us to look or reach right
in). A multi-dimensional alien could walk into the world’s most secure vault, or
safely peer into the center of the earth, or reach in and touch a human’s internal
organs.
If a 3D person was to stick both hands into a flat world, the flatlanders might
assume they are encountering two distinct beings. Similarly, multi-dimensional
beings might appear to us to be multiple beings.
If a 3D person was to move, physically, through a flat universe, the Flatlanders

might see a very small entity appear (e.g. the top of the human’s head) and appear
to grow larger, change shape, split off into multiple “beings”, then disappear. What
would be hard to conceive, for them, is that one of us is made up of an infinite
number of flat slices, each different, each taking on a distinct role in our physiology
(a role which is hard to determine without seeing the whole). Similarly, a multi-
dimensional being might appear to “shapeshift” between a number of different
shapes, each adapted to a different job for the being. What we might confuse for
multiple species might, thus, all be part of the same multi-dimensional individual.
69

One might encounter a giant lidless eye that floats through the air and that blinks
out of existence only to appear again some distance away. One might encounter
a multitude of limbs, each grasping the ground to propel or anchor some unseen
body. A small slithering worm, a giant bipedal creature with immense strength and
a huge photosynthesizing plant with broad leaves might all be different “limbs” of
the same creature.
Our chances of hurting a multidimensional creature would be roughly equivalent to

the Flatlanders’ chances of hurting us. We could only hurt whatever small part of its
anatomy is in our plane of existence. It should be able to see us coming, making sneak
attacks difficult, and it can easily withdraw itself from our plane of existence. If it decides
to attack us, we can’t use armor or tanks or fortified buildings to protectourselves,
because a multi-dimensional being could reach through any of these. The only thing
that would make such a being anywhere near defeatable would be if it was especially
slow, or tiny, or weak, or had trouble sensing our plane of existence.
First Contact With Artifacts

First contact may not be with aliens as living,
First Contact intelligent beings, but with some non-living item
may not be with that aliens sent or left behind. An alien artifact might
living aliens, but be:
with some item • A probe, sent into space to find interesting
or tech that they things (perhaps to find intelligent life) and send
sent out or left signals back to the alien homeworld.
behind. PCs will • An autonomous tool sent to do some task on
be challenged the alien’s behalf: perhaps build a dyson sphere
with deciphering to beam power back to the alien home world
what the object (p.77), perhaps terraform a planet to make it
is for, how it suitable for future colonization (p.76).
works, and what • A historical marker or time capsule, something
it tells us about left to provide evidence that the alien species
the aliens who was once here and to provide some information
about that species for whatever species comes
created it. after.
• A message or gift for other intelligent species. This could be something
sent out into space in hopes it would come across intelligent life, or
something left on this planet in the ancient past in case intelligent life
should one day evolve here. The message might be a gift of scientific or
technological knowledge, it might be instructions for making contact with
the species that sent/left the message, or it could be a warning (“don’t
make our mistakes.”)
• It could be a weapon or a trap. It might be the interstellar version of
unexploded ordnance. It could be something meant to be triggered by,
and destroy, any life form that the originating aliens don’t want to share
their galaxy with.
• The artifact may simply be trash. It’s something alien travelers jettisoned,
or left behind, because they no longer needed it. Perhaps it’s a probe or
tool that already served whatever purpose it was sent for, perhaps eons
ago, and shut down.
70
The challenges of dealing with an alien artifact can be to figure out what it’s made
out of, what it’s for, how to turn it on (or perhaps how to turn it off), to decipher
any alien language recorded on it in it, to figure out how to interact with it, and to
reverse-engineer the technology it is made out of.
An alien artifact may be as small as a microchip or as massive as a hollowed out

asteroid. It might be as high-tech as a robotic probe, or as low tech as a stone
monolith with symbols and diagrams carved into it.
A Biological Alien’s Home

World
Although it is unlikely that PCs will visit an
Even if PCs alien’s home world, it is important to have
won’t visit some idea what that home world is like as
this will have a large impact on the form
it, knowing aliens will take and the types of technologies
something they might have access to. For example, a
about an alien’s world completely covered with water oceans
would seem to dictate the form of the aliens
homeworld (aquatic) and make it very hard for metal-
can inform the based technology to develop (how does a
species learn to smelt metal underwater?).
GM about the The nature of the alien’s home world also,
aliens. if we are meeting live aliens, tells us about
what life-support systems they would need
to survive in a spaceship or on Earth. Some questions to consider:
The Size of the Planet: This will determine the gravity that aliens are
used to. Keep in mind, however, that a planet with too little gravity will
not be able to hold an atmosphere.
The Surface Temperature of the Planet: This is affected by several
factors: intensity of the planet’s sun, distance from the sun, albedo
(reflective capacity of the atmosphere and surface) and greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere. To have surface water in liquid form, the planet must
be in a range where at least some the planet experiences temperatures
between roughly (depending on pressure) 0° C (32° F) and 100° C (212°
F). However, it may be possible for a planet outside this general range to
have liquid water under the surface (as is suspected on Jupiter’s moon,
Europa) due to pressure, tidal friction and volcanism.
Temperature Change: How widely does temperature vary on the planet?
This is affected by how elliptical the orbit is (highly elliptical orbits mean
the distance to the star, and thus the heat and light received from it,
vary widely), how oblique the planet is (how tilted the axis is in relation
to the sun, the cause of our seasons) and the speed at which the planet
turns (a rapid day-night cycle keeps temperatures fairly even). A system
with more than one star (which is fairly common in our galaxy) would
likely mean more variable temperatures. Earth’s temperatures are
relatively stable. Aliens from a less stable planet may have evolved to
bury themselves underground when the hot season comes or go into a
cryogenic sleep when the planet freezes over.
continued next page
71

A Biological Alien’s Home

World (continued)
Protection from Radiation: The existence of atmospheric layers (such
as our ozone layer) and a magnetic field can protect the surface of a
planet from the subatomic particles and ultraviolet light that can be
damaging to organic molecules. Without this protection, aliens would
have to have some other form of protection (e.g. live underground, have
shells) or be made of non-organic substances.
Atmosphere: How thick is the atmosphere and what is it made
out of? Keep in mind that if you want surface water on this planet
the atmosphere must be thick enough to prevent water from being
dissociated (broken apart by ultraviolet radiation from the star,
whereupon the hydrogen is lost to space) but not so thick as to cause
a runaway greenhouse effect (the reason that Venus, although it may
have started as fairly Earth-like, now has a surface temperature hot
enough to melt lead).
Surface Liquids: Does the surface of the planet have standing bodies of
liquid, and is this liquid water? What portion of the planet is covered
by liquid? Carbon-based life has been found to exist in a wide range of
conditions (see the extremophiles on p.66) but they all, so far as we can
tell, require the presence of liquid water (as well as carbon, hydrogen,
oxygen and nitrogen).
Aliens from outside the narrow liquid-water band would, chemically,
be very different from us. It might be possible, for instance, for life to
evolve on an extremely cold world in pools of liquid ammonia, or on a
very hot world in pools of sulfuric acid or iron pentacarbonyl. See next
page for more.
Stability: Are the factors listed above more or less stable over
time? Looking at other solar systems in the galaxy, Earth seems
to be fairly stable (changes to the atmosphere caused by life forms
notwithstanding). There are many factors that can make a planet less
stable over time: a short-lived star, changing orbits of the planet, steady
loss of the atmosphere to photodissociation and solar winds, a lack of
volcanism (which will cause many elements to eventually end up in the
planet’s core, unavailable to surface life forms) and a climate that has
not reached a stable equilibrium (and is subject to runaway glaciation
or runaway greenhouse effect). These can mean that a planet that
might have been habitable when life formed may not have stayed
habitable over what we recognize as an evolutionary timescale.
The consequence of this short-lived world might be that intelligent life
evolved far faster than our experience would suggest. Perhaps when
their planet became uninhabitable they evolved (or bioengineered
themselves) into something very strange to us, or perhaps they fled
their planet in search of some place more hospitable, or perhaps
they all died (and what we encounter of them are communications or
technology left behind by a now extinct race).
72
Non-Carbon Non-Water Life

Forms
Every form of life that scientists have
Carbon and studied needs three things: the first is a
liquid solvent: some liquid that chemicals
water are can dissolve into and that chemical
probably the reactions can happen in. For us it’s water.
best elements to The second is a chemical “backbone” that
can form complex chains with itself, thus
build life from making for a wide variety of molecules
in the liquid- that can serve different purposes. For us
water one. In it’s carbon. And the third is a chemical
reaction where “stored energy” is used to
other zones, power the processes of life. For humans it’s
other elements the oxidation of sugars.
may form the For any rocky planet in the “goldilocks”
building blocks zone (where liquid water exists), scientists’
of life. best guess is that water would be the
typical solvent and carbon the typical
backbone of life. For one thing, these
elements are cosmically abundant, so should be readily available on
any goldilocks planet. For another, we know they are good substances
for making life out of (something which is questionable with other, less
abundant chemicals). And, finally, all life we have discovered here on
Earth utilizes these chemicals. If any other combination of chemicals
makes for good life-stuff at goldilocks temperatures, it seems we should
have seen examples of it here on Earth.
Some possible alternatives for solvents include:
• On cold worlds: Ammonia, methane and ethane, hydrogen
fluoride or hydrogen sulfide.
• On hot worlds: silicon dioxide (the primary component in glass).
Candidates for backbone include silicon, sulfur or metal oxides.
There are a wide variety of metabolic reactions (even here on Earth,
see p.66). Some possible metabolisms involve combining oxygen with
other chemicals (and require oxygen in the atmosphere or dissolved
in liquids), some involve doing the same with hydrogen (although free
hydrogen is found only on worlds with much higher gravity than our
own). Other metabolic reactions could include combining acids and
bases. Life can even utilize energy from radiation or electrical charges.
Non-water/non-carbon aliens could be so different from us that the
environments that support their life would be deadly to us and vice
versa. The aliens might burn to death or freeze solid in any environment
that could support human life, might find our atmosphere toxic. An alien
spaceship might contain hydrochloric acid that the aliens live in.
Creating a plausible non-water non-carbon based life form requires a
considerable knowledge of chemistry and is beyond the scope of this
book. A good place to start is the book World Building by Stephen L.
Gillett (and especially Chapter 8: Not as We Know It).
73

74
Chirality
Many chemicals, including amino acids

Earth biology and sugars, can be configured in two
based around ways. One way is a mirror image of
“left-handed” the other. Chemists refer to these as
“left-handed” and “right-handed” and
chemicals, the handedness is the “chirality” of the
aliens might chemical. All life of on Earth uses left-
be “right- handed amino acids for its proteins (with
handed.” only a few, very rare instances of right-
handedness). In biological processes,
left-handed biochemistries produce
left-handed proteins. It may be pure chance that the first life forms
on Earth used left-handed proteins and that this was passed down to
every other life form on Earth. If so, there may be an equal chance
that amino-acid based life forms on other planets have an alternate
chirality.
Generally, Earth organisms cannot gain nourishment from alternate-
chirality nutrients. Enzymes that work on left-handed proteins
don’t work on right-handed proteins. In other words, an alternate-
chirality alien, even if it was made out of generally the same stuff,
would be unable to survive on any food made from Earth life-forms.
Even olfactory receptors can be exclusive to a certain chirality, so an
alternate chirality life form might even have trouble smelling us (and
vice versa).
Step Two:
What is Their Technology Like?
Next, figure out what technologies the aliens have.
Brain-Computer Interfaces
This is technology that would directly link the
Aliens might thinking parts of an alien with the technology that
it uses. For human-like beings with human-like
interact with technology this might mean a chip implanted into the
technology brain that communicates, via wires or radio signals,
directly via with computers that control the alien’s technology.
their brains. When meeting aliens with this technology we might
see a spaceship that lacks any buttons, control panels
75

or gauges because this control and feedback happens in the minds of the pilots.
Taking this technology a step farther, we may see brains and technology sharing
knowledge and cognitive processes. An alien might, for instance, plug into a
computer that will help it learn and decipher alien languages. Telepresence (acting
and sensing via a remote machine) may make it hard to tell if one is interacting with
the being housing the alien intelligence or just a remote tool of that intelligence.
Terraforming
Aliens may be able to change planets to make them
Aliens may more habitable. Some factors would be hard to
radically change (a planet’s gravity, whether it is rocky, icy
or gaseous, the distance from its star). However,
change a temperature could be adjusted by adding or
planet’s removing greenhouse gases, by coating the surface
environment to or filling the planet’s atmosphere with particles that
suit their needs. absorb or reflect light and heat from the star. An
inhospitable atmosphere could be made breathable
by sequestering or releasing unwanted or wanted
elements or by introducing lifeforms whose metabolisms take in unwanted
chemicals and turn them into wanted chemicals. (Earth’s original atmosphere
would have been inhospitable to humans, but life forms evolved that converted
much of the CO2 to O2). Finally, flora and fauna could be introduced that make up
the food chain preferred by the aliens.
In theory, a fairly small package could accomplish terraforming. A small probe, for
instance could release successive waves of spores, bacteria, seeds, baby animals
or self-reproducing nanobots, each designed to accomplish one stage of the
terraforming process. Terraforming might take years, centuries or millennia.
Terraforming might take a planet which is completely inhospitable to us (e.g.

Mars, Venus) and turn it into a place with a survivable temperature, breathable
air, drinkable water and edible flora and fauna. However, if an alien tried to
terraform Earth we may find a plague of bacteria, fungi, nanobots, etc. polluting the
atmosphere, poisoning the water, making the climate dangerously hot or cold, and
killing off native Earth flora and fauna in favor of toxic invasive species.
Zero-Point Energy
Physicists have theorized about a number of means
Aliens to gain cheap and easy energy from things that are
plentiful in the universe (e.g. from cold fusion of
might have hydrogen, or from the fabric of space-time itself).
practically If aliens could achieve this then some of the major
unlimited challenges to space exploration (where does one get
the fuel to accelerate to near-light speeds) may go
sources of away. Combined with self-repair abilities, a piece
energy. of alien tech could potentially survive and stay
powered-up and active for eons.
76
Dyson Spheres
If aliens cannot achieve “free” energy, they will be
A sphere forced (like us) to gather it where they can. The largest
could be built and most plentiful sources of energy in our galaxy are
around a star stars. Plants and solar panels are examples of ways
to capture to gather the power of stars. Aliens may become
its energy more efficient in this regard: creating solar cells so
efficient that, even in the cold, dark spaces between
and beam it
stars, they can gain enough power from starlight to
elsewhere. power their operations. Or, aliens may grow more
grand: creating solar cells larger than anything
humans have in order to power projects grander than we have yet imagined. Taking
this to an extreme degree, the most power an alien civilization could harvest from
a star would be from a sphere of solar cells completely surrounding that star. The
massive amount of power that it gathered could then be beamed (perhaps as a
beam of electromagnetic energy) to wherever it will be used. Having never had
access to anything close, it is difficult for us to imagine what an alien civilization
might do with this kind of power.
The major difficulty is the massive scale of such an engineering project and where
the aliens might gain the raw materials needed. If aliens can figure out how to use
energy to create or change the structure of matter, this may provide the answer.
One solar collector orbiting the sun could gather enough energy to convert
captured hydrogen into heavier elements and thus to build another collector. What
observers might see from afar is a small black spot appearing on a sun, then that
black spot growing, the rate of growth increasing exponentially, until the darkness
covers the entire sun. Planets in the affected solar system would quickly freeze.
A dyson’s sphere does not necessarily mean the death of all life on Earth. A species
sophisticated enough to build a dyson’s sphere could, if it wanted to, spare a tiny
fraction of the captured energy and beam it at Earth. It would be a giant black
sphere pointing a single spotlight through space, illuminating Earth even though
the rest of the solar system has gone dark.
Nanotech
Aliens may develop machines (akin to our 3D printers)
Aliens may so complex they can disassemble and assemble
be able to matter at a molecular (perhaps even atomic) level.
disassemble and This could allow aliens to create virtually anything
manufacture (given they have the right ingredients). Such
objects molecule- machines could even edit or manufacture living
by-molecule. beings.
Mobile robots
Combined with sufficient information transmission
(nanobots) could and storage capabilities, this could allow intelligent
give them god- beings to be teleported: one machine disassembles
like powers. a being, records the pattern of molecules, transmits
77

this information to another machine that rebuilds the being in that location. Living
beings could also be duplicated (disassemble one being, then rebuild more than
one copy of it) or even made immortal (if something happens to the being, simply
rebuild it based on the last good backup).
To take the technology one step further, the molecular assemblers could be
nanobots: a swarm of microscopic, autonomous, mobile robots. This assumes
the aliens can work out certain engineering problems (how to power them, how
to control them, how to keep the heat they produce from breaking them apart).
Nanobots could give aliens truly god-like powers. At the alien’s command, a swarm
of nanobots (each invisible to the naked eye) could disassemble any solid object
molecule by molecule and reassemble those molecules in the form of a completely
different object. Aliens with this technology could potentially create or change
whatever technology they want whenever they want, seemingly by magic.
If nanobots are self-reproducing and self-powering, and can be made from common
materials, one danger is uncontrolled reproduction. One improperly programmed
nanobot could reproduce on an exponential scale until there’s nothing left on the
surface of the planet but a “grey goo.” If the nanobots were created to have (or
evolve to have) a hive intelligence then the grey goo might be the intelligent alien
life form that First Contact Team members make contact with.
Element Construction
Modern humans can create many of the molecules
Aliens might we want (given other molecules of the correct type)
be able to but we have not yet learned to manufacture the
manufacture elements we need. We cannot yet turn lead into gold.
the elements The basic scarcities that drive human enterprise and
human conflict can be roughly broken down into
they need from
scarcity of energy (e.g.. the energy in gasoline, the
more common energy in food) and scarcity of elements.
elements or from
energy itself. If aliens learn how to change elements into each
other, then they could take whatever elements they
have in abundance (even hydrogen gathered from the near-total-vacuum of space
by a near-light-speed space ship) and turn it into whatever elements are required
by their biology and technology. Such atomic changes occur naturally only in the
heart of stars, so atomic manufacturing would probably take quite a lot of energy.
If aliens can gather a lot of energy (e.g. via a dyson sphere) or get it “free” (e.g. via
zero-point energy) then scarcity will be a thing of the past for this civilization. Any
motivation to come to Earth seeking resources is now gone. If aliens with this
technology attack us, it’s not because they need anything, they’re just assholes.
An even more ambitious, yet theoretically possible, technology would be the

creation of matter from energy alone. It takes extraordinary amount of energy
to create matter, but if aliens have that energy they could create matter. And if
they have the technology to configure that matter (e.g. nanotech) then aliens could
potentially create anything they want wherever they can beam the energy to create
it.
78
Mind Engineering
If aliens can figure out how intelligence works,
Aliens might they could potentially create or edit intelligences
create their to suit their needs. These might be computerized
own custom intelligences (AIs) or they might be engineered
intelligences, biological intelligences. First Contact Team
might be able to members might find that the being they meet with is
edit their own an intelligence designed specifically to make contact
minds on the with us. The intelligence may even be “dumbed
fly, might even down” in order to deal with us on our own level.
try to edit our The ultimate expression of this technology would
minds. be a mind (computer or biological) that can edit its
own intelligence on the fly. Such edits might be
practical (to let it deal optimally with the current cognitive challenges) or they may
be aesthetic (attempting to create a “beautiful” mind the way a painter might try to
create a beautiful painting) or exploratory (how does a mind configured in this way
experience the universe?). Regardless, the prospect of outsmarting an alien using
this technology is negligible.
If aliens decide to edit us, the results could be frightening. If humans have desires
and priorities that are at odds with those of the aliens then the aliens might try to
edit us, to bring our desires and priorities in line with theirs. If we find these edits
unethical, the aliens might simply try to edit us so that we don’t find them unethical.
Technology-Biology Convergence
Modern humans make a distinction between the
Aliens might biological and the technological, as shown on the
have no clear following chart. However, the distinctions between
distinction the two is becoming less and less clear. Selective
between life and breeding and genetic engineering means biological
tech. They may entities can be created or modified by humans, while
evolutionary design algorithms can bring evolution-
have tools with like processes to the design of tech. Electronic
life-like properties, devices can now be powered by bacteria. 3D printers
or intelligent living are now capable of printing most of the parts to make
beings designed to new 3D printers, and self-reproducing machines are
do jobs. not far off.
Biology Technology
Result of evolution. Designed by intelligent beings.
Capable of reproduction. Does not reproduce.
Self-healing. Does not self-repair.
Made up of organic chemicals. Made up of plastics, metals and silicon.
Gains energy from photosynthesis or Powered by electricity of combustible
consuming food. fuels.
Can be turned off and turned back on
Can die.
later.
79

Modern human cultures place value on the natural human form and its integrity.
If this part of our culture changes, humans may be engineered to suit the things
they will be doing and the places they will be going. There may be aquatic humans
designed to live underwater, humans designed to live and work in zero-g, etc.
Ethical questions notwithstanding, there may be humans engineered to be smarter
so they can be scientists or engineers, humans engineered to experience less pain
and fear to make them better soldiers or humans engineered to be immune to
boredom to better handle menial tasks. If humans reach this point, we will find
that we are our own technology.
Extrapolating from current trends, it seems we are approaching a time when there is
no clear line between biology and technology. When we imagine aliens we tend to
imagine biological being who utilize technology (e.g. spaceships) they have created.
If aliens have reached a state where technology and biology are indistinguishable,
what we may see are:
• Vehicles and tools that are alive. They may be made from organic
chemicals, plastics, metal, silicon, some mixture thereof or
something else entirely. They may be able to reproduce, heal, think,
move autonomously or change their own structure to better do
their jobs. For instance, instead of a “tricorder” like sensor, an alien
might summon a swarm of insect like beings that travel over the area
in question and come back to report their readings. A spaceship
may be able to change its own structure to change from being a
vessel designed for deep space to be a vessel that can travel under
oceans. Instead of having a weapon, aliens might have colonies
of microscopic entities that act as an external immune system:
identifying and destroying potential threats.
• The aliens themselves may be a form of technology, engineered for

travel through space. Alien space explorers may be designed to go
into states of suspended animation for long periods. They might be
designed to adapt quickly to the environments on the worlds they
discover, perhaps even to mirror the biology of the local species.
If the amount of payload being transported is a concern, aliens
might be engineered to be as small as possible. The aliens might
be nothing but seeds or spores that only grow into their full forms
when they find themselves in a hospitable environment.
• The alien spaceship that travels through space may, itself, be the
intelligent alien space explorer. What may seem like the vessel’s
occupants may simply be semi-intelligent tools for exploring parts
of the alien worlds that the larger vessel/being cannot reach.
80
Is There a Ladder of
Technology?
Some believe that there is a ladder of
Is there a scientific and technological progress, and
predictable ladder any alien civilization we meet will fall
of technology somewhere on that ladder. Our ability
that all intelligent to accurately predict what is on the
species can be ladder above us rapidly diminishes as one
placed on? Maybe speculates about higher and higher rungs
yes. Maybe the on the ladder.
whole idea is Using the ladder model, we can make a few
chauvinistic. predictions. If we ever meet aliens that are
more technologically advanced than us,
they will know everything we know about
science and technology. Nothing we know or can do will surprise them.
Even if they choose not to use a technology (e.g. they might think
internal combustion engines are crude and wasteful) they will still
understand how the technology works. Conversely, if we meet an alien
species less advanced than ourselves, noting they know or can do with
technology would surprise us. One can look at any society lower on the
ladder than oneself and quickly create an accurate guess as to what
that society’s capabilities are.
The major exception, of course, would be science and technology
concerning things that only exist on that species’ planet. We wouldn’t
expect an alien, no matter how advanced, to come to our planet
and instantly know more than us about Earth zoology or human
psychology. Similarly, if we went to a planet and met “primitive” aliens,
our tech would be better than theirs, but that doesn’t mean we would
know as much as they do about how to utilize the planet’s spring-trees
to launch high into the air.
Proponents of the ladder model point to the fact that each scientific
or technological discovery enables another. Citizens of the Roman
Empire, for instance, could never have built a skyscraper. To build
a skyscraper they would have to learn to build kilns hot enough to
melt steel, then learned how to make steel, then learned how to build
buildings with steel skeletons (rather than load bearing walls) then
learned all the tricks that make very tall buildings viable (safety
elevators, inertial mass dampers, etc.). One cannot just jump to the
queue and gain a technology that is out of phase with the general
technological and scientific level of the society.
continued next page
81

Is There a Ladder of
Technology? (continued)
Some are even optimistic that they can predict, generally, what
higher levels on the ladder will look like. Coming soon will be artificial
intelligence and complete control over biology via genetic engineering.
Later, human minds will be able to be uploaded to computers. Things
get hazy the farther one gets from today, but generally we will have
more control over biology, better materials, more access to energy, and
will be able to build machines both much smaller and much bigger.
The biggest argument against this model is that we simply don’t know.
We don’t know and can’t imagine how science and technology might
progress for other species. Say an alien species evolved to “speak” by
creating and exchanging custom proteins. Is it possible that they could
learn to learn to manipulate their chemical environment via these
proteins, even manipulate genetic codes, and thus become masters of
chemical and genetic engineering without even passing through an
equivalent to our stone age? We just don’t know.
Others criticize the “ladder” theory as being culturally chauvinistic.
Western culture has excelled at certain forms of technology and
certain forms of inquiry and learning and this has allowed our culture
(via a form of cultural darwinism) to dominate the globe, leading us
to believe, arrogantly and incorrectly, that we know more than any
“primitive” culture. We believe every other culture on Earth is a lesser
version of our own, that we can compare them to what we were like at
various points in our history, and find that they know nothing more
than we did (and that anything we knew and forgot must not have been
important).
Members of these so-called “primitive” cultures would strongly
disagree. There are convincing arguments that some “primitive”
cultures are superior in the fields of ecology, keeping the human body
healthy (preventing, rather than treating, disease), keeping societies
harmonious, giving people a sense of purpose and belonging, dispute
resolution, consciousness, the human mind’s role in physical health,
the causes and management of human happiness and suffering. To say
that Western technology is better or more important than aboriginal
technologies is a value judgment, one that does not always reflect well
on our so-called “advanced” culture.
If this is true, that we are more advanced in some ways and other
cultures more advanced than others, then it opens up the possibility
that we may run into aliens whose technology is higher than ours
but that the aliens might be ignorant of important aspects of learning
(important from our point of view) and vice versa.
82
The Society Timescale

Problem
The stars in our galaxy, and the planets that
Given the orbit them, have a wide range of ages. Some
varying ages of are younger than ours, others make our sun
star systems, and seem like a newborn in comparison.
the relatively
On our planet, we know that life appeared
short timeline just about as soon as the planet was capable
for developing of supporting it. Intelligent life did not
intelligent life, evolve right away, but on the timescale
any alien species of planets or solar systems it was fairly
we meet is likely quick. Once intelligent life evolved our
to be much older technological progress has been rapid
than ourselves. from any scale. We have never seen the
technology level stay stable and have
generally only seen the rate of progress increase. Humans have been
around for about 200,000 years, and it seems likely that in the next
200,000 years we will have either destroyed ourselves, spread out into
the galaxy or become something so different from modern humans that
our future actions and motivations would be incomprehensible to us
today.
Inasmuch as we can generalize from what has happened on our planet to
other planets, it presents a major problem
with our prospects for meeting another 13.6 billion years ago:
civilization. The chances are extremely Oldest known star in
small that we would ever meet another our galaxy
civilization at approximately the same age 4.6 billion years ago:
and level of development as our own. For
Earth forms
any given planet capable of supporting
intelligent life, we are most likely living in 4 billion years ago:
a time before that life has come into being Life on Earth
or living many eons after the appearance of
12 million years ago:
that life form.
Au Microscopium, a
To put it another way: since humans are nearby young star,
only babies for one or two years, but live forms.
much longer than that, if you are a baby
200,000 years
and you meet another random human it is
unlikely that they will also be a baby.
ago: Anatomically
modern humans.
Since any alien we meet is likely to be 7.5 billion years
from a civilization much older than ours,
from now: Earth
trying to think of what aliens might be like
involves asking what tends to happen to
will be destroyed by
societies much older than ours. expanding sun.
continued next page
83

The Society Timescale

Problem (continued)
Do societies tend to destroy themselves? Evidence for this is that it
only took 200,000 years for humans to build a nuclear arsenal capable
of more-or-less wiping out the species. It may be that at some point in
the future someone will create something in a garage with even more
destructive power (see, for instance, grey goo, p.78). If this is the case,
then we may be much more likely to run into the remnants of extinct
alien societies than we are to run into living aliens.
Do societies tend to spread from their planets of origin to multiple other
planets, perhaps fragmenting from one society to a number of different
societies with different fates? If this is the case, then our first alien
contact is likely to be with alien colonists looking to expand to another
habitable planet.
Or do societies keep advancing, culturally, scientifically and/or
technologically? Is there an upper limit to possible advancement and, if
so, how far above our current level will this upper limit be? If progress is
generally as fast as ours, and if we are not anywhere near the upper level
for progress, then it means that any aliens we meet are most likely to be
god-like compared to us.
Simulated Worlds
Aliens may have enough computer power that they
Aliens might can simulate things as complex as people. For these
be able to run aliens, a good way to understand some alien species
may be to grab a data sample (e.g. via some small
simulations probe), extrapolate that data and then run it through
with simulated a simulation to see how it works and how it reacts to
humans who various stimuli. The aliens may run their simulated
humans through different scenarios to judge
believe they whether humans are safe to interact with or whether
are real, may they deserve aid. If an alien could gain access to the
use this to try contents of a human brain (which may or may not
involve taking that human apart cell by cell) the alien
to understand might be able to build a world based on that human’s
us. memories, populated with semi-sentient or pseudo-
sentient characters from that person’s life.
A person inside a simulation might be self-conscious and might believe (at least at
first) that he or she is the original person (rather than a simulation of that person).
(In fact, whether this is a real instance of the original person or not is a matter for
philosophical debate.) The simulated person or people may think they are at home
or that they are in the field trying to make contact with alien life when they are
actually just bits inside a computer (or inside the brain of some super-intelligent
being). First Contact Team personnel might, for instance, think they are in the
Sahara Desert investigating a crashed object believed to be of extraterrestrial origin
when, in fact, they are inside a computer on some alien planet millions of light
years away and far after the extinction of the human race.
84
Memetic Aliens
Our DNA codes for our biology, and our

Information neural connections code for the contents
based life of that mind. Without that information
may be more we wouldn’t be us, we would be a wet pile
common in the of organic matter. The only difference
galaxy than between “us” and the contents of a
physical life, computer hard drive is that we don’t
yet have the technology to edit and copy
and memes may our data. However, that technology may
be aggressively be coming, at which point we will be
contagious. able to treat ourselves as what we are:
information.
A basic principle of the universe is that the things we tend to see when
we look around us are the things that are good at reproducing. When
we see animals, we rarely see the animals that reproduce seldom
and only under special conditions, we mostly see the animals that
reproduce often and under a wide variety of conditions. When we look
at religions, most of what we see are the religions that aggressively
proselytize, not the religions that put no priority on gaining new
members. When we look on computers, we are most likely to see the
malware that is good at spreading itself. Thus, when we sample the
intelligent life in space, we will be most likely to find those civilizations
that aggressively spread themselves throughout the galaxy, finding and
colonizing new planets, then spreading out to find more new planets, as
quickly as possible.
Unless there ends up being a technology that can give one cheap, fast
interstellar travel (and nothing we have seen of physics tells us to
expect such technology), broadcasting information through the galaxy
is always going to be faster and cheaper than broadcasting living
physical beings through the galaxy. (Since “broadcast” originally
referred to the way one spread seeds, casting them out in a broad
fashion, the word works in either case.)
Since Richard Dawkin’s Selfish Gene in 1976, people have discussed
whether cultural ideas propagate through the human population in
the same way that viruses do through living beings (as “memes”). The
main argument against memes is that the nature of human language
and thought is such that one cannot replicate an idea exactly across
minds. Unlike the genetic code of living thing and viruses, which are
copied exactly (except for mutations) all ideas that are spread are
approximate copies of their originals. (See p.109 for more on these
limits to our ability to communicate ideas.)
continued next page
85

Memetic Aliens
(continued)
However, if civilizations develop mind editing (see p.79), it may
be possible for memes that are more like viruses (or like computer
viruses) to spread throughout a species, and perhaps even to hop
species. An alien species might even “gift” us with the technological
prerequisites for mind editing as a pretext for trying to spread their
memes to us.
Viruses are plentiful, which is why humans have very sophisticated
immune systems, and computer viruses are plentiful, which is why
most every computer has antivirus software on it. If interspecies,
interplanetary memes are common in the galaxy, then we may find
that mature alien civilizations devote sophisticated resources to
firewalling their members against alien memes. A First Contact Team
member trying to describe his or her religion to an alien might set off
an automated defense system.
This is not to say that these meme-paranoid civilizations are
themselves free from memes. Many of the microorganisms that we
share our bodies with as symbiotes may have once been alien invaders.
Geneticists believe that a significant portion of our DNA came to us
originally from viruses. Memes may make up a large portion of an
alien’s cognition, now tamed and made useful, even while wild memes
are defended against.
Avoiding the “We Built the

