Alien: Dead On Arrival - One-Shot Cinematic

The CSCSS Santa Cruz, a passenger, and light cargo vessel is departing from the Anchorpoint Station. Anchorpoint is a bustling space station on the far frontier, the last outpost on the ragged edge of colonized space. You are among the lucky thirteen people - crew and passengers - making this journey. You each have your reasons for wanting to be on this ship, which is bound for the prosperous ICSC capital of Alexandria.

If everything goes smoothly, you are expected to arrive at the core system after 68 days of uneventful cryo sleep. You look around at your fellow travelers and... you sure hope this goes smoothly.

Scenario Overview

Alien: DOA is a one-shot cinematic adventure for the Alien RPG. It works best with 5-6 players, can be completed in a single session, and can work well as an introduction to the Alien RPG and setting. 

Higher player counts are possible. With multiple GMs, the scenario could accommodate up to 12 or possibly 15 players. With minimal modification, it could also be inserted into an existing campaign. 

Players will choose a pre-generated character from among 13 crew and passengers making the journey - each of which has their own secrets and personal agenda. On arrival near Alexandria, the characters will realize the journey has not gone as smoothly as they hoped. One of their fellow travelers is missing and the characters find themselves in a locked-room mystery that quickly turns to a desperate fight for survival. 

Cast, Crew, and Passengers

The following characters are involved in this adventure. Players should have these images available to select characters and for reference during the adventure. 

Players can choose a character from among crew and passengers. The ICC team members are not (initially) available as characters. Malcom Alvarez is also not a selectable PC. But you should only mention that if someone wants to select him. 

Story Overview

On Anchorpoint station, a mysterious woman named Monica approached one of the travelers on the Santa Cruz. We'll call this selected traveler the perpetrator or the perp. The perp was given three syringes - each of which contained a perishable sample of a different strain of the black oil pathogen. The perp's instructions were to inject each of them into a different live host. The expectation was that, once injected into a human host, the pathogen strains would be stable while the infected person remained in cryo. On arrival, the infected hosts could be slipped past ICC inspectors and then picked up within Alexandria Station. 

On the ship, the perp just needed to wake up while everyone else was still in cryo, inject three of the travelers with the black oil, and then go back to sleep. On arrival, they could just walk out with the rest. In exchange, they could keep their secrets, follow their dreams, and have a nice fat payday.

On departing from Anchorpoint, the perp used a local override card to have their cryo-chamber wake them up after 28 hours. They got up and injected three of their fellow travelers. They concealed the evidence, tweaked one of the other cryo chambers (to cast suspicion, if needed), turned off the alarms on the others, and went back to sleep. 

One of the people injected was colony scientist Malcom Alvarez. Malcom was injected with a strain derived from the XX121 xenomorph. They took the Plagiarus bacteria that is typically implanted by a facehugger, and injected it directly into Malcom. Even in cryo-sleep the pathogen was not as stable as they expected. Within a few days, the chestburster burst from Malcom and busted out of the cryo chambers. Not long after that, a full-grown xenomorph returned, scooped up Malcom's remains, and disappeared back into the maintenance shafts to hide and hibernate, awaiting the sounds and scents of fresh prey. 

Meanwhile, Malcom has been ovomorphing in a quiet corner somewhere on the ship and is now a ripe, somewhat man-shaped egg. 

The other two infected people were not transformed during their journey. The original plan was based on their rapid transfer onto Alexandria. That plan is quickly unraveling.

Getting Started

Show the players the list of crew and passengers and have them select characters. The full characters sheets are available for download here. The GM should also be familiar with each of the characters and their role in the story. 

Hand out the character sheets to their respective players. They should keep this information to themselves. 

The players should have access to the Crew and Passenger lists during the game.

CSCSS Santa Cruz is a Hepatica-class starship. The layout is available here*: 

The ship layout should be made available to all players. 

Santa Cruz has the standard Hepatica configuration, with one modification. This ship does not have a tractor hitch. Instead, the Tractor Hitch Control has been converted into a passenger cryo bay with 10 cryo pods. This is where the passengers will be traveling. The ship's crew will rest in the forward cryo area.

