All those great crashed spaceships...

<font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">Okay it is a theme in sci-fi, the crashed alien ship, or crash landing on an alien planet... (I even had a book as a child that was nothing but great sci-fi art of crashed spaceships with a story behind each one of them, I really wish I could remember the title and find a used copy today.)</font><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">But they also appear in a lot of TSR's stuff... usually some poor unsuspecting fantasy setting gets crashed on. There are at least 2 crashed ships in Blackmoor, 1 possibly 2 in Grewhawk, and 1 for sure in Tale of the Comet... oh there are probably more. Ray-gun equals magic to primitives. </font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">So exploring the ideas:</font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">1 or more planets with intelligent life (in a low tech stage of development) have had 1 or more spaceships crash with either similar or very different life forms on board. </font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">Possible ways to play it out in SF that I can see...</font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">It's your ship crashing, for example you got to deal with the issues like Blackmoor's FSS Beagle crash plus mutiny scenario, can you fix the ship, if you live? Or you could be off to City of the Gods on some mission either as primitives or as modern archaeologists.</font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">Classic something found under the rocks &amp; dirt or frozen ice like the Thing or Expedition to Barrier Peaks... got to deal with the critter/s escaping the spaceship no one knew about...</font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">Aliens setting up colony on your world...</font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">Aliens have crashed too and need your crashed ship and will do anything to get control of it.</font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">It sort of depends how you want to play it, as a primitive people dealing with sci-fi alien stuff or as the advanced people dealing with crashing or occasionally finding a crashed ship. One perk to being the primitives in a setting is that could be part of a SF races history.</font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">There are some critters lurking in the pages of D&amp;D that started as alien beasties too.</font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">I found this in Expedition to Barrier Peaks interesting: Plague!</font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><p style="font: normal normal normal 9px/normal 'Century Gothic'; margin: 0px"><b><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">T</font></b><b><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">HE SPACESHIP</font></b></p>
<p style="font: normal normal normal 8.2px/normal 'Century Gothic'; margin: 0px"><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">Sometime else, a large exploration-colonization expedition of human origin was overtaken in the course of its journey by a deadly plague. In a vain effort to halt the spread of the virus, the modular sections of the vessel were sealed and then separated, each left to its own fate. The section concerned here was drawn through a black hole and spewed into the universe where the </font><span style="font: normal normal normal 9px/normal Helvetica"><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">World of Greyhawk </font></span><span style="font: normal normal normal 8.9px/normal 'Century Gothic'"><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">fantasy setting exists. Chance brought it</font> </span><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">to that very planet, and its computers and robotics brought it to an </font><span style="font: normal normal normal 7.3px/normal 'Century Gothic'"><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">intact landing.</font></span></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 8.2px/normal 'Century Gothic'; margin: 0px"><span style="font: normal normal normal 7.3px/normal 'Century Gothic'"><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></span></p>
<p style="font: normal normal normal 8.2px/normal 'Century Gothic'; margin: 0px"><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">This process, however, caused an earth tremor, and a landslide buried the ship section for several decades. Then a computer malfunction sent worker robots to a cargo hatch to discharge material, and when these robots found the hatch blocked by </font><span style="font: normal normal normal 7.3px/normal 'Century Gothic'"><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">fallen earth and stone, they promptly cleared it and unloaded the</font> </span><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">requisite cargo </font><span style="font-size: small; font: normal normal normal 13.2px/normal 'Century Gothic'">- </span><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">unfortunately</font><span style="font-size: small; white-space: pre" class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">for the inhabitants of the area, for the holds contained various alien fauna and flora, and the </font><span style="font: normal normal normal 9px/normal 'Century Gothic'"><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">offloading freed these creatures from stasis. Some died</font></span><span style="font-size: small; font: normal normal normal 9px/normal 'Century Gothic'"> </span><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">immediately, some lived for a time, and a few species prospered and propagated.</font></p><p style="font: normal normal normal 8.2px/normal 'Century Gothic'; margin: 0px"><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></p>
<p style="font: normal normal normal 8.2px/normal 'Century Gothic'; margin: 0px"><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">Recently, another earthquake uncovered an upper air lock, and the tremor caused the same computer malfunction, so the worker robots again cleared the lower cargo lock and periodically discharged more of the unwanted “goods”.</font></p></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">Now obviously all the humans died in this scenario, and the ship was buried along enough time for no one to know about it... but this ship besides holding a host of alien critters could still harbor a plague not to mention cool dangerous technology. </font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">This could be reworked for instance into how the Blue Plague really started... an established colony is suddenly dealing with strange creatures not cataloged before, and soon a group of people is put together to investigate... </font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">Of course there are great plots from movies, Alien, The Vampire Planet, The Thing and more...</font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span">Just musing on old stuff... <img src="http://www.starfrontiers.us/modules/tinymce/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/p…; title="Smile" alt="Smile" border="0" /><br /></font><div><font size="2" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></font></div><div><br /></div></div>