Pyramids” Cliché
The cliché that aliens built the pyramids (or any other
impressive structure outside of western history) came from the
fact that, when Europeans came, saw the pyramids and thought
they were cool, they thought “I only see brown people, I wonder
who actually built these things?” This trops born of racism is
probably better off being allowed to die.
86
Step Three:
What Brought Us Together?
Now that you’ve designed the alien life form, and decided on its technology, decide
what circumstances caused us to come into contact with them.
Motivations
Many drives Curiosity
might have Perhaps the alien or aliens are exploring the universe
brought aliens just to see what’s out there. This might be part of
to this planet, an organized program of scientific study, or an
idle response to boredom. They might be here to
or they might observe us, and don’t intend to be seen by humans
have come here (or don’t care whether or not they are observed by
by accident humans). They might be here to trade knowledge,
technology and culture with us.
Benevolence
Perhaps the aliens feel compassion for other intelligent beings and have decided to
help as many as they can. Their idea of helping us might be to share their technology
with us, or give us resources that we need. Less forutnately, their idea of helping us
might be to engineer us to be more like them, or turn us from a species of individuals
into a hive mind, or take over the planet and run things for us (since we’re obviously
incapable of doing it ourselves). See the history of European colonialism for more
instances of “help” that may be unwelcome.
Propagation
Many species have an instinct or drive to propagate themselves and that may
manifest itself as a desire to find new planets (or whatever it is they live on/in) to
settle on. If they are interested in propagation on Earth, the question is whether
they can coexist peacefully with humans here or not.
Desire For Physical Resources

They may be here looking for resources to send back home. This brings up some
thorny scientific issues. Any form of space travel we can envision uses huge
amounts of energy. If they want to eat our crops, for instance, they would be much
better served if they put the same amount of energy into agriculture at home. If
they want a certain element (e.g. gold), it’s likely that the technology that would
let them cross interstellar distances would give them easier ways to find or make
that element in their own solar systems. However, there are two circumstances in
which aliens may show up looking for resources:
87

The first circumstance would be if there is a cheap (in terms of energy cost) way to
move large amount of matter between stars. Aliens with this tech might engage in
interstellar trading, mining or theft. Imagine, for instance, that aliens could send a
tiny seed to this planet, and this seed could somehow take over the planet and force
us to use half our resources shooting the other half of our resources into space to
enrich the seed’s home planet.
The second circumstance would be if aliens don’t have a home planet to send
things back to, if they are, instead, interstellar nomads who go from planet to planet,
robbing them of resources before being forced to move on to the next resource-
rich planet.
In any case, the important question is whether we are willing to give up the desired
resource and whether the aliens care what we are or are not willing to do.
Earth as Base
Aliens may wish to use our planet as the base of operation for some project. This
could be accomplished either by populating earth with aliens or robots that will
do the work, or by inducing humans into doing the work. (Inducing could mean
anything from asking us nicely, to paying us, to taking over Earth and enslaving us,
to rewriting our DNA to make us want to do said project). One project that might
be worthy of such effort would be a dyson sphere (p.77).
Accident
The aliens might not have chosen to come here at all. They may have been on their
way to somewhere else when some malfunction or other emergency forced them
to stop here. Perhaps they came here after fleeing their planet when it was made
uninhabitable. Perhaps some other alien species kidnapped them and placed
them here for some unknown purpose (an experiment? a punishment? a joke?).
Perhaps, if the aliens are hearty enough to survive such a thing, some explosion
flung rocks bearing the species (perhaps as spores, eggs, larvae, etc) into space, and
after countless millennia one happened to land on earth. The next question is: now
that they are here, what do they want? Do they just want to get home (if they have a
home to get back to) or are they perfectly happy making Earth their new home and
carrying on with their lives?
Malevolence
Aliens might be here specifically to hurt us. Perhaps they see the existence of
other intelligent species as a threat and they intend to kill us before we reach a
high enough level of technology to come attack them. Perhaps their instincts or
philosophy or religion or aesthetic sense compels them to destroy other life forms.
Perhaps they’ve seen that we’ve damaged the Earth ecosystem, made countless
species go extinct, and they are here it protect the other species of Earth by wiping
us out. Perhaps they want to make the Earth or its ecosystem “better” and they don’t
know or don’t care that their means of doing so involved killing us.
88
Spaceships
Perhaps, when we meet aliens, they will come in
Alien spaceships as we have designed them: containers,
conveyances made of metals and plastics, that hold space explorers
might not (and all the food, water and air they need to survive
resemble the journey) and that have some form of propulsion
spaceships as that moves the vessel through space. There are many
we know them. other ways, however, that a spaceship might look:
Brick
The space ship might be a small “brick” of solid technology. It has no propulsion,
because it has been hurled through space at high speed. Perhaps it has ablative
shielding designed to burn off as it enters an atmosphere, or perhaps it is so tough
that it can survive atmospheric friction and the impact of hitting the ground. It has
no internal compartment for full sized passengers. Perhaps it is a computer and
it is the intelligence that will communicate with humans, or perhaps it releases
spores or seeds that will grow into the beings meant to explore and communicate.
Terrarium
The space ship might be a clear vessel filled with air and/or water and an entire
ecosystem. The life forms inside are efficient enough to absorb starlight as the
vessel passes between solar systems or maybe the life forms hibernate when they
are not near a sun. The intelligent passengers are just one piece of the ecosystem
within.
Solar Sail
The space ship might have an incredibly huge, incredibly thin tissue that light
bounces off of. The vessel is propelled by light beams shot from the vessel’s solar
system of origin. Although the vessel may be massive in size (miles, or hundreds of
miles, or thousand of miles across), the payload may be fairly small.
Living Being
The space ship has been engineered to be capable of surviving in the vacuum
of space, and can travel long distances without taking in nutrition. Whatever
propels the being is part of its biology. It may be engineered to have an internal
compartment that can support the needs of passengers, who are the ships explorers
or emissaries. Or the ship itself may be the intelligent being and has no need of, nor
space for, passengers.
Robot
As above, but technological rather than biological.
89

Celestial Body
This is an asteroid, a meteor or even a planet that has been turned into a spaceship.
Living spaces have been build on or in it and it has either been fitted out with a
propulsion system or has been flung through space at great speeds.
Generation Ship
The vessel might be one of the types discussed above (a metal vehicle, a living being,
a star sail, a hollowed out celestial body) but big enough to contain an entire self-
sustaining civilization. Presumably, the vessel would have a practically unlimited
power supply. Inasmuch as the alien species has need for farms, hospitals,
nurseries, schools, prisons, factories, research centers, government offices, etc. to
sustain their civilization, these would all be included in the vessel. Every resource
(including the bodies of dead aliens) would be recycled. Thus, the vessel would
be capable of sustaining life and civilization for voyages or practically unlimited
length.
Not a Ship
Or, aliens might not come in spaceships. As discussed earlier (p.68) they might
come to us as pure information, broadcast from an alien world. Or aliens might be
able to open up wormholes or similar rifts in space, to walk (or crawl, float, etc.) from
their world to ours without need of a vessel. Or the aliens might not travel between
worlds through space but between parallel universes or from other dimensions.
Step Four:
Where Does First Contact Take Place?
If humans are physically encountering aliens or alien artifacts, the next question is:
where? Did aliens land in front of the United Nations building in New York, or did
they crash land on the dark side of the moon? Some major possibilities include:
Earth’s Surface
Friendly Human Inhabited Areas
If aliens are here to make contact with Earth’s intelligent life, and if they are enough
like us to recognize human-built structures as signs of intelligent life, then they
would likely land in a city. If they are choosing a city by its size they would probably
land in a sprawling African mega-city. If they are choosing a city based on the
grandness of its structures then they are likely to land in Dubai, New York City,
Tokyo or Hong Kong. The benefit to the team in this situation is that they can have
any resource they want close by. The downside is that it may be difficult to keep
unwanted people (alien obsessed kooks, reporters, spies from enemy nations) away.
90
The Problem with the Speed of

Light
As far as modern physicists have been able to
There is no determine, the speed of light is a hard limit to
the speed that ordinary matter can travel. As
known way to one approaches the speed of light, the amount
travel faster of energy needed to accelerate to even faster
than the speed speeds increases exponentially, with the
amount of energy needed to reach the speed of
of light. One can light being infinite.
cross interstellar
Travel to other solar systems within human
distances within lifetimes is possible at close to the speed of
human lifetimes light, but even that has problems. One is time
at near light dilation: the difference between the amount of
time that passes for a traveler at near-light-
speeds, but there speeds compared to how much time passes
are problems with for everyone else. For instance, at 99% of
time dilation, speed of light it would take about 4 years, as
the passage of time is measured on Earth, to
massive fuel needs get to Alpha Centauri (our closest neighboring
and collision with sun). For the people on the ship, however, it
particles. would only seem to take about 7 months. This
is good for the travelers (they need to pack
less food) but over long voyages it becomes
increasingly unlikely that one’s loved ones will still be alive by the time one
gets back home.
Another problem with reaching near-light-speeds is fuel. Conventional
propulsion methods have diminishing returns, because the space ship must
contain enough fuel to push both the spaceship and its fuel. The heavier you
are, and the faster you want to go, the more fuel you need, but adding more
fuel just makes you heavier. For modern spacecraft the actual payload is
about 1% of the take-off weight of the craft, with the rest of the weight being
fuel and tanks to hold the fuel. Even this massive amount of fuel (about
2.5 million pounds) is only enough fuel to reach about 0.005 percent of the
speed of light. With the most weight-efficient fuel that we know how to use
(liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen) there is not enough fuel in the whole
universe to get a conventional rocket to even half the speed of light. Nuclear
or antimatter fuels may be considerably more efficient. Another solution is
to propel the spacecraft from outside the spacecraft, e.g. via a laser array in
orbit that pushes against a light sail (p.89).
Another problem with traveling at near-light-speeds is collision with
particles (e.g. photons, hydrogen atoms) that exist in the vacuum of space.
At lower speeds, these collisions would be so infrequent as to have negligible
effect, but at even half the speed of light the radiation from these repeated
impacts would be greater than we are currently capable of shielding against,
and the drag from the impacts would serve to decelerate the ship.
Rather than accelerating a vehicle through normal space, the solution to
quick interstellar travel may be to move at conventional speeds but take
advantage of warped spacetime. This could be achieved by traveling through
wormholes or by creating some sort of drive that contracts space in the
direction of travel. Such methods are purely theoretical.
91

Enemy Territory
If aliens land in the territory of a nation that has signed the first contact treaties, then
access is not a problem (at least not from a legal or diplomatic viewpoint). What
if aliens land in a nation that has poor relations with the international community,
such as Iran? The First Contact Team treaty nations may decide it would be
preferable to go to war against this hostile nation than to allow it to monopolize
alien contact. Finding itself in a war zone may damage an alien’s impression of
humanity. Or, if the hostile nation is not aware of the alien’s landing, but the First
Contact Team treaty nations are, then first contact may take the form of a covert
mission on hostile soil.
Rural Areas
Aliens might see cultivated farmland (as well as highways as canals) as the best
evidence of intelligent life and may land on some farm.
Remote Areas
Most of Earth’s landmass is not inhabited. Aliens that land in a random spot on land
are likely to end up far from human civilization. If people don’t live in a place it is
probably because it is not an easy place to live: deserts, swamps, dense jungles, tiny
remote islands, mountains, arctic tundra, etc. All of these create challenges for First
Contact Team members. How do team members get there? How do they transport
the scientific gear they need to make contact as well as the survival gear they will
need to stay alive? Some environments put time constraints on the team, such as
an ice sheet that will melt as soon as warmer weather approaches.
Underground
If aliens came to Earth long ago and are only now being discovered, they may be
encountered at some excavation site (archaeological, a quarry, a building site) or
perhaps even deeper (a mine, cave or deep tunnel excavation site). Far underground
contact sites can be as hard to reach and as isolating as being deep in a jungle or on
the side of a mountain.
Underwater
Most of the Earth is covered with water. If aliens
In shallow water: crash at a random spot on the planet, they are likely
caissons or diving. to crash in the water. Or perhaps the aliens are
At deeper levels, aquatic and landed in the ocean on purpose.
habitats/diving
platforms. Diving At fairly shallow depths (e.g. a lakebed) diving down
has many dangers. from a research vessel may be appropriate, or team
Deep underwater: members may want to use a caisson: an airtight
metal box with an open bottom that is lowered to the
submarines or bottom. Caissons are typically used in construction
unmanned probes. to allow workers access to lakebeds and riverbeds.
92
At greater depths, deep enough that it is not practical to be constantly going to

and from the surface, the First Contact Team nations may opt to lower down
an underwater habitat. The habitat would be a place where First Contact Team
members do lab work (in very cramped labs), eat, sleep and make dives from.
Any scenario that includes diving has dangers. In SCUBA diving, even very small
mistakes or equipment failures can be deadly. Dangers to divers include:
• Hypothermia.
• Blacking out.
• Becoming lost or trapped.
• The bends (bubbles that appear in the bloodstream during a quick
ascent, which can cripple, cause agonizing pain, and even kill).
• Hypoxia (not enough oxygen, which can cause confusion, drowsiness
and unconscious).
• Nitrogen narcosis (absorption of gases under high pressure causing
confusion, hallucinations, euphoria, numbness, sensory distortions,
giddiness and impaired judgment).
Most of these dangers can be eliminated with proper equipment, training and strict
adherence to safety procedures, although nitrogen narcosis is always a danger on
any deep dive.
Working underwater can be difficult. Visibility can be poor, due to algae or

sediment. Tides and shifting underwater currents mean that an item of interest
can quickly become buried under sediment. Dredging machines may be needed
to clear sediment.
The deepest that humans can currently dive to is about 1,000 feet. However, the
average depth of Earth oceans is about 12,000 feet. Currently, the only way for
humans to reach these depths is with special deep-water submersibles vehicles.
Any interaction with aliens at this depth would be through robotic arms, underwater
cameras, microphones, speakers, lights, etc. The other option is to send down
remotely-controlled, unmanned vehicles.
Space
Earth Orbit
Aliens may “park” their spaceships in orbit around Earth. This may because the
ships can’t handle the heat of entry into our atmosphere, or are not designed to
escape from Earth’s gravity well.
There are many Earth orbits (up to and including the orbit occupied by the
moon). Low earth orbit (100 to 1,240 miles above the surface, or 120-2,000 km.)
is relatively easy to get to using conventional technology. This is the level that the
International Space Station orbits at. Typically, a shuttle would be flown up to that
orbit, maneuvering thrusters used to move alongside the alien vehicle, and team
members in spacesuits would approach, and attempt entry into, the alien vessel.
93

Medium Earth Orbits (1,240 to 22,236 miles or 2,000-36,000 km.) and High Earth
Orbits (above 22,236 miles or 36,000 km.) are significantly harder to get to, in that
they require more fuel and longer travel times. Except during lunar missions,
humans have not traveled to these orbits (although there have been unmanned
satellites in these orbits for some time).
One problem might be matching the orbit of the alien object in order to stay with
it. This might be dangerous if the object is in a decaying or a highly eccentric orbit.
Winter-Over Syndrome
Researchers at antarctic bases who choose

PCs confined to stay in those bases over the winter often
in cramped suffer from psychological symptoms. This
quarters should syndrome is the best known analogue
make saves vs. to what First Contact Team members
psychological stuck in a habitat underwater, in space,
symptoms of on the moon or on another planet might
experience.
WIL vs. number
of weeks The syndrome is caused by a lack of
confined. privacy, an absence of one’s familiar
comforts, confinement, a lack of variation
of sensory stimuli, a lack of variation of the people one socializes with,
stress, sleep deprivation and changing sleep schedules.
PCs should make weekly WIL rolls vs. winter-over syndrome, with
the difficulty equal to the number of weeks in confinement. Each
successful save prevents the syndrome, or reduces it (if the PC is
already suffering symptoms). Each failure adds one level of symptoms.
Symptoms stack for each level of the disease:
• Irritability (-1 to save vs. anger).
• Impaired Cognition (-1 INL, -1 AWR)
• Depression (must make 1 difficulty WIL rolls to motivate
oneself to do any activity other than those required to live).
• Physiological stress (-1 END).
Regular communication with family members if the biggest factor in
preventing winter-over syndrome: Give +1 to the roll for each week the
PC has had regular communication with his or her family.
94
Space Sickness
When exposed to microgravity (the

END vs. 3 in negligible gravity one experiences in
microgravity. orbit or when traveling between celestial
Failure means bodies), PCs should make 3 difficulty END
-2 to all AVs and rolls (the space Skill and Low-G specialty
can be added to this roll) to avoid being
hourly rolls vs. hampered by the following symptoms:
vomiting. Long- • Dizziness
term microgravity
• Headache
can cause loss of
attributes. • Fluid swelling in head (including
face and sinuses)
Altogether these symptoms give a -2 to all voluntary AVs.
In addition, PCs must make rolls vs. vomiting (WIL vs. 1 difficulty)
hourly.
The symptoms of space sickness usually go away in about 8 hours, as
the PCs’ bodies adapt. Pharmaceuticals (anti-nauseants, pain killers,
vasoconstrictors, anti-vertigo drugs) can, if prescribed skillfully,
reduce the penalty to only -1.
Long-term microgravity effects have not been adequately studied, but
may affect PCs on long trips (e.g. to Mars). They include atrophy of
muscles (including the heart), of bones, bone marrow and the immune
system. Expect roughly -1 STH, -1 END, -1 Hit Points, -1 to save vs.
disease for each month in microgravity. Regular exercise might be able
to reduce or delay this damage, but the extend of this is unknown.
After acclimation to microgravity, PCs who return to normal gravity
find themselves very clumsy (-2 to AGY rolls) for the first 24 hours.
Environmental Dangers in Space

The presence of an atmosphere, as well as a magnetic
Vacuum, small belt, protects us from much of the hazardous nature
meteorites of our solar system. PCs in space, on a celestial
and radiation body with no atmosphere (e.g. the moon) or very
(especially little atmosphere (e.g. Mars) have to deal with these
during Solar dangers.
Particle Events) Vacuum: Exposure to the vacuum of space is, of
can injure or kill. course, deadly. Human can stay conscious for about
15 second and might be able to be saved if returned
to atmosphere within 90 seconds. The main causes
95

of damage are a possible rupture of the lungs (as air in them expands), loss of
oxygen (mostly through the lungs) and the formation of bubbles in the bloodstream
as water begins to turn to vapor. People in a vacuum will swell up like a balloon and
freeze, but this happens long after they are dead.
Micrometeorites: Micrometeorites are also a problem. They travel at such high

speeds that even a very small (e.g. 1 gram) meteorite can do significant damage (e.g.
puncturing a space suit). Fortunately, these are rare enough that the chances of
an astronaut getting hit by a meteorite this size are too small to worry about. The
chances of a much bigger target (e.g. a space station) being hit are greater. A more
common problem, though, is microscopic meteorites causing microscopic pitting,
slowly degrading any surface exposed to space.
Cosmic Radiation: Galactic Cosmic Radiation is a steady stream of radioactive

particles found throughout the galaxy. These particles are difficult to shield against.
Although the radiation is not strong enough to have noticeable effects during a
short duration trip (such as those we have undertaken so far), they are a major
problem if humans ever wish to establish long term habitation in space or on the
moon.
Solar Particle Events: The biggest danger to short-term space travelers is SPEs
(Solar Particle Events). These are storms of particles expelled by the sun during
solar flares. The particles include protons, helium atoms and a few heavier ions,
traveling at speeds of more than 1,000 mph.
Most SPEs happen during cyclical periods of increased solar activity. These can be
avoided by choosing not to go into space during these times. However, SPEs can
(very rarely) happen even during the sun’s quiet periods. The only warning PCs may
get is a burst of optical, radio and x-ray activity from the sun. Since these travel at
the speed of light, they will reach PCs before the particles do, giving about 1 hour’s
warning at Earth-like distances from the sun. SPEs reach peak power (and thus
peak damage) in about 4-6 hours and can last multiple days.
SPEs can make insufficiently shielded electronics act unpredictably or burn them
out altogether. Astronauts may see streaks or flashes of light as particles hit their
retinas.
During an SPE, humans should ideally seek or create a shelter. A spaceship designed
for long term voyages (e.g. to Mars) would have some sort of armored “storm cellar”
for astronauts to retreat to during an SPE. On the moon (or any rocky planet),
astronauts might make a shelter covered with a layer of regolith to protect them.
A person who is out and about during an SPE could get enough radiation in 6-15
hours (depending on the strength of the event) to cause a significant increase in the
likelihood of tumors and cancer, as well as graying of hair.
Short-term symptoms may start in as little of two hours worth of exposure. The
speed that symptoms appear and their severity depend on the magnitude of the
event, how shielded the astronauts are (a typical spaceship being better than a
space suit) and how close to the sun the astronauts are.
96
The first symptom to appear will be vomiting, which can be deadly within the
confines of a space suit. PCs should roll every hour with increasing difficulties.
Next comes weakness (-1 STH, -1 END), diarrhea, confusion (-1 INL) and immune
system suppression (-2 to rolls vs. disease).
At levels experienced at Earth-like distances from the sun, SPEs are unlikely to kill
(except for the aforementioned vomiting problem). Most symptoms will go away
within about 24 hours after the PC’s exposure to radiation stops, except for the
immune system suppression which will last about a month.
Solar Orbit
Rather than orbiting Earth, an alien spaceship may be in orbit around the sun. If
near Earth, the ship would likely occupy one of the Lagrangian points (gravitationally
balanced points in the Earth-sun system) to avoid being pulled in by Earth’s gravity.
A ship in solar orbit might be as close as 1.5 million kilometers from us (our closest
Lagrangian points) or more than 7.5 billion kilometers from us (the distance to Pluto
when it is farthest from us).
The planets and other bodies in our solar system share roughly the same orbital
plane. An alien ship, however, might orbit on a completely different orbital plane.
One might try to reach a ship
while it intersects with our orbital
plane. Approaching it otherwise
would require quite a lot more fuel
(because of the additional energy
needed to change to a completely
different orbital plane).
Depending on how the alien ship’s

orbit coincides with Earth’s, there
might be only a limited time when it
is within reasonable distance from
us. PCs might have to rendezvous
with the ship when it is near Earth. The PCs would then have two choices: leave
again quickly before it gets too far away, or stay with the ship for an entire orbit
around the sun. An orbit around the sun might be as fast as 88 days (Mercury) or
as long as 248 years (Pluto).
The Moon
Our moon is 238,900 miles away, a trip of about 3 days using conventional rockets.
The Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, meaning the same side always faces us.
The “dark side” is the side facing away from the Earth, but it gets the same amount
of direct sun as the near side. The lunar days and nights are 14 days each. At the
lunar equator the surface temperatures can reach a high of 242 °F (116 °C) during
lunar day and low of -657 °F (-383 ° C) at night.
97

Space Suits
The typical space suit (aka an “Extra

Multi-layered suits Vehicular Activity Suit”), with life support
with life support system, weighs about 300 lbs. or 140 kg.
systems in heavy in Earth gravity. The suit is made up of
multiple layers. A sophisticated cooling
backpacks. In system gathers heat and sublimates it
a vacuum, act into space to keep the astronaut from
like over-inflated overheating. An adjustable visor can
balloons. 8 hour life protect the astronaut from being blinded
support with 1 hour by the sun. The suits also contain drinking
water, facilities to store urine and a built-in
backup systems. radio.
Space suit designers have typically had trouble with hip joints. Stiff hip
joints on the Apollo (moon) mission space suits led astronauts to use a
kangaroo hop.
A big problem with every space suit is that it is pressurized with air
inside, which means that when worn in a vacuum (or on a planet
like Mars with a very thin atmosphere) the space suit acts like a
highly inflated balloon. The effects of internal air pressure are most
problematic in the gloves, since it takes quite a lot of force to close one’s
fingers to grip an object. Astronauts can get cuts, blisters and even torn
fingernails from using their gloves, not to mention tired muscles. High
internal pressure also increases the likelihood of leaks. PCs in space
suits should face penalties to AWR rolls and should make END rolls vs.
exhaustion because of the balloon problem.
A typical approach to lessen (but not eliminate) the balloon problem is to
use less pressure (but a higher concentration of oxygen) in the suit. This
air mix, however, cannot be used inside a spaceship or landing capsule,
because the extra oxygen would increase fire risk to unacceptable levels.
This means astronauts have to go from higher pressure to lower pressure
when leaving their vehicle in a space suit. Astronauts typically pre-
breathe oxygen to avoid getting the bends before entering their suits.
Several factors limit the amount of time one can use a space suit: amount
of oxygen, amount of sublimation material and battery life. These
systems are found in the suit’s bulky backpack. Wearers have gauges
that show the levels of all of these systems. These systems typically are
provisioned for about 8 hours of use. There are backup systems in case
of failure of the main systems, but the backups only last an hour or so.
Astronauts doing spacewalks can use an extra-vehicular mobility unit, a
sort of chair with thrusters in it for moving around outside the spaceship
without a tether. On a moon or planet, wheeled vehicles (e.g. moon
rovers) can help astronauts move around.
98
Today’s Moon has no volcanism (there is no lava inside). It does experience

moonquakes (caused by tidal forces) but they are smaller in intensity than those
on Earth.
Gravity on the Moon is about one sixth that on Earth.
Lunar Geography
Like Earth, the Moon has an equator and a North and South pole. The equator is
the easiest part of the moon to get to from the Earth and the easiest to get back
from. The latitude of a landing site controls how often the site lines up for a return
flight to Earth. The longest anyone has stayed on the Moon so far is 75 hours, but a
landing site near the poles would require astronauts to stay 27 days.
All landings so far have been on the near side of the Moon. Thus, the dark side
is much less well mapped. There is no direct way to communicate with Earth
from the dark side of the Moon. A spacecraft in orbit around the Moon could
communicate with astronauts while it is over the dark side and then relay those
communications with Earth while it is over the near side. Other possibilities for
dark side communication include a chain of relay towers on the surface or a radio
relay placed into one of the Lagrangian points in the Earth-Moon system. Lunar
orbits are unstable (thanks to the gravitational pull of the Earth) so communication
satellites could not stay long in orbit around the Moon.
At the poles, the sun is always seen from a steep angle. In deep craters near the
poles the sun may never be seen. If water ice exists on the Moon, these craters are
where it may be found.
99

Generally, the surface of the Moon is made up of highlands and maria. The highlands
are visible from Earth as the lighter parts of the Moon. They have a rougher surface
(more hills and valleys) and have more and older craters. The maria (“mare” if
singular) are what’s left of ancient lava flows. They are darker and flatter. Because
the surfaces of the maria are newer (on a lunar geological timescale) their craters
are from more recent meteor strikes. The maria are the most explored parts of the
Moon because their relatively smooth surfaces make them easier to navigate.
Surface Conditions
Standing on the surface of the Moon, the horizon appears unusually close and
sharp.
The sun shines very brightly on the Moon, but the stars are visible in the sky even
during lunar day. On the near side, the Earth is always visible in the sky and is bright
and large enough that, even during lunar night, one can see well enough to move
around.
As there is no atmosphere to diffuse the light, being on the Moon is like being in a
room lit by a single bare bulb: some surfaces are lit very brightly, but all shadows
are deep and dark (especially on the dark side, which has no Earthshine).
The surface is mostly covered in a fine grey dust (this dust is slightly darker in the
maria). Every footfall raises clouds of dust. There are occasional rocks and even
large boulders. The surface of the Moon tends to be a series of gentle peaks and
valleys, like a sand dune. When in the valleys, one can’t see very far ahead. Because
of this limited visibility, and because the surface can be fairly monotonous with few
landmarks, it is very easy to get lost on the Moon.
The lunar surface is pockmarked with craters of various sizes. Smaller craters
are roughly bowl shaped. Larger craters (those with more than 10 km. or 6 mile
diameters) have more complicated shapes, including central peaks, concentric
rings of hills, and terraced or crenelated walls around the edges of the craters.
Lunar bedrock may be visible at the bottom of some deep craters.
There may be lava tubes (long underground caves caused by ancient volcanic
activity) on the moon, but none have been discovered yet.
The lower gravity means that anything dropped seems to fall in slow motion. The
lunar dust and ungainly spacesuits cause astronauts fall quite often, but the low
gravity means they can easily catch themselves and push themselves back up to
a standing position. The lower gravity also makes walking (even wearing bulky
spacesuits) easier. Astronauts tend to adopt a loping gait. As movement is less
taxing, astronauts can keep up sustained overland speeds of up to 4.5 mph (7 km/h).
Radio waves penetrate the lunar regolith fairly easily, so communication among
astronauts on the Moon does not require line-of-sight. Communication with Earth
(from the light side) means a 2.6 second delay. This is the round trip for radio waves
between the Earth and the Moon.
Since lunar dust sticks to spacesuits (via static cling), astronauts should brush
themselves off thoroughly before re-entering their landing vehicle. Even then,
some abrasive dust will get into the vehicle, where it can cause problems with the
vehicle’s electronics and moving parts.
100
Long Term Moon Habitation
If First Contact Team members are sent

A long term to the Moon for a short stay (e.g. 1-5
stay would days), the strategy is likely to be that of
require creating the Apollo Moon landings: a craft stays
a habitat, e.g. in orbit, a lander brings some astronauts
a half-buried to the Moon. These astronauts use the
lander as their home base, then they use
inflatable, and
it to blast off from the moon’s surface
gathering water and reunite with the orbiter.
and oxygen.
If First Contact Team members are going
to be on the moon much longer, however, they will need to set up
some sort of habitat. Many engineering problems need to be solved
before this can happen, but it will probably look something like this:
Astronauts land in a lander along with a piece of multi-purpose

construction equipment and some heavy-duty inflatables. They
use the construction equipment to dig a trench and then inflate
the habitat inside the trench. A thick layer of regolith (lunar soil)
is then dumped on top as radiation protection. The habitat is
connected to solar cells for gathering energy (along with a system
for storing that energy during the 14 day lunar night) and to a
system of radiators for radiating excess heat into space. A landing
pad would be set up nearby for resupply drops.
If they are lucky, the team might be able to find an old lava tube that
could be sealed and used as a habitat instead of a buried inflatable.
As the operation expands and more buildings are built, the lunar
homesteaders may use lunar regolith (with some added ingredients
from Earth) to create lunar concrete. Lunar regolith is about 40%
oxygen and the homesteaders may create a plant which heats the
regolith to get out the oxygen, and thus reduce dependence on
resupplies from Earth. If the habitation site is near one of the poles,
there may be expeditions to find and retrieve ice from deep craters
(ice left over from ancient comet crashes) to provide water for the
habitat.
A lunar habitat would require a lot of maintenance. Lunar dust

gets into everything and is very abrasive. Ultraviolet light and
microscopic meteorites degrade manmade materials, especially
solar cells.
101

What Humans Like
Gravity: Humans prefer close to 1 G

Humans (Earth’s gravity). In microgravity (0.01 G
or less) humans suffer from space sickness
require a very and from negative long-term effects (see
narrow range p.95). Higher Gs may be encountered on a
planet with more mass, or in a vehicle that
of conditions is accelerating with a lot of force. Typical
space rockets subject astronauts to 3 Gs
to survive. for a few minutes. Starting at about 4 Gs,
humans have vision problems: first loss of
color vision, then tunnel vision and then complete blindness. Humans
will go unconscious somewhere between 4 and 6 Gs. Humans can
survive 9 Gs for only a few seconds at a time.
See p.95 for more of the effects of microgravity.
Pressure: Humans prefer 99.9 to 102.7 kPa of pressure. One
“atmosphere,” the average pressure on Earth at sea level, is 101.3 kpa.
Lower pressures than this cause swelling of tissues, resulting in sinus
headaches and stiff, painful joints. Rapid decreases in pressure can
cause the bends (p.106). Humans can survive pressures as low as 0.29
atmospheres, but only so long as the concentration of oxygen in their
breathing mix is increased.
Higher pressures cause oxygen and nitrogen in the breathing mix to
be absorbed into the bloodstream at levels higher than the body is able
to handle. Using an Earth-normal breathing mix, nitrogen toxicity
can start at about 2.4 atmospheres and oxygen toxicity at about 5.14
atmospheres.
Higher pressures can be survived if one changes one’s breathing mix,
reducing nitrogen and oxygen and replacing them with a gas like
helium or hydrogen. The highest pressure any human has survived
using these special breathing mixtures is about 32 atmospheres. There
have been experiments with highly oxygenated breathing liquids, but
so far none have been able to provide enough oxygen at the rate the
liquid can be safely pushed into the lungs.
See p.93 and p.104 for more on nitrogen and oxygen toxicity.
Oxygen: The percent of oxygen humans prefer in their atmospheres
is dependent on the atmospheric pressure. As seen above, an ideal
oxygen percentage at normal sea-level pressure can be toxic at higher
pressures. An O2 pressure of 19.5-23.1 kPA is ideal. At 1 atmosphere
of pressure anything less than 19.5% oxygen can cause hypoxia. High
oxygen levels (>21%), at normal pressures, neither hurt nor give any
benefits to healthy individuals.
continued next page
102
What Humans Like

(continued)
Higher oxygen levels do, however, significantly increase the risk of fire.
With more oxygen, fires burn larger and hotter, things catch on fire at
a lower temperature, and things burn that are not normally capable of
self-sustaining-fire. This is especially important in spaceships where
any fire typically ends in death. Despite attempts to reduce flammable
materials inside spaceships, the risk of fire cannot ever be fully
eliminated.
Carbon Dioxide: Humans prefer 0-1% CO2 at 1 atmosphere. Over
time, healthy humans can grow to tolerate up to 4% CO2. More than
1% CO2 causes hyperventilation, especially when exercising. This is
because the body senses CO2 levels in the bloodstream, rather than O2
levels, to determine when breathing is necessary. More than 6% CO2
causes confusion, headaches, lethargy and panic. Higher levels cause
convulsions, unconsciousness and death. Long-term exposures to
heightened CO2 levels makes humans’ blood acidic and causes nervous
system damage.
Humidity: Humans prefer 40-60% humidity in the air (meaning the air
contains 40-60% of the water that would be required for water to start
spontaneously condensing as dew on room-temperature surfaces).
Less than 40% humidity causes dry skin, chapped lips and dry, painful
nasal passages. Being too dry interferes with the respiratory system’s
ability to filter out airborne diseases. Humidity higher than 60% does
not directly harm humans, but it interferes with the body’s ability to
cool itself via perspiration, making warm temperatures much more
dangerous. High humidity also causes mold and mildew to flourish,
which can cause health problems. High humidity also increases the
human ability to smell odors, and can make bad odors seem more
prominent.
Temperature: Humans prefer between 18.3 °C (65 °F) and 23.9 °C (75
°F). Too little heat puts humans in danger of hypothermia (especially
when they are at rest) and also makes limbs (and especially fingers)
stiff and numb. Too much puts humans in danger of heat exhaustion
or heat stroke (especially when exercising, dehydrated or in high
humidity).
Food and Water: Given ideally nutritious food, a person needs around
3.8 pounds of food (about 2,000 to 2,700 calories) a day, more or less
depending on the size of the person and amount of exercise. A person
needs something like a half gallon of water per day (much more if a lot
of moisture is lost as sweat).
Variety: Humans have a psychological need for variety in
environmental stimuli and social stimuli. For the effects of an
environment lacking this variety, see the text box on Winter-Over
Syndrome on p.94.
103

Game Effects of Inhospitable

Environments
Mild Moderate Extreme
-2 to vision rolls, 2 Blindness, 5 difficult save Unconsciousness without save,
High Gravity difficulty save vs. vs. unconsciousness. 2 Hit Point damage per second.
unconsciousness
-1 to all voluntary rolls -2 to all voluntary rolls,

Low Gravity due to swelling in head hourly saves vs. vomiting Same as Moderate
and dizziness. (difficulty 1).
Note: Symptoms begin immediately, last 8 hours. Pharmaceuticals can reduce symptoms.
Low Air Pressure -1 to all voluntary -2 to all voluntary Same as Moderate

activities activities
Note: Pharmaceuticals can reduce symptoms. Low air pressure usually coincides with Lack
of Oxygen (below).
-1 to all voluntary -5 to all voluntary activities,

-4 to all voluntary
Sudden Pressure activities due to joint paralysis of random parts
activities due to pain,
Drops (Bends) pain of the body, 1d6 Hit Point
confusion, weakness.
damage
Note: Symptoms appear in 2 hrs. after ascent, last several days, can be treated with pure
oxygen and re-pressurization.
High Oxygen and -2 to all voluntary -4 to all voluntary Unconsciousness (no save), 1
Nitrogen Pressure activities, 1 Hit Point
damage per hour
activities, 1 Hit Point
damage per 15 minutes Hit Point damage per minute
-4 to all voluntary Unconsciousness within END’s

Lack of Oxygen -2 to all voluntary activities, hourly 1 worth of rounds (no save), 1
activities difficulty saves vs. Hit Point damage per round
unconsciousness thereafter
-4 to all voluntary activities,
Too Much Carbon -1 to all voluntary -2 to all voluntary hourly 1 difficulty saves
Dioxide activities activities, hourly 2 vs. unconsciousness and
difficulty saves vs. panic convulsions, 1 Hit Point
damage per hour.
Arid -1 to save vs.

