empire makes its way

I’ve been reading through Mothership, and want to use it to run a game modeled on Dune, Caves of Qud, and Moebius. Salvage-based scarcity culture endlessly recycling barely understood machinery, alien deep science reverse engineered into volatile and unreliable ritual technology, enormous draft insects hauling precious water across the desert. I spent a lot of time trying and failing to write a concise setting summary, so here’s an encounter table with some item and NPC descriptions instead.

Encounters

1	Moon Court bounty hunter in clean tech Janissary Frame
	60 HP, 60 Combat, 30 Instinct, 40 Armor, Military Training, double move rate while in Frame.
2	Water Bearer carrying 50 days of water in a ritual tech cucurbit golem.
	Water Bearer: 40 HP, 15 Combat, 35 Instinct, Creed, Geology, Rites Cucurbit Golem: 75 HP, 50 Combat, 15 Instinct, knockdown on a hit
3	Dog sledge trade caravan with 5000 credits worth of ritual tech
	Merchant Baron: 60 HP, 35 Combat, 20 Instinct, Military Training, Riding Mercenary (6): 1 Hit, 40 Combat, 25 Instinct, Military Training, Survivalism Draft hound (3): 70 HP, 20 Combat, 35 Speed, 50 Instinct
4	Emperor grub tribute caravan with 2500 credits worth of liquor and amaranth
	Militia (4): 1 Hit, 35 Combat, 30 Instinct, Hydroponics, Animal Training Emperor grub: 100 HP, 40 Combat, 15 Instinct, knockdown on hit
5	Bandit posse fleeing Moon Court bounty hunter
	Bandit Leader: 60 HP, 50 Combat, 25 Instinct, Military Training, Rimwise Bandit (3): 1 Hit, 40 Combat, 25 Instinct, Military Training, Driving Mantid mount: 30 HP, 25 Combat, 75 Speed, 15 Instinct
6	Elder Gul on rampage
	Surrounding dust storm limits visibility to 10m 5 (30) Hits, 65 Combat, 35 Instinct Make a Sanity save on first sight or become a lesser gul upon death
7	House of Iä Pilgrimage
	Magus: 60 HP, 15 Combat, 45 Instinct, Creed, Archaeology, Ignition Augment Cult Warrior (4): 40 HP, 40 Combat, 30 Instinct, Military Training, Creed
8	Pack of emperor jackals
	Vicious, but susceptible to taming (4): 45 HP, 45 Combat, 35 Instinct
9	Wandering Devil Merchant riding cucurbit golem
	Knows how to implant any of its augments, requires 1000 credits Merchant: 50 HP, 35 Combat, 65 Instinct, Creed, Cybernetics, Rites, 3 random augments Cucurbit Golem: 3 Hits, 50 Combat, 15 Instinct, knockdown on a hit
10	Holy Ghost Brigade Sortie
	Scout (4): 40 HP, 40 Combat, 30 Instinct, Military Training, Rimwise Sergeant: 50 HP, 45 Combat, 55 Instinct, Military Training, Creed, random ritual augment

cucurbit golem: a creaking ritual tech automaton with a head and torso formed from an enormous calabash, canine hind legs and humanlike forelimbs. Engraved with esoteric circuitry and typically painted with a fierce face. The automaton only obeys spoken commands from its owner; ownership can only be transferred verbally and in the automaton’s presence.

elder gul: an esoteric being, transfigured by death and time and the influence of some deep science mechanism. It is horse-sized, bone pale, shrouded by mirage shimmer, moving in a way that suggests a deer or maybe a wolf, commanding hot desert wind and bleaching the distinction between life and death just with its presence

Janissary Frame: +10% Armor and double move rate. A clean tech battle dress used exclusively by the Moon Court. Genetically keyed to its operator. Someone with knowledge in hacking or jury-rigging could trick it into working for an illicit user for a time with a sample of the real owner’s biological material, but it would take real cybernetics expertise to truly jailbreak it.

Rites and Creed: Rites is a skill, representing knowledge of protocol for greetings, farewells, insults, haggling, marriages, funerals, alliances, and the like. If you want to convince someone of something, knowledge of Rites helps. Creed is a replacement for Theology, representing a general knowledge of all the various religions and esoteric beings that proliferate in the desert. It probably specializes based on major religion or religion type, but I’m not that far yet.

ritual tech: Modern technology has been adulterated with superstition and supplemented with reverse-engineered alien deep science, yielding an unpredictable but strangely efficacious “ritual tech”. As there is little infrastructure for modern material science and resources are scarce, most structures, vehicles, and devices are made from ceramics, plastics, and engineered wood. Metal goods and strictly conventional technology, known as “clean tech”, are expensive and reserved for space-faring vessels, heavy manufacturing, and high quality weapons, all monopolized by the Moon Court. Anyone attempting to repair, modify, jury rig, hack, or otherwise work with a ritual tech device suffers disadvantage on checks, unless they constructed or designed the device themselves–ritual tech is groaty fake science interwoven with reality-warping alien principles, and requires a mix of intellect, luck, and trial and error. Clean tech confers no such disadvantage.

ritual augmentation: Metal pigment tattoos forming esoteric circuits for cranial and neurological stimulation, providing uncanny powers of perception and influence: ignition, suasion, water-sense, alethiometry, telekinesis, etc.

Water Bearers: traveling aesthetic members of a reputable dowsing cult. Dig wells using sanctified ritual drills and sell water to those far away from water sources. Deny rumors of deep science, but people who show too much interest in the topic tend to disappear.

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