Alien hive

Alien hive
A large wasp comb, its cells full of capped and open brood, with a wasp in the foreground, Hino, Tokyo · KQuhen, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

A cave, or a building, that something has taken over and grown into a nest. The walls vanish under ribbed resin, dark, glossy and warm, slime hangs from the ceiling in threads, and the floor of the deeper chambers is set with leathery eggs. The air is humid and smells of ammonia and rot; every sound carries, and the hive hears it. Whatever was here before, an outpost, a mine, a crew, is still in the walls.

Light
Dark
Going
Slow

Hear it

Hazards

  • Hive resin. The hive coats everything in a resin that is soft and sticky when fresh and hard as horn within a day. Fresh resin grips boots, gloves and anything that lies still in it for long; the hive uses it to hold what it keeps. D&D 5e (House rule): House rule: fresh resin is Difficult Terrain. A creature that falls Prone in it, or is shoved against a wall coated with it, makes a DC 13 Strength saving throw or has the Restrained condition; it or an ally can take an action to make a DC 13 Strength (Athletics) check to break it free. Fire clears a 1.5 m (5 ft) square of fresh resin in 1 minute.
  • Alien microbes. Life that never met a human: most of it cannot touch our chemistry at all, but nobody knows which of it can. Quarantine, filters and patience decide who goes home. D&D 5e (House rule): House rule: a creature that breathes the open air or eats unscanned food makes a DC 12 Constitution saving throw at the end of the day; on a failure it has the Poisoned condition for 1d4 days. A creature that succeeds three days in a row is safe from this world's microbes.
  • Unbreathable air. There is air, but not air a human can live on: too thin, no oxygen, or the wrong gases. A mask and an oxygen supply are enough where the pressure holds; a full suit where it does not. D&D 5e: A creature holds its breath for 1 + its Constitution modifier minutes (at least 30 seconds), then gains 1 Exhaustion level at the end of each of its turns until it can breathe; it then loses all the Exhaustion it gained this way. Starfinder 2e: Thin atmosphere (GM Core): a few hours make a creature that is not acclimated fatigued; in severely thin air it attempts a Fortitude save every hour or becomes drained 1. With no oxygen at all, use holding breath and suffocating (Player Core). Armour environmental protections cover both. Archives of Nethys

What may happen

  1. A few metres in, the walls stop being rock: ribbed resin, dark and glossy, warm even through a glove.
  2. A floor of leathery eggs, knee-high, set in rows. One of them twitches as a lamp beam passes over it.
  3. A human shape is set into the wall under a skin of resin, a mission patch still readable on the shoulder. Its chest rises, very slightly.
  4. Slime hangs from the ceiling in long threads that catch the light and snap without a sound.
  5. The deeper tunnels are warm and wet like breath; visors fog at every step.
  6. A smear along the floor smells sharp even through a filter: the hive marks its paths.
  7. The motion tracker pings once, behind the party, then shows nothing.
  8. Half of a prefab outpost juts from the resin, its door panel still lit green.
  9. Empty moults hang from a ledge, translucent, each one larger than the last.
  10. A low hum rises from below, swelling and fading like something breathing in its sleep.
  11. A rifle lies on the floor with its barrel eaten through, above a hole in the rock where the blood fell.
  12. A chamber stacked with the carcasses of local animals, sealed under resin like a larder.
  13. The whole tunnel shudders in a slow rhythm, and somewhere far below something heavy is being moved.
  14. A pool of clear slime blocks the passage; things float in it, slowly coming apart.
  15. An egg splits along a seam and a pale thing the size of a hand slides out, blind and fast.
  16. A warrior stands in an alcove, motionless, glazed in fresh resin as if it had been set there.
  17. The comm link fills with a hiss that rises whenever someone touches the walls.
  18. A helmet camera lies in the slime, its last recording still on the card.
  19. A mist hangs in one gallery; the creatures that walk through it pass each other without a sign.
  20. Pale glands in the ceiling glow faintly as the party passes, and dim again behind it.
  21. The tunnel splits three ways: one branch is warmer, one is wetter, one is silent.
  22. A sealed sample case lies in a niche, its company seal intact; the label reads “eggs, quantity two”.
  23. Somewhere ahead, a fast clicking, like fingernails on a visor, stops when the party stops.
  24. A shaft to the surface, half choked with resin, still shows a strip of sky at the top.
  25. A dead warrior lies across a passage, its carapace split by a blade nobody in the party carries.

Adventure hooks

  1. A company wants one egg delivered intact and pays for nothing else, not even survivors.
  2. A colonist’s beacon still transmits from deep inside the hive, eleven days after her outpost went silent.
  3. The hive is growing toward the mine, a metre a night, and the miners want it sealed before the next shift goes down.
  4. A biologist insists the hive is farming the cave rather than infesting it, and wants an escort to prove it before the burners arrive.

Who and what is met

Each is an SRD stat block under another name, as game masters reskin them.

Other places among the stars

Orbital station, Derelict ship, Colony outpost, Precursor ruin, Asteroid field, Gas giant orbit, Deep space relay, Terraforming works, Prison hulk, Research lab, Crashed freighter, Nebula, Neon city, Junktown, Spaceport, War front, Living ship, Undersea base, Lava foundry

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 ("SRD 5.2.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

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