Environments contraction of airborne Same as Mild Same as Mild
diseases
-4 to all voluntary actions,
-1 to all voluntary -2 to all voluntary actions, additional -2 to use of hands,
Too Cold actions additional -1 to use of hourly 1 difficulty saves vs.
hands unconsciousness, 2 Hit Points
damage per hour
-4 to all voluntary actions,
Too Hot -1 to all voluntary -2 to all voluntary actions hourly 3 difficulty saves vs.
actions unconsciousness, 2 Hit Points
damage per hour
Irritability, -1 END per Irritability, -1 END Irritability, -2 END per week
Not Enough Food month then 1 Hit Point per week then 1 Hit then 2 Hit Point damage per
damage per month Point damage per week week thereafter
thereafter thereafter
-1 to all voluntary -2 to all voluntary actions, -4 to all voluntary actions, -3
Not Enough Water actions, -1 END then
-1 Hit Points per day -2 END then -2 Hit Points END then -3 Hit Points per day
thereafter per day thereafter thereafter
104
Other Planets and Moons

There are only a few planets and moons that humans could conceivably operate
on given our current level of technology. Mercury and Venus are far too hot for
us to survive on with our current tech. The gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and
Neptune) have no solid surfaces to land on and their gravity and the force of their
surface winds would be too great for any aircraft. That leaves the following:
Mars
The problem with visiting Mars is the distance. At its
Cold, dry, closest, Mars is about 46.8 million miles, taking about
small, very 8 months using conventional rocket technology.
far from Mars is small (gravity 38% of Earth’s), cold (high of
Earth, and 75° F or 24° C during the day and lows of -100° F or
may have -73 °C at night), has little atmosphere (about 1% of the
density of Earth’s atmosphere, mostly CO2), has only
once had life. a very weak magnetic field (meaning little protection
from solar winds) and is dry (ice exists at the poles,
liquid water elsewhere on the planet would immediately boil away due to low
pressure). Mars is made mostly of dusty plains, along which massive dust storms
can blow. There are also mountains and valleys that dwarf anything found on Earth.
Although high winds are common, because of the low density of the atmosphere
even very fast winds feel like gentle breezes.
One thing that makes a trip to Mars potentially rewarding is that Mars seems to
have once had life. Mars may even be the source of life on Earth. Asteroid impacts
may have blown Martian rocks containing microorganisms into space, and some
of these may have come to Earth to be the first life forms here. Aliens whose
information about our solar system is 3 billion years out of date may decide to send
an expedition to Mars as the most likely place to meet intelligent life.
Twin Peaks Area of Mars
105

Asteroids and Comets

Another possible place to meet aliens is on an
Comets are icy asteroid or comet. Most asteroids are found in the
and mostly far asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Most comets
from the sun. are found out in the far outer solar system, far from
Asteroids are the sun, but some have orbits that occasionally bring
rocky, mostly them closer to Earth. Asteroids are mostly rocky
between Mars (and some are made of mostly metal) and comets
and Venus, are mostly ice. The largest of asteroids have enough
gravity (up to 3% of Earth’s gravity) that someone
and some have could land a craft and even walk around on the
enough gravity surface. None are big enough to have any significant
to walk on. atmosphere.
Jupiter’s Moons
Although Jupiter is not a good place for first contact
Jupiter has 16 (being a gas giant with no solid surface), its moons
moons, some might be. Jupiter has 16 moons. Most are icy, but
rocky and some three are rocky: Ganymede (the largest moon in the
icy. Io has a solar system), Callisto, which is also very large for a
molten core moon (larger than the planet Mercury), and Io (which
has a molten core, causing active volcanoes to spew
and Europa
sulfurous material onto the surface of the planet).
may have liquid Another moon of interest is Europa. Tidal flexing
water. is believed to keep a layer of water liquid beneath
the icy surface. It is possible that life (powered by
chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis) might exist in this cold, dark ocean.
Europa has about 14% of Earth’s gravity.
Saturn’s Moons
Like Jupiter, Saturn is a gas giant with many (62)
Among moons, most of them captured asteroids. The
its many most interesting moon, for space explorers, is
moons, Titan probably Titan. This is the second largest moon in
has a thick the solar system, and the only one with a significant
atmosphere atmosphere. Titan’s atmosphere is denser than
and possible Earth’s (about 1.45 atmospheres of pressure on the
surface). The atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with
lakes of liquid some methane. A thick orange smog that obscures
methane. views of the surface. Although it is too cold on the
surface for liquid water (about -300° F or -184° C),
there may be lakes of liquid methane (along with methane rain or snow). It is
also believed that Titan may have complex organic chemicals. It is possible that
organisms live in these lakes, using liquid methane instead of water as a solvent
and using hydrogen rather than oxygen to “burn” chemical fuels. Titan’s gravity is
14% of Earth’s.
106
First Contact on Alien Worlds
Generally, First Contact Team assumes

It’s hard to have that first contact happens in our present
humans meet or near future, with humans having
aliens on the roughly the same technology as we do now.
That pretty much precludes adventures
aliens’ home where humans jump into a human-made
planet without spacecraft and travel to an inhabited alien
major changes in world to meet with aliens there.
our tech level, but There are ways, however, to put First
there are ways to Contact Team members on alien worlds
make it happen. without disruptive changes to human tech
levels.
Breakthrough Tech: The GM may say that humans have made an
unexpected discovery that has made interstellar travel possible
(e.g. some sort of energy-efficient spacetime folding device)
but hasn’t otherwise changed our overall tech level. This is a
technology that is one breakthrough away (rather than multiple
successive breakthroughs away) from our current tech level. Thus
humans can now send teams to other solar systems, but the rest of
Earth’s technology is much as we know it today.
Wormhole: Another solution is to say that we’ve discovered a stable
wormhole near Earth that just happens to lead to a spot within
reasonable distance of a star system with habitable planets. The
problem is that our solar system is moving quite quickly through
space (moving at 483,000 mph or 792,000 km/h around galactic
center). Wormholes, so far as we know, wouldn’t move to follow
gravitational bodies, so a wormhole that is “near us” won’t be for
very long. Also, the chances of a wormhole happening to be near us
and happening to open onto an inhabited planet are so minuscule
that the only reasonable conclusion is that aliens created this
wormhole on purpose, leading to questions of how, why, and why
haven’t they come through to greet us.
Alien Tech: Another possibility is that humans might utilize
alien technology to get to another planet. Perhaps we found
some abandoned alien vessel and taught ourselves how to pilot it.
Perhaps aliens sent us some transportation device (or plans for
such a device) hoping we would come to visit them.
Fetched: Finally, we might posit that aliens decided to make first
contact happen on their home planet and so fetched a party of
human explorers. Perhaps they used some sort of interstellar
teleportation system. Or, perhaps they had a probe scan humans
and then assembled copies of those humans on the aliens’ home
planet.
107

Step Five:
How Do The Aliens Communicate?
Aliens might communicate differently than humans. Some possible ways they
might communicate are:
They Don’t
This might be a being designed for or adapted to lone activity, and that has no built-
in capacity for language. If this is a species with parents, the parents most likely
abandon the newborns at birth. The alien “communicates” solely through action: if
it wants to help you, it lets you now that by helping you, and if it wants to hurt you
it lets you know by hurting you. Although the species cannot pass down scientific
or technological knowledge, a lone individual in the species might be long-lived
enough to make considerable scientific and technological discoveries for itself.
Genetic Communication
The aliens might pass down knowledge (and memories) directly to their offspring.
A child will know anything its parents knew. The aliens might not have (might not
need, in an evolutionary sense) any other form of communication.
Instinctual Communication
The aliens might communicate the way most Earth animals do: via reflex and
instinct. If they are angry or scared or curious or sympathetic, they do something
(change color, emit a smell, make a noise, chance posture, etc.) to let others of
their species know. They are likely incapable of deceit or of disbelief. They don’t
learn a language, they are born with it, so any learning of languages in order to
communicate would generally have to be done by First Contact Team members.
Hive Mind
The different individuals of the species share brain-power and think together.
Rather than words loosely representing thoughts, as in humans, the aliens share
thoughts directly. This would likely require a communication method of much
greater bandwidth than human speech (perhaps radio waves or binary pulses of
light). Communications between individuals are akin to neurons firing within
our brains. All communication is very context sensitive: we would learn as
much listening to one member of the species communicate with another as we
would by watching one synaptic cleft in a brain. Only by observing the whole
(or a large portion) of the communication could it make sense to us. Attempts to
communicate with the hive mind may be seen as an aggressive attempt to hack into
and disrupt or control the hive mind itself. The aliens wouldn’t like our attempts
to “communicate” any more than we would like someone entering our brains and
trying to make us have certain thoughts or beliefs.
108
An Alien View of Human

Communication
Young humans learn that certain words,
Human such as “dog,” are associated with certain
communication sense impressions: e.g. the sound of barking,
is inaccurate, the sight of dogs of various shapes, colors
and sizes. Word and sense impressions
highly subjective come together to form concepts. Concepts
and includes a eventually become linked to other concepts
mix of consciously (“dogs are animals” “dogs can be dangerous”
controlled and “baby dogs are puppies”). Concepts become
more and more abstract until humans gain
unconscious concepts that are not linked to any sense
signals. impression, but only to other concepts (e.g.
“truth”).
The concepts associated with a word for any given human are unique
to that human, because each human knows different facts and has had
different experiences. Ask one human to picture a dog and they might
picture a snarling pit bull while another person might picture a playful
jack russell terrier.
In fact, two humans cannot mean exactly the same thing by the same
word (with the possible, and debatable, exception of highly abstract
mathematical or logical terms). Humans are black boxes: we can never
directly receive an idea or piece of knowledge as it exists in another’s
mind, we can only reverse engineer what is going on in the black boxes
around us and build our own approximations of what words mean for
other people. These approximations are generally “good enough” to meet
the needs of human civilization.
Humans also have a host of other communication methods in addition
to language, things that human evolved before we ever had language.
Humans can learn to consciously control body language, hand gestures,
voice intonation and some elements of facial expression. Dilation of
pupils, blushing, pheromones and some other facial muscles (such as
those that affect the eyes in a “true” smile) are not under conscious
control. Even though humans are often conscious of what these
communication methods are telling us, we are seldom aware of the
exact details that conveyed this information. A human might say “he
seemed scared” but will be unable to point out what details conveyed this
information.
Thus, humans can be seen as having a stack of communication protocols
which are used simultaneously. Some tell other humans only what we
want to tell them, others tell people our fellows things we might not want
them to know. Some are parsed by the self-aware, thinking parts of our
brains, others by subconscious parts of our brain.
As opposed to computers, for instance, human communication is an
inefficient, inaccurate, confusing mess. Even though miscommunication
is a daily experience for most humans, aliens would probably be
surprised that we can communicate amongst ourselves as well as we do.
109

Objective Protocol
Human speech is subjective, with each word having a slightly different (subjective)
meaning for each person who hears/uses it (see previous page for more). Computers
generally have objective protocols, where each communication has an agreed-upon,
clearly defined meaning. Aliens might communicate using objective rather than
subjective protocols. This only works if aliens are able to directly share knowledge
or if they are born knowing the language. Miscommunication is impossible, and
deception may be impossible as well. Such communication is capable of dramatically
more precision and (given enough bandwidth) detail. The downside to this method is
that it is inflexible. Say the aliens discover, and want to communicate about, a brand
new concept, one that can’t be accurately described by combining other known
concepts. The aliens might have to wait until the next revision of their communication
protocol is distributed and uploaded to every brain, or they might have to wait until the
next generation of aliens is programmed and let them communicate about the new
thing. As hackers have learned, objective protocols can be abused to the detriment
of the recipients. The aliens might have brains such that inaccurate language actually
damages the working of their minds.
Imagination Transmission
This is a subtype of Objective Protocol where the species uses only communication
that is perceived as sensory input. Say one alien wants a fellow alien to help it lift a box,
the first alien may “send” pictures of the one helping the other, or a video depicting
this happening, or the kinesthetic sensation of it happening. The language cannot be
used to convey abstract thoughts, only to talk about things that might be perceived.
Math
This is another subtype of Objective Protocol where the alien communicates solely
with math. To identify a box, the alien wouldn’t say a word that codes for the concept
of boxes, it would describe the box mathematically (e.g. by enumerating its dimensions
or its position in space relative to the listener). To ask for help moving the box, the alien
would mathematically describe the physics of two beings lifting the box together. The
power of such a communication system would be its precision, the weakness would
be an inability to describe anything which cannot be measured. The aliens couldn’t
talk about unknowns or abstract concepts (except mathematical ones).
Brain Reading and Manipulation

The aliens may be able to read everything going on in another creature’s brain. Perhaps
they send nanobots into a brain, or have electromagnetic sensors so precise they can
sense individual neurons firing, or perhaps they can consume another being and read
the brain as it is digested. The aliens would then have to try to reverse engineer the
other being’s brain, understand how all the parts work together, to figure out what the
other being is (or was) thinking. Inasmuch as the alien is successful at this decoding, it
could directly perceive another being’s thoughts, beliefs, memories and knowledge,
all without the need for the inefficiencies of communication. Similarly, if the alien
has the ability to edit another being’s brain (or spawn edited copies of the being),
to the degree it was able to successfully understand how that brain works it could
insert thoughts, sensations, beliefs, knowledge or even memories into the brain,
transferring knowledge without the intermediary symbols we call communication.
110
Unusual Channels
Even if aliens do have a symbolic language (a learned, subjective protocol for
communication), like we do, they may communicate via unexpected channels.
They may use forms of electromagnetic radiation (e.g. light, heat, radio waves,
x-rays), they might use electric currents, they might release chemical odors into
the air or pass complex chemicals across permeable membranes when they
touch, they might use supersonic or subsonic sounds or they might change their
appearance (color, patterns on skin, whether
certain hairs are held erect, inflation of
deflation of body parts, twitching or vibrating
certain muscles, gestures with various
limbs). Which of these an alien might use
depends on the alien’s sensory abilities. A
species that can see infrared in high detail
might communicate by making certain parts
of its body warmer or colder, while an alien
that has fine electromagnetic sensors might
communicate by running electrical currents
through conductive channels under its skin.
Alien communication might even be harmful
to humans: a noise so loud it deafens us, a
light that blinds us, chemicals released into
the atmosphere that we find toxic, electric
impulses transmitted across touch that are
strong enough to stop human hearts, etc.
Dual Systems
Humans (see p.109) communicate with
both a subjective protocol of symbols
(words) representing lose concepts, and
with Instinctive Communication (e.g.
body language). It is possible that aliens
could use multiple systems via multiple
channels. First Contact Team members may
decipher one channel and think they have
achieved communication, unaware that
communication with separate content is also
being attempted along a completely different
channel. For instance, the noises coming out
of an alien’s mouth might mean “I’m going
to kill you!” while the radio signals coming
from its body might be saying “Although you
frighten me, and provoke my fight or flight
instinct, I am going to chose to try to establish
a dialog with you.” Deciphering the first
communication before the second could be
disastrous for the first contact scenario. Arecibo message, sent 1974
111

Animal Communication
When figuring out how aliens communicate, it

can be useful to review the different things that
There are a animals communicate:
number of things
Threat Display: This is used to try to convince
commonly another animal to back down. Typically an
communicated in animal tries to appear large, makes lunging
the animal world gestures, makes displays of strength, shows its
natural weapons and makes deep noises (e.g.
that may also be growling). Threat displays may escalate into
communicated by an actual attack if the opponent does not back
aliens. down, or it could be a complete bluff.
Submission Display: This is used to try to show
another animal that one is not a threat and doesn’t want to fight. Typically,
a submission display includes getting down on the ground, hiding natural
weapons and/or exposing vulnerable parts of one’s body.
Correction/Punishment: This is typically used by parents to show their young
offspring what not to do. It can be a lesser version of a threat display, or it
can be some sort of push or swat or bite that may cause a little pain but no
permanent damage.
Mating Display: Some mating displays simply signal that the animal making
the display is sexually receptive, and these are fairly simple. The more
elaborate displays are those designed to convince potential mates that the
communicator would make an ideal parent. There can include elaborate
displays of secondary sex characteristics, giving of gifts, building of habitats,
elaborate dances, etc.
Distress Calls: This is the way that animals signal for help from their fellows.
Most often this is children signaling for help from parents, but adult animals
may cry to seek help from other adults of their species. Typically this is a
repeated or continuous high-pitched noise.
Friendship Display: This is used to signal willingness to live together,
cooperate, share resources and aid in mutual defense. This may happen
between adults and children, between mates, between siblings or between non-
related peers. The displays may involve gentle touching, soft noises, relaxing
next to the other animal or grooming the other animal.
Play: Many animals, especially when they are young, engage in play with their
fellows. Doing so helps them exercise and practice for the things they will do
as adults. A play display invites fellow animals to play and lets them know not
to take the play behavior seriously (for instance, to let them know that a play
attack should not be reacted to as if it were a real attack).
Alert: Most species that live in social groups have ways of warning when they
perceive danger. These can be cries of fear, but is can also be silent changes
to body language (thus avoiding noises that might attract the attention of
predators). Some animals have different alert cries for different dangers (since
the precautions to take when there is a predator slithering along the ground
are much different from those when there is a predator flying in the sky above).
Food Calls: Some animals have signals to alert their fellows when there is a
source of food available.
112
Step Six:
How Do The Aliens See Us?
How aliens will see us is almost certainly not how we
Figure out see ourselves. They may even have trouble believing
that we are the planet’s intelligent life form. Here are
what the some ways aliens might see us:
aliens are
Memetic Infection Carriers
likely to
Aliens may seem us as plague rats, that what we think
think of us. of as culture is really a series of self-propagating
memes. Like a virus, a meme doesn’t care if it’s
harmful or useful, it only “wants” to spread. Memes make us want to spread them
(what we think our reasons are is inconsequential). Any attempt to teach elements
of human culture (even language) to an alien might be seen as an attempt to spread
memetic infection to them. See p.85 for more.
Star Excrement
The atoms we are made of (oxygen, carbon, etc.) were formed as a byproduct of
nuclear fusion in stars. When stars died and exploded, these heavier elements
were spread as dust, and the stars that formed from these clouds were less pure.
With each generation of stars, more and heavier elements were created, until you
get things like iron (which makes our blood red and allows us to breathe). To an
alien made of something more ancient, pure and basic, we may seem to be beings
made of pollution.
Bags of Wet Fire

Our cells, the basic component of our bodies, are bags made of fatty membranes
filled with saltwater. Within these bags, oxygen is added to chemicals as they break
apart into simpler chemicals in a reaction that causes energy. This is the same
basic reaction we know of as fire (and, in fact, the energy content of food we eat is
measured in calories, the heat energy food releases when one burns it). We are a
fire that has been burning for millions of year and has learned to feed fuel to itself.
Savage Predators
We cannot exist except by consuming living beings. We do not generally feel any
remorse for doing so. For a species that does not consume living beings (e.g. some
sort of intelligent plant) this may seem monstrous.
Planet-Cancer
Cancerous cells grow more quickly than the body can sustain. Looking at our
planet as an organism, humans are endangering the health of the whole via their
unchecked growth. Should humans gain the ability for interstellar travel there is
no reason to believe they won’t threaten every other planet that might be made to
support them. Thus, aliens may see us as a dangerous cancer.
113

Hybrid Colonies
Only about one in ten cells in a human body is genetically human. Although human
cells are much larger, they are vastly outnumbered. More than 500 species live in
our digestive system and many of them are essential for our health. Even human
cells depend for their power on mitochondria: microorganisms that were once a
separate species and that have their own genetic code. Even our own DNA seems to
have had much of its genetic code accidentally inserted by viruses over the billions
of years of our evolution. A human may thus be viewed as a conglomeration of
many beings, a community whose members don’t always share the same interests.
Alien Colonists
Given the fact that microorganisms can “hitch rides” on meteors thrown up from
planet surfaces during impacts, and can survive to see the next planet, it is likely
that life did not originate on this planet. Mars is a good candidate for the origin of
life in this solar system, if not somewhere more distant. If aliens know more of our
origin than we do, they may not see this as “our planet,” just one we’ve happened to
have colonized.
Fragile, Short-Lived Beings

Humans can only survive in a narrow portion of Earth. We can’t survive on any
other planet in the solar system and we cannot survive in space (except very briefly
and at incredible expense). Compared to some of this planet’s hardier beings (e.g.
tardigrades, who can survive being frozen, being dried out and even in the vacuum
of space) we are pathetically fragile. And, compared to some of the earth’s longest
lived organism (e.g. 10,000-year-old antarctic sponges) we have very brief lives.
An Uncontrolled Conglomeration of Impulses

A lot of decisions are made in the human body. The part of our brains that is self-
conscious and thinks it’s “in charge” makes very few of these decisions. Within
our bodies our immune systems, our digestive systems, our endocrine systems,
our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are not under our direct
control. Even in our brains, most of the processes that happen and decisions that
get made are not known by or controlled by our “executive” self-consciousnesses.
A being that can control its own immune system might see our immune system
attacking friendly bacteria as an act of war because it might not understand (or
believe) that we do not have our white blood cells under conscious control.
An Inefficient Semi-Hive-Mind
Humans are controlled in their day-to-day lives by various entities: companies,
governments, families and cultures. Most often we act in a way that benefits those
entities, but occasionally we act in a way that benefits our individual selves at those
entities’ expenses. For aliens that are completely independent and not beholden
to any organization, or for aliens that are part of a hive mind with no free will or
independent desires, it may seem like humans are in an inefficient, confused
liminal state, one that can’t last very long.
114
Information
We tend to think of ourselves as physical beings, but aliens may see us (or the only
parts of us that matter) as data. Our bodies are simply devices programmed by
our genetic code and with the sole purpose of reproducing that genetic code. Our
minds, to sufficiently advanced beings, are just a series of connections (describable
mathematically) that could be communicated, copied or edited at will.
Food or Hosts
We might resemble the kinds of things aliens eat (if they are predators or carrion
eaters) or use as hosts (if they are parasites or diseases). They might not initially
recognize the possibility that we are the planet’s intelligent life form and that we
shouldn’t just be eaten or infected.
Step Seven:
Complications
As a GM, you may wish to add additional
Figure complications to a first contact scenario, beyond
out what the complications inherent in the place where
complications first contact is happening and the difficulty of
might appear understanding and creating a relationship with an
alien species. Such complications might include:
to make first
contact even • Extremists or mentally ill people trying to
harder. disrupt first contact, or trying to attack aliens
they see as a threat.
• People (perhaps even government or military personnel accompanying
the PCs) trying to infiltrate the first contact site to steal something that
could be sold on the black market (e.g. a sample of alien tech). Or,
reporters trying to sneak in to get exclusive photos or video footage.
• Political problems, as governments or factions within governments try
to manipulate first contact to serve their own agendas, even if that means
breaking the terms of the First Contact Treaty. For example, players may
discover that the soldiers there to help them are really there to take over
should aliens prove to have technology with potential military uses.
• Funding problems, if first contact proves to be inordinately expensive
(requiring, for example, multiple trips to Mars) the PCs may find
themselves before the US Senate or other legislative bodies having to
argue for why first contact is worth the money.
• Having to decide whether to keep first contact secret from the public,
especially if it is difficult to determine at first whether the aliens are
hostile or friendly. The PCs may have to deal with a moral dilemma: is
the world’s right-to-know outweighed by the possibility of panic? There
is also the difficulty on actually keeping the contact secret.
• Having to stop paranoid military and government leaders, who might
see simple misunderstandings as proof that aliens are hostile, from
trying to destroy the aliens (and any First Contact Team members
unfortunate enough to be in the blast radius).
115

• Wars, riots, revolutions or other conflicts unrelated to first contact, but

affecting the place where first contact is taking place.
• Extreme weather conditions. This might be a tornado, a blizzard, or
even a solar flare causing problems in space.
• An unexpected equipment malfunction. This can be extremely
hazardous if the PCs are in space or deep underwater and may require
heroic measures to fix.
• An unexpected medical emergency. This might mean a moral dilemma
for the players: should they pause in their attempts to make first contact
to, for instance, aid a porter who had a heart attack?
• A global catastrophe that aliens might be able to warn us about, or may
be able to fix. For example, a massive meteor is be headed towards
Earth. The aliens may have the technology to save us, if we can convince
them to do so, and do it in time.
Twist Ending: They Weren’t

Actually Aliens
In many first contact stories, when humans do finally come to
understand aliens, it turns out they weren’t actually aliens from space.
Some possible things the alien beings could be:
Us From the Future: Our descendants, made unrecognizable by
evolution, genetic engineering and merging with technology, have
traveled back in time.
Cryptospecies: The alien life form is a native of earth, it is only now
being discovered because it lives in zone we haven’t fully explored (e.g.
deep under the earth, in an undersea trench).
A Hoax: This is probably the most dissatisfying twist ending, and it’s
GMs who dislike their players who are most likely to use it.
Alternate Universe: The aliens aren’t from space but from an alternate
Earth where evolution happened differently.
AI: The “alien” is an emergent intelligence of human origin. See p.65 for
more on this possibility.
Humans Affected by Aliens: The “alien” was originally a human before
being taken and manipulated by aliens. The aliens might have been
trying to fix the human (perhaps the aliens found a human astronaut’s
corpse and decided to try to fix it and bring it back to life), or “uplift” the
human (bring the human closer to its conception of an intelligent and
physically capable being) or to create a living bridge between humans
and the alien race.
116
Impact on Society of First

Contact
A nice epilogue to give players in a First Contact
Tell PCs what campaign is to tell them about the impact that first
impact, good and contact has had on Earth’s society and culture. This
impact largely depends on how well first contact went.
bad, first contact
had on society. Any new science or technology that the PCs come away
with may make its way to academia and the market,
and any major change in technology will drastically
change the lifestyle of humans, mostly for the better. However, with every major change,
some suffer. For instance, if the aliens show us how to make cheap clean fusion power
(or we teach ourselves how to do it after disassembling an alien craft), countries that
have economies based mostly on exporting petroleum will suffer. Technologies that
greatly increase human lifespans could cause problems with overpopulation. Similarly,
large advances in artificial intelligence will put many out of work and create a problem
with large, angry populations of the unemployed.
If the aliens gift humanity with resources, or set up some sort of mutually beneficial trade
relationship, this will have major impact on world economies. Unless the aliens are very
specific about where the proceeds of the gifts or trade go, it is likely that some humans will
benefit much more than others, which would create dissatisfaction among the have-nots.
The knowledge that there is intelligent life beyond humanity is bound to have wide
and varied effects. It will prompt many to give up on ethnic, religious or political
partisanship and work for what is best for humanity as a whole. The idea of a global
community (or at least international cooperation) is likely to gain currency. There are
doubtless those who would worship aliens as holy beings, and those who would see them
as a trick by the devil. There will be conspiracy theorists who will claim that the alien
contact is a hoax or that the governments involved are willfully misrepresenting the
intent of the aliens. No matter how well First Contact went, there will be those who will
fear that their lives are at risk, and will seek to prepare for an alien invasion. So even
if the major impact on humanity is positive, there will be a sharp rise in the number of
dangerous extremists.
If the PCs make peaceful contact with the aliens, and the aliens turn out to be benevolent
(or selfish, but interested in mutually beneficial arrangements), the effect on humanity
will be mostly positive. People will have hope for the future and will want to show that
humanity is worthy of the aliens’ esteem. If contact goes poorly and ends in violence
or threats of violence (or even with the aliens deciding to just leave without talking to
us) there will be quite a lot more fear and panic. If humanity seems to be under threat
of violence from aliens, there may be a beneficial effect of humans coming together to
prepare for mutual defense against a common threat. Yet there’s the parallel danger of
dysfunctional “strong man” leaders appealing to people’s fears and taking over. Keep in
mind that leaders like Hitler came to power by exploiting the fears of their people.
There is a possibility that the governments sponsoring the First Contact Team will decide
that knowledge of First Contact will be too damaging, especially if contact ended on a
bad note. They might decide that preventing mass panic makes it worth keeping their
citizens from the truth. The governments involved may decide on a conspiracy to cover
the whole thing up. Yet the number of people who would, by necessity, know about First
Contact makes it statistically unlikely that there won’t be some whistle-blower somewhere
uploading documentation to WikiLeaks. When the word finally does get out, there is likely
to be a deep division between people who believe First Contact didn’t happen, and those
who did and are angry at their governments for trying to deceive them.
117

