Sci-fy Horrors in the Black

[tooley1chris]

Forgive me if this is a sub-topic here somewhere. I really did look (a little).

I've never been a big Cthulhu RPG fan, although I really liked Alone in the Dark. Does that count? 🤷‍♂️

I've read/listened to a lot of Lovecraft and tons of fan fiction audio on YouTube over the years. Maybe that earns a little cred in these circles. I dunno.

 Anyway I'm working on a Space Opera system under ORC for BRP and was wondering if anyone has a good springboard for a horror based game in the black of space.

Doesn't have to be tentacles, cults, and submerged cities...but can be. 

Give me even a little bit of inspiration and I'll give credit of course. Thinking something Event Horizon but outside the normal Hollywood tropes. 

 

[Gray Raven]

Perhaps you could do something with an encounter with the rock that housed and brought the alien entity that is featured in the short story The Color Out of Space.

From the 7th edition Keepers Manual:

Colours Out of Space
The shaft of phosphorescence from the well brought a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image their conscious minds could form. It was no longer shining out, it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow directly into the sky.
—H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space
A colour is a sentient organism that manifests as pure colour—it is not gaseous, it is insubstantial. When it moves, it is visible as an amorphous, glistening patch of colour,
rolling and shining in shades of its pale colours that match nothing in the known spectrum. This patch pours over the ground or flies in a living fashion. When it feeds, its victim’s skin and face glow with the colour.
Though incorporeal, its passing nonetheless feels like the touch of a slimy, unhealthy vapor. Geiger counters register its presence as a distinctive burst of radiation. With today’s light-intensification gear, it shows as a bright patch of luminosity. Infrared viewers are useless. 
Colours come from the depths of space, where natural laws differ. Adult colours create embryos, harmless three-inch spheres seemingly empty. Deposited on verdant soil
or in shallow waters, the embryo begins to germinate. After a few days, the outer shell dissolves and the new creature, which we may term a larva, emerges.
The jellylike larva can grow to great size. As it infiltrates the ecosystem, local vegetation exhibits a tremendous but unhealthy growth. Fruit tastes bitter. Insects and animals are born deformed. At night, all plant life glows with the colour, and the vegetation begins to twist and writhe, as though in a strong wind. Even humans shine with the spectral light. After a few months, the larva transforms into a young colour.
It now makes brief trips from its lair to feed, and begins to drain the life force from the area previously affected by the larva. When it drains enough energy, it departs the planet for space and adulthood. In so maturing, the colour may drain life force from an area of five acres or so if rich in life, or perhaps 10-20 acres of moor or grassland. The area drained is ruined thereafter, and no plant can grow.
Bright light inhibits a colour. It spends daylight hours in dark, cool hideaways, preferably underwater: cisterns, wells, lakes, reservoirs, and oceans are all suitable

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