There are 4 roles in this scenario that are determined randomly among the travelers. Each of them can be a PC or NPC. They are:

1. The Perpetrator - This is a person who accepted the deal and who will awaken mid-flight and infect their fellow passengers.
   
   
2. Infected #1 - This person has been injected with a stable pathogen. They will appear infected on close medical inspection, but will otherwise have minimal effects.
   
   
3. Infected #2 - This character will have a neomorph bloodburster rip out of them shortly after waking from cryo.
   
   
4. "Infected" #3 - This character will awaken with a bad case of "cryo-cough". Their sudden emergence from cryo has left this character with a bad cough that occasionally produces flecks of blood. Otherwise, they'll be fine and aren't really infected with an alien pathogen.

The third person to receive the pathogen is Malcom Alvarez. He will have died of the chestburster, and been taken by the resultant xenomorph while everyone else was still in cryo-sleep.

Each of the 4 roles should be determined randomly. Any of the characters (PC or NPC) can be the perpetrator. Powers and Synthia should (probably) not be among the infected.

Act I: Up and Away

The scenario begins just prior to departure on Anchorpoint Station. The crew is getting the ship ready for departure and the passengers are boarding. 

Give each player a chance to introduce their character and describe their activities as everyone is boarding this ship. Describe the NPCs and what they are up to. Give everyone time for some brief interactions as the ship gets ready for departure.

Departure from Anchorpoint goes smoothly. Soon everyone will be asked to proceed to their cryo pod. Synthia will do the rounds to make sure everyone is settled in. And then everyone enters cryo for the journey. 

Act I Interlude

While the characters are in cryo-sleep the GM should meet privately with each player. 

During these meetings, you can discuss any aspects of the character and their secret agenda. Each PC who has been selected for one of our 4 special roles should get additional information:

1. The Perpetrator - the person will learn that they are the perpetrator. You can tell them about their meeting with Monica and decide on their motivation and the terms of the arrangement.
   
   The perpetrator will have received a credit-card-sized override card that they inserted into their cryo-chamber. After departure,  while everyone else was asleep, they were awakened. They opened the cryo chambers of the 3 people to be infected and gave them the injections.
   
   The player has no choice in this. It's already happened. They can decide what they did with the syringes afterward. Starships are designed so that nothing can be ejected from them while under FTL. 
   
   If the perpetrator is among the crew or infecting one of the crew, they will have noticed that Synthia is sleeping in one of the crew's cryo pods. 
   
   After performing the injections, the perpetrator returns to their cryo pod and prepares to awaken with everyone else on arrival. 
   
   
2. Infected #1 - During cryo sleep this person experiences terrible nightmares. They have dreams of black worms crawling under their skin. They will wake up with +2 stress.
   
   
3. Infected #2 - This character will wake up feeling a little off. Maybe they are feeling bloated and have a little tightness in their chest. A neomorph will burst out of them (killing them) in Act II. But you don't need to tell them about that now. 
   
   
4. "Infected" #3 - Tell this player that their character will awaken with a bad cough.  Their sudden emergence from cryo has left this character with a bad cough that occasionally produces flecks of blood. Otherwise, they'll be fine. They aren't really infected with an alien pathogen. But you don't need to tell them about that now. 

 

Once the GM has met with each of the players, we can move to the arrival at Alexandria to begin Act II. 

Act II: Scene I: Rude Awakening

While the travelers on the CSCSS Santa Cruz were sleeping, the chestburster ripped out of Malcom Alvarez. It smashed and melted it's way out the cryotube and ran off to hide in the ship. In time, it grew to adulthood. Since it could still smell his copse, it decided to come back and snatch Malcom's body from the cryo chamber. The xenomorph found a quiet spot to ovomorph poor Malcom, and retreated to the ship superstructure to await fresh prey. 

The shattered cryo chamber and a missing person will be the scene that greets the travelers as they awaken.

The ship will have largely completed it's journey, have spun down from FTL, and be on approach to Alexandria when the first characters awaken. Kathleen Ripton and Synthia will be the first to awaken. Synthia always sets her own pod to awaken before the others so that she can pretend to have been awake the entire time. Whether accidentally, or intentionally, the perpetrator set Kathleen's pod to open a little early.