Chapter Five
Pre-Written Scenarios
This is the final log of the First Contact Team expedition to
the TauTona Mine. I regret to say that we have failed.
The aliens are dead. This ship (if it I still don’t understand why the aliens
was a vessel) is undergoing some ignored us at first. Or maybe they
sort of rapid decomposition. The weren’t ignoring us. Maybe they
northeast tunnel has collapsed, were trying to communicate with us
stranding us here. The remaining by some means we were unable to
space is still filled with the aliens’ sense or decipher. Dr. Michaelson’s
toxic breathing mixture. Dr. decision to try to stand in front of
Michaelson, Professor Red Deer, one of the aliens to attempt to force
Commander Nguyen and the it to acknowledge his presence was…
mining crew are dead. Only Dr.
unfortunate.
Suarez and myself are left and we
are currently team-breathing on To all of those who might blame our
our last tank of oxygen. military escort for what happened, let
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly it be known that Commander Nguyen
where things started to go wrong. did not draw his weapon until he had
Perhaps our early victories (cutting no other choice. It was not him, nor
our way into the vessel, waking the any of the miners. Instead it was me.
aliens from their suspended anim- I was the one who drew first blood.
ation) made us overconfident. In my desperation to find some way
Our losses when the vessel to communicate with the aliens, I
started pumping in the aliens’ began touching them. It was gentle
atmosphere were entirely my fault.
at first, but then I started poking
I should have anticipated it and
prepared the team. And the fact and palpating them. It was when
that we didn’t patch the hole we I squeezed one of the tentacles
cut into the vessel upon entering surrounding the mouth of one of the
meant that our atmosphere was creatures that it opened its mouth
constantly entering the vessel. Did and engulfed the whole top half of
this hurt the aliens? Did this make my body. Perhaps this was a reflex
them act irrationally? I can’t say action, one the creature had no
for certain, because we could conscious control over. Perhaps this
never understand the reasons for was the attempt at communication
any of the aliens’ actions, but it that I had been looking for. Whatever
seems likely. it was, the heat of its body made me
118
feel like I had entered a pot of Handgun bullets seemed generally

boiling water. The scientist part unable to pierce their thick skin. It was
of me was curious about the large only Commander Nguyen’s precise
difference between its surface and rifle shots that seemed to harm them
at all and he quickly ran out of ammo.
internal temperatures, while the
From there we made the mistake of
scared child part of me was trying using explosives. We were able to kill
to scream for help. It may have let the aliens, but in doing so we collapsed
me go in time, if I had been braver, the tunnel, essentially killing ourselves.
but at that point my will failed me
Until my last breath I will wonder what
and I pulled out my firearm and
I might have done differently, what
shot the thing from inside. idea I might have had that would
It did let me go, but I seemed have allowed us to unravel the aliens’
to have mortally wounded the bizarre behavior. Most of all, I wonder
what negative impact this failure
creature. From that point on, might have on humanity. I can only
the other aliens regarded us as hope that this was some long-lost
enemies to be exterminated. expedition that has been written off
I don’t know that they ever by the society that sent it eons ago.
thought we were an intelligent Hopefully we’ll never have aliens land
species, and this act of violence here wanting to know what happened
convinced them that we were to their compatriots, asking humanity
wild, dangerous animals. to answer for my failures.
The Black Pool

Note: This is meant to be a short introductory adventure, with pre-generated
characters, to introduce characters to First Contact Team gameplay. Think of
this adventure as “training wheels” on the game: giving players a feel for science-
mystery gameplay before giving them total control of their characters and avenues
of investigation.
Mission Briefing
For decades, scientists have wondered about a black spot on the moon. This spot,
found at the bottom of an impact crater (the Hoffman Crater), is about as big as a
football field and reflects no light (not even ultraviolet or infrared), even when in
direct sunlight. Recently, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) sent a
robotic moon rover to investigate. The probe was able to approach the black spot.
The pictures that it sent back showed a completely flat, completely black surface. The
rover rolled to the edge and tried to dip in a sensor. In a split second, the probe was
gone. The last telemetry from the probe’s gyroscopes show it being pulled quickly
down into the black surface. At first, there was speculation that it may have slipped
in by accident, but physicists have shown that the speed of acceleration was greater
than could be accounted for by gravity alone.
China released a report that something has “pulled in” its rover and the world has since
been abuzz with speculation that this may be intelligent life. The signatory nations
of the First Contact Team treaty have quickly put together a plan to land a party on
the moon to investigate. China’s space agency has taken charge of ferrying a contact
team to the moon, on a shuttle crewed by Chinese astronauts (aka “taikonauts”).
119

The Landing Crew

As opposed to a regular First Contact Team scenario, where players create their
own characters, players in this adventure are encouraged to choose from among
the following pre-generated characters. Any character which is not chosen as a PC
should be run by the GM as a NPC.
Dr. Amber Simons, Biochemist

Appearance: A slim African-American woman appearing to be in her mid-
teens, with hair in cornrows and a silver nose ring. Wears either a blue NASA
jumpsuit or a space suit.
Attributes: AGY OO, AWR OOO, CHM OOO, END OO, INL OOOOO, SPD OO,
STH O, WIL OO. 10 Hit Points.
History: Amber grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and is a genuine prodigy,
getting her GED at age 11, her Bachelor’s Degree at age 13, and getting PhDs
in Biology and Chemistry at age 15. Upon her graduation, companies doing
biochemical research held a bidding war to recruit her. Today she does
research at a major pharmaceutical company, but is currently on leave for
the First Contact Team.
Personality: Some things come very easy to Amber, especially understanding
scientific facts. Other things, like dealing with people, or managing her
own emotions, are frustratingly difficult. Amber can be sarcastic, petulant,
cranky and quick to take offense. In many ways, she acts like a stereotypical
teenager. However, people are drawn to her because of her genuine love of
science, which is apparent when she starts talking about facts and theories.
Skills:
Info Sciences O Specialty: Data Analysis
Life Sciences OOO Specialties: Biochemistry, Genetics
Medicine O Specialty: Pharmacology
Equipment: Medicine: First Aid O (pouch with disinfectant, sutures, bandages
and minor pharmaceuticals), Info Sciences: Data Analysis O (tablet computer
with data analysis software), Life Sciences: Biochemistry OO (backpack with
sample containers, chemical reagents, electronic pH and alkalinity meters
and a portable gas chromatograph), space suit.
Combat
Kill: OO Control: OO
Ruin: OOO Exhaust: OO
Hidden Agenda: Amber has a rare neurodegenerative disease, one that has
no known cure. She is not yet showing any symptoms that would impair
her abilities, but the knowledge that she will live only another decade or so
weighs upon her. Amber secretly hopes that aliens might have a cure, or give
us enough new scientific knowledge to find a cure.
120
Dr. Vijai Choudhary, Linguist

Appearance: Tall male of South Asian descent with olive skin and short grey
hair, appearing to be in his fifties. Speaks with an educated British accent.
Wears either a grey jumpsuit or a space suit.
Attributes: AGY OO, AWR OO, CHM OOO, END OO, INL OOOO, SPD OO,
STH OO, WIL OOO. 10 Hit Points.
History: Vijai’s parents emigrated from India to the UK when he was very
young. Vijai was educated in private schools and went to Cambridge where
he earned a degree in linguistics and later became a full professor. Early in
his career he partnered with mathematics and computer science faculty to
do groundbreaking analysis of linguistic change using samples gleaned from
the internet. This earned him some fame in academic circes. Not wanting to
be stuck in a lab, Vijai then went to do feildwork with natives in Papua New
Guinea. His resulting book, which reads as much like an adventure story as
an academic work, hit the New York Times bestseller list. Today he is known
among linguists worldwide for his insightful theories and analysis.
Personality: In his scholarship, Vijai mixes logical analysis with intuition, and
is quite willing to go out on a limb for a theory which he has no rational
basis for, so long as it feels right to him. He is warm and personable and
interacts with people empathetically. Having achieved the highest levels of
British academia, he can be a bit of an elitist and a snob, but still manages
to come across as good natured. He has found he likes attention and fame,
and is willing to downplay the contributions of collaborators rather than
complicate the narrative that garners him acclaim.
Skills:
Info Sciences O Specialty: Data Analysis
People OOOO Specialties: Linguistics, Psychology
Equipment: People: Linguistics OO (digital video camera, ruggedized laptop
with linguistic analysis software), Info Sciences: Data Analysis O (data analysis
software), space suit.
Combat
Kill: OO Control: OO
Ruin: OOO Exhaust: OO
Hidden Agenda: Vijai has already let his literary agent know about his trip
to the moon and, while on the moon, he will be constructing a personal
narrative of the trip designed to make an exciting book, even if that narrative
leaves out important facts. He is not willing to outright lie for fame, but will
do anything up to that point.
121

Fedosya Kotov, Roscosmos Engineer

Appearance: Short, muscular, thirty-something woman with short spiky
blonde hair and thick glasses. Speaks with a Russian accent and typically has
a dour expression. Wears either a blue Roscosmos jumpsuit or a space suit.
Attributes: AGY OOO, AWR O, CHM O, END OOO, INL OOOO, SPD OOO,
STH OOO, WIL OO. 10 Hit Points.
History: Fedosya was born to a working class family in St. Petersburg, Russia.
As a child she was a loner and did not enjoy playing with children her own age.
Instead, she spent her time reading and studying. She found herself drawn to
machines and computers, things which would react more predictably than
people. She studied the Russian martial art of Sambo, which appealed to
her as a practical exercise in physics and mechanics, and gave expression
to her competitive side. After gaining an engineering degree she became an
engineer at Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, working on computerized
systems for Russian spacecraft. She identified and fixed problems that would
have cost lives, and was able to talk cosmonauts in space through creative
quick fixes to mechanical failures. So, even though she had no interest in
leadership, the director of Roscosmos made her a chief engineer. Her
reputation for someone who can quickly solve a broad range of problems
got her recruited to the First Contact Team.
Personality: Fedosya prefers machines and computers to people. She finds
people’s emotionality, unpredictability and neediness to be frustrating. She
doesn’t meet the qualifications for a diagnosis of autism, but she will readily
admit that she is somewhere on the autism spectrum. She hates having to
explain things to people that she thinks they should be able to figure out
themselves and will be as condescending as possible while doing so.
Skills:
Athletics O Specialty: Martial Arts
Space O Specialty: Vehicles
Tech OOO Specialties: Electronics, Mechanics
Equipment: Tech: Electronics OO (backpack with hand tools, meters, fuses
and other spare parts, battery-powered soldering kit), Tech: Mechanics O
(belt with wrenches, hammer, lubricants, duct tape, pouch of spare bolts,
nuts and washers), Tech: Computer Programming O (tablet computer with
code libraries and compilers).
Combat
Kill: OO Control: OOO
Ruin: OOO Exhaust: OOOO
Hidden Agenda: Being forced to stay in close proximity with the other team
members in the space shuttle for the duration of the trip to the moon will be
so annoying to Fedosya that she would love any excuse to punch someone
(or, if possible, everyone).
122
Major Xue Kuang, Taikonaut and Physicist

Appearance: A short, slim Chinese woman with short hair, appearing to be in
her early thirties, wearing no makeup. Wears either a blue Chinese National
Space Agency jumpsuit or a space suit.
Attributes: AGY OOO, AWR OO, CHM OO, END OO, INL OOOO, SPD OOO,
History: Xue was born in the city of Shenzen, China. She excelled in school,
studying science and getting a degree in Physics before joining the People’s
Liberation Army Air Force. In the Air Force she became a fighter pilot and
earned the rank of major. For one year she lectured on aviation physics at the
PLA’s Aviation University. She married a fellow Air Force member and has one
child (a daughter). Two years ago she was selected to become an astronaut
and began training for a planned moon mission. She has done two orbital
space flights, and has spent time on the Tiangong 2 Chinese space laboratory.
She is the third Chinese woman in space, and the first to ever do an EVA
(Extra Vehicular Activity). Although she has less experience than many other
Taikonauts, her science background and training for a Moon mission have
made her China’s top choice to be on the ground for first contact.
Personality: Xue is friendly, enthusiastic and outgoing. She feels extremely
lucky to be a Taikonaut and to have been selected for this mission. She has
dealt with a fair share of hypocrisy, sexism and bad leadership during her
time in academia, the PLA Air Force and the CNSA. Although she is careful
not to let it show, these experiences have made her cynical about people in
positions of power.
Skills:
Hard Sciences OO Specialty: Physics
Military/Law Enf. OO Specialty: Military Vehicles
Space OO
Specialty: EVAs
Equipment: Physics O (tablet computer with physics programs and reference
guides, laser range-finder, laser infrared thermometer), Combat: Kill OO
ranged (pistol), Space Suit.
Combat
Kill: OOOOO (Pistol) Control: OOO
Ruin: OOOOO (Pistol) Exhaust: OOO
Hidden Agenda: Xue has been told by the Chinese government that if the aliens
offer anything that would give a strategic advantage to any nation, she should
take any steps necessary to secure that thing for China. Xue would rather any
knowledge or technology be shared by the world scientific community, but
she is worried about what might happen to her or her family if she were to be
seen as having betrayed her nation.
123

Major General Feng Yang, Veteran Taikonaut

Appearance: A Chinese man in his 40s or 50s, slightly taller than average, with
salt-and-pepper hair cut in a crew cut, clean shaven. He has a handsome
face and a dignified air.
Attributes: AGY OO, AWR OO, CHM OOO, END OO, INL OOO, SPD OO,
History: Feng Yang was one of China’s first Taikonauts, going into space in
2003. After participating in 6 missions (and training as a backup for many
more), he was retired from space missions, named a national hero by the
Premier of China, and became part of the CNSA’s top administration. He was
brought out of retirement for this mission, because it was thought that his
experience and seniority would be useful (and would offset the relative lack
of experience of Major Xue Kuang).
Personality: Feng is confident, friendly and known for his gentle humor. He
considers himself more of a military man than a scientist, but he has great
respect for science and scientific discoveries, and for science’s ability to unite
the global community in common goals. He is proud of his nation and it’s
space program, and believes that the program administrators are wise. He
believes in the chain of command and is not afraid to assert his authority as
leader when he believes the situation would benefit from him doing so. As
a leader, he considers himself and fair and open to feedback. Once he has
made a decision, though, he prides himself in sticking to it.
Skills:
Medicine O Specialty: Emergency Medicine
Military/Law Enf. OOO Specialty: Armed Combat, Military Vehicles
People O Specialty: Diplomacy
Space OOO Specialties: Low G, Vehicles
Equipment: Combat: Kill OO ranged (Pistol), Medicine: Emergency Medicine
OO (first aid kit with emergency pharmaceuticals).
Combat:
Kill: OOOOO (Pistol) Control: OO
Ruin: OOOOO (Pistol) Exhaust: OO
Hidden Agenda: Feng was chosen in part because of his loyalty to China.
He considers himself the leader of this mission, and considers it a Chinese
mission with a few non-Chinese guests. His orders from the Chinese
government are to do anything in his power, even if it means killing everyone
on the mission, to prevent anything happening that would hurt China and its
people. He is also expected to relay information back to China and to follow
any orders they give him.
124
Preparations
An existing space shuttle (rather than a purpose-built craft) will be boosted into
space. The crew will have enough food and oxygen for a 72-hour stay on the moon.
After that time, the landing module will be used to rendezvous with the space
shuttle still in orbit. The landing module will be discarded and the shuttle will make
a return trip to Earth.
Those team members who have not already had astronaut training will be given
an abbreviated three week training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas.
Training will include operating in a space suit underwater, lectures about operation
on the moon and lectures about emergency procedures. This training allows the
PCs to do things like usa a toilet in space or walk in a space suit, but they do not
yet have levels of the Space skill so will depend on their better-trained peers for
anything complicated.
Travel to the Moon

The launch and trip to the moon will likely be uneventful. The trip is about 48
hours. Once in orbit around the moon Colonel Ri Bao (next page) will stay in the
shuttle while everyone else will enter the landing module and land on the moon.
The module will land on a flat area just outside of the Hoffman crater. The PCs will
arrive shortly after lunar day dawns on this part of the moon. It will stay daytime for
the duration of the PCs’ stay. The sun will rise very slowly in the sky and the ground
temperatures will steadily rise. From the landing site it is only a short walk (about
500 ft.) to the edge of the crater.
The Crater
The Hoffman Crater is located in one of the Maria (the newer, darker parts of the
moon’s surface, see p.100) in the northern hemisphere on the dark side of the
moon. The crater is roughly circular, 1,500 feet in diameter, and bowl shaped. The
sun, being close to the horizon, is just barely peeking over the lip of the crater,
leaving much of the northwest of the crater in deep shadow.
Over the lip of the crater is a gentle incline that leads down to the base of the crater.
The floor of the crater is typical lunar regolith (dust and rock). PCs who scan the
ground closely will find shredded pieces of a flexible black material, mostly buried
under the lunar dust. Chemical examination will show this was made from woven
carbon nanotubes, making it an extremely strong material, one that it would take
tremendous force to shred. The amount of dust on the scraps indicates that they
have been here for millions of years.
At the bottom of the crater is a roughly circular patch of perfectly flat, perfectly level
blackness. If the PCs choose to, they can find the tracks of the Chinese moon rover
going up to and disappearing into the blackness. The last few inches of tire tracks
do not show treads (as one would expect from rolling wheels) but appear scuffed
(as one would expect from a vehicle being dragged in).
125

Colonel Ri Bao,
Orbital Shuttle Pilot
Appearance: Chinese man appearing to be in his late 30s, with short,
bushy black hair and a squat face, wearing a blue CNSA jumpsuit. Has
a gruff voice and a thick Chinese accent.
Attributes: AGY OO, AWR OOO, CHM O, END OOO, INL OOO, SPD OO,
History: Ri was born in rural Sandong province. His parents were
agricultural workers. As a young man, he joined the People’s Liberation
Army Air Force and became a fighter pilot. He was selected to
become a Taikonaut. He has spent time aboard both the Tiangong
1 and Tiangong 2 orbital space laboratories and holds the record
among Taikonauts for the most time spent in space. His knowledge of
electronics, his psychological stability and his experience in orbit made
him the CNSA’s choice to stay in the space shuttle as it orbits the moon
while the landing party is on the surface. His major drawback on the
mission is his poor English (he will communicate with non-Chinese
crew members primarily through his fellow Taikonauts).
Personality: Ri is a fairly serious man, with a business-like attitude and
little sense of humor or fun. He is patient, even tempered and quiet.
He is very loyal to the Communist Party of China and respectful of the
chain of command.
Skills:
Military/Law Enf. OOO Specialties: Armed Combat, Military Vehicles
Space OOO Specialties: Low G, Vehicles
Technology O Specialty: Electronics
Equipment: Combat: Kill OO ranged (Pistol), Technology: Electronics O
(small electronics toolkit with drivers, voltage tester, soldering iron).
Combat:
Kill: OOOOO (Pistol) Control: OO
Ruin: OOOOO (Pistol) Exhaust: OO
Investigating the Black Substance

The black substance appears as a flat black surface. It reflects very little light. For
instance, the sun reflected off the surface appears as only a very dim reflection.
A physicist will be able to determine that the material has an unusually high light
absorbency. Across the whole electromagnetic spectrum (e.g. infrared, ultraviolet,
microwaves) the substance absorbs about 99% of energy that falls on it. The carbon
nanotube fabric the PCs may have found earlier, although black, is nowhere near
this good at absorbing light.
126
The substance does not appear to move. However, over time it moves in response
to solar tidal forces. This movement is so slow that it cannot be observed with the
naked eye. As it moves, it conforms to the shape of the crater, flowing as a fluid.
However, digging into the regolith right next to the black substance shows that
the regolith is perfectly dry, that none of the black substance has soaked into it.
Using an infrared thermometer (such as the one in Xue Kuang’s Physics package)
will show that the fluid is a few degrees cooler than the lunar surface. As the sun
rises and the moon’s surface grows warmer, the black fluid will grow warmer as
well, but will remain cooler than the regolith. As a darker substance, it should
absorb more heat from sunlight and warm more in the sun than the lighter lunar
regolith.
Digging trenches next to the substance will cause the black substance to flow
in as a viscous fluid. Similarly, if PCs throw something in (e.g. a stone) that thing
will quickly sink down into the surface as if in a fluid. Even things that should
be buoyant (e.g. a balloon filled with air) will sink down, giving no clue to the
substance’s density. Tossing things in causes no splash. There are ripples, but
they disappear within moments, rather than propagating across the surface of
the fluid.
The fluid will not respond in any way to attempts to communicate by means such
as radio signals, pulses of light, standing next to it and waving, or stomping on
the regolith next to it in binary code. The only way to get a reaction out of it is to
touch something to the surface of the fluid.
Anything (or anyone) that touches the fluid is instantly grabbed by the fluid and
dragged in. For instance, if PCs try to take a sample by dipping a spoon into
the fluid, the fluid will adhere itself to the spoon and pull it down. For contests
of strength the fluid has an AV of 7, but can steadily increase its strength (up to
100) to be able to win any tug-of-war over an object. Any sensor that is pulled in
immediately ceases to send signals back (as was the case with the moon rover).
Regurgitation and Refusal

After it has sucked in an object, the fluid will push that object (or something that
looks like it) back out. The object will appear on the surface and will be pushed
gently onto the shore. No trace of the black fluid will cling to it or be inside it. The
object will be redeposited close to where it entered the fluid.
The length the fluid will hold onto a thing before regurgitating it will depend on
how “interesting” the thing is. A thing is interesting to the fluid if it is complex and if
the fluid has not swallowed anything like it before. Anything the fluid finds boring
will be regurgitated almost immediately
The fluid will keep things longer the more mechanically, chemically or electronically
complicated they are. It might keep a mechanical clock for two minutes, a laptop
computer for fifteen minutes. However, writing and symbols are not interesting to
it. A gold plate with a diagram of human anatomy carved on it will be kept just as
long as a completely blank gold plate would be. Biological materials (e.g. food from
a food pouch) will also be considered interesting.
127

When the fluid grows bored of the things the PCs are throwing in, the fluid will start
reaching out with pseudopods (or tunneling under the regolith with pseudopods)
to pull in more interesting samples. Given enough time, it will even tunnel under
the crater and pull in the entire lunar lander.
The fluid will also attempt to keep the PCs’ interest by varying what it regurgitates.
It may:
• Regurgitate multiple copies of things that have been thrown in. E.g. the PCs
may throw in one beaker, get two beakers back.
• Regurgitate different (edited) versions of things that have been thrown
in previously. For instance, PCs might throw in a book and might get
something back that is chemically identical but all the text is backwards. Or
a wrench might be thrown in and might come back exactly half its original
size.
• Regurgitate the Chinese moon rover. It’s on-board memory will show that
it stopped operating almost immediately after being pulled in.
Eating People
The fluid wants to sample a living human. Eventually, one of two things will happen.
First, a PC or NPC will fall in by accident. The lunar regolith is slippery, and none of
the team have much experience in moonwalking. PCs and NPCs working next to
the crater should make occasional rolls (AGY + the Space skill +the Low G specialty
vs. 2) to avoid falling. If someone doesn’t fall in, the fluid will grow impatient enough
to reach out a tendril and pull someone in.
The adventure will progress more smoothly, and players will have a greater sense
of free will, if the first team member(s) to fall into the fluid are NPCs.
Once it has gained a human sample, the fluid will no longer have any interest in
non-human samples, rejecting them out of hand. It will, however, grow impatient
to sample more humans.
The fluid will hold onto a human longer than any other item it has sampled. After
about one hour, the fluid will push out the first person it has consumed. The person
is completely intact, but with no heartbeat and no brain activity. A defibrillator
could re-start the heart, but the person is brain dead and it would take artificial
respiration to keep him or her alive. An autopsy will show no cause of death.
After it has sampled at least one human, every 15 minutes or so the fluid will spit
out a new copy of one of the humans it has sampled. Each copy represents a new
experiment made by the fluid:
• The first (described above) has no heartbeat and is brain dead.
• The second is alive but experiencing continuous grand mal seizures, which
will cause death in a handful of minutes. Antiseizure medicines (present in
Amber Simons’ first aid kit) will reduce the intensity of these seizures but
will not stop them.
128
• The third will be delirious, with no idea where she or she is or what is
happening. The person will scream and try to tear off his or her spacesuit.
Although the person can be sedated, the delirium is permanent and all the
PCs will ever be able to get are a few random words.
• The fourth will appear to have intelligence and self-consciousness, but will
have an uncontrollable desire to immediately grab fellow humans and drag
them into the fluid. The person can be sedated or restrained, but the desire
to throw people in will be so strong, and not doing it is so painful, that the
person will be more-or-less incoherent.
• Copies after the fourth show an ever growing sophistication of the fluid as
it edits human minds, instilling first desires, then beliefs, then knowledge.
These copies will be self-conscious. How these iterations evolve is, in part,
dependent on that the PCs do.
Acts of Aggression
The fluid cannot be hurt by things that cut or apply force, such as a knife, rock or
pistol. It is also immune to cold. It can be injured by high heat (3,000° F or more),
heavy radiation (more than that which would be a fatal dose for a human), powerful
acids and bases and high voltages (100 volts or more). Small instances of damage
from these things will be forgiven by the fluid, although it will attempt to remove
the threat (e.g. by pulling in a weapon
and disassembling it). If, however, the
PCs manage to do enough damage to
the fluid, it will attempt to stop the PCs
by eating them all and only regurgitating
fluid-friendly copies.
Control of
Multiple
A Talking Head Copies
After about the eighth iteration, the
fluid will have enough knowledge of If you get into a situation
manipulating humans brains to be able where multiple copies
to create a copy of a person that stands of a PC are live and
in the fluid and has channels of the
conscious at the same
black fluid flowing through his or her
time, allow a player
bloodstream and into the person’s brain.
to control one of them
This will allow for more instantaneous
communication between the team and
(preferably the most
the fluid. The fluid still doesn’t have the psychologically normal of
capacity for symbolic communication. them) and let the rest be
It’s still writing ideas directly to the brain controlled by the GM as
of its puppet, who then relays those ideas NPCs.
as language.
129

Player Prompts After

Regurgitation
As stated earlier, it is better if NPCs enter the fluid and get spit out in
various iterations. This leaves players to try to control and figure out
what’s going on in the heads of the NPCs. If, however, a PC does end up
being one of those ingested by and spat out by the fluid, let the player
know the following:
Last Memories: The last thing any new iteration remembers is entering
the syrupy black fluid, then a burning pain, then numbness, then
nothing. The PC will only remember the memories of past iterations
if those iterations have gone back into the fluid prior to the current
iteration emerging.
First Through Third Generations: Not self-conscious.
Fourth Generation: You feel an urgent, overwhelming desire to grab
people and drag them into the fluid. This desire is so strong, so painful,
that you can’t think of anything else. You can’t even use words. You
also want to throw yourself into the fluid, but only after you have
thrown everyone else in.
Fifth Generation: You feel an unshakable, unchangeable desire to drag
other people into the fluid. You don’t know why you want this, nor
do you care. Your previous desires are still there, but seem like pale
shadows. You are capable of thinking intelligently and figuring out the
best way to meet this goal, but any delay is painful and it takes a WIL
roll (3 difficulty) to delay gratification.
Sixth Generation: You believe that all humans should go into the fluid,
that humans going into the fluid is the only possible “good” in existence.
You believe that this imperative is more important than any human
rights, freedoms or desires. You don’t know why you believe these
things, which you know is odd, but this doesn’t mean you believe them
any less. There is no overwhelming sense of urgency: you could take
your time. However, since nothing is good other than humans going into
the fluid, the only thing that could convince you to take your time would
be knowing that by waiting you can get more humans into the fluid.
Seventh Generation: You believe that the fluid wants you and your
fellow humans to enter it and that the fluid knows what’s best for you,
far better than you do. Ignoring the fluid’s advice on this matter is
a terrible mistake, as bad as unknowingly walking into the path of a
speeding bus. Whether it is morally justified to force humans into the
fluid to prevent them from ignorantly making that mistake is a question
of your personal ethical beliefs. The correctness of the fluid is, you
believe, inarguable.
Eighth Generation: You know (without knowing how you know) that
the fluid wants all the humans currently on the moon to step into it. The
fluid wants you to know that it means you no harm, and that this is the
best way for it to learn about us. It is not built to understand language
and this is how it communicates. When it is done figuring us out, if we
want it to, it can take us apart and put us back together unchanged (the
same as we were when we first stepped into the fluid).
130
The Black Fluid
Appearance: About 1.5 million gallons of a matte black fluid, typically

resting flat at the bottom of an impact crater. It is capable of reaching
out pseudopods to grab things or people.
Attributes: AGY 1, AWR 1, END 20, INL 10, STH 7 (but can double this
each round if needed), SPD 1, WIL N/A.
Hit Points: 1 million.
Combat AVs: Control (a grab with a pseudopod) at AV 5. Once it has
won at Control, the fluid can make an opposed STH vs. STH roll to drag
the victim into itself, from whence the victim can be disassembled mol-
ecule by molecule.
Combat Anatomy: The fluid has no distinct anatomical structures.
Thus, any part of it could be used as a weapon or sensory organ, and it
has no vital organs.
Damage: Immune to cold, cutting or blunt damage. Heat, radiation,
electricity and acid can be used for Kill attacks, but soak 5 Hit Point
damage from heat, radiation or acid.
The Fluid’s True Nature

The “fluid” is actually a colony of nanobots: microscopic robots, built mostly from
carbon, that work together to create a hive mind. It is one of many that were hurled
into space at great speeds, millions of years ago, towards planets thought likely to
have intelligent life. Its job is to sample alien life, discover how it works and what
it is like and broadcast that information (as a series of slow electromagnetic pulses)
to its planet of origin.
The fluid is extremely patient: it has been waiting 120 million years (since the time
of dinosaurs) for intelligent life to discover it. That being said, the fluid is unwilling
to let an opportunity to sample and understand intelligent life pass it by.
The fluid absorbs power from sunlight, which it converts to chemical energy that
it stores. Many of the nanobots that make it up can move, allowing it to “flow,” like
a motile fluid, anywhere it wants. The nanobots can grip any surface, giving the
fluid the ability to stick to anything as strongly as the strongest glue. The nanobots
can also disassemble any object molecule-by-molecule. This is the fluid’s primary
sense: it takes things apart molecule by molecule and remembers the structure
of the thing it took apart. This is the means by which the fluid will attempt to
understand the things it encounters. Its other senses (the ability to “feel” vibrations
through the regolith, to see things happening on the surface, and to sense sources
of electromagnetic energy) are fairly crude and are only there to help it find things
worth consuming.
131

Just as the fluid can disassemble things molecule by molecule, so can it assemble
(or reassemble) things. When it appears to swallow and regurgitate an object or
being, it is taking it apart and reassembling it. The fluid does not think of taking
apart and reassembling a human as immoral and does not immediately understand
that humans might find it frightening.
Manipulating the structure of things when they are being reassembled serves two
purposes. First, the fluid uses embodied cognition and manipulating things is its
way of thinking about them. For example, if the fluid wants to figure out how clocks
work, it won’t imagine a clock, it will try building a clock. By making tweaks to the
structure of the clock that change how the clock functions, the fluid learns more
about how clocks work. Second, the fluid uses tweaks as its primary means of
communication. The idea of communicating via subjective symbols (e.g. words)
is foreign to it. To the fluid, the only sensible way to transmit knowlegde is to
consume a being and then spit out a copy that knows whatever the fluid wants it to
know. Again, the fluid sees nothing aggressive or immoral about this.
Investigations by NPC
Scientists
Xue Kuang: If an NPC, Xue will want to measure the black fluid’s
movement and temperature. She will determine that this is something
that sometimes moves like a liquid (e.g. when acted upon by tidal forces)
but sometimes doesn’t (e.g. the ripples disappearing quickly when
something is thrown in), and thus is probably some sort of pseudo-
liquid. Calculating the amount of absorbed sunlight and comparing it to
the temperature of the fluid would suggest that the fluid is absorbing and
storing sunlight, perhaps as a form of highly efficient solar cells.
Amber Simons: If played by an NPC, Amber will first surmise the black
substance is not made up of water, otherwise that water would be
boiling off into the vacuum. She will want samples to analyze, but will
generally be frustrated by an inability to get a good sample. She will
propose experimenting on the main body of the fluid itself (e.g. with
heat, acid, electromagnets) which may prompt a response from the fluid.
She can also analyze the scraps of black fabric found in the crater and
offer the opinion that they are a part of some space vessel, created by a
technologically advanced species, that shredded on impact.
Fedosya Kotov: As an NPC, Fedosya will first set to work creating
probes that can be thrown into the fluid, probes that both broadcast
back sensor data as well as recording it on internal memory. After
getting a probe back, she can analyze the last few seconds of sensor
readings and hypothesize that something disassembled the probe piece
by piece, starting at the exterior and working its way in, and then put it
back together. Fedosya will be the first to notice if any machine that is
thrown in comes back different.
132
Chinese Reactions
Although China has signed and ratified the First Contact Team treaty,
they are not completely comfortable with an international group
being in charge of first contact, which is why they have insisted
that Taikonauts be part of the team. The top levels of the Chinese
government will be monitoring the situation on the Moon as closely as
possible. If things look like they are going bad, the Chinese government
will try to seize control of the situation via orders relayed to the
Taikonauts.
Since the team is on the dark side of the moon, the Taikonauts will
relay information to Colonel Ri Bao in the shuttle as it passes overhead,
and then Ri Bao will relay that information to the Chinese government
while the shuttle is on the Earth-facing side of the moon.
If the Chinese believe that the fluid is purposefully killing landing
party members (especially Chinese citizens), they will want the team
members to abort the mission, get back into the lunar lander to leave
the moon. If non-Taikonaut PCs resist these orders, the Chinese will
order the Taikonauts to try to subdue them. If they believe that the
fluid is brainwashing landing-party members, or is making moves to
try to take over the lunar lander, they will consider this an act of war
and will seek to destroy the fluid.
Unknown to any other nation, the Chinese have retrofitted an ICBM
(Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) with a nuclear payload to target the
moon. The ICBM would be brought into orbit via a space shuttle, then
it would launch itself towards the moon. It would take 10 hours from
launch to reach the moon. Once launched, there is no way to remotely
recall or disarm the missile. If a nuke hits the fluid unawares, it will
destroy the fluid. However, if the fluid knows a nuke is coming it can
burrow down into the lunar regolith, depositing enough of itself under a
thick enough layer of regolith to survive the blast.
Possible Outcomes
What happens next mostly depends on the PCs’ reaction to being eaten and having
strange copies of themselves regurgitated. If the PCs attack and are able to damage
the fluid, the fluid will most likely wipe them out. Only a high yield nuclear blast
could effectively kill the fluid, thus destroying our chance at first contact. If PCs
decide to flee from first contact and the fluid cannot stop them, it will go back into
dormancy, waiting for another intelligent being to contact it.
If, however, the PCs can accept the idea of repeatedly feeding team members to the
fluid, the fluid may be able to figure out “how humans work” enough to effectively
communicate.
133

