Nebula

Nebula
The Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, by the Hubble telescope, 2014 · NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

A glowing cloud of gas light-years wide, where new stars kindle and instruments go half blind. Ships hide in it, lose themselves in it, and sometimes come out with a crew that remembers the trip differently.

Light
Dim
Going
Hard

Hear it

Hazards

  • Blind instruments. The glowing gas scatters every signal: scanners show ghosts, communications break up and navigation falls back on dead reckoning. D&D 5e (House rule): House rule: checks that rely on sensors or long-range communication have Disadvantage. Each day, the navigator makes a DC 15 Intelligence check; on a failure the ship loses a day.
  • Radiation belt. Close to a giant planet, its magnetic field traps particles in belts fierce enough to kill an unshielded person in days and fry electronics. Every hour outside counts, and shielding is measured in metres of ice or rock. D&D 5e (House rule): House rule: a creature outside without shielding makes a DC 12 Constitution saving throw at the end of each hour, the DC rising by 1 each hour; on a failure it takes 2d10 Necrotic damage and gains 1 Exhaustion level. This Exhaustion goes only with a Long Rest under shielding. Starfinder 2e: Radiation sickness, extreme (GM Core): disease 10, Fortitude DC 27, onset 2 hours; 3d8, then 4d8, then 5d8 poison damage with sickened 1 to 3, each stage an hour, and death at stage 4. Strong radiation also leaves electronics glitching or dead. Archives of Nethys

What may happen

  1. The navigator swears they have passed this glowing knot twice already.
  2. The gas glows red and green through every viewport, bright enough to read by.
  3. Another ship appears at the edge of sensor range, matching course exactly.
  4. Two crew members remember yesterday differently, and both have the logs to prove it.
  5. Deep in the cloud, a young star kindles behind a curtain of dust.
  6. With the stars blurred, the navigator fixes the ship’s position by the steady tick of a distant pulsar.
  7. Every channel fills with hiss. Messages to the outside take hours to get through, if they do at all.
  8. Charge builds on the hull, and sparks jump from every handle the crew touches.
  9. A pillar of dark dust rises across the view, its edges lit bright by the young stars behind it.
  10. The scanner shows a ship-sized contact off the bow. The cameras show nothing, and the contact keeps pace.
  11. Weeks in the glow have worn the crew thin. Small arguments break out over the last tin of coffee.
  12. The engines are off for a repair, and for an hour the whole crew sits at the viewports in silence, watching the cloud.
  13. A smuggler’s hideout is lodged deep in the cloud, a ring of old ships lashed together and lit like a fair.
  14. A newborn star throws two thin jets of glowing gas from its poles, light-years long and dead straight.
  15. The ship’s log has gaps: entries missing for an hour, as if no one had been at the controls.
  16. The ship’s scoop collects a sample of the cloud. The tank barely fills: the glowing gas is thinner than almost any vacuum made on Earth.
  17. The radiation counter climbs near a cluster of hot young stars, and the pilot steers wide.
  18. A buoy drifts at a known point in the cloud, a smugglers’ dead drop. It holds a message for someone else.
  19. A wreck drifts in the haze, its hull scorched by years of starlight from the young suns.
  20. A survey ship hails, crewed by three astronomers who have not spoken to anyone else in a year and want to talk.
  21. The sensors need a full reset, and for ten minutes the ship flies with no eyes at all.
  22. On the night watch the cabin lights are off, and the cloud’s glow alone lights the bridge in soft red.
  23. The star chart lists a star here. There is none, only a dark knot of dust where it should be.
  24. The ship’s own hail comes back an hour later, faint and slightly changed, from somewhere ahead.
  25. The haze thins, and for the first time in weeks the stars come back sharp and white. Someone cheers.

Adventure hooks

  1. A ship lost in the nebula for a year has come out with its crew a year younger.
  2. Pirates use the nebula as a harbour, and the navy wants a guide who knows the way in.
  3. A new star is kindling, and a cult wants to be there when it lights.
  4. The ship's sensors show a station inside the cloud that no chart has ever listed.

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, Neon city, Junktown, Spaceport, War front, Alien hive, 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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