This scene can play out a little differently, depending on if Synthia or Ripton are PCs, but Kathleen will wake up and see the shattered cryo-chamber. Her first priority is Madeline's safety. She'll grab some clothes, and possibly her pistol, and then go to the cryo controls and try to awaken the other travelers. 

Synthia will awaken in the crew cryo-chamber. She may see some warning lights on the cryo console or otherwise go check on the passengers. She'll come upon Ripon at the cryo-controls and see the smashed and bloody chamber. Ripton will activate the emergency cryo awakening procedure for everyone on the ship. (If Ripton is interrupted or doesn't try to wake everyone, Synthia or MU/TH/UR should do it).

Emergency premature wake up from cryo-sleep is very unpleasant. Each character should make a stamina check. Everyone who fails takes a point of damage (and an associated point of stress) from the overly rapid awakening process. 

The characters will all awaken with the crew and passengers in their respective rooms. The passengers will all see the shattered cryo-chamber. Everyone will begin the process of sorting out what's happened and begin to decide what to do about it. 

Act II: Scene II: The Hunt

The process of investigating the scene and sorting out what's going on is the heart of the adventure. This can play out very differently, depending on which characters are PCs, and what their roles are. In all cases, the PCs should take center stage. The NPCs can contribute but should be generally in the background. 

The following character notes assume the character is an NPC. They could also be guides and suggestions for PCs playing these characters. 

Joanna Franks: On approaching Alexandria the ship will be contacted by ICC. The ship will not be allowed to dock and risks ICC quarantine with something as suspicious as a mysterious missing person. Franks will spend her time at the bridge trying to smooth things over with ICC. She will deputize a PC to lead the investigation. She will insist that everything needs to be sorted out and that they absolutely have their story straight before the ICC arrives. 

Synthia: Synthia might face questions about why she was unaware of what was going on in the ship during the trip. She will never admit to being on cryo-sleep and will deflect or insist she never left the bridge. 

Cole Beckford: If Beckford is an NPC, he will tell people that he was fired from his marshal's job. Somebody else will have to sort this out. 

Lucia Alvarez: Lucia is horrified by her father's disappearance. She has a cutting torch in her bag and will use it as she demands an explanation. She'll insist her father is found. If interrogated, Lucia will say that her father was a botanist who worked with grain on Terraform 3. Lucia is confident that he wasn't involved with anything like this. She swears he was fine before getting onto the ship. 

Dr. Benson Powers: Dr. Power's priority is protecting his secret. He definitely wants to avoid ICC or other scrutiny. He'll want to destroy himself before risking exposure. Things like floating off into space, decapitation, or other measures that would be sufficient for silencing a human are insufficient for a synth that wants to ensure that it's memory can never be accessed. Dr. Powers is designed as an infiltration unit and is able to simulate cryo-sleep. He may or may not have some awareness of what transpired while everyone was asleep.

Joshua Hines: Joshua Hines is on this ship to track someone smuggling alien pathogens. He's the least surprised by what's happened and will smugly accuse the corporate types (Vickers, Ming, and Ripton) of infecting passengers, messing with forces they can't comprehend, and endangering them all to make a profit. He expects they were trying to slip xenomorphic materials past ICC quarantine in live hosts. He'll also claim that Malcom is certainly still alive. He is transformed and reborn! 

Hines is mostly correct. He is also pretty crazy. People might not trust or believe him. Joshua's top priority is making sure alien substances don't fall into corporate (or ICC) hands. In the conflict between the aliens and humans, he'll be on the side of the aliens. 

Madeline Ming and Kathleen Ripton: Madeline has rented one of the quarters in the living area as her personal room. She will want to retreat there with Kathleen while this is all sorted out. If left alone, the two of them are pretty easy prey for the neomorph 

Additional Evidence:

In addition to information gained from interrogating people, there is some physical evidence of what has transpired. Most of these should require an observation/investigation, comtech, or another check to determine the amount of information that can be gained. 

Malcom's Cryo-Tube: The cryo-tube is made of thick rugged plastic. It would require considerable strength to break in or out of it. There is old, dried blood spattered on the inside. The pattern of shattered glass suggests that something broke out and that something smashed in. Some acid scoring can be found on some of the melted plastic. 