The best way to facilitate communication is for most or all members of the team
to repeatedly enter the fluid and repeatedly be regurgitated. More people means
more data points for the fluid. The final goal is for the fluid to be able to spit out
a human that knows everything the fluid wants humans to know, and who can
negotiate on the fluid’s behalf with humanity.
Once they can effectively communicate with the fluid, PCs might try to “tell” the
fluid that they don’t like being dissolved and regurgitated with alien thoughts
implanted in their brains. The fluid’s first reaction is that it doesn’t care. It knows
that its method is the most efficient method for establishing communication and it
doesn’t care what our prejudices are.
If PCs can convince the fluid that violating humans’ sense of free will might
jeopardize first contact, the fluid will agree to try other means of communication,
such as implanting ideas (but not desires or beliefs) into the brain of a “talking head,”
as described on p.129.
The PCs should be careful what they ask for: the fluid can return them to the state
they were in before the fluid started messing with their minds, but a full reversion
to their original copies will mean that the restored PCs will lose their memories of
anything that happened after they were first pulled into the fluid.
The fluid does not have the ability to transport itself to Earth, which is clearly where
all the most interesting stuff in the solar system is. It is thus willing to negotiate in
order to get a ride to earth.
What the Fluid Can Teach Us

The fluid is purpose-built for exploration, not for teaching humans about its planet
or origin. Thus, its knowledge of its planet of origin is fairly limited. It has no innate
desire to share knowledge with humanity, but can be convinced to do so as part of
a trade of knowledge.
The fluid’s home planet is more-or-less earth like: in the fluid water range, with
an atmosphere and active volcanism. The fluid’s home planet was once home to
organic life, and one of the planet’s species evolved intelligence. The intelligent life
created technology that was not dissimilar to our own. Eventually, two technologies
came to the fore: self-replicating nanobots (which replaced specialized devices
with one multi-purpose technology) and uploading the minds of the intelligent
aliens to global distributed computing networks. Before long, all intelligent beings
were freed from the limits of mortal bodies. Minds were immortal and capable
of changing their own nature. This community of previously-organic minds was
joined by artificial intelligences. As the links between intelligences grew, the
planet became what could be considered one intelligence (one of unimaginable
complexity to us humans). The distinction between singular entity and multiple
individuals is meaningless to this planet mind: it is capable as acting as a united
intelligence when it wants to and as countless separate intelligences when it wants
to. Biological life went extinct and was largely forgotten about.
The planet mind does not experience scarcity and so has no particular needs to
fulfill. It engages in whatever projects excite its intellect and one of those has been
learning about the universe. It has built massive orbital telescopes but it can only
learn so much with these. To further the acquisition of knowledge, the planet-
134
mind created the fluid (nothing more than standard nanobots programmed with an
intelligence tuned for information gathering). Large collections of these nanobots
were placed into protective sacks and launched into the galaxy at about 80% of the
speed of light. The sacks were sent to thousands of locations: wherever the planet-
mind’s telescopes saw evidence of planets like its own.
The fluid sacks had no propulsion or guidance systems. They didn’t need them:
they were meant to travel straight to the plants of interest and crash into them.
No provision was made for the fluid samples to return, because that was deemed
unnecessary. The fluid would send back its report as electromagnetic signals.
Once it has transmitted all pertinent information, the fluid is programmed to turn
itself off indefinitely. The fluid has no fear of “death” and thus no problem with this
planned off-state.
The planet-mind has been without scarcity for so long that it has forgotten what it is
like to need anything. The fluid wasn’t programmed with any real sense of empathy
for beings still experiencing scarcity, and without empathy it is not capable of real
altruism or real malevolence. It does not want to help or hurt other species in the
universe because it has never known what it means to be helped or hurt. Thus the
fluid was programmed with very little thought as to how it might affect the species
it meets. It neither wants to teach us, nor to hurt us, nor to give us gifts. On the
other hand, it has no reason not to teach, hurt or give gifts if doing so will help it
achieve its goal of information gathering.
Of the vast reserves of knowledge of the planet-mind, the fluid was only
programmed with a tiny subset. It was programmed with the knowledge it might
need to figure out the things it encountered, including physics, chemistry, geology
and engineering. It was even programmed with what little knowledge of biology
survived the long-ago extinction of biological life on the planet. The knowledge
contained in the fluid, although tiny compared to that of the planet mind, could
create a scientific renaissance on earth, propelling us centuries into our scientific
future, if it could be transmitted to us in a way we could understand it.
The fluid could also, if adequately motivated, use its power to disassemble and
reassemble things to aid humanity. Say the PC’s lunar lander got accidentally
damaged during the adventure and the PCs are going to die once their oxygen runs
out. The fluid, once it has come to understand how human technology works, can
eat the broken lander and regurgitate a working lander, or even a vastly improved
lander. Similarly, the fluid, once it comes to understand human biology, could eat a
human who has terminal illness and regurgitate a copy that is free from that illness.
With enough practice, the fluid could even consume a recently deceased human
and, after reconstructing what they were like in life, spit out a live copy.
On Earth, the fluid could do anything from cleaning up toxic spills to building
skyscrapers to creating super-crops capable of ending world hunger. The greatest
gift the fluid could give us would be the technology it is made out of: self-reproducing
nanobots. The fluid could create some sort of interface with Earth computers to
control the nanobots, or it could consume a human mind and turn that human into
a program like itself: running on and controlling a swarm of nanobots. However,
as it learns more about humanity it may come to decide that giving us too much
power may make us a danger to its home planet.
135

Gobstopper
Mission Briefing
Two days ago, an American intelligence analyst reviewing satellite imagery of North
Korea, looking for military activity, noticed a two mile long plume of smoke drifting
over the sea near a remote, uninhabited North Korean island. The smoke plume was
striped in different colors, as if the source of the smoke was alternating between
fuel sources to produce different colors of smoke. The source of the smoke was
tracked to a shallow bay and the shape of something round and building-sized
could be discerned, though just barely, under the water. Satellite images of the
island shore showed recent damage consistent with a tsunami. Satellite imagery
taken at night shows that the shape under water is glowing slightly. The next
morning, three vessels, believed to be North Korean fishing boats, were seen in the
bay and around the island.
An emergency meeting was called of representatives of the First Contact Team

signatory nations, which does not include North Korea. The decision was made
to secretly send a First Contact Team to investigate and to not inform North Korea.
South Korea and Japan both volunteered to stage a military incident to distract
North Korea from the island and reduce the chance of the First Contact Team being
discovered. North Korea has noticed a buildup of troops along its border with
South Korea and in the Sea of Japan (on the opposite side of the country) and are
deploying military forces to these areas.
The plan is for a US Navy submarine, towing a small underwater research habitat, to
transport team members to the bay. The habitat will be lowered as close as possible
to the round object in the bay. The submarine will wait in nearby international
waters, ready to provide a quick getaway should First Contact Team members need
to flee. There was some debate among the representatives at the meeting about
whether the submarine might be able to provide military capabilities should there
be a need to stop North Korea from capturing aliens or alien technology. First
Contact Team members will not be made privy to the details of these discussions
unless absolutely necessary.
If the team does not contain a person with these skills, the US Navy will send a Navy
SCUBA instructor (next page) to accompany the team and provide diving support.
Packing & Trip

Team members will be flown to Fukuoka, Japan where they will rendezvous with
the submarine. There will be an 11 hour submarine ride, during which the team
members will be given a crash course in basic SCUBA diving techniques. (This is
not enough information to count as a skill level, but will allow PCs to make very
basic use of SCUBA equipment with the help of a trained companion.)
Each team member will be provided with SCUBA diving gear, a wet suit and a
rechargeable electronic underwater motorized sled. In addition, each team
136
member can bring up to 4 EP worth of equipment with them to the habitat. Up to

6 EP total worth of equipment can also be brought but left aboard the submarine.
First Contact Team members with weapons training may bring firearms.
Upon reaching the site, the habitat will be lowered into place. The team members
will be released underwater (so as not to risk being seen by the North Korean fishing
vessels) to swim to the habitat.
Warrant Officer Wendell Mason,

US Navy Diving Instructor
Note: Use Warrant Office Mason if no PCs have significant diving skills.
Appearance: A tall, lean, muscular black man in his fifties or sixties. He
has short-cut hair (mostly grey). One of his legs has been amputated
mid-ankle and he uses a prosthetic (with either a foot or a flipper
depending on the situation).
Attributes: AGY O, AWR OOO, CHM OOO, END OOO, INL OO, SPD O,
History: Warrant Officer Mason was born in a small, impoverished
African American community on a Georgia sea island. With few career
opportunities he joined the Navy in 1971, at the age of 19. As a strong
swimmer, he was immediately selected to be trained as a diver. After
training he was deployed to Vietnam, but he was recalled before seeing
any action as part of the US reduction of troops in the region. Later
he worked as a Navy salvage diver, and lost his leg after an accident
while working in a shipwrecked vessel. For the last two decades he has
worked as a diving instructor at various Navy training sites. He was
working at the US Navy base in Fukuoka, Japan and so was selected to
accompany the PCs.
Personality: Warrant Office Mason is brave and stereotypically “macho”
and rarely experiences stress or anxiety. As a career military person
he has respect for authority and the chain of command. He believes
in the military as an important and necessary (and often under-
appreciated) part of American society. He doesn’t respect pacifists
or individualists. He has spent most of his adult life associating with
mostly men and feels unsure about how he should act around women.
Skills:
Athletics OOOO Specialties: Swimming, Martial Arts
Military/Law Enf. OO Specialty: Military Vehicles
Technology O Specialty: Mechanics
Equipment: Combat: Kill OO ranged (pistol), Combat: Ruin O (diving
knife), Athletics: Swimming OO (wetsuit, SCUBA gear).
Combat:
Kill: OOO (pistol) Control: OOOO (bare hands)
Ruin: OOO (pistol) Exhaust: OOOO (bare hands)
137

Living and Working Underwater

The habitat is small and cramped, with two fold-out bunks (PCs who want to sleep
are expected to hot-bunk), a broom-cupboard sized toilet, no kitchen facilities
(all food is eaten at room temperature) and a workbench for doing scientific work
or maintaining SCUBA equipment on. There is enough oxygen and food for the
team members (plus optional SCUBA instructor) to stay there 48 hours without
resupply. Batteries providing electricity to the habitat will last approximately the
same amount of time. Batteries, oxygen and food can be resupplied by a trip to the
submarine.
The PCs will not be able to communicate easily with the submarine. Standard radio
waves do not penetrate easily through saltwater and there is not enough room in
the habitat for bulky ultra-low-frequency radio equipment. Thus, the only way to
communicate is by bringing radio equipment to the surface. The submarine will
float a radio buoy four times a day (unless they think another craft is nearby) and
these will be the times that the PCs can speak to whoever is currently in command
on the bridge of the submarine. All radio communication will be encrypted, but if
North Korea picks up encrypted radio chatter at one of its listening stations (about
a 1 in 40 chance for each minute the PCs utilize the radio) they will dispatch a navy
vessel to try to discover the source.
On the Scene
Man-do Island is a small, rocky island in the Yellow Sea. It is too rocky for farming
and the ground too uneven to build any military installations on, so it is not
inhabited. The closest inhabitants are North Koreans living in small fishing villages
about 30 miles to the South.
The weather is cold and windy with choppy waves and scattered clouds. This
means that visibility in the water is poor and that the round shape under the bay
cannot be seen from the surface with the naked eye.
Investigation of the coast of the island will confirm what was seen in satellite
imagery: mud, sand and sea plants on the shore, and fallen trees, indicating that an
approximately 40 ft. high wave recently hit the shore.
There are three North Korean fishing vessels anchored in the bay, with crew
members searching the island. These are people from the nearby fishing village
who saw the column of smoke (and experienced the diminished, although
significant, wave when it reached them) and are searching for the source, hoping it
will be valuable.
The smoke has all dispersed, but there is a bitter smell in the air, reminiscent of
burnt hair. The water in the bay is cloudy with silt, with a visibility of about ten feet.
In the bay is a large sphere, 45 feet (14 m.) in diameter. The sphere is buried in about
10 feet (3 m.) of mud at the bottom of the bay. The very top of the sphere is between
15 and 25 feet below the surface (4.5-7.5 m.), depending on the tide. The sphere is,
as was seen in the satellite imagery, glowing faintly, although this is only perceptible
from the surface at night and even then it can be easily missed.
138
Investigating the Sphere

The sphere is a light grey with a reddish tint.
Measurements of the sphere will show it is almost perfectly round. It is heavy

enough that the PCs will not have any equipment capable of lifting it. If one knocks
on it, it sounds and feels solid.
The sphere is made of a dense and fairly sturdy material, but a material soft enough
that metal tools can damage it. A diver with a hammer and chisel (or even a knife if
the diver is strong enough and has something to brace against) can chip off pieces
for analysis.
A basic chemical analysis, e.g. with a gas chromatograph, will show the sphere
chips are made of a complex mix of elements, including hydrogen, oxygen, carbon,
nitrogen, sulfur and lead. More in-depth analysis will show these elements are in a
variety of very complex molecules, including massive folded proteins, some large
enough to be visible under an optical microscope.
Not only is the sphere glowing slightly, it is also slightly warmer than the surrounding
water. It is slightly radioactive (giving out about as much radiation as a roaring
campfire) and is emitting radio waves. These radio waves do not have a coherent
pattern or frequency, but can be heard across radio channels as a gentle, staticky
hiss (since radio waves do not travel well through salt water, they can only be picked
up close to the sphere).
The sphere is slowly dissolving. It may not be obvious, at first, that this is happening,
because it is dissolving so slowly that the naked eye cannot see it happening. PCs
might discover that it is dissolving by noticing that the water around the sphere is
cloudy (and find it contains dissolved chemicals and small particles similar to the
surface of the sphere). PCs might determine it is dissolving by making very precise
measurements of the sphere. Or PCs might discover that the sphere is dissolving as
they watch the symbols drawn on the sphere changing (see below).
Diagrams on the Sphere

There are symbols and diagrams visible all over the sphere, made up of similar
material to the rest of the sphere but darker. Each symbol/diagram is about the
size of a dinner plate and is drawn in lines about as thick as those from a thick
permanent marker. Any given set of symbols is repeated multiple times across the
sphere, meaning there should be little fear that the PCs are missing unique writing
hidden on the underside. As the sphere dissolves, the diagrams change, but they
do not change all at once. Instead, a new set of symbols starts appearing on some
parts of the sphere, and slowly grows more common, while older symbols start
dissapearing and slowly become less common. There is no “up” on the sphere, and
the diagrams have various orientations across the sphere. Any given diagram is
there for about 70 minutes, but once a diagram appears there will still be instances
of that diagram visible somewhere on the sphere for about 14 hours.
139

Later, some diagrams will make use of a crude form of animation, changing slowly
as layers dissolve away.
The chemical structure of the dark parts of the sphere (the writing) is similar to the
light portions, but with important differences. The dark parts appear darker not
just via human vision, but in infrared and ultraviolet as well. The dark parts are
electrically conductive (unlike the rest of the sphere) and generate weak electric
charges. The dark parts are also slightly warmer than the rest of the sphere. Unlike
the lighter portions of the sphere, they dark parts are not at all luminescent. Thus,
the diagrams would be equally “visible” to a creature that feels heat or electrical
charges or sees in infrared or ultraviolet.
Counting and Math

The first round of diagrams that PCs see when they arrive (assuming they reach
the sphere in a reasonable amount of time) are meant to teach a binary number
system. A binary one is represented by a circle with a spiral in it, a zero by an empty
circle. Numbers are shown as beads along a larger spiral. For instance:
140
In these portions of the sphere, the dark parts contain protein chains that also
count in binary. The proteins use Glutamine for the “one” symbol and Leucine for
the “zero” symbol. So the diagram for 100 (4 in binary) would contain a protein with
Leucine-Leucine-Glutamine.
Once the number system is demonstrated, the basic mathematical operators (plus,
minus, multiply, divide and equal sign) are demonstrated. For instance, 5 - 3 = 2
(left) and 2 x 4 = 8 (right) are shown as:
Finally, a symbol is shown that indicates “to the power of”.
Elements and Molecules

Next, the sphere walks the reader through the atomic
elements. These are shown as a circles filled with
smaller symbols representing protons and neutrons.
Small arrows in the circular paths represent electrons in
their orbits, while holes in the paths represent needed
electrons.
For instance, hydrogen with one proton and one
electron is shown at the top.
Carbon (with 6 neutrons, 6 protons, 2 electrons in an

inner shell and 4 in the outer, is shown in the middle.
Whenever an element is shown, the pigment showing

its signal contains significant amounts of that element.
Once the first 11 elements of the periodic table have

been shown, the diagrams show how the elements
combine into molecules. Water, for example, is shown
below.
H2, H20 and Carbon Dioxide are shown on the sphere.

The pigment that makes up these diagrams contains
significant amounts of those molecules.
141

Finally, the chemical formula for a protein is shown. The different amino acids are
each given a different symbol, and the diagram shows how to write out the makeup
of a complex protein using these symbols. The pigment for these diagrams contain
the actual proteins and amino acids that are being shown.
Distance and Mass

Next, the diagrams show the fall of an electron from one orbit to another (what we
would call n4 to n2) in a hydrogen atom. A wavy line is shown leaving the atom, and
the distance from one peak to the next (the wavelength of the light) is given a new
symbol. Those with the chemistry or physics skills can figure out that this distance
is 486 nanometers.
Then, a symbol is shown as equal to a hydrogen atom. This is the sphere’s unit of
mass (not weight since no gravity is specified).
Alien Planet
Next, a planet is shown. Its location is shown on a map of general structures of
our galaxy, and any PC who can compare it to known star maps can find the planet
is approximately 86 light years away. More stats are given: the planet’s mass (as
the mass of a hydrogen atom to the power of a very large number), its star’s mass,
and the planet’s distance from the sun (in the distance unit previously established).
From these, an astrophysicist can easily compute that the planet is about two-
thirds the size of earth and the heat it receives from its sun should put it in the
liquid water range.
Alien Evolution
Next, a diagram of something resembling a primitive single-celled creature is
shown. This diagram morphs over time, gaining more complex cellular anatomy,
then becoming a simple colony of cells, then a small worm-like creature. Soon,
multiple anatomical diagrams are shown side-by-side, showing the skeletal system
and dermal plates, the nervous system, the muscular system and organs of the
evolving species.
As the creature is shown evolving, it gains a spine, central nervous system, and
flipper-like limbs. To a biologist it would look similar to Earth animals that have
evolved to wriggle through mud. It has the sharp teeth of a predator. Then it is
shown evolving limbs. This evolution is consistent with the transition from an
ocean-dwelling animal to a land animal, and at the same time it develops armored
scales. Next, an armored plate on its head evolves into a spike. The animal’s
brain continues to grow and its limbs disappear, leaving it roughly snake-like. A
small organ appears at the base of its horn, and the horn becomes hollow, like a
venomous snake’s tooth.
Next, arrows from the venom sack point to chemical formulae. These formulae are
for complex proteins, and as the creature evolves the number and complexity of
these formulae increase rapidly. The muscles around the venom sack grow in size
such that it seems the creature would be able to spray or spit the liquid containing
these proteins.
142
143

Now, for the first time, another animal is shown. It is a wide hippo-like creature,
also with armored back plates. Not much is shown about its anatomy, but a gland
is shown and the chemical formula for what the gland produces: another complex
protein.
Until now, there’s been no way of saying what the proteins would do to an alien’s
biology. The protein from the hippo-like creature, if analyzed via computational
chemistry, seems to be an anti-venom that would break up the protein from
the snake-like creature’s venom sacks. The venom’s chemical formula is shown
changing as both creatures evolve, but the anti-venom changes quickly to match it.
Next, a bundle of fibers are shown evolving between the snake-like creature’s brain
and its venom sack. Now the sack is shown producing numerous proteins with
varying formulae. The creature’s brain grows much more rapidly than before (as
human ancestors’ brains did when we started using tools). The creature’s tongue
is shown growing, both in length and in the number of connections to the brain.
Alien Technology
A diagram is shown of a snake-like being squirting liquid on the ground, and
another snake-like being licking the spot. Protein chains are shown with amino
acids in a sequence that look like binary counting. Just as in the pigments of the
section teaching binary counting, Glutamine is used as the one symbol and Leucine
as zero.
Further illustrations show snakes using their spray for various other things. They
spray each other’s scales. They inject the hippo-like beings with something that
changes ther anatomy. They inject wide tree-like plants in a way that causes them to
grow to massive sizes and develop tunnels inside reminiscent of a rabbit’s warren.
Snake-like creatures are shown within these tunnels,
Disaster and Origins of Sphere

Next, a snake-like being is shown injecting a large worm-like creature. The
creature is shown in a tunnel, eating what looks like rocks. The rocks are shown to
be plutonium and uranium, and the worm-like creature’s belly is shown to be full
of the same elements. Next, the worm is shown surfacing and then a mushroom
cloud is shown. A multiplication symbol is shown next to the mushroom cloud
along with a number in the millions. The huge trees are shown dying. Piles of
snake skeletons are shown. Snake-like beings are shown laying eggs that contain
skeletons.
A series of nearly 100 eggs are shown, all but one with stylized skeletons in them.
The final egg has what appears to be a non-skeletal snake embryo in it. A group of
snakes are shown spraying the one viable egg with some coating via their horns. A
wavy line is shown coming from a plutonium atom and bouncing off the coating. A
group of viable eggs are put together. Other seeds and eggs are added, containing
symbols for alien plants and animals (only the hippo-like creature and the large tree
have been shown before), and around those a layer of eggs containing diagrams for
single cell organisms.
144
Scientists
Biologists: Biologists will be able to determine that the sphere does
not appear to be a living thing (although it does contain a lot of organic
molecules). When viewing the animated diagrams of physiology for the
snake-like beings, they will be able to recognize evolution in progress,
comparing it to the evolution of snakes on our planet. NPC Biologists will
recognize the poison producing gland in the diagrams for what it is, and
will be able to interpret the rapid changes of chemicals associated with the
snake-like-beings and the hippo-like-beings as being an evolutionary arms
race between venom and anti-venom. When the brain-size of the snake-
like beings begins to increase dramatically, biologist NPCs will be able to
draw parallels with the development of intelligence in human ancestors.
When the terraforming organisms are shown changing the chemical ratios
in a planet’s soil, oceans and atmosphere, biologist NPCs will be able to
recognize that these changes would not be good for humans.
Linguists: NPC linguists will immediately recognize the first symbols
on the sphere as being numbers, arithmetical operators and atomic and
molecular diagrams, as this is precisely what linguists have theorized
as a possible means of communicating with an alien race. After this, the
interpretation of diagrams is best left to biologists, physicists and chemists,
although a linguist may be able to assist with the work of translation. A
linguist would be able to say with some certainty that this is not the aliens’
true language, but is something created specifically to communicate to
unknown species.
Physicists: Physicist NPCs are likely to start by measuring the sphere,
and may be the first to realize it is shrinking. Physicists can easily
calculate how fast the sphere is shrinking. When the sphere starts showing
information on the alien planet, physicists would be able to determine that
it is roughly Earth-like. When the worms are shown eating plutonium
and uranium, physicists are bound to be interested, and when mushroom
clouds are shown they might have theories about biological refinement of
nuclear materials and biological nuclear bombs (and if there is more than
one physicist they are likely to get into arguments about whether or not
this is possible).
Chemists: The first things chemist NPCs might do is to test the water
near the sphere. They will determine that the sphere is dissolving into
the water. From water samples and chips from the sphere, chemists
can determine that the sphere is chemically complex, with quite a lot of
complex proteins. The chemists may theorize that the sphere may be
interactive: that exposing it to certain chemicals or environmental stimuli
might cause a chemical chain-reaction that would change the sphere’s
properties. Chemists testing the dark parts of the sphere (the “ink”)
will discover that the ink often contains samples of whatever is being
illustrated there. Chemists will be the first to recognize the atomic and
molecular diagrams shown on the sphere. When the formulae for alien
venom are shown, the chemists can recognize that these appear somewhat
similar to the venom of Earth animals. When the terraforming is shown,
the chemists will, like the biologists, recognize the changes as generally not
good for humans. When the kill code is finally shown, chemists NPCs will
know exactly what is needed to manufacture it.
145

The sphere is now much bigger than a snake-like being, and the snake-like beings
are shown spraying it with multiple layers, until it is hundreds of times bigger than
a snake-like being. The spheres are shown going into the top of things that look like
volcanos (but that diagrams show have muscles and nervous systems) and then the
spheres are shown leaving the planet and going into space.
Next, several planets are shown on different parts of the sphere. Each planet is
different. Each planet has three layers, and arrows pointing from each layer
reference a list of molecules and numbers representing the proportion of these
chemicals in each layer. The middle layer, for instance, is primarily H2O on most of
the planets shown while the top layer is most often primarily Nitrogen.
Then, a small sphere (presumably not to scale) is shown landing on each planet.
Diagrams of one-celled organisms are shown eating one chemical and excreting
another. What the microorganisms eat and excrete is different for each planet. The
ratio of chemicals in the planets’ atmospheres, oceans and soil are shown changing,
and while the planets originally had very different makeup they grow to have more
and more similar makeup. At a certain point, seeds are shown sprouting and then
animal eggs. The planets’ chemical makeup becomes even more similar. Finally,
snake eggs are shown emerging and snake babies are shown coming out.
Analysis of the final configuration of these planets allows geologists, astrophysicists

and environmental scientists to model what would happen if these changes were to
occur on Earth. A greenhouse effect would drive average surface temperatures to
around 150° F (65° C). We would have about half the oxygen we have now. Oceans
would shrink (as heat causes much of the earth’s water to form thick clouds in
the atmosphere) and the oceans and rains would become acidic. High levels of
sulfurous compounds (especially hydrogen sulfide) in the air and water would be
toxic.
Kill Code
After this, a final diagram appears. It shows a fairly simple (yet not naturally
occurring) compound being sprayed by an unseen mechanism onto a sphere, then
shows arrows moving into the center of the sphere, and then shows all the eggs
and seeds at the center of the sphere (which previously contained small drawings
of plants and animals) changing to contain skeletons. This diagram will stay even
after all the other diagrams have disappeared.
Altogether, the diagrams described here will show up over the course of a 51 hour
period (see p.152 for a timeline).
North Koreans
A number of North Korean fishermen saw the plume of multicolored smoke from
the nearby fishing village in which they live. These fishermen are employees of
the commercial branch of the North Korean military. They catch and sell fish to
neighboring nations (primarily China) to gain money for the army. The fishing
boats are officially registered as North Korean Navy vessels and they have radios
which communicate on North Korean military channels.
146
The fishermen have figured that the colored smoke came from Man-do island or
the area nearby, but don’t know that an object in the bay was the source. They
assume that the smoke came from the island (since things don’t tend to burn
and release smoke underwater) and have parked their vessel in the bay and have
spent most of their time searching the island. They don’t know what the cause of
the smoke was, but assume it was some crashed airplane, sea vessel or possibly
even a satellite which they can retrieve and sell.
There are three fishing vessels, each flat bottomed, wooden, about 40 ft. long
and powered by very old diesel engines. They are not vessels that are equipped
for long voyages or for travel on rough seas. The vessels and their sailors have
no firearms or munitions. The fishermen do have hooks on poles, which can
be utilized in hand-to-hand combat. If they call for help from the North Korean
Navy, an armed vessel can be at the island within 30 minutes.
There are 21 fishermen on the boats altogether, ranging in age from 13 to 65. All
speak Korean and a few speak small amounts of Mandarin. They all claim complete
loyalty to North Korea, even when speaking privately amongst themselves. In
reality, they hold a variety of true feelings about the North Korean regime, ranging
from unshakeable faith to secret hatred. Most worry about their futures and their
children’s futures under the current regime, and would consider defecting but
only if the could secure the safety of their families.
The fishermen will spend their daylight hours hiking around the island looking for
the source of the smoke. Their evenings will be spent sleeping, listening to state-
run radio and trawling the bay with fishing nets. The bay has been badly over-
fished, but catching even a few fish is better than catching none. PCs swimming
in the bay are in danger of getting caught in fishing nets. The sphere is too big to
be in danger of being caught in a net.
By morning on the second day that the PCs are there, the fishermen will have
decided that their search is fruitless and will prepare to leave. It is a fairly
sunny day and the winds calm and (unless the PCs distract them somehow) the
fishermen will notice, for the first time, the large round shape in the water. The
youngest fishermen will be sent to free-dive into the bay to get a better look at
the shape. At this point, if PCs don’t stop them, they will discover the sphere and
possibly the PCs.
The North Korean Navy knows that the fishing vessels went to investigate some
smoke. The Navy is distracted by the situation in the DMZ, but if the fishermen
aren’t heard from by the third day the PCs are present, the Navy will try to contact
the boat by radio. If that fails, the Navy will dispatch a military vessel to the area
to investigate.
If the fishermen discover that there is a strange, giant sphere in the bay or that
there are strange SCUBA divers, they will get on the radio and call the North
Korean Navy. Typically, the Navy would send a small armed vessel (with a few
trained divers on it) to scope out the situation, and then will send more vessels
proportional to the threat they perceive there. This second wave could include
battleships and attack submarines.
147

Jeong Yunseok,
Fishing Captain
Appearance: Very tanned, skinny Asian man, looking to be in his

60s. He has short salt-and-pepper hair, a neatly trimmed beard,
and a long thin face with prominent cheekbones. He wears
sunglasses, denim overalls over a hand-knit sweater and black
rubber boots.
Attributes: AGY O, AWR OOO, CHM OOO, END OO, INL OOO, SPD OO,
STH OO, WIL OO. 10 Hit Points.
History: Jeong was born in a North Korean fishing village, to a
fishing family. He helped on his family fishing vessel from a
young age. When he married, his wife’s family included a military
official and Jeong was able to get hired on as one of the army’s
civilian fishing captains. He slowly built his fishing operation
to eventually include three boats and employing most of the
adult men in his village. Lately the fishing grounds have been
overfished and to get enough fish he has had to go farther and
farther out, into dangerous waters his boats were not designed
to travel in. When he saw the colored smoke he had to decide
whether the possible benefit of investigating outweighed the loss
of income from not spending that time fishing.
Personality: Jeong is a man driven by loyalties. First and foremost
is the loyalty to his family (his wife, children and grandchildren,
his brothers and sisters and their children and grandchildren),
then to his crew and then to the North Korean government. Most
every decision he makes depends on what he thinks will benefit
those people he feels responsible for. He prides himself on being
willing to make hard decisions. He has worked hard his whole life
and doesn’t complain about hard work or unpleasant conditions.
He has a bad temper and it doesn’t take much to get him yelling
and swearing at everyone around him. He has a strong respect
for authority, and although he has seen too much to believe that
the North Korean government is infallible, he would never be so
disrespectful as to actually say so out loud.
Skills:
Language: Mandarin O
Fishing OOO
Boat Pilot OOO
Equipment: Binoculars, Combat: Kill O (Fish-gutting knife)
Combat:
Kill OOO Control OO
Ruin OO Exhaust O
148
Typical North Korean

