Gamma World: The Egyptian Incursion

November 14th, 2011

This is a quick scenario I threw together in a couple of hours for Gamma World. It was designed to serve as an introductory adventure for 1st level characters.

BACKGROUND: Over the past few months, intermittent meteors have been hitting the area around town. The force of the meteor impacts (or perhaps something special about these particular meteors) have been tearing open interdimensional rifts. Locals have started referring to them as “techno-meteors” because high-value tech has often been found in the area around the impact craters.

THE OSIRANS: A meteor struck down around 10 PM last night. The rift it opened pulled through a Lesser Emperor of the Osiran Empire and his entire funerary chamber. (Osiran Emperors retire into a state of cryo-torpor, sending their virtual consciousness into the Land of the Dead while continuing to wield great influence over the Empire through their religious cults. But that’s largely irrelevant for the purposes of this adventure. The visual motif you’re looking for here is Techno Pulp Egyptian.)

Bereft of his crystalline pyramid, the Lesser Emperor is less than amused. Having determined that he has no way of returning home, however, he has decided to launch a Conquest. If he’s successful, the result would be a Neo-Osiran Empire of papyrus cults and Art Deco pyramids in which the dead serve as eternal slaves. (Or some bastardized, post-apocalyptic fiefdom built in its image.)

OSIRAN TIMELINE:

10 PM – Appear in Crater.
1 AM – Leave crater and establish a new Tomb for the Lesser Emperor.
4 AM – Move equipment to Nano-Embalming Compound.
8 AM – Attacked Ford Family Bunker.
10 AM – Attacked the Roadside Ambush.

NOTE: Most Omega Tech scavenged during this adventure should be given a distinctly Egyptian flavor if possible.

THE HOOK AND SET-UP: The PCs are based out of Hogtown. Hogtown is your standard, post-apocalyptan settlement. It’s a thin veneer of civilization that’s trying to stretch itself out over as much territory as it can manage.

The PCs work as a team of specialized troubleshooters for Boss Hog. They’re called into his office first thing in the morning: He’s got a job for them. Last night his observatory (a huge, rickety structure in the center of town that Boss Hog refers to as being “three stories tall” although no one locally knows why he’s measuring it in tall tales) observed a meteor strike to the west. The PCs need to head on out there, secure the site, and gather up any valuable tech in the area before other scavengers show up and pick it clean.

(Boss Hog can either be a petty tyrant who just wants the stuff to aggrandize himself. Or he can honestly be trying to make Hogtown into a place where people can get by just a little bit better and the tech will be serving the community. I dunno. See where the snout-nosed little bastard takes you.)

HEADING OUT: The meteor strike is on the other side of Cataclysm Wall. This is a weird wall of jagged rock about thirty or forty feet deep that was thrust up out of the ground during the Big Mistake. It runs for dozens of miles and is a real pain in the ass for navigation in these parts. Fortunately, during the Militia Wars that wracked the region after the Big Mistake several holes were blown through the Wall. There’s a dirt road that runs through one of these holes not far from where the meteor went down.

Conpiracy (Easy): The road is kept in pretty good condition. There are quite a few farms north of the Wall, and they all bring their goods to Hogtown on this road.

Conspiracy (Moderate): The hole in the Wall is a natural chokepoint for trade. Which means that bandits are known to lay ambushes there.

Next: Roadside Ambush