Other Cryo-Tubes: The cryo hardware override card can (likely) still be found in the perpetrator's tube. In addition, the cryo-tubes are equipped with alarms. Synthia will insist they were all activated originally. They have all been turned off. 

Passenger Cryo Room: Some scratching and acid scoring can be found near a small ventilation vent. Within the ceiling super-structure and larger vents, there can be found old, dried blood smears. 

MU/TH/UR: The ship is not equipped with internal cameras or active motion sensors. MU/TH/UR would have records of the 4 cryo-chambers that were opened early in the flight (the perpetrator and 3 infected - including Malcom). The precise order they were opened might not be available. 

Medical Examination: A medical aid check can reveal if someone has or hasn't been infected with the alien pathogen.

Clever players (and/or good rolls) might discover other useful information. 

Finding Malcom

At some point, the players are likely to go looking for Malcom. His ovomorphing corpse is tucked away in one of the smaller rooms or access shafts on Deck B of the ship. Which room he's in is left up the GM. You can decide beforehand. Or when you feel it's dramatically useful, you can have him be found wherever people happen to be looking.

It's best if the characters have had time to do some investigation and speculation before they find Malcom's body. During the past few weeks, he's been turned into a xenomorph egg sack. When found, he will be curled up in a very uncomfortable-looking fetal position, and have a massively distended chest and stomach, almost like he is pregnant. 

Malcom is quite dead. His body is now a xenomorph egg. If anyone gets close (like to check if he's deceased) his stomach will peel open and a facehugger will pounce on the nearest person. 

Anyone fully caught in the facehugger's embrace will fall unconscious and be on the path to burst a chestburster of their own. 

Birthing a Neomorph

The character chosen as infected #2 is doomed to give birth to a neomorph. If it's a PC you could, periodically, subject them to a 10 dice attack (each success does 1 damage) opposed by their stamina. If they are broken then the neomorph bloodburster will pop out. 

Alternatively, you can provide a few warning signs, but then just have the bloodburster come out at a narratively convenient time. The bloodburster will rip out it's host (killing them). It will make a rapid dash to hide somewhere and grow. 

The bloodburster will quickly grow into a juvenile neomorph and return to stalk the characters. 

The neomorph birth can happen at any time. The best time is probably around when Malcom's body is discovered. Multiple things going very wrong at the same time should ratchet up the tension.

By the end of Act 2, the players should have done some investigation and may have a sense they have a betrayer among them. They will have encountered a facehugger and there is likely a juvenile neomorph staking them. 

Act III: Coming Home to Roost

Through all of this, there has been a mature xenomorph drone hiding on the ship. Characters might have seen some evidence of it's existence. Maybe someone caught a glimpse of it, found some black resin, or it's picked off an alone NPC. Mostly, the main xenomorph can stay in hiding until the third act. 

Once the egg has been found, and the neomorph is born, then the main alien can emerge. How you want to use the main alien is up to you. They do like to stalk lone people or small groups. Once it emerges, it should begin to rapidly pursue the remaining characters. The xenomorph and neomorph can also attack different groups of characters at the same time. 

The characters should quickly find themselves in a desperate fight for survival that is the core of Act III.  They will also have their personal agendas and a betrayer to contend with. How this all plays out can vary considerably between groups. 

The neomorph and xenomorph are not friends. They will attack one another on sight. But they might prefer to hunt the characters.

Additional Information

What's On the Ship

The precise contents of each room on the ship are deliberately ambiguous. You can have characters make a survival roll to find something in particular. An observation check might yield a useful clue. But, unless otherwise noted, the contents of particular rooms are up to you, or unimportant.

Armory

The only weapon in the armory is the captain's 12-gauge shotgun and a box of shells. Normally, the shotgun is locked in place with an electric lock.

Escape Pods

The ship is equipped with 2 class B Type 20 EEVs. Each of these has seats for two people. 

Cargo Bay

There are 7 cargo shipping containers in the cargo bay. The crew will all know about them. Passengers might have seen them during boarding as well. 