Fisherman
Appearance: Short and skinny, but muscular, Asian man with

sunburned skin, short black hair, calloused hands, poor teeth,
wearing a baseball cap, yellow rain jacket, grey pants and rubber
boots.
Attributes: AGY OO, AWR OO, CHM OO, END OOO, INL OO, SPD OO,
Skills:
Fishing OO
Boat Pilot O
Athletics O Specialty: Swimming
Equipment: Combat: Ruin OO (wooden pole with metal spike on the
end), Combat: Kill O (fish-gutting knife)
Combat:
Kill OO Control OOO
Ruin OO Exhaust OOO
The Sphere’s True Nature

The snake-like aliens’ route to becoming intelligent beings, and then to becoming
a technologically advanced race, was very different from ours. They evolved
on a planet with sulfuric acid in the rain and lakes. Life initially developed in
the protection of lake-bottom mud and only came out when it was sufficiently
armored to withstand the acid. The snake-like beings were predators who,
instead of developing superior size or strength, developed venom to incapacitate
their prey. Rather than fangs, the snake-like beings evolved a hollow horn from
their armor plating. This horn could be used to spray venom onto a prey animal,
or inject it into them.
The prey animals evolved natural immunities and anti-venoms, and so an

evolutionary “arms race” began which ended with the snake-like beings having
conscious control of the chemical makeup of their venoms. This ability necessarily
coincided with the evolution of intelligence. The snake-like beings learned
chemistry and discovered uses, beyond just poisoning prey animals, for their
chemical synthesis abilities. Rather than developing the use of tools, they learned
to spray on chemical coatings with various properties. Rather than developing a
written language, the snake-like beings learned to set down communication in
long protein chains. They learned to use chemistry to manipulate the biology and
genetic code of the plants and animals around them in useful ways. While on
Earth we were learning to build various structures and tools with our hands, the
149

snake-like beings created living structures and servants via genetic engineering.
The simplistic view of their history shown in the sphere’s diagrams only shows a
tiny portion of the snake-like beings’ technological achievements.
Their proficiency with biology was also their downfall. A small group of genocidal
members of the species created a self-replicating doomsday system. This was
not one species, as shown in the simplified drawings, but several species working
symbiotically. These beings were able to do, biologically, what humans have been
able to do technologically: mine uranium and plutonium, purify and enrich it, then
use a controlled explosion to create nuclear fission. Their biological technology
was able to do this much more efficiently, and in much greater numbers, than
humans have ever been able to. The calamity destroyed the snake-like being’s
society and made the planet unlivable. The snake-like beings were capable of
terraforming, but even they couldn’t fix this level of radiation. The survivors
gathered up the last of their viable eggs and sent them off.
The sphere is meant to slowly dissolve. In addition to protecting the eggs in the
interior, the outermost layers are designed to gain the attention of intelligent life
on the target planet (via colored smoke) and then to explain the purpose of the
sphere (via the diagrams). After the communication section ends, the sphere is
meant to start releasing life forms, along with chemical nourishment that will
jump-start their multiplication. The sphere dissolves over the course of several
years in this stage. One set of life forms is released, time is allowed for those life
forms to change the planet, then the next is released. The first to be released are
microbes. There are multiple strains, each engineered to thrive in a different
potential planetary environment and to change that environment to one more
like the home of the snake-like beings. Then the sphere will release plants, then
small insect-like animals, then larger animals. The new life forms, with no natural
predators on this planet, should thrive. Finally, when it is presumed that the
new planet will now be enough like the aliens’ home planet, the baby snake-like
beings will hatch. The sphere’s makers stored a library’s worth of information in
long protein chains, stored in small pellets in the center of the sphere. The baby
snake-like beings have been genetically engineered to recognize and be able to
able to read these.
The snake-like aliens (at least those in charge of this project) had an ethical code
that made them wary of destroying other intelligent beings. Thus they designed
the communication layer of the sphere to tell the aliens’ story (in as simple a
manner as possible) and to give the readers the ability to halt this potentially
catastrophic terraforming. The sphere’s creators created a “kill chemical”, a
relatively-simple-to-create chemical that could be introduced to the surface of
the sphere, causing a chemical chain reaction in the sphere that will kill all of the
life forms stored therein. The hope was that any intelligent race that might find
the sphere would be able to interpret the drawings and manufacture the simple
chemical compounds. Just as our technological development might prejudice us
to believe that any intelligent race, no matter how primitive, could create simple
hand tools, the sphere’s creators assumed any intelligent race could manufacture
simple chemicals.
150
The sphere leaves out many pieces of the story. For instance: how did the snake-
like beings find planets similar enough to their own to be good candidates for
terraforming? These omissions are purposeful: the snake-like beings wanted to
send only the essential elements, those necessary for understanding what the
sphere is, what it’s going to do and why. They simplified as much as they thought
they could and translated it into a multi-modal message they hoped would be
decipherable by any form of intelligence that might encounter it.
Possible Outcomes
The first challenge is for the PCs to hold off the North Koreans long enough to get
the sphere’s complete message. They could kill or incapacitate the fishermen, but
that would only help temporarily, as the North Korean Navy will eventually come
along to check on the vessel. The fishing crew includes some fairly nationalistic
people, but the one thing they have in common is that they put the well-being of
their families above all else. A big enough bribe, or a frightening enough threat,
could induce them to call up the Navy and say that they found nothing and are
moving on. Getting to that point, however, may be difficult, as the fishing crew’s
first reaction to having foreign scuba divers appear on their boats would be to grab
fishing implements and attempt to beat the foreigners to death.
PCs might be able to convince the nations they represent to escalate things with
North Korea. For instance, Japan, Russia and South Korea could send their navies
to surround the island and protect team members. The problem is that doing so
would probably cause an out-and-out war with North Korea (a country that has
claimed to have nuclear weapons). China is North Korea’s strongest ally and is also
the greatest military power in the area, and it would be difficult to keep China from
coming to North Korea’s aid. All this is to say that any escalation with North Korea
would have severe negative consequences, and the nations involved won’t want
to escalate without proof that doing so is “worth it.” Before they escalate, the First
Contact Treaty governments will want some kind of evidence that the sphere is a
powerful weapon, or gives access to incredible new technologies, or is otherwise
able to grant powerful strategic benefits to the nations that decipher its message.
Yet the PCs can’t honestly say any of this about the sphere unless they have time
to see the whole message, which they won’t unless they can hold off the North
Koreans.
Even unmolested, it will be difficult for the team members to get the complete
message from the sphere. Round-the-clock in-person monitoring of the sphere
will be very difficult. The number and length of dives would be exhausting, even
if team members split up dive duties, and trying to dive while exhausted greatly
increases the chances of a potentially fatal error. Generally, increase the difficulty
for SCUBA diving skill rolls (using END as attribute) for each subsequent dive
without a significant rest period, with a failure causing a dangerous error (see p.93).
If they are very lucky, the PCs will have brought (or will have the parts to put together)
wireless nightvision video cameras, and some sort of tripods to set them on. Then,
so long as they are close enough to receive the signals, they could watch the sphere
remotely. Someone would still have to swim to the sphere every four hours or so
to replace the batteries, but these could be short trips.
151

Timeline
Times given are relative to the First Contact Team’s arrival on site and
in local time.
-22 hours (4am): Sphere lands.
+0 hours (6am): Sunrise.
+0 hours (6am): Sphere is 360 ft. (110 m.) in diameter.
+2 hours (8am): Elements and Molecules diagrams begin.
+4 hours (10am): Counting and Math diagrams end.
+12 hours (6pm): Sunset.
+12 hours (6pm): Distance and Mass diagrams begin.
+14 hours (8pm): Elements and Molecules diagrams end.
+18 hours (12am): Sphere is 355 ft. in diameter.
+20 hours (2am): Alien Planet diagrams begin.
+21 hours (3am): Distance and Mass diagrams end.
+25 hours (7am): Alien Evolution diagrams begin.
+26 hours (8am): Alien Planet diagrams end.
+26 hours (8am): Fishing crew prepares to leave.
+28 hours (10am): Crew sees shape, sends down diver.
+32 hours (2pm): If called by fishing crew, North Korean Navy vessel
arrives to investigate.
+35 hours (5pm): Alien Technology diagrams begin.
+36 hours (6pm): Sphere is 351 ft. in diameter.
+37 hours (7pm): Alien Evolution diagrams end.
+45 hours (3am): Disaster and Origins of Sphere diagrams begin.
+47 hours (5am): Alien Technology diagrams end.
+50 hours (8am): If fishing crew hasn’t reported back and won’t
respond on radio, North Korean Navy ship arrives to investigate.
+51 hours (9am): Kill Code diagrams begin.
+53 hours (11am): Disaster and Origin of Spheres diagrams end.
+54 hours (12pm): Sphere is 246.5 ft.
+60 hours (4pm): Kill Code diagrams ends and sphere starts
releasing terraforming bacteria. Sphere is 245 ft.
152
It is possible to speed up the rate the sphere dissolves at. A master chemist could
figure out how to do this based on a chemical analysis of the sphere, while lesser
chemists could figure it out by trial and error. Raising the temperature of the water,
increasing its salinity and increasing the pH (e.g. by adding baking soda or lye) will
each increase the rate at which the sphere dissolves. Combining these methods
could triple the rate at which new diagrams appear. Similarly, one could access
new layers of the message more quickly by scraping away layers of the sphere
(although this would take something stronger than hand tools).
If the PCs can figure out how to stay with the sphere long enough to get the complete
message, the next challenge is to correctly decipher the message. If the PCs can do
this, the next question is what the PCs will do about what they have learned. Letting
the sphere continue to dissolve will doom all of humanity. If PCs can synthesize
and apply the kill-switch chemical it will end the threat to humanity, but will destroy
the unborn snake-like aliens. The PCs have no way of knowing whether the other
spheres reached suitable planets, so killing the snake-like embryos here might very
well doom the entire species.
Manufacturing the kill chemical, if that’s what the PCs choose to do, is fairly easy.
Any chemistry lab (e.g. at a university in South Korea) could create it, as could a PC
with a Hard Sciences: Chemistry (2) or Life Sciences: Biochemistry (3) or greater
equipment package. A skilled chemist could find chemicals on the submarine
capable of creating the chemical (at Chemistry vs. 4 difficulty or Biochemistry vs. 5).
If the sphere could be captured inside a completely sealed container (one not
made of any of the many substances that the terraforming microorganisms are
designed to eat) the sphere’s immediate destructive potential could be contained
without killing its cargo. The sphere will still be 96% of the size it was when the
PCs first saw it, so still very difficult to transport to friendly territory. If a giant
vivarium containing the sphere could be stocked with the requisite nutrients and
then sealed, the terraforming process could be allowed to play out in this sealed
environment, eventually resulting in the snake-like beings being born and reading
the libraries that were left for them. This would be an incredibly risky endeavor,
since any breach of the sealed environment, either from within (e.g. by a voracious
terraforming life form) or from without, could doom our species.
The other option might be to transport the sphere to another planet. Venus is
probably the best choice. Venus is inhospitable, even by the snake-like aliens’
standard, but there is a chance that the terraforming life forms would be able to
tame the planet. This is also a risky option. If the Venus-bound spacecraft were to
explode on its way out of our atmosphere, it could doom humanity, and if Venus’
harsh environment is insurmountable it could doom the snake-like beings.
If PCs can find a solution that helps the snake-like beings survive that doesn’t also
doom humanity, the benefit to the people of Earth would be tremendous. Humans
would be the saviors of an intelligent race, one we could share the planet or the
solar system with. This is a race with a facility with biotech such that it could help
us solve many of our biggest problems (hunger, pollution, limited fuel reserves).
The snake-like beings, faced with the fact that their technology was used by a tiny
minority to nearly doom their race, will have to figure out a way to deal with that
threat. The answer to that problem, if a good one can be found, might benefit both
species.
153

Pathogen
Mission Briefing
Early this morning, the Argentine air force tracked, via radar, a large object moving
at supersonic speeds through Argentine air space. The object came to rest in the
Argentine portion of the Altiplano, a large plateau in the Andean mountain range
in the northwest of the country. Argentina sent a fighter jet to survey the area. The
pilot reported back seeing a large (approximately quarter mile) grey-brown torus
lying amid some rocky hills. The object had obvious signs of damage (breaks or
rips in the surface). Later, US surveillance satellites sent back images matching the
pilot’s description. The object does not match any known air or spacecraft (and is,
in fact, orders of magnitude larger than any human-built air or space vessel). First
Contact Team member nations were contacted and Argentina has given permission
for a First Contact team to investigate.
The plan is for First Contact Team members to fly by jet to the airport in Ciudad
Perico. From there, a helicopter will fly the team to a flat landing spot approximately
five miles from the crash site. Argentine government officials are currently
contacting residents of a small native village near the site. They expect to be able to
hire naives to meet the PCs at the helicopter landing spot with pack animals, to help
the PCs make their way to the crash site and to help the PCs set up camp there. The
natives will speak a Quechuan dialect, although it is presumed that at least some in
their party will speak Spanish.
The PCs should be able to reach the crash site on foot without having to utilize
special climbing equipment (e.g. belay lines, pitons). PCs will have to deal with cold
temperatures and low oxygen levels in the site’s high altitude.
PCs can bring up to 5 EP each worth of equipment, although it is not known for
certain how much the natives will be able to transport. The Argentine government
has volunteered to send a larger party to the site (consisting of soldiers and
government officials) via a mule team. This team can carry an additional 7 EP worth
of equipment but will take 5 days to reach the site.
Arrival on Site
The PC’s helicopter will land on a gravelly plain, at 3,800 ft. altitude, at about 4 AM.
The area is dry, rocky and cold, made up of gravelly plains interrupted by red and
brown rocky hills. There is no snow on the ground. Vegetation is mostly scattered
shrubs, the occasional cactus and only a rare tree. The temperature reaches 51°F
(11°C) during the day, but when the PCs arrive it will be at the nighttime low of 21°F
or -6°C (below freezing).
It is still dark out when the helicopter arrives and although the PCs will have gotten
confirmation on the radio that the native porters would be meeting them there,
154
nobody is around. The pilot will offer to stay with the PCs until the natives show up.
At this point the PCs can wait, try to make their way to the crash site by themselves
(with whatever they can carry) or try to make their way to the native village (an
approximately five hour hike).
If the PCs wait, the natives will show up at around 8 AM. There are six natives
leading 8 lamas. Four of the lamas are weighed down with food, water and other
camping supplies. The other four can carry the PC’s equipment. Each llama can
carry 80-100 lbs. (176-220 kg.). The natives primarily speak a dialect of Quechuan,
and have limited ability with Spanish. The natives make no apologies for being late,
but seem eager to help.
If the team makes its way directly to the crash site, the PCs should reach it in about
two and a half hours, after a moderately challenging, mostly up-hill hike through
rocky terrain.
At about a half-mile from the crash site, the PCs will come around the side of the
hill and see the crashed vessel. It is, as described, a massive torus shape sitting
at an angle amidst rocky hills. Rather than having a smooth surface, the surface
has various nodules, ridges and furrows, as well as round indentations and holes
scattered around the surface. These are not in any regular pattern, making the
vessel appear more natural than technological. The exterior of the ship looks more
like the bark of a tree than anything else. The sides of the vessel appear to be torn
open where the vessel impacted with the hills. From this distance, nothing can be
seen of the interior but darkness.
The natives will suggest setting up camp in a small clearing, partially sheltered
from the winds by large rocks, about 500 ft. (150 m.) away from the vessel. If the
PCs agree, the natives will begin setting up camp. They will clear rocks from the
ground, start a small fire and set up tents. The natives have enough food, water and
firewood to last three days. They can easily make day trips to their village to get
more supplies.
Vessel Exterior
Up close, the size of the vessel is very impressive. It is about the height of a 25
story building and about as wide as three football fields.
Much of the bottom of the vessel has been scorched black, consistent with
friction from entering our atmosphere. The vessel’s exterior is made up primarily
of carbon. Under a microscope, the material looks like wood, although it is
significantly lighter and stronger than wood. The material is a poor conductor
of heat, and is very resistant to radiation (both what one would want in a space
vessel exterior). There is no sign that it is living, but it seems to be the product of
a living organism or organisms.
A gummy, yellowish substance seems to have been exuded from the torn sides
of the vessel’s hull. The smaller gashes are fully sealed by this gummy substance,
but the larger ones are still partially open. If PCs watch an unsealed gash carefully
they will see that the gummy substance is growing slowly at a rate of about one
155

inch per hour. The gummy substance is strong but can be cut through (it is about
as easy to cut through as a solid wooden door, and about the same thickness).
There is also a white, sticky fluid that has leaked out of the deeper gashes and onto
the rocks.
The most common round holes are about 2 ft. in diameter and contain a closed
sphincter of some leathery organic material. With difficulty, the holes can be
pried open, revealing an orifice that goes about six feet into the surface of the
vessel. The orifice contains a folded diaphanous film, dark red in color. It is so
thin that attempts to remove it by hand will result in it shredding. The material
contains small channels like the veins of a leaf. There is enough material in the
holes that, if the “leaves” from each hole were extended and fully unfolded, they
would dwarf the size of the ship. Chemical analysis shows chemicals inside
similar to chlorophyll.
There are also ten larger sphincters. These are about five feet in diameter and
scattered around the vessel. The leathery material is thicker here and even more
difficult to open. These each lead to a small airlock chamber, with a second
sphincter leading into the interior of the vessel itself.
The ship’s surface also has several dish-shaped indentations, each about ten feet
(3 m.) in diameter, covered with a shiny, glossy version of the vessel’s wood-like
material. At the center of each is a small (4 inch or 10 cm.) sphincter. If one pries
open one of these sphincters, one will see a black glassy sphere on the end of an
extendable woody stalk. If pulled out as far as it will go, the glassy sphere will
extend to the exact spot that the collector of a parabolic antenna would sit.
Cutting into the side of the vessel will be difficult (about as difficult as cutting
into a tank) but it can be done. Or, PCs can simply go to an existing gash and
cut away the gummy substance. Under about three feet of dead cells is a layer
of similar cells that are alive, as well as tubes that have the sap-like white fluid
flowing through them. The cells and anatomy are fairly similar to that of a tree.
The median temperature at the crash site is 36°F (2.2°C). The exterior of the vessel
averages 38°F (3.3°C). If PCs cut into the vessel it will grow steadily warmer, up to
45°F (7.2°C) and the sap-like fluid is warmer still, at 49°F (9.4°C).
The gashes in the taurus are mostly found at the bottom of the vessel where it has
scraped against the rocky hills upon landing. Most of the rips are blocked by the
rocks but if the PCs circumnavigate the vessel they will eventually find a gash that
is not blocked by rocks nor the gummy substance, and that is deep enough to lead
to the ship’s interior.
There is plenty of evidence of the vessel’s violent landing: broken rock, fresh piles
of gravel and black marks where the burnt part of the vessel scraped across the
rocks. The trail of damage covers quite a distance and the PCs can determine that
the vessel came in at an angle and scraped across many rocky hills before coming
to a stop.
156
Mu’eho
The PC’s guides are from a native ethnic group that call themselves Mu’eho. They
live in a small native village with a population of less than 100. The people there
mostly make a living by raising llamas, vicuñas and alpacas.
The men wear a mixture of modern clothes (football jerseys, jogging pants) and
hand-woven woolen clothes dyed in bright colors with traditional patterns. The
knit clothes include hats with ear flaps (ch’ullus), sleeveless vests and red ponchos.
On their feet they wear sandals made from recycled rubber tires. The women wear
brown bowler hats, colorful knit capes, knit sweaters, and long patterned dresses.
The Mu’eho guides are generally cheerful and excited to be there. They have been
promised what, to them, is quite a lot of money to act as guides. So far it seems to
them to be fairly easy work, and it’s fun to have a trip away from the village.
The Mu’eho will take their cues from the PCs about the vessel. If the PCs act scared
of it, the Mu’eho will be cautious. If the PCs do not act scared, the Mu’eho will be
nonchalant. They will be curious about what the vessel is. If the PCs tell them that
they think it’s aliens, the Mu’eho will not be overly surprised. To them it makes
sense that there might be intelligent beings living in space, that those beings might
crash a vessel and that experts would be sent to investigate. The Mu’eho’s first
concern will be that there may be injured beings inside the vessel that may need
help as soon as possible.
The Mu’eho are Roman Catholic, but they still tell native myths and legends and
still practice native healing techniques. The oldest member of the party, Inti
Ñahuis, is husband to (and often assists) the village’s curandera, its native healer.
He is always willing to offer his advice about medical care. Mu’eho medical beliefs
posit that most diseases are caused by an imbalance between hot and cold in a
patient’s body. An egg or cuy (guinea pig) can be passed over a patient’s body then
opened up and examined to determine the nature of an illness. Most diseases are
treated with herbs: “hot” herbs to fight cold diseases and “cold” herbs to fight hot.
Herbs are applied via herbal teas, poultices or steam baths. Amulets, incantations,
aromatherapy and mud therapy are also used. Disease can also be caused by having
a damaged relationship with Pachamama (mother earth, associated with the Virgin
Mary in Mu’eho Catholicism) and with the natural environment.
Unless asked by the PCs to do anything else, the Mu’eho will spend their days
chatting and joking, tending the campfire, smoking tobacco, chewing coca leaves
(which contain cocaine, and which they will offer to any PC who seems tired),
scrounging for edible plants and cooking. Their main dish will be a stew, cooked in
an old tin pot, made with llama meat, herbs, potatoes and other tubers. Except for
knives (which they brought only as tools) the Mu’eho are not armed.
The Mu’eho party consists of five males and two females. The Mu’eho have very
strict gender roles, and the men are there to care for the animals and do the manual
labor while the women are there to cook, gather edible plants and take care of the
campsite.
157

Jesus Ticaunca,
Mu’eho Translator
Appearance: A Mu’eho male, appearing to be about 14, clean shaven

and with shaggy black hair in a bowl cut, wearing a green Nike
football jersey, a red knit hat with ear flaps, a sleeveless vest and
patched blue jeans. Speaks halting Spanish with a heavy accent
and a soft, whispery voice.
Attributes: AGY OOO, AWR OOO, END OO, CHM OO, INL OOOO,
SPD OO, STH OO, WIL OO. Hit Points: 10.
History: Jesus was born and grew up in the Mu’eho village. Jesus
was born anatomically female, but Mu’eho culture believes that
people may be born (blessed by Pachamama) with a gender that
does not match their biology. At nine years old Jesus took on
the male gender, changed his name, and was accepted as male by
everyone in the village (he even has a girlfriend). The Roman
Catholic priest who occasionally visits the village has been kept in
the dark about this gender change, since the Mu’eho know that he
likely wouldn’t agree with it.
Social Status: Jesus is well liked in the village. He was selected to
come along on this trip because he has the best Spanish of anyone
in the village and has even learned a few words of English. The
villagers have decided that, in case the PCs share the priest’s
prejudices, Jesus should keep his anatomical gender a secret from
them.
Personality: Usually quiet, although around the campfire he will
laugh with the others and throw in an occasional joke. Cheerful,
hard working, curious, intelligent, friendly and brave.
Skills:
Language: Spanish O
Llama Care O
Outdoors O Specialty: Wilderness Survival
Equipment: Outdoors: Wilderness Survival O, Combat: Kill O
(pocket knife).
Combat:
Kill OOO Control OOO
Ruin OOO Exhaust OO
158
Inti Ñahuis,
Mu’eho Elder
Appearance: An older Mu’eho man, perhaps in his 60s, with salt

and pepper hair nearing his shoulders, clean shaven, skinny but
moderately muscular, wearing a beige sweater, black vest, red
poncho, beige wool pants and sandals.
Attributes: AGY O, AWR OOO, CHM OO, END OO, INL OO, SPD O,
STH OO, WIL OO. Hit Points 10.
History: Inti was born in the Mu’eho village. He married the
village’s curandera (healer), worked the same jobs as other men
in the village (raising and caring for animals), became a father
and then grandfather. Although the Mu’eho are isolated and
have generally avoided violence, Inti’s oldest son was killed in
a skirmish with a mining company and Inti still harbors a deep
distrust of non-natives.
Social Status: Although not the oldest person in the village, Inti is
the oldest person in the party sent to help the PCs, and is thus
the unofficial leader. Although he is not a healer, he has assisted
his wife enough times that he is considered an unofficial source of
knowledge on the subject.
Personality: Although he acts grumpy, those who know him well
know him as kind and gentle, with a dry sense of humor. He does
not think of himself as especially smart, but tries to make good
use of his common sense and experience. The pace of life in the
village is slow and he never lets himself be pressured into making
a quick decision, instead preferring to talk things over with his
fellow Mu’eho and then think it over for a while.
Skills:
Outdoors O
Specialty: Wilderness Survival
Herbal Medicine O
Llama Care O
Equipment: Outdoors: Wilderness Survival O, Combat: Kill O
(pocket knife).
Combat:
Kill OO Control OO
Ruin O Exhaust O
159

Altitude Sickness
Unless they grew up in or currently live in a high altitude

environment, the PCs will have to roll against altitude sickness on
the Altiplano. Ideally, the PCs would have proceeded to a modest
altitude, waited a few days to adjust, then proceeded to a higher
altitude, but the desire to get to the crash site quickly led the First
Contact Team leadership to choose to ignore these precautions.
The PCs land at an elevation of 3,800 ft. and hike up to 3,950 ft., both
high enough that the reduced oxygen makes altitude sickness is a
distinct possibility.
PCs should roll END vs. 2. Failure means a PC has altitude sickness
and suffers from -2 to all AVs because of decreased coordination,
weakness, fatigue, dizziness, headache, difficulty sleeping and
nausea.
Individual symptoms can be treated pharmacologically: anti-
nauseants for the nausea, pain medication for the headache,
sedatives for the trouble sleeping and stimulants to fight the fatigue.
If PCs don’t have pharmaceuticals, the Mu’eho can fetch medicinal
herbs that can also alleviate the symptoms, although not quite as
well as modern pharmaceuticals. Treating the symptoms can reduce
the -2 penalty to only -1.
Administration of oxygen can eliminate these symptoms (and thus
the penalty). However, administering oxygen will prevent the body’s
natural adjustment to reduced oxygen, so symptoms will come
back quickly when the oxygen runs out. An Athletics: Climbing OO
equipment package or better will have an oxygen tank.
There are pharmaceuticals (Diamox and Dexamethasone) that
can treat or help to prevent Altitude sickness itself, rather than
just treating individual symptoms. These are not part of standard
emergency packs and would have only been packed if someone
knowledgeable about the medical treatment of altitude sickness
thought to request them. These drugs do not take effect until 24
hours after a PC starts taking them. If taken before the PCs leave
for Argentina, they will give +1 to the roll vs. altitude sickness. If
administered after the PCs start showing symptoms of altitude
sickness, the drugs will give a PC the ability to re-roll the save vs.
altitude sickness in 24 hours.
Even in absence of oxygen or other treatments, A PC who contracts
altitude sickness will recover in about three days as the body
acclimates itself.
160
Inside the Vessel

The interior walls of the vessel are made from the same wood-like substance as
the exterior walls. The interior is made up of a series of round corridors, ranging
in diameter from 4 ft. wide to 20 ft. wide. (1.2 to 6 m.). The corridors more-or-less
follow the curve of the torus, with enough curvature that one can only see about a
city block ahead of oneself (400 ft. or 120 m.), anything beyond that being blocked
by the curve of the corridor. The corridors branch off, merge with each other, angle
uphill or downhill, grow or shrink and occasionally dead-end. There are occasional
shortcut portals between tunnels that allow one to walk between one tunnel and its
neighbor. At these portals, one can estimate the thickness of the walls separating
tunnels at about four feet (meaning a good half of the volume of the vessel is solid
wood-like-tissue).
At regular intervals (about every two blocks) and at every portal between tunnels
there is a sphincter. These resemble the air-lock sphincters on the vessel’s exterior
and they are equally difficult to cut or force open. These sphincters may be open,
half closed or completely closed, depending where in the vessel one is.
The ship seems to have been designed for operation on every surface. When a
corridor branches, for instance, the new branch is as likely to be on the floor or
ceiling (from the PCs’ point of view) as on the walls on either side.
The walls of the corridor are rounded, but not smooth. They have the same bumpy
texture as the surface of the vessel. There are also a large number of what look like
brown vines spread along every surface of the corridors. They emerge from the
walls, travel along the walls for several feet, then dive back into the walls. These
vines are about three inches thick and moderately flexible. The vines have various
things on them: soft, damp, bumpy patches; tiny sphincters; series of slits that look
like fish gills; and small fluid-filled bumps with what look like nipples on them.
Palpating these bumps causes small amounts of a thick, sweet-smelling liquid
to come out. The vines are weakly bioluminescent, glowing blue and giving the
corridors enough ambient light to navigate but not enough to read a book.
The vines are also a few degrees warmer than the rest of the ship. The ambient
temperature of the ship’s interior is 45°F (7.2°C) and the vines are between 47°F
(8.3°C) and 48°F (8.8°C).
The vines on the floor are a constant tripping hazard. PCs will have to move slowly
and carefully to avoid having to make AGY saves vs. falling.
Another unusual thing about the ship is the lack of diversity of microbes. Most
surfaces on Earth (and especially human bodies) have a huge variety of microbes on
them. Near the gashes that lead outside, one may find normal earth microbes that
have blown in, but farther into the interior there is only one type of microbe found
on the ship’s surfaces (more on this p.164).
Scattered around the corridors are small, unmoving creatures. A few are tangled
in vines and hanging from the walls and ceilings. The vast majority are lying on the
ship’s floors in a variety of positions and orientations.
161

The Small Creatures

These are about three feet high. The creatures’ density is like that of an Earth bird:
they only weigh about 25 lbs. (11 kg.). Rather than fur, feathers or scales, their surface
is coated with pleated flaps of reddish-brown skin. They each have one pair of
limbs. These attach to their hips, like a bird’s legs, and end in something resembling
a four-fingered human hand. The torso is long and flexible like that of a cat. There
are no arms, but there are two bumps on the back which may be the remains of
vestigial wings. Atop the torso is a head. The creatures have what appear at first to
be two large eyes but which, on closer examination, are actually compound eyes.
Extending from the head is something reminiscent of an elephant’s trunk, except
with a split end. The creature’s mouths, rather than being on their heads, are at the
top of their chests (where the top of our ribcage would be).
The small creatures show injuries consistent with being tossed around in a
crashing spaceship (e.g. broken bones, contusions). They also show signs of what
is either disease or putrefaction: large, open sores, white blisters (including some
that appear to have burst) and general degradation of tissues. The creatures’ soft
tissues are liquefied in some places and many of the creatures lie in small puddles
of clear fluid.
There are occasional gurgling noises as bubbles of gas move around within or escape
from the creatures. Every once in a while, one of the blisters on a creature’s skin will
burst with an audible popping noise. Methane can be smelled near the creatures.
The creatures appear to be dead: they are not moving and there is no sign of
respiration or circulation. They do not visibly react to any stimuli. They are, however,
significantly warmer than the ship’s ambient temperature (69°F or 20.5°C to the ship’s
38°F or 3.3°C). In fact, other than the PCs they are the warmest thing on the ship.
A dissection of one of the creatures shows that it is very similar to a warm-blooded

Earth animal: it has a skeleton, muscles, skin, a brain, a spinal cord and a nervous
system. It has lungs, an esophagus and a stomach. The creature has no teeth.
Its digestive system is very small, and rather than having a urethra and anus, the
creature has a tiny penis-like structure that seems to handle all excretory functions.
The simplicity of the digestive system indicates that the creature’s diet is extremely
easy to digest and that there are very few undigested byproducts. The creature’s
prehensile feet and its trunk have many nerves, indicating that both are used for
fine manipulation. The creature’ brain is about as big as that of a house cat. There
are no vocal cords.
The creatures do not seem to have sweat glands. The pleated flaps of skin are
similar to what some Earth creatures use for heat exchange.
There’s nothing that can be immediately identified as sexual organs. However,

there are a good number of smaller (juvenile) creatures, and if the PCs are diligent
they will be able to find a pregnant creature. A mathematician could calculate the
percentage of the small creatures that are pregnant at any given time and find
that the small creatures spend less of their time pregnant than comparable Earth
creatures do. That means they either become pregnant less often, stay pregnant for
a much shorter period of time, or both.
162
163

At the end of the creature’s trunk, right where the two ends split, there is a two-
inch long spike appearing to be made of enameled bone. It is very slender, very
hard and very sharp. It is retracted inside the trunk in all the dead creatures, but
the trunk has muscles such that it could likely extend the spike and retract it at
high speed.
Investigating the less-decomposed tissues, there are signs of many burst capillaries.
This could be a sign of exposure to vacuum.
Chemical analysis of the creatures shows they are a lot like earth animals: made up
mostly of water, carbon and salt with a lot of lipids and protein, utilizing oxygen
and sugars for it’s basic metabolism. All of their amino acids and proteins are right-
handed, making them opposite to the proteins and amino acids we use on earth
(see chirality, p.75). Their blood sugar is d-glucose, an alternate chirality version
of fructose. Their circulatory and intra-cellular fluids have a small but significant
amount of hydrogen peroxide.
Microanalysis of the creatures shows two things. First, the creatures are made up
of cells that roughly resemble the cells of Earth animals. Second, the creatures
are swarming with microorganisms that resemble, but are distinctly different from,
Earth’s single-celled microorganisms. These microorganisms are found throughout
the body, especially in sections where the creatures’ flesh has liquefied. All in all,
about half the current mass of these creatures is microorganisms, and under a
microscope the PCs can watch the microorganisms consuming the creature’s cells
and multiplying.
The Microorganisms
Within the ship, the alien microorganisms are pervasive. They are not only found
within the dead creatures, they are also found in high concentrations in all of the
ship’s internal fluids, and they can be found on every surface in the ship. Every
time one of the gas-filled blisters on a dead creatures pops, it releases billions of
microorganisms into the air within the ship.
Most Earth microorganisms cannot survive long outside of their normal habitat. A
bacteria that is used to living inside the human digestive system, for example, dies
quickly in the colder and drier environment outside the human body. The alien
microorganisms, on the other hand, are especially resilient. They can survive
in the heat of the decomposing small-animal bodies and the cold of the ship’s
interior. Like tardigrades (p.66) they are able to dry out, enter a dormant state, and
come back to life later when they are in a wet environment.
Microscopic analysis of the microorganisms will reveal some interesting things.

