Me and some friends played through the Alien RPG adventure Chariot of the Gods around Christmas. I altered a bunch of the adventure to make it run faster. The following is expanded from my original Twitter thread.
This is part 2. You can find Part 1 here. These recaps include SPOILERS for Chariot of the Gods. You have been warned.
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The survivors of the USCSS Montero, a freighter ship making a cargo run to the frontier of space (which suddenly self destructed), find themselves aboard the Weyland scientific vessel USCSS Cronus. The crew of the Cronus is shook up, having woken up from cryo-sleep after coming in contact with an alien parasite which killed most of them.
Our cast of characters are:
- Rye, roughneck technician (Played by Tucker)
- Cham, roughneck cargo handler (Played by Sam)
- Juno, medic and ship’s physician (Played by Fiona)
and the surviving NPCs of both ships are:Miller, officer and Montero’s captain (NPC)Wilson, company agent and Weyland-Yutani representative on the Montero (NPC)Reid, Cronus’ colonial marine attache, currently in stasis after having an alien embryo extracted from herFlynn, Cronus’ medic, losing his mind from fearClayton, Cronus’ company agent and presently the ranking officer on the ship
Play began with the characters heading to the Cronus’ mess hall to secure a way of getting the ship operational enough to get them back to Anchorpoint station, as well as find a way to deal with whatever monster is lurking on the lower levels of the ship.
Rye and Captain Miller had to the cargo deck to secure the helium-3 tanks from the Daisy.
Cham and Wilson go to the bridge to patch into Cronus’ AI core, hoping to bring the automated door locks of the ship back online so they can trap the alien.
Clayton orders Juno (who’s holding the flamethrower) to accompany her back to her private suite to…see to some important matters.
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On the cargo deck of the Cronus, Rye and Miller set to raising the cargo elevators from the floor. Upon activating them, they crunched and squealed as they rose up: the elevators were encased in a sticky black resin (like the kind the alien builds its hives out of).
Panicked, they turned around and hustled to the lift to get back to the bridge. Rye hit the button. Now they waited.
Miller stood under a vent in the ceiling. As soon as Rye turned back to her, a pair of enormous mottled arms reached down and snagged the captain. Rye watched as she was snatched up, pulled up into the vents, screaming. Rye tried going after her…but she was gone!
The lift pinged open.
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At the same time on the bridge, Cham and Wilson activated the automatic doors. They had a suite of security cameras giving them live feeds of the ship…and they spotted the alien. Wilson used his Comtech skill to try to funnel the alien deeper into the ship…and panicked!
Hitting the wrong button, the alien went to opposite way…towards the cargo deck! Cham tried to quickly fix this mistake, but gained more stress as a result. He rolled his own Comtech…and failed!
The two men watched the silent camera feed. They saw the alien slide through the vents, grabbing captain Miller. She was dragged deeper into the ducts, out of range of the cameras.
“Oh shit…oops” Cham breathed.
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Clayton took Juno to her suite. There the company agent retrieved a sample of black goo from a wall safe. She explained that this substance would be worth a fortune to Weyland’s bioweapons division, and she was willing to cut Juno in if the medic protected her and kept her mouth shut.
Juno weighed her options, agreeing to the deal.
Clayton punched a code into a wall panel. It slid away to reveal a private escape shuttle built into her suite. It was big enough to take the both of them. Clayton stashed the sample and other research documents in the shuttle, when…
…the alien popped down from an overhead vent! It stalked towards Clayton.
Juno was faced with a choice: Run for the shuttle and save herself, or get the alien’s attention to try and save Clayton.
Bravely (perhaps foolishly), she chose the more valiant choice. Juno tried to blast the alien with the flamethrower, but failed to hit. The deadly xenomorph lunged at her, grabbed her, and hissed. Its second set of jaws revealed themselves. With a single roll, it killed her.
We bid farewell to Juno, the brave medic who performed incredible feats of surgery while stimmed out on space painkillers. She would be missed.
Clayton panicked and ejected her escape shuttle, escaping with the sample and leaving the crew of the Cronus to die.
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Rye caught up with Wilson and Cham. They discovered that Juno was dead, and that Clayton had abandoned them. As they regrouped on the bridge, they found Flynn (also dead). He’d killed himself out of fear of the infection that had killed Cooper.
Now it was just the three of them. They suited up and formed a plan: rig up a noisemaker, lure the alien into the shuttle Daisy (still mostly full of helium-3), lock it in, blow the shuttle into space…then blow it and the alien up.
They just had to sneak down two decks undetected.
Several movement checks later, carefully watching a motion tracker, they made it to the Cronus’ vehicle bay.
With the noise maker in place on a shuttle loaded with helium-3 and rigged to blow in 10 minutes, they waited for the alien. It appeared…but was a clever girl. It took coaxing with a flame thrower to get it trapped. Boxed in, they hit the airlock and sent the ship away…but the vehicle bay depressurized!
The team hanging on for dear life, company man Wilson swung down to empty a shotgun into the thing’s face. He missed…and got his helmet caved in by the alien for his trouble. Wilson went down. It was up to Cham and Rye!
Rye’s expert harpoon gun shot did it!
The team could breathe a sigh of relief. The alien was dead. The airlock sealed.
Wilson sat up and said “I need a vacation”. White blood leaked out from his suit. He was a secret android the whole time! The crew laughed, wiping tears from their eyes. They thought they’d lost him.
Eventually, the Chronus was up and running again. Rye searched through the ventilation ducts, eventually finding captain Miller cocooned up in there. She was alive too! Rye cut her free, and the crew was reunited.
Plotting in a course, the Cronus was finally headed home. Cham and Rye signed off, alive.
It would be a Merry Christmas after all!
…
Meanwhile…
The duplicitous Clayton stirred in cryosleep. The container of black goo she clutched ruptured over her research papers. It seeped into her veins. The infected EEV blared a distress signal into the vastness of space…waiting for any unsuspecting ship to bring it aboard.
THE END?