The containers are:

• 3 refrigerated containers labeled with a logo from Carvalho's Cuts. They are packed with sides of beef from Terraform 3. 
• 2 standard shipping containers from Weyland-Yutani. These are sealed tight. They contain mineral samples and barrels of black crude oil. 
• 2 climate-controlled containers from Lasalle Bionational. These contain Madeline Ming's "biological samples" which are high-yield cold-weather tomatoes. 

All of the shipping companies, and especially W-Y and Bionational, would have contract clauses that state that their shipping containers will not be opened or disturbed during transport. Crew members would all be aware of these clauses and know that the financial penalties for breaching them can be quite severe.

ICC Inspectors

When the ICC hears about the irregularities with the ship, they will not permit docking at Alexandria station. Instead, they will direct the ship to a position away from the station and send a shuttle to meet them. 

The ICC should be used to create time pressure on the ship. Several characters (Franks, Powers, Synthia, Oleg, Qing, the perpetrator...) really do not want to be subject to ICC scrutiny. There should be pressure to sort things out and the arrival of the ICC team should not be seen by many as a source of relief or rescue. 

The precise arrival time of the ICC should be vague, likely "in a few hours". They may not actually arrive at all during the session. They should only appear if that would usefully complicate things for the players or if you are running out of living characters for your players to play.

Synths and Secrets

Benson Powers is secretly a synth. And Synthia is secretly not actually a synth. You'll want to give them the opportunity to preserve their secrets, and so may need to fudge some mechanics accordingly.

Powers does not need to accumulate stress. But he can fake it. He can track stress as normal and even roll stress dice on ability checks. He can voluntarily comply with panic table results. But he can also choose to ignore them. He can not gain successes from fake stress dice. 

If he wishes to, Powers can also choose to roll fewer base dice than allowed (to conceal his abilities). And he can choose to replace base dice with stress dice. In those cases he would still get the stress dice successes, and panicking would be voluntary.

Synthia has the opposite problem. She accumulates stress like other humans. But she is good at hiding it. Until Synthia accumulates 4 stress, she can't roll a meaning full result on the panic table. So, she can roll base dice instead of stress dice and will never panic. If she tries an ability check with 4 or more stress, then she can no longer hide it and must roll normal stress dice (still with the -2 modifier on the Panic Table from her Nerves of Steel talent). 

Synthia finds the act of mimicking a fearless synth to be very therapeutic. While she remains calm and behaves like a proper synth she can lose a point of stress every turn. 

Hull Breach

Gunfire is especially dangerous on a spaceship as you really don't want holes in the side of your ship. Any missed or panic-induced shots in the direction of the ship exterior have a chance of breaching the hull. In those cases, roll the ship's armor rating (5) vs the base damage of the weapon. A single point of pass-through damage will make a small hole. If more than one point of damage gets through, the hole will be substantially larger. This will likely result in explosive decompression of the chamber and everything and everyone in it will risk being sucked into the cold vacuum of space. 

Xenomorph acid will have a similar effect. If the xenomorph is damaged or destroyed roll it's acid splash rating (8) vs the ship's armor. The acid can pass through multiple decks. 

Xeno-induced Malfunction (Optional)

The xenomorph has been crawling around in the ship's superstructure for weeks. It could easily have damaged a few things. The characters could wake up a few cases of Minor Component Damage (p. 198). 

Character Count

Even before the ICC arrives, this scenario involves 12 different characters, each with their own agendas and personalities.  GMs who have concerns about juggling all those NPCs will probably want to reduce that count. Free free to decide that a few of the less involved characters decided not to make the trip. 

Character Death

The scenario is meant to be deadly. Characters will die. NPCs can certainly disappear or meet some grisly end. If a PC is killed or otherwise broken beyond use, you can let them mourn for a bit. Then have them select from among the remaining characters and give them someone new to play. 

What's the Real Story

Exactly who is behind this attempt to slip alien pathogens into Alexandria is deliberately left as a mystery, Monica's employer might also change depending on the chosen perpetrator. 

As for where the pathogen came from, that is also a mystery. But, if you want to include these events in a broader narrative, it is certainly possible that the materials found on the USCSS Chronos found their way to Anchorpont Station. 

* The Hepatica ship specifications were created by Staffan Guildevall and are available on Facebook. Thanks to Staffan for creating such a cool and useful ship design.