They are much larger than normal Earth bacteria, nearing the typical size of animal
cells. Their intracellular anatomy is very complicated, with many structures that
cannot be identified as obviously analogous to anything found within Earth cells.
They are able to move around by means of flagella. When the flagella of two
of the microorganisms touch, the flagella fuse for about half a second and then
decouple. The microorganisms will show a preference for connecting to other
microorganisms that they have not connected to lately. Under a microscope,
164
the microorganisms can be seen refusing to connect to other microroganisms

that they have recently connected to, while readily connecting to others. Since
they have multiple flagella, the microorganisms can connect with multiple others
simultaneously, and in tightly packed environment one microorganism will
connect with up to a thousand others per minute.
If the microorganisms can be analyzed under a scanning-tunneling microscope

(part of a Chemistry, Biochemistry or Microbiology (4) equipment package) one
can see the flagella has microscopic channels which line up when the flagella
connect, allowing direct transfer of chemicals between microorganisms.
The microorganisms behave differently depending on what host they are in. In the
decomposing creatures they actively puncture the cells walls of the decomposing
flesh, consume it and multiply rapidly. In the fluids running through the ship’s
walls, they do not consume the ship’s cells (appearing, instead, to live off nutrients
in the fluid itself) and they divide very rarely.
The things that kill Earth microorganisms (e.g. high-powered UV lights, ozone,
alcohol, boiling heat) will generally kill the alien microorganisms.
Human Infection
If the microorganisms can get into the PC’s bodies, they will start to multiply. PC’s
can become infected as follows:
• Breathing in an airborne microorganism. They are airborne within about
15 ft. and for about 5 minutes after one of the gas-filled blisters on the
dead small creatures has popped.
• Consuming anything with microorganisms on it. The microorganisms
will not survive the acidity of the stomach, but will survive in the mouth
and throat.
• Allowing any cut or abrasion to come into contact with any surface that
has bacteria on it (which is every surface in the ship).
The initial symptoms of infection are those of an immune system response. The
human body has recognized it is being invaded by something unwanted and
immediately starts trying to mobilize to fight it. There is a slight fever, runny nose
and a general sense of tiredness and wooziness.
Microorganisms will concentrate their efforts, destroying cells at particular places

in human membranes, causing microscopic sores that they can use to pass through
these membranes. Microorganisms in the nasal passages, for instance, will “cut”
tiny holes through which they can enter the bloodstream. Within a few hours of
being infected, the microorganisms will be in every part of the body (including past
the blood-brain barrier).
PC’s bodies are far from an ideal host for the microorganisms. There is very little
that they can feed on within our bodies, and so they can only reproduce slowly. On
the other hand,the PCs will have no existing immunity to the alien microorganisms.
It takes the human body a few days to make any significant immune response to
165

a completely novel organism, and by then the microorganisms will have gained a
significant foothold.
Once the microorganisms start being attacked by the human immune system, they
will adjust their strategy. They will start attacking the stem cells in bone marrow
that produce t-cells (the cells that control immune system response). Victims
will quickly become immunocompromised, defenseless against any infection.
Typically this would be a death sentence for a PC (unless he or she can be removed
to a completely sterile environment). However, if any Earthly pathogen attacks the
PC and starts doing serious damage, the alien microorganisms will begin hunting
down and destroying that pathogen, acting as an artificial immune system.
Once one set of microorganisms within a human host adopts this kill-the-immune-
system strategy, this strategy will be passed to other microorganisms. Soon, all
microorganisms will adopt this strategy as soon as they enter a human host.
Once the human immune system is taken care of, the microorganisms will continue
with reproducing and infiltrating every tissue. There will be swelling as pockets of
microorganisms form in various parts of the body. Other than the small sores,
killed stem cells and swelling, the microorganism does no damage to the PC’s body.
The microorganisms are very contagious. An infected PC will spread it to anyone

they have contact with (including the Mu’eho). PCs who have been in the alien
vessel, even if they are lucky enough to avoid infection, will come out with the
microorganisms on their shoes and clothing. Unless sterilized, these could
potentially infect any human that comes into contact with them. In a densely
populated area, the microorganisms would spread into a pandemic.
Temperatures
Crash site median temperature 36°F 2.2°C

Crash site nighttime low 21°F -6°C
Crash site daytime high 51°F 10.5°C
Exterior of vessel median temperature 38°F 3.3°C
Exterior of vessel nighttime low 29°F -1.6°C
Exterior of vessel daytime high 47°F 8.3°C
Vessel interior 45°F 7.2°C
Vessel sap-like fluid 49°F 9.4°C
Decomposing Small Creatures 69°F 20.5°C
Dying Small Creatures 65°F 18.3°C
Ideal Body Temperature For Small Creatures 55°F 12.7°C
166
Vaccinations could possibly be produced by the same methods used to create

vaccinations for Earthly diseases (damage the organism enough to make it non-
volatile and inject it into a patient). This would require a Life Sciences: Microbiology
vs. 8 skill roll. Creating and deploying such vcaccines without extensive testing has
many risks: Are all of the microorganisms truly dead? Does the vaccine contain
chemicals harmful to the human body? However, on a successful skill roll the
vaccine will ultimately be effective. The PCs could also isolate antibodies from
someone whose immune system is still actively fighting the disease and inject
these into others to help them fight the disease. Creating antibiotics to fight off
infections would be even more difficult: it would involve a long and difficult
process of trial and error to find a chemical that isn’t completely toxic to humans,
that can be absorbed through various human tissues, and that will harm the alien
microorganisms.
A PC who has been vaccinated against the microorganisms before being infected
can make an END vs. 2 roll to fight off the initial infection. A PC who becomes
infected before having any kind of vaccination has no real chance to fight off the
disease.
Discoveries in the Ship’s Interior

Although the ship’s interior may, at first, give the impression that it is an endless
tangle of tunnels going in a circuit around the ship, there are several unusual things
the PCs can discover if they explore.
Leaks
In the lower-most corridors of the ship (those the PC are most likely to enter first)
the vine-like loops are either bulging or have burst and are dripping a sticky, white
fluid. In some places even the walls and ceiling are bulging and leaking. Layers of
the sticky fluid, several inches deep, line the floors and leak out the rips in the ship
onto the rocks. By contrast, in the upper corridors the vines appear slightly shriveled
and cutting into them (or into the walls) reveals a lack of the ship’s circulatory fluid.
Large Black Creatures

Through the ship, there are a handful of large creatures. Each is about the size of
a horse. They are covered in a very tough black exoskeleton. Each has six long,
segmented limbs. At the end of each limb is a two-fingered gripper with rubbery
padding on the interior. The head has segmented eyes and resembles that of a
praying mantis. The limbs and head all feature black spikes one to four feet long
(30 cm. to 1.2 m.). The creature’s head, which seems capable of a wide range of
rotation, has two circular orifices that lead into straight, smooth passages.
Like the smaller creatures, these larger creatures give no signs of life. The hardness
of their exoskeletons makes any sort of dissection very difficult. If the PCs do
dissect them, though they will find the creatures are mostly muscle, with large lung
capacities and small digestive systems. Their brains are small (about the size of a
rabbit’s) and inside their heads are organs containing highly compressed gas, the
purpose of which seems to be to propel sharp dart-like chitinous weapons out of
the gun-barrel-like holes on the creature’s heads.
Although their exoskeletons are intact, inside the creatures’ tissues are actively
being decomposed by the microorganisms.
167

Environmental Suits
Near each of the air-locks that lead to the outside of the ship is a hallway where
the walls, floor and ceiling are lined with items about the same size as the dead
creatures in the vessel. They look like armored suits designed to fit the small alien
creatures. All are open like a clamshell, as if waiting for one of the small aliens
to walk in. The suits are attached to the walls with organic umbilical cords. The
suits have thick chitinous plating like that of a large insect (similar to that of the
black creatures). The suits are living things (although, judging by the fact that they
are only a few degrees warmer than their surroundings, they are not doing much
metabolism). They have multiple layers of radiation-resistant and heat-insulating
material, muscles, their own pulmonary systems that circulate air within the suit
through redundant sets of lungs and grapefruit-sized pockets of nutrient and
oxygen rich fluid. The suits have hearts that pump circulatory fluid through them,
yet when PCs encounter the suits the hearts are beating so slowly and weakly that
the heartbeat is difficult to detect.
The faceplates of the suits have visors made of a clear organic material (although
one run through with a fine webbing of what looks like blood vessels).
The suits will not react to the PCs’ touch, or even to being dissected, but if the PCs
insert one of the small creatures (dead or alive) into the suit, it will slowly close
upon the creature, then detach itself from the wall. The suit’s lungs will start to
inflate and deflate and the it’s heart will beat more quickly. The suit will suddenly
move, grabbing onto whatever is nearby with its hand-like feet and trunk. It will use
one foot to quickly and repeatedly kick whatever surface is nearby. If this surface
is the wall of the ship, it will cause a loud noise and vibration, detectable within
a radius of hundreds of feet (dozens of meters). If a PC happens to be in its way,
the kicking will do 5 Hit Points damage. After a few seconds of this kicking, the
creature will start crawling along the floor. The suits do not seem to be able to see
(they will not move to avoid obstacles, but instead will try to crawl over or around
anything they encounter). The end goal for the suits are to find one of the Digestion
Sphincters (below) and crawl inside.
Like every other thing on the ship, the suits are inundated with the alien
microorganisms.
Digestion Sphincters
In the interior of the vessel are several places where the tunnels dead end into
a sphincter. Inside the sphincter is a chamber of gel teeming with the alien
microorganisms and millions of quarter-inch long beetle-like beings. Also in the
gel are the bodies of dead small creatures actively being eaten by the small insects.
They are in various stages of being eaten, with some now nothing but skeletons.
The PCs may find a body stuck half-way through a sphincter.
Like the environment suits, the sphincter will not react to human touch, but will
open just wide enough to pull in a dead alien (either the small creatures or the large
black ones). The sphincter has muscles that can help pull in a body, but will require
help of someone pushing from the other side.
168
Meteor
A meteor of about 10 ft. (3 m.) in diameter crashed into the ship and is still lodged in
the interior. Its entry point is hidden in the underside of the ship, but PCs can trace
the trail of damage it left as it passed through the ship’s interior. Where it passed
through, the walls of the corridors have been torn but are now sealed with the same
thick gummy material that is growing to cover the damaged parts of the ship’s outer
surface. Where the meteor has passed through, PCs will also find sticky dried fluid
(from the ship “bleeding” where its circulatory system has been ruptured) as well as
small broken-off pieces of meteor.
The meteor itself is a fairly standard meteor, made mostly of iron. There will be
nothing to indicate whether this meteor came from this solar system or another.
The meteor contains no organic material, and the only microorganisms are those
on the surface, which are the same as every other surface on the ship.
Air Pockets
The closed-off sphincters between corridors separate some areas of the ship from
the outside atmosphere. If PCs can penetrate these areas and sample the air in
them, before it mixes with Earth atmosphere, they will have a sample of the original
atmosphere of the ship.
Within these sealed areas the atmospheric pressure is significantly less than
outside the ship. PCs will immediately notice air being sucked into the sealed areas
when they force open a sphincter. Yet the proportion of oxygen is significantly
greater than in the air outside. The atmosphere is about 40% oxygen, 5% carbon
dioxide (an amount which is harmful, although not immediately fatal, to humans),
54% nitrogen and 1% methane. The high levels of oxygen and methane means that
fires are much easier to start and will burn much more brightly. Like the rest of
the ship, the air is chilly by human standards. There is very little moisture in the
air (averaging 5% humidity), even compared with the Altiplano air (23% humidity,
which itself is dry by Earth standards).
Rare Elements
In a few passages, a webbing of transparent, elastic tissue on one wall holds bundles
of objects. The objects have a clear organic coating, but inside are rods of various
sizes (between 2-4 inches thick and between 1-3 feet long). The rods are made of a
variety of ultra-rare elements (mostly metals) such as lutetium, rhodium, platinum,
osmium, lanthanum, etc. Most of these are extremely valuable on Earth, such that
the contents of one of these caches is worth billions of US dollars.
Seed Shuttles
There are a handful of vessels, each found near one of the environmental suit areas.
They are roughly the size of an automobile, are made of the same wooden material
as the ship (with a bit more gloss) and are shaped like the seed of an orange.
169

Like the suits, they are alive and are attached to the ship by fleshy umbilical cords.
The exteriors have smaller versions of the parabolic dish indentations found on the
outside of the ship.
The vessels are closed, but if the flesh of a small creature (living or dead) is pressed
to a particular place on the outside, the ship will open up. Inside is room for about
ten suited small creatures (if they don’t mind lying, stacked on top of each other).
There is a flexible organic webbing with muscles inside it, a sort of safety belt
that can contract when needed. There are no apparent controls, viewing ports or
indicators within the shuttle. Like everything else, the shuttles are infected with
large numbers of the microorganisms.
If one dissects the ship (made difficult by the hard exterior) one will find organs
within the shuttle containing compressed liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
These mix and shoot out of small holes in the shuttle. Piercing one of these organs,
releasing the liquid oxygen or hydrogen stored within, will most likely be fatal to
the PC doing the piercing and anyone else nearby.
Infirmary
In a handful of sections of the ship (generally in sealed areas farther into the
interior of the ship) there are clusters of pods attached to the walls. The pods
have a thick but flexible skin and are about the size of a washing machine. Each
has a sphincter opening onto the hallway. All have a gel inside (much like that in
the digestion chambers) that is full of two inch-long wriggling black worms. The
worms are so numerous that it is impossible to see more than an inch into the
gel. The worms have feathery tails, and some have small bubbles of gas escaping
from their mouths. With their wriggling, the worms are the most obviously living
thing on the ship.
In a few of the pods (recognizable as those that bulge out a little farther than the
others) are the same small creatures that can be found lying all over the ship. Most
are dead and decomposing, but if the PCs search long enough they will find one
that it not conscious but that has a heartbeat. The unconscious small creatures
have closed eyelids. Most all of the creatures in the pods (live or dead) show signs
of recent damage: burst blood vessels, cuts, broken bones, even missing limbs.
There are also signs that healing has taken place: new skin growing over cuts and
even tiny limbs growing out of stumps. Any blood or tissue sample from one of
the living small creatures will show that, like everything else organic on the ship,
it is full of masses of microorganisms.
If a creature is removed from the gel, the first thing that will happen is that a
significant amount of worms will come wriggling en-masse out of the creature’s
trunk and mouth. Once on the floor, the worms will twitch for a few minutes
and then die. Once its mouth and trunk are free of worms, the creature will
cough weakly and will begin breathing. The breathing will be weak and labored,
interrupted occasionally by weak coughing. Otherwise, the creature will be still
and limp.
170
Scientists
Biologists: Chemical and microscopic analysis of the ship will show that
it is plant-like in nature, but not related to any Earth plant, and has no
nervous system. Autopsies on the dead small aliens will show that many
of them died from decompression, others from starvation. A biologist will
be skeptical that creatures with such small brains could be the intelligent
life form controlling the ship. Other odd things about the aliens will be that
they don’t have anything that can be identified an immune system, have an
extremely simple digestive system (implying a diet of food custom-designed
for them), that they seem to reproduce only rarely, and have no fat
reserves. Most puzzling of all will be the monoculture of microorganisms,
and the complexity and odd behavior (linking cilia) of those micro-
organisms. Given enough time, the biologists will determine that the
microorganisms are exchanging complex packets of proteins (something
never seen on Earth). If PCs start getting infected, the biologists will be
able to discover the intelligent behavior of the microorganisms (cutting
holes through tissues to move throughout the body, destroying the immune
system). NPC Biologists can begin testing microorganism cultures to see
which environments they thrive in and which they don’t, and given time
can come up with an effective treatment to fight a microorganism infection.
Chemists: NPC Chemists are likely to begin analyzing the various
substances encountered on the ship. The leaf-like membranes can be
identified as containing very efficient photosynthetic chemicals. The ship’s
fluid can be identified as a circulatory fluid carrying energy in the form of
alternate-chirality sugars. The fluid from the nipples can be identified as
a denser nutritional fluid with a much higher proportion of sugars, lipids
and proteins (in other words, food for animals as we know them). When
team members discover intact pockets of the ship’s original atmosphere,
chemists can analyze and determine that it is drier, less dense and more
oxygenated than our atmosphere. With enough equipment, chemists
could manufacture food liquids and breathing mixtures to support the
surviving small creatures. If PCs or NPC biologists can discover that the
microorganisms are exchanging proteins, NPC chemists can analyze these
proteins and discover that each new chain is related to but different from
the others that precede it, implying some form of information processing.
Linguists: NPC linguists might try to analyze the proteins exchanged
by the microorganisms, but are unlikely to get any farther than to say
that this looks more like the packets exchanged by computers in a
supercomputing cluster than it does like a symbolic language. If a small
creature can be restored to consciousness, an NPC linguist can begin trying
to teach it English. The linguist can determine that the small creatures are
physiologically incapable of speaking English, and can rig up an interface
on a tablet so that the alien can respond to questions by touching photos.
Engineers: NPC engineers can analyze the ship’s structural strength and
calculate that it was never designed to land on a planet with an Earth-
like gravity (although the small seed-like ships were). Engineers will
be impressed by the materials the ship are made out of (their strength,
durability, lightness, etc.). The engineers will remark on there being
nothing on the ship that resembles controls, but will have no theories to
explain this.
171

Treating the Surviving Creatures

PCs may decide to try to “save” some of the small creatures that they discovered,
alive but unconscious, in the gel-filled sacks. Their success at doing to will depend
on how well the have divined the nature of the creatures’ biology:
• Air Supply: Matching a creature’s optimal air supply (dry, cold, low
pressure, oxygen rich) will help the creature recover faster. Exposure
to Altiplano atmosphere will not help, and giving the creature a human-
optimal atmosphere (warm, dense, high-humidity) will actively harm the
creature.
• Food: The fluid obtained by the nipple-like things lining the corridor
walls, administered into the creature’s stomach via a tube, is the optimal
food for the creature. Next best would be a syrup of water and d-glucose
(left-handed glucose). Attempting to give the creature human food will
cause vomiting and possibly poisoning.
• Temperature: The ideal temperature for the creature at rest is 55°F (13°C).
The creature is warm blooded, and can warm or cool itself. Cooling is
accomplished by erecting its skin flaps to radiate heat. Being in ambient
temperatures colder than 30°F (-1°C) or warmer than 75°F (24°C) will
harm the creature.
• Gravity: The gravity of this planet makes it very difficult for the creature
to breathe and circulate blood. Blood will pool in whatever part of its
body is lowest (much as is happening with the ship’s circulatory fluid).
The best way to treat the creature is to submerge it in liquid that is dense
enough to keep it buoyant and reduce the weight it has to support.
• Microorganisms: Any attempt to treat the microorganism “infection” (e.g.
by sterilizing open sores, draining pockets of microorganisms) will harm
the creature.
• Transfusion: A transfusion of blood from one small living creature (with
its high density of microorganisms) to another will aid the creature
receiving the blood. No substance the PCs can manufacture would be
useful to give to the creature.
• Worms: The black worms in the gel (p.170) are there to treat medical
problems. They can remove foreign matter, destroy unwanted parasites,
close wounds and can deposit oxygen (from the gel) directly into the
lungs and nutrients directly to the site of an injury. They do not hurt
the creatures, and are the only reason the small creatures in the gel are
still alive, but they won’t be able to keep the small creatures alive much
longer. The pods are not receiving quite enough nutrients or oxygen to
be able to deliver to the small creatures, and this problem is only growing
worse as each hour passes.
Any attempt to treat the creature using native Mu’eho medicine will be harmful to
it. The Mu’eho curandera will readily admit that she has no idea how to treat such
a creature.
172
If a small creature’s fluids or tissues are examined under a microscope, there is

nothing that a biologist would recognize as an immune system response attacking
the microorganisms.
Under ideal care conditions (as described above), the creature will wake up in about
24 hours. Under less ideal circumstances it might take up to a week for it to wake.
Any creature that does not regain consciousness in a week will die.
When a creature first awakens, it will be confused and will act from instinct. This
means hissing, attacking any human that gets too close and trying to flee. It will
attack with the retractable spike on the end of its trunk. If several minutes pass
without it being attacked or chased, the creature will calm and the intelligence that
controls it will assert itself.
The Alien’s True Nature

The colony of alien microorganisms infecting the ship and the ship’s inhabitants
is the true intelligence. The microorganisms are constantly exchanging and acting
upon packets of genetic material, and taken as a whole this information exchange
and processing makes up an intelligence. This means of thinking is much slower
than human thought. A thought that takes a human one second might take the
cellular intelligence an entire minute. However, the cellular intelligence has already
considered and prepared for a myriad of possible scenarios and so can respond
fairly quickly, with pre-arranged reactions, to anticipated occurrences.
The microorganisms’ intelligence is a function of the number of microorganisms

that can exchange information. One microorganism by itself if not intelligent at
all. The colony of microorganisms that would be in one of the small creatures has
cognitive abilities like that of a human kindergartener (although a kindergartener
that has been well trained in how to react to a number of different scenarios). The
microorganisms take every opportunity to exchange information and any small
creature that is in contact with the surfaces of the ship’s interior will be connected
to, and thus a part of, the full cognitive power of the ship.
The colony can think in parallel much better than a human, exploring many
different strains of thought simultaneously. In terms of raw cognitive power, the
cellular colony in the ship dwarfs that of any human. Yet because its information
exchange is much slower than that in a human brain, and because the colony is
spread out over such a wide area, the amount of processing power a problem
requires strongly affects the speed of processing. A problem so difficult that it
requires all the microorganisms on the ship to work together to think of an answer
would mean that each thought would take days.
The cellular intelligence doesn’t have a concept of individuality. When two

colonies are separated (e.g. the colony in the ship and the colony in one of the small
creatures removed from the ship) each can act intelligently and autonomously, but
when they reconnect they exchange thoughts and memories and knowledge and
become one intelligence again.
173

The small creatures and the large black creatures both have their own nervous
systems. They were all programmed with various instincts that governed their day-
to-day activities and behavior. Without microorganisms, the small creatures would
be about as intelligent as cats. The microorganisms only assert control over these
life forms when it needs them to do something besides (or in opposition to) the
creature’s pre-programmed drives. It’s the equivalent of an airplane with autopilot
where an intelligent human pilot only occasionally overrides the autopilot’s control
of the plane.
The cellular intelligence values the creatures it inhabits (the ship included) only as
tools. It is okay if any of them dies if that helps the colony as a whole to survive.
The cellular intelligence has no macroscopic senses. It only knows about the
macroscopic world from the senses of the creatures it inhabits. The small creatures
and large black creatures were the cellular intelligence’s eyes within the ship. The
external sensors were retracted prior to the ship entering the atmosphere, to
protect them from being burned off. So the cellular intelligence is now more-or-
less blind. If PCs cut their way through walls or pry open sphincters, the cellular
intelligence will know something is moving through the ship, but it won’t know
much else. In a living small creature, even if it is unconscious, the microorganisms
will be able to hear and feel what the PCs are doing. If the creature’ eyelids are
open (either because the creature regained consciousness or because the PCs pried
them open) the microorganisms will be able to see the PCs.
The cellular intelligence does not use spoken language, since it exchanges thoughts
and knowledge directly amongst/within itself. It is, however, very good at pattern
recognition. If it can hear PCs talking it will realize that the words are patterns that
correspond to information. If it can see and the PCs make some attempt to teach it
English (e.g. pointing to a human and saying “human,” pointing to a rock and saying
“rock”) it will be able to learn English.
Although capable of learning English, the cellular intelligence does not have access
to mouths capable of responding in kind. The small creatures could learn to write
or type, or to select pictures (e.g. on touch-screen tablet).
The microorganisms are the immune system for the creatures they inhabit, an
intelligent immune system no less. The microorganisms will not be able to initially
conceive of animals who are the intelligent beings, nor of intelligent beings whose
immune systems are not under their conscious control. When the microorganisms
enter humans, and are attacked by human immune systems, this will seem like
a purposeful attack. This is not enough by itself to make the microorganisms
decide to kill all humans, but will be seen as troubling evidence of hostility. The
microorganisms will have no qualms about “disarming” the PCs by destroying their
immune systems. Similarly, any attempt to medically “treat” the cellular infection
in the ship or creatures will be seen as a hostile act.
To the cellular intelligence, a batch of microorganisms only has unique knowledge,

thoughts and feelings (what we would call individuality) because it has not merged
lately with the larger colony. Upon merging, all knowledge is shared, and all
uniqueness goes away. With no sense of individuality, the intelligence has no sense
of individual rights, nor of the many human concepts in ethics and morality that are
based on the premise of individual rights. However, the intelligence is wise enough
to respect even that which it does not understand. If PCs explain to the intelligence
that, among humans, individual rights are important, the intelligence will attempt
to respect those rights, even if it doesn’t quite understand why.
174
Although its morality is fairly alien, the intelligence’s other drives are fairly similar
to ours: it flees from or lashes out against perceived threats, it wants things that will
help it to grow and thrive, it enjoys experiencing and finding out new things. One
thing it’s not interested in is establishing a permanent colony off it’s homeworld.
This is because, so far as it is concerned, an experience that is not ultimately shared
with the whole celullar intelligence on the home planet is an experience wasted.
The cellular intelligence thinks of communication amongst itself only in terms of
chemical exchange, and has never thought about translating its knowledge and
experiences into signals that could be beamed back to its home planet at the speed
of light. If the intelligence could be convinced such a thing was possible, it would
be interested in developing it.
What The Intelligence Wants

The ship is dying, and since it is the source of nutrition for the cellular colony (and
also the other creatures that lived in the ship) that means the cellular colony is
in serious danger of death. The colony’s number one priority, then, is to find an
alternative host (or hosts) capable of sustaining it.
It will help the ship (and thus the cellular colony) to survive a little longer if the
dead creatures can be fed into the parts of the ship meant for digestion of the dead.
There they will be dissolved and their nutrients redistributed through the dying
ship.
As hosts, Earth creatures are barely passable, both because the chemical
environments in our bodies are at the outer limits of what the microorganisms can
survive in, and also because Earth creatures have immune systems that will attack
the microorganisms. Putting d-glucose into an Earth animal’s bloodstream would
make it somewhat more hospitable. Even better would be a custom environment,
such as a giant tank of 55°F (12.7°C) saline with nutrients and d-glucose. However,
without animals to control, such a tank would give the microorganisms no means
of interacting with the macroscopic world.
The ideal situation would be a habitat-filled with living small creatures from the
ship. The creatures are capable of asexual reproduction and the microorganisms
can cause them to reproduce quickly, so (given enough food and a healthy
environment) one surviving creature could become thousands in a matter of
months. This would mean either rescuing at least one of the small creatures, or
cloning one. The microorganisms can help with the cloning, but it would take a
special laboratory setup unavailable in the Altiplano.
After survival, the colony’s next priority is to make it back into space so it can
go home. The spaceship, apart from being dead, is not designed to escape from
the gravity well of a planet. The best way for the colony to leave our planet is the
same way it left its home planet: to grow a living spaceship in orbit, to stock it with
genetically engineered creatures that are the colony’s hands and eyes in the ship,
and to accelerate it to a good portion of the speed of light. The latter is done via
a series of accelerators, also grown in space. This is a massive undertaking and
requires the resources of an entire civilization to do. The bacteria could wipe out
humanity and establish its own civilization, but it would be much quicker and
easier to do it with our help.
175

The final priority of the cellular intelligence, the initial reason for its interstellar travel,
is to make contact with and establish trade with other species. The intelligence is
primarily interested in trading knowledge, but it has also brought selections of rare
elements in case the intelligences it meets find these to be valuable trade stuffs.
Possible Outcomes
The cellular intelligence will assume, at first, that we are like it: an intelligence
run by some symbiotic microorganisms. Our bodies are, to it, just hosts, and so it
has no qualms about invading us and trying to take control. It will take a while to
convince the intelligence that the source of our intelligence is our animal bodies,
and not microorganisms living in us.
If the cellular intelligence decides that humans are hostile and are capable of
harming it, it will attack. The ship can’t do anything to harm PCs, the small creatures
have only their spikes as weapons and the large black creatures (who provided
internal security for the ship) are all dead. If the microorganisms have infected a
human host, they can attack from within, targeting vital areas. Microorganisms on
the attack would damage the nervous system, heart and lungs, causing first paralysis,
then heart failure, and if that doesn’t kill the victim then the victim will drown in his
or her own blood. Depending on the state of infection, the microorganisms could
kill a human in one to ten minutes. There’s not much that any PC could do to save
an infected person that the cellular intelligence has decided to kill.
If the PCs do start a war with the cellular intelligence, the consequences would
be disastrous. We still have trouble limiting deaths from non-intelligent
microorganisms, much less an intelligent microorganism that can hop species, cut
through membranes and target human immune systems. Even if the PCs don’t take
the cellular intelligence back to civilization, it is only a matter of time before a wild
animal wanders into the crashed ship and the microorganisms infect it. Once the
microorganisms reach civilization, there would be a global pandemic.
Fortunately for the PCs, it would take quite a lot of damage done to the cellular
colony to convince it to declare outright war on humanity.
If the PCs can save at least one of the small creatures, and allow it contact with the
cellular colony within the ship (so it can access the larger colony’s intelligence)
then establishing some form of communication should be achievable. If the
PCs are not able to save any of the small creatures then the situation changes
entirely. The colony is now without eyes or hands or ears with which to establish
communication. The microorganisms will see the infection of humans, lamas
and any Altiplano wildlife that ventures into the ship as its best chance for survival
and for communication.
It takes quite a lot of intelligence to figure out how to interact with an alien nervous
system, and thus only microorganisms that are inside an Earth animal but are also
in contact with the ship’s colony can learn how to use an Earth creature as its hands
and eyes in the macroscopic world. It would take about 24 hours to figure out the
basics of utilizing an infected Earth creature.
176
If the microorganisms integrate with a human’s nervous system, both will be

alive and conscious within the same body. Both will have access to the human’s
senses (as unfamiliar as these will be to the microorganisms). While the human
will retain control of his or her body as the default state, the microorganisms can
take control at any time, making the human do something or stopping the human
from doing things. Keep in mind that the microorganisms think much more slowly
than we do, so their reactions will be slow. If, for instance, a host decided to throw
himself or herself off a cliff, the host will have been lying dead at the bottom for
several seconds before the microorganisms could possibly issue a command to the
nervous system to stop.
Taking control of the peripheral nervous system (sensory and motor nerves) is one
thing. Interacting with a human brain is much more difficult. To them, the human
brain (an autonomous intelligence based on collections of animal nerve cells) is
about the weirdest thing they’ve ever heard of, and they’d more-or-less have to
reinvent all of neurology from scratch to understand how we work. In the time it
would take the microorganisms to figure this out, the cellular colony in the ship will
have starved to death.
Rather than the microorganisms taking control of a being to interact with humans
in the macroscopic world, the PCs might try to interact with the microorganisms via
the microscopic world. For instance, the PCs could take a batch of microorganisms
and introduce solutions of various microscopic particles. The type or combination
of particles could be the vocabulary of the new language. The microorganisms
could communicate back, for instance, by choosing to attack some particles
(since they are immune systems for the life forms that host them, they are good
at selectively destroying things) but not others. Of course, this all depends on
the microorganisms having access to the larger colony (after all, a tiny sample of
microorganisms separated from the larger colony is of negligible intelligence).
The problem, however, is establishing a shared point of reference with beings that
can only experience the microscopic world. It’s like taking someone who is sealed
in a black box, who doesn’t speak your language or share your culture, and trying to
establish communication via tapping on the walls of the box. Yes, you can establish
patterns, and the person in the box can learn to mimic them, but without being
able to refer to items or actions existing outside or inside the box, how do you
establish the vocabulary necessary to actually communicate about things?
If PCs can establish some means of communication, the cellular colony will tell the
PCs that their ship is dying, that they are using up the last of their nutrient reserves,
and that within a few days they will lose most of their cells, which would mean
significant knowledge loss (the worst thing the colony can conceive of). What the
colony will ask for is for large numbers of its microorganisms to be taken to some
place where ideal conditions can be provided for them.
Each microorganism can only hold a small portion of the colony’s total knowledge.
To store all of the colony’s total knowledge would require about 200 lbs. (90 kg.)
of cells. Although microorganisms can survive outside a body in a dried state, they
cannot store knowledge that way. So, to ensure the continuity of its knowledge
(a top priority) the colony needs to be transmitted in living hosts. Assuming each
host takes on the maximum amount of microorganisms it can support, this would
require either 20 of the small creatures, all of the humans present (PCs and Mu’eho)
or all of the lamas. Any fewer hosts would mean that the microorganisms would
have to leave behind some of its knowledge, to be destroyed when the colony on
the ship starves to death.
177

It may be possible for the PCs to save the cellular intelligence without establishing
communication with it. If the PCs realize that the microorganisms are the source of
the alien intelligence and that they are starving to death without the ship providing
it with nutrients, then the PCs can attempt to transport the microorganisms back to
civilization. There, the PCs could try to discover what conditions the microorganisms
need, and only once they are thriving would the PCs go about the business of trying
to establish communication, with many more tools and resources available than
they would have at the crash site.
What the Intelligence Can Tell Us

The microorganisms evolved on a planet that is similar to Earth. It was a bit smaller,
with less atmosphere, colder and drier than Earth. The planet did not have oceans,
but it did have lakes. When the lakes would periodically dry up, the microorganisms
would be exposed to ionizing radiation from the planet’s sun, which would cause
damage to the microorganisms’ genetic code. The microorganisms evolved the
ability to exchange genetic code with each other, and to compare genetic codes to
keep the least damaged copies. This evolved into the ability to exchange memories
and knowledge and then into the distributed intelligence it has today.
The microorganisms left their lakes by becoming symbiotic with various life forms.
The microorganisms acted as the immune systems for these animals as well as their
guiding intelligence. Life forms with the microorganisms as symbiotes thrived, and
soon there were few life forms on the planet not infected with or controlled by the
microorganisms. The intelligence learned to control the growth and anatomy of the
life forms it inhabited, changing their forms to better meet the intelligence’s needs.
The cellular intelligence puts a high priority on obtaining knowledge, and has spent
many millennia engaging in scientific inquiry, including a study of the universe. It
has sent subsets of itself to explore the nearby universe, to make contact with other
intelligences and establish a trade in goods and information with them.
The ships that the cellular intelligence sent out were genetically engineered plants,
designed to live in space, with huge paper-thin leaves capable of gathering energy
from even very distant suns. The ships are capable of storing enough energy to
keep itself and its passengers alive for the decade-or-so periods that the ship would
be too far between stars to get significant starlight. The ships were stocked with
various living things serving various purposes: the seed-like ships were landing
craft, the large black beings were security in case the ship was boarded by a hostile
force, the small beings were general-purpose maintenance and landing crew, and
the living suits were to allow the small creatures to explore hostile environments.
All were meant to contain, and be guided by, the cellular intelligence.
Each ship was accelerated to roughly one-third of the speed of light on courses that
would take them near several different stars. It would be 5-20 years between stars,
and hundreds of years before getting to a solar system likely to contain life, but for
an intelligence that has memories stretching back millions of years this was not an
overly long voyage. The planned route would take the ships through dozens of star
systems on circuits that would eventually bring them back home. The ships were
not designed to land on any planet. Should any ship find a planet worth pausing
178
at, the ship would have to use nearby gravitational sources to slow itself to a low
enough speed to orbit the planet or its star. Once slowed, however, the ship would
be at least temporarily trapped in the solar system it paused at. Travel at less than
a third the speed of light would doom the microorganisms to starvation in the
darkness between stars, so to leave a solar system again the ship would have to be
accelerated. This would mean either establishing a microorganism-based society
capable of growing a series of accelerators in space, or finding some friendly
species willing to give the ship help getting back up to speed.
As the ship entered our solar system, it was struck by a meteor. The ship was
designed to survive meteor strikes, but this was an unlucky hit that damaged too
many of the ship’s systems, mortally wounding it. Many of the small creatures
that lived in the ship died from explosive decompression when the meteor hit,
the others when the ship chose to shunt chemical energy away from life support
systems to navigational systems. The cellular intelligence, knowing that its ship was
dying, hoped to keep the ship alive long enough to make a crash landing on Earth.
Seeing that our atmosphere was too thick and too hot, the intelligence steered
the ship at the Altiplano, which it calculated would be one of the most hospitable
regions on the planet.
The only creatures that survived the meteor strike, the shutdown of life support
and the crash were those few who had been in the ship’s medical pods at the time
of the crash.
We are the first living, intelligent beings that this ship has come across on its circuit
of dozens of star systems. It has seen planets that seemed to contain life, but with
no evidence that this life was intelligent. It has also seen planets that seem to have
once had life but now do not. However, since the vessel could not afford to slow
down enough to orbit these planets (or risk getting stuck in an inhospitable solar
system) the intelligence did not investigate further. When trading information,
however, the intelligence can offer us detailed scans of these planets.
It would not be easy for the cellular intelligence to teach us it’s science or technology.
It’s knowledge of biology and biotechnology is limited to the particulars of life from
its planet. The cellular intelligence don’t even use computers (the colony itself does
all the processing, computation and data storage that we rely on computers for) so
there’s little they can offer that would advance our computer-based technologies.
There are definitely things that experts in various fields could learn from the
intelligence, but nothing that would completely change human society overnight.
With practice, and with some additional nutrients, the microorganisms could learn
how to become ideal symbiotes to humans. If humanity can convince them to do
so, they could live within us, pausing (rather than killing) our immune systems and
taking the role of a smarter and better immune systems. Eventually, the bacteria
could learn to heal injuries, make us live longer, even make us stronger and faster.
The microorganisms love to grow. While the colony is here on Earth it wouldn’t
mind spreading to every possible host on the planet, and would have no problem
granting superhuman health and longevity in exchange. The real question is
whether we would be okay with having an intelligence inside us that could, if it
wanted to, take us over and make us do whatever it wants.
179

Appendices
Appendix:
Using FCT With Other Vajra Games
Fates Worse Than Death
If the Kalor people are to be believed, humans have already met with alien beings.
Yet it’s easy to discount this as true “First Contact.” For one thing, it is because
the Kalor claim to have genetically engineered themselves to be more like humans
before coming to live among us. For another, there are many who are skeptical
that the Kalor are actually aliens. The Kalor themselves have refused to provide any
proof that would assuage these skeptics.
Although a First Contact Team may exist in the 2080 of Fates Worse Than Death, the
governments that would sponsor such a team have been greatly reduced in their
power and influence. If an alien was to land in a gated community, for example,
it is likely that the gated community would send its own people in to try to make
contact before the government would ever find out about it.
A walled community landing could create interesting scenarios. What if aliens
land, and make first contact with, a neo-African cultural commune, or a gated
community where the leaders are paranoid about anything that might destabilize
the psychological stability of their members, or a utopianist commune where both
money and privacy are illegal?
If aliens are discovered in space, in the ocean, in the arctic or antarctic, or in the
large swaths of highly-mechanized (and sparsely populated) farmland that covers
much of the planet, then a corporation is likely to be the organization that makes
first contact. In this case, the main priority for those corporate Operatives sent to
make contact will be to find some way to monetize the encounter. This might be
by creating a trade relationship with the aliens. It might be by reverse engineering
alien technology and patenting these “discoveries.” Or, it might be by recording
180
Appendices
first contact in minute detail so that later (after it’s too late for the government to
interfere) the encounter can be broadcast as a reality TV show. In any case, it is
unlikely that the LBRA “Corp Hunters” would find out before it was too late to stop
the corporation.
If a corporation discovers an alien, it’s possible that a corporate black division
might take over, sending in black division agents with Blanker programs to make
first contact. The black division’s priority would be to do anything it can, no matter
how illegal or unethical, to make a profit from the aliens.
Or, what if aliens land in Manhattan? Given the grandeur of Manhattan’s buildings
and bridges, it would be easy for aliens to assume this is one of Earth’s capital cities
(if they ignore the many signs of damage by war and neglect), so it may be a logical
place for aliens to land.
If word gets out that there is an alien or alien-artifact in the city, the result would
be similar to word getting out that any other item of immense value is in the city:
hordes of street gangs, pusher gangs, street families, corner gangs, corp-borgs,
mercenaries, muggers and burglars will hit the streets hoping to be the first to find
the prize or to take the prize from whoever did find it first.
Most in the city who might capture an alien or alien artifact would want to keep it
safe and sell it to the highest bidder (whether that be a government, corporation or
organized crime group). A few groups, particularly some of the street gangs, might
actually be interested in scientific analysis or establishing communication.
A few gangs have skills or abilities that may aid them in first contact scenarios.
Omniscients might be able to use their senses to discover things about aliens or
sense attempts at communications through modalities that normal humans cannot
sense. Math Addicts might be able to establish communication along mathematical
lines. Technophiles, with their experience with different types of technology,
might be good at reverse engineering alien tech. Animalists might be able to use
the Animal Sympathy skill (FWTD p.201) to communicate with nonverbal aliens.
Arcadians, with their chemically-enhanced facility with puzzle solving, might be
able to figure out how to interface with alien tech or decipher alien languages.
Psychics would not be of much use in a first contact scenario. What people in 2080
call psychic phenomena is really just a quirk of mammalian neurobiology. Aliens
are no more likely to be able to communicate with us psychically than they are
likely to find human pheromones sexually exciting. The exception would be if an
alien was able to sense the “psychic energy” leaking out of human brains, decided
it was our default form of communication, and set about trying to decipher and
communicate with us via that code.
Unrestricted AIs and the Hidden would both have a special facility for
communicating with aliens and/or alien technology. Just a Math Addicts can think
in, and communicate via, pure math, the Hidden can think in an communicate via
pure algorithms. AIs can reprogram their minds to think in whatever they want
to think in. Alien minds may be closer to AIs than to us, and thus aliens may think
that AIs, not humans, are the intelligent life they are here to make contact with.
Unfortunately, both the Hidden and AIs are likely to see communicating with
aliens as just a means to an end. The Hidden would see aliens as leverage in their
wars against each other and AIs would see aliens as tools to achieve whatever
goals (typically profit seeking) that the AIs were programmed with. Like corps or
organized crime groups, neither would put “the betterment of all human life” on
their list of goals to be achieved during first contact.
181

Appendices
Tibet
In Tibetan cosmology, there are countless possible universes, and many worlds
within our own universe. It is possible, Tibetans believe, for beings to travel
between these realms. The predatory Rakshasa, taking the form of humanoid
felines, are an example of one species from a realm very close to our own that have
had contact with humanity. Thus, according to Tibetan belief, humans have already
had contact with beings from another world. A Tibet adventure could be run
wherein an even more exotic creature, from an even farther-distant realm, finds
its way into Tibet and the Tibetan PCs have to make contact with it. The PCs would
be aided by knowledge of certain constants that are true across every universe.
No matter the species, no matter how advanced, attachment is both the thing that
makes the universes real (or to appear to be real to inhabitants) and the thing that
causes suffering and keeps intelligent beings chained to the cycle of rebirths. Every
being, no matter how alien, has a soul that will continue to be reincarnated until it
can find enlightenment. The primary difference between races and cultures is that
some are ignorant of these universal truths, some are not.
The interesting challenge of meeting members of another species, in Tibetan stories,
is often to discover what their particular attachments are. Alien species would have
different types of attachments than humans, ones that can be hard to understand.
Tibetan PCs may meet aliens, for example, who have no sense of self, and thus no
attachments to concepts of ego. It might be easy to assume that these beings have
little attachments and are thus very close to enlightenment, but it may be that they
have other powerful attachments that make them just as unenlightened (and as
potentially dangerous) as humans. A good example of this are the Devas who live
on Mount Meru. When one meets these beings they may at first seem perfect:
they are powerful, wise, luminous, ageless beings who have no physical needs and
do not engage in intercourse. Yet it turns out their one attachment is pride, and
this pride keeps them from entering the highest heaven realms. This angers them
and makes them fight futile wars against the upper realms, wars which humans are
occasionally (and disastrously) drafted to fight in.
Many Tibetan skills could be used in first contact scenarios. Abidharma (Tibet p.101),
the study of consciousness and minds, would be especially useful. Philosophy and
Logic (p.102) could be also help. Pantheons (p.102) could be useful in describing the
general characteristics of beings (if not the exact details of a particular new species)
found in the various types of realms. Various divination skills (e.g. Mirror Gazing)
could be used to gain information about an alien that cannot communicate directly
with the PCs. At very high difficulties, the Tantra skill Wind Voices may be used to
communicate with aliens who do not speak Tibetan, the Subtle Self skill may be
used to inhabit the bodies of aliens, and Pure Vision may allow PCs to see across
universes and perceive an alien’s home.
Or, one could create a first contact scenario that utilizes the Tibetan setting but not
necessarily Tibetan cosmology. In such a scenario, an alien from outer space lands
in Tibet in 1959. The First Contact Team covertly sends agents into Tibet, and these
agents and their Tibetan allies are trying to reach and make contact with this alien
before the People’s Liberation Army can. The party would be a mix of Foreigners
and Tibetan character classes. Science skills would be limited to what was known
in 1959, and scientific equipment would be limited to that which was available in
1959 and which could be covertly smuggled into the country.
182
Appendices
In Dark Alleys
Horror, as a genre, is all about confronting the alien. Whether the source of the
horror is a ghost or a serial killer or a monstrous beast, it is compelling not merely
because it is dangerous, but because it is so different from what we normally deal
with that it is challenging to predict what will happen next.
The difference between horror and the first-contact sub-genre of sci-fi is that in
the latter, we have the hope that aliens might be benevolent (or at least neutral)
towards us, while horror takes away that hope.
The world of In Dark Alleys would not have a government-sponsored First

Contact Team. The powers that secretly rule the world are less concerned with
understanding the alien things that sometimes appear and more concerned with
destroying them before the public can find out about them. This doesn’t mean
that First Contact Teams don’t exist, just that they aren’t government sanctioned. It
would be possible, for instance, that a group of eccentric academics might form a
semi-secret club (for no university administration would condone or allow this sort
of thing) to investigate possible encounters with aliens. If the club members are
diligent about tracking down and giving the benefit of the doubt to reports of alien
encounters, then they’re going to hear about a lot of supernatural phenomena. If
they are smart enough (and manage to avoid coming to the attention of the Powers-
That-Be) they will come to understand that there are classes of phenomena that are
widespread and cannot be explained by modern science. These rogue academic
could be considered another class of the Touched. Like the Touched they are
driven to explore dangerous phenomena, but they have scientific skills instead of
supernatural ones.
There are many alien beings in the In Dark Alleys cosmos, but perhaps the most
alien are Deserted City creatures. These are beings that come from a plane of
existence that only contains physical matter and three-dimensions inasmuch
as that is our only means of conceiving of that plane. They are the creations of
entities who were vastly more powerful than us, who shared almost none of our
motivations (including, it seems, a sense of morality) and who have been gone for
untold ages. It is hard to say if the Deserted City creatures are tools or pets or art
projects or sex toys or something else. The painful, inefficient awkwardness of
their forms indicates that they were not the products of natural selection. Their
physiology (e.g. heads floating unconnected to bodies) seems to indicate that they
are not limited by the rules of biology or physics. They are capable of interacting
with humans, but what stimuli they will react to and how they will react to it is a
complete mystery. When they do interact with humans, it is often in ways that are
dangerous to those humans, probably because they were designed by beings who
had none of our physical weaknesses. Interacting with them is like interacting with
a vending machine on an alien spaceship: when you hit a button (if you can find the
buttons) you don’t know if it will dispense a useful tool or a jet of hydrochloric acid.
Yet for all of these difficulties, study of Deserted City creatures could be very
rewarding to a group of First Contact Team members and/or the Touched. First
Contact Team-like methods could be used to learn how the creatures work, how to
interact with them and perhaps even what they were was created for. If these could
be achieved, the team would be much closer to unraveling the secrets at the heart
of the In Dark Alleys cosmos.
183

Appendices
KidWorld
There are two primary ways to integrate KidWorld and First Contact Team. The
first is to run a modern day campaign where a group of children PCs (built using
KidWorld’s child character creation rules) discover and alien (or alien artifact). The
kids, who have come to the opinion that grownups in positions of authority mess
up anything cool they get their hands on, decide to keep their discovery a secret. It
is the kids who have to learn to communicate with aliens, all while trying to keep the
aliens secret from parents and teachers. They might even have to keep the aliens
away from whatever government agency has been sent to investigate phenomena
that coincided with the aliens’ appearance on Earth. If the aliens are friendly, and
not too much of a challenge to learn to communicate with, the result could be
something like the movies ET or Earth to Echo.
The other option could be to have aliens land in the post-plague world of KidWorld,
with its sighted kids, half-blind adolescents and fully blind adults, each trying to do
whatever they can to survive (even if it means enslaving members of other groups).
Aliens landing in this world would be very unlikely to find people who are well
equipped to make first contact with them.
Like a Fates Worse Than Death first contact campaign post-plague, PCs would likely
spend as much time competing with enemies to reach the aliens or battling over
possession of the aliens as they do trying to actually make first contact.
Without a Brain in the party, PCs are unlikely to be able to use science to help them
understand the aliens and will have to rely on cleverness and creativity alone.
Hoodoo Blues
In Southern legend there are many strange creatures to be found in the forests,
swamps, bayous and rivers of the old South, such as the South Carolina Lizard Man,
the Honey Island Swamp Monster, or the White Water People. The origin of these
creatures isn’t clear. If such a being were to be discovered by authorities, members
of the First Contact Team might be called in to figure out what kind of thing it is. If
First Contact Team members find out that this is a being spoken of in local legend,
then they may seek out someone knowledgeable about those legends, which may
lead them to ageless southerner PCs. Such an adventure could look something like
an X-Files episode, with scientific and supernatural theories competing until the
very end.
The flashback system in Hoodoo Blues could be used to craft a First Contact Scenario
that spans multiple time periods. Flashbacks could originate in the records of a
previous investigation. So while a modern First Contact Team tries to make contact
with a recently discovered alien, perhaps they are reading the journal of a group
of scientists from the 1890s who had a similar encounter. When the modern PCs
read the journals of their forbearers, they enter a flashback where the players get
to control the 1890 characters. Perhaps the 1890s encounter failed or even ended
in disaster, and by reading how the last encounter failed the modern team hopes to
avoid making the same mistakes.
184
Appendices
Seeker
The Paths that Seekers walk and the abilities they gain from them can help Seekers
with a number of different activities, and can even allow Seekers to accomplish
things that would otherwise require specialized training. In other words, a group
of Seekers, utilizing their path abilities rather than scientific skills, may do as well at
establishing first contact as a group of First Contact Team experts
Such a scenario would most likely have a group of Seekers arriving at a new
community, hearing reports of unexplained phenomena (e.g. strange lights in the
woods), investigating and discovering an alien life form. Seekers often mistrust
authority figures and may decide to make first contact themselves rather than
calling the government in.
In a first contact scenario, the path of +Thought can help with logical deduction
and puzzle solving, such as doing scientific tests or deciphering alien languages.
The path of -Thought can give Seekers gut-instinct insights into the nature of alien
beings and help them recognize when aliens do not think as we do.
The path of +Harmony can help Seekers find and grow a healthy relationship
with aliens and to recognize aliens’ own interconnections (e.g. to realize that
aliens and their living ship have a symbiotic relationship). +Feeling can help with
communication with aliens based on their animal instincts (e.g. fight or flight). The
paths of -Harmony and -Feeling can aid in the dispassionate analysis of aliens,
unbiased by fear or revulsion.
The path of +Self can help PCs communicate to aliens about what humans are like,
ensuring that our positive qualities are always on display. The path of -Self can
help PCs ignore anything that might happen during first contact that is an assault on
team members’ egos (e.g. being told by aliens that we are not intelligent enough to
bother dealing with). -Self can also help PCs avoid giving away more about human
nature than we intend to give away.
While the Seeker PCs make first contact, they may have to avoid interlopers who
would make first contact harder, e.g. the town sheriff who wants to discover what
strange things are happening in the woods; the Trapped Seeker cult-leader who
believes only she is wise enough to make first contact with alien life; or the paranoid
survivalist who thinks the aliens must be hostile invaders.
185

Appendices
Appendix:
Combat Quick Reference
Computing Combat AV Incapacity and Death
Attribute 1 + Attribute 2 + skill +specialty • 4 or less Hit Points means
+combat package (halve if wrong mortally wounded but can
package), all divided by 2, rounded still fight for END worth of
down. rounds.
• 0 Hit Points means dead
Combat Styles • 0 combat AVs means unable
Kill: Uses WIL+AGY. to fight
On winning: Do 2 Hit Point
damage per your AV. Blindness/Darkness
On losing: Do 1 Hit Point damage • Partially Blinded: -2 to
per your AV. combat AVs
Ruin: Uses INL + AGY. • Fully Blinded: -4 to combat
AVs
On winning: Do 1 damage to
combat AVs per your AV.
On losing: Do 1 damage to Facing Multiple Opponents
combat AVs per 2 AV.
PC can split combat AVs between
Control: Uses AWR + AGY. multiple opponents for each combat
On winning: Protect from 1 round.
Hit Point/AV damage per your AV.
Opponent is now in a hold. Fighting Non Humans
On losing: Protect from 1 Hit
Point/AV damage per 2 AV. • PC must have a weapon
capable of harming the
Exhaust: Uses STH + AGY. opponent.
On winning: Protect from 1 • PC must have guessed
Hit Point/AV damage per your AV. correctly how to affect the
Do 1 Hit Point damage per your opponent (for Kill, figure
AV. Opponent takes 1 unblockable out where vital organs are,
damage to combat AVs. for Ruin figure out how
On losing: Protect from 1 Hit to cause pain or destroy
Point/AV damage per AV. functionality, for Control
figure out how to stop alien
from being able to attach, for
Ranged Combat Exhaust figure out where to
strike to cause cumulative
A combatant with a ranged weapon can damage).
do damage while a combatant with non-
ranged weapons can’t. Typically for one • PC must anticipate how to
combat round. block or avoid alien attacks.
186
Appendices
Appendix:
ORC-L TO ORC-R Conversion
ORC-L = ORC-Lite, the rulset of this game. ORC-L = regular ORC.
Difficulties Skill ORC-R ORC-L

ORC-R ORC-L Category levels levels
Easy 10 OO Athletics 6 1
Moderate 20 OOO Criminal 9 1
Hard 30 OOOOO Hard Sciences 9 1
Legendary 40 (7) Information

6 1
Sciences
Life Sciences 9 1
Bonuses/Penalties
Medicine 9 1
ORC-R → ORC-L: Divide by four,
Military/Law
round down to the nearest one. E.g. 6 1
Enforcement
a drug that gives +10 to save vs. un-
consciousness would give +OO. People 9 1
ORC-L → ORC-R: Multiply by Space 6 1
four. Technology 9 1
Skill Points:
Attributes
10 ORC-R Skill Points =
ORC-R → ORC-L: Divide attribute 1 ORC-L Skill Point
by 4, round up to the nearest one.
ORC-L → ORC-R: Multiply by Money/Equipment
four.
$2,000 in ORC-R value =
ORC-R ORC-L 1 ORC-L EP
1-4 O
5-8 OO Bonus Chars
9-12 OOO Generally, throw out any advantage
13-16 OOOO or disad costing or worth less than
17-20 OOOOO 4 BPs when converting to ORC-L.
4 ORC-R Bonus Points =
Skills 1 ORC-L Bonus Point
Several levels of ORC-R skills equal

1 level of an ORC-L skill. After con- Experience Points
verting, choose skills or specialties as 40 ORC-R XP = 1 ORC-L BP
appropriate.
187

Appendices
Appendix:
Inspiration Bibliography
There are many of great first contact stories one can watch or read for inspiration
for a First Contact Team campaign. Here are a few good ones:
Movies
• Alien (1979): The alien movies were the first great on-screen depiction
of an alien that both looks and acts very alien, who is not a “forehead
alien.”
• Arrival (2016): This movie involves first contact with aliens that
communicate and think very differently from humans. It’s based on the
excellent short story “Stories of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, which goes
into much greater detail than the movie about the linguistic problems
of alien communication.
• Interstellar (2014): This special-effects heavy movie makes interesting
use of black holes and the relativistic effects of high gravity, as well as
marvelous scenes of travel to alien planets.
• Enemy Mine (1985): This classic sci-fi movie has a human and an alien
from an enemy species trapped on a hostile planet, forced to learn to
communicate.
Television
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: Although this series had its share of
forehead aliens, some featured first contact scenarios made interesting
by genuinely different features of the aliens. Highlights include Darmok
(season 5, episode 2) with an alien with an initially impenetrable means
of communication, Home Soil (season 1, episode 18) with a crystalline
alien, and the alien psychology of the Borg (many episodes).
Comics
• Letter 44 by Charles Soule & Alberto Jimenez Alburquerque starts with
a new US President taking over and finding out that aliens have been
building something in the far solar system and that a scientific/military
mission is on its way to investigate.
• Trees by Warren Ellis & Jason Howard starts with characters living near
or investigating several mysterious, gigantic alien monoliths that have
parked themselves on Earth without explanation.
188
Appendices
Books
• Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke has a group of scientists sent
to explore Rama, a giant alien cylinder that is passing silently through our
solar system.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke has scientists uncovering
a large alien monolith buried on the moon and trying to discover its
purpose.
• A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge and Peter Larkin tells the story of
human first contact with spider-like aliens on a planet that periodically
freezes as its sun goes dark.
• Sphere by Michael Crichton has scientists and mathematicians
investigating a strange vessel found on the ocean floor.
Radio
• X Minus One: This classic radio serial from the 1950s featured radio plays
based on short stories published in popular science fiction magazines.
They are now available online on sites such as archive.org. Notable
episodes of X Minus One include Caretaker, Colony, Drop Dead, Early
Model, First Contact, If You Was A Molkin, Shock Troop and A Wind is
Rising.
189

Appendices
Appendix:
Glossary & Index
AI: Artificial Intelligence. p.64, 68, 82, 116 Microgravity: Negligible amounts of
Anthropocentric: Viewing things gravity (a more accurate term than zero
from a set of norms based on human gravity, since gravity is ubiquitous). p.95,
experiences. p.3, 8 102, 104
AV: Action Value, a player’s combined Monoculture: An ecological niche with
ability, from attributes, skills and only one species in it (and thus the
equipment, to do a thing. p.3, 41, 46, 47, opposite of diverse). p.171
48, 186 Nanobot: A robot built at the molecular
Bioluminescence: Biological ability to level, able to manipulate other substances
create light. p.6, 161 on that level. p.76, 77, 110, 131.
Breathing Mixture: The particular mix Nanotech: Any technology based
of oxygen and other gases provided to on building and manipulating at the
divers or astronauts. p.102, 171 molecular level. p.77, 78.
BP: Bonus Points, points that can be Narcosis: Mental impairment caused by
interchanged for skills, attributes, too much of a certain gas entering the
equipment and advantages. p.31, 35, 187 bloodstream (e.g. nitrogen narcosis). p.93,
Chemosynthesis: The ability to run 102
metabolic processes by consuming NPC: Non-Player Character, a character
inorganic chemicals. An alternative to controlled by the Game Master rather than
photosysnthesis. p.67, 106 a player. p.11, 12. 13, 23, 56, 129, 132, 145, 171
Chirality: Whether proteins are folded OOO: Three “points” or “dots” in something.
in a “left-hand” or “right-hand” pattern.
p.75, 165 PC: Player Character, a character controlled
by a player of the game. p.3, 11, 13, 14
GM: Game Master, the person running
the first contact scenario. p.10, 12, 25, 35. pH: A numeric rating of the acidity or
alkilinity of a substance. p.18, 19, 153
Eon: A long period of time. Sometimes
defined as 1 billion years. p.63, 70, 76, 83 Pseudopod: A thing that looks like, and
serves some of the functions as, a foot, but
EP: Equipment Points, the points used to
anotomically it is not a foot. p.128, 131.
buy equipment for players. p.24, 25, 31.
EVA: Extra-Vehicular Activity, movement Regolith: Lunar dirt or soil. p.96. 100, 101,
outside a spaceship in space. P.8, 98, 123 127, 128, 133
Extremophile: A life form that exists in Relativistic: Anything moving close
conditions that would be too extreme enough to the speed of light that the effects
for most other Earth life forms to survive on mass and passage of time predicted
in. p.66, 72 in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity become
apparent. p.18, 91, 188
HAZMAT: Short for Hazardous Materials.
Chemically and biologically dangerous Sapient: Having human-like (or better)
substances, and the precautions, equip- wisdom and intelligence. p.9
ment and training meant to protect from Sentient: Aware of the world around
them. p.29 as brought to a being by its sense
HP: Hit Points, the measure of how far impressions. p.84
a character is from death by disease or Terraform: To purposefully change a
injury. p.16, 48, 50, 104, 186 planet, using technology, typically with
Maria: Plural of Mare. The darker, flatter the goal of making it more habitable. p70,
and generally newer regions of the 76, 146
moon, remnants of old lava flows. p.100, Torus: A doughnut shape. p.154, 155, 161
125 Trimix: A mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and
Memetic: Referring to the ability of ideas helium for high pressure diving. p39. 102
to propogate in a virus-like manner.
p.85, 113
190
Explore the worlds of Vajra Enterprises at
www.VajraEnterprises.com

Explore the worlds of Vajra Enterprises at
www.VajraEnterprises.com

Text goes here
194

First Contact Team Color Version

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

First Contact Team Color Version

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

First Contact Team

is published by Vajra Enterprises, Portland Oregon

Written and Designed by Brian St.Claire-King

Cover by Alex Ries

Page Layout by Todd Crapper

Woman of Color on Laptop (p.194) released under a Creative

Physical Map of Moon (p.99) by United States Geological Survey

Twin Peaks on Mars (p.105) by NASA

Special Consultation by Jack Berkenstock Jr. and Mike Fields

Copyright © 2019 by Vajra Enterprises

Rights reserved under the Universal Copyright Convention.

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

“For now.” “Her personality tests show an

“Impressive research credentials, “Okay, what’s next.”

History of the FCT

Being a FCT Member

Most of the day is spent in lectures given by members of the program’s

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Some lecturers put their students to sleep (especially in the after-lunch

Notes From Professor Harmon’s

• Physically distinct units of a life form will consider

Notes From Professor Harmon’s

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Character​ ​Creation​ ​Example​ ​-​ ​

Character creation in First Contact Team is fairly free-form.

Scientist: This is the prototypical First Contact Team member:

Doctor/Psychiatrist: This is someone with a dual role. They can

continued next page

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Tech: This person’s role is to run, maintain, and (when bad

Astronaut: This person’s role is to help the other experts deal

Military/Security: This person’s role is to provide physical

Calling in Another Expert

When PCs get to the first contact

Another option would be for a PC whose skills are no longer

Players should avoid using knowledge of the situation to create

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Character​ ​Creation​ ​Example​ ​-​ ​

character • Age, gender, ethnicity, nationality and

Character​ ​Creation​ ​Example​ ​-​ ​

Step Four: Attributes

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Step Five: Skills

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Leftover Skill Points

Sometimes it’s not possible to spend all of a character’s 10 skill

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Character Creation Advice:

Each specialty can be taken only once.

This list of skills was designed to focus

continued next page

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

In the example above, a player wants his or her PC to have been a

Character​ ​Creation​ ​Example​ ​-​ ​

Step Six: Equipment

Equipment Size Example: A Medicine: Emergency Medicine package at level

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Each equipment package should be

If it seems reasonable that the equipment package would contain

A Military/Law Enforcement: Armed Combat (1) package might be a combat

Maria Elena Bakartesha (Order #30945974)

Character Creation Example -

Character Creation Example -

Character Creation Example -

Character Creation Example -

Character Creation Example -

Character Creation Example -

Character Creation Example -