Orbital station

Orbital station
The International Space Station after the shuttle Atlantis undocked, 2010 · NASA/Crew of STS-132, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

A ring or a stack of modules turning above a world, home to a few hundred people who never see a horizon. Air, water and patience are rationed, every corridor smells of machine oil, and the docking ring sees more news than the planet below.

Light
Lit
Going
Easy

Hear it

Hazards

  • Decompression. A hull breach or a door opened at the wrong time: the air rushes out with everything loose in it, bulkheads slam shut and whoever is on the wrong side has seconds to find a mask. D&D 5e (House rule): House rule: each creature within 9 m (30 ft) of the breach makes a DC 13 Strength saving throw or is pulled 6 m (20 ft) toward it, taking 1d6 Bludgeoning damage for each 3 m (10 ft) if it hits a wall. A creature pulled through the breach is in vacuum. After 1 minute the section is airless. Starfinder 2e: Decompression (GM Core): a creature thrown from pressure into vacuum takes moderate bludgeoning damage (4d6 to 6d6) and starts suffocating at once, with no breath held. Archives of Nethys
  • Weightlessness. Nothing falls. A person drifts in the direction they last pushed, tools float away if not tied down, and a fight is a matter of handholds. D&D 5e (House rule): House rule: a creature without a Fly Speed moves only by pushing off a surface, at its Speed in a straight line, until it meets another. Each attack it makes without a handhold has Disadvantage unless it has trained for weightlessness. Starfinder 2e: Zero gravity (GM Core): creatures are clumsy 1, off-guard and untethered; they move by Push Off from something their size or larger, or with propulsion. They lift and carry ten times as much, and thrown ranges are multiplied by 10. Archives of Nethys
  • Stellar flare. The star throws out a burst of light and particles. Instruments warn minutes to hours ahead; whoever is outside or behind thin walls must get to shelter, and radios crackle for a day. D&D 5e (House rule): House rule: a creature still outside shelter when the flare arrives makes a DC 14 Constitution saving throw, taking 4d10 Necrotic damage on a failure or half as much on a success. Radios and sensors work at Disadvantage for 24 hours. Starfinder 2e: Solar flares (GM Core): far from the star, a flare leaves electronics and radio glitching or out of order for up to 1d6 hours; on a world with no air, add its cosmic radiation. Only on or near the star's surface does it deal massive fire damage. Archives of Nethys

What may happen

  1. The water ration is cut again; the queue at the dispensers turns sour.
  2. A ship docks unannounced, and its crew will not say where they came from.
  3. A pressure alarm on a lower deck; doors slam shut along the corridor before anyone knows whether it is a drill.
  4. Near the hub of the turning ring, weight fades and a newcomer is sick in a bag.
  5. In the canteen, a rumour: the company is selling the station.
  6. Someone has been stealing lettuce from the hydroponics bay, a head a night. The gardener has started sleeping beside the trays.
  7. In the spinning ring a poured drink curves sideways on its way to the cup, and every newcomer spills the first one.
  8. At the observation window, children press their faces to the glass as the planet’s dawn line slides beneath them.
  9. An antenna on the outer hull needs fixing, and the duty technician asks for a second pair of hands on the spacewalk.
  10. Market day on the docking ring: crates of real fruit, second-hand suit parts and a woman selling seeds from a dozen worlds.
  11. The water tastes faintly of metal and of somebody else. Old hands no longer notice; newcomers notice nothing else.
  12. The stationmaster announces new quotas over every speaker. A cleaner turns the volume down in her corridor and gets a round of applause.
  13. A cargo handler offers to keep the party’s crate off the customs list for a small fee, and seems to have done this before.
  14. A birthday party in the weightless hub: the cake has to be eaten with a lid on, and the candles are banned.
  15. A flare warning sounds. Everyone heads for the shielded core and waits there, packed in, until the counters settle.
  16. A grain of debris has punched a pinhole in a storage module. A slow hiss, and a sheet of paper drawn flat against the wall.
  17. The corridor lights dim to amber for the station’s night, and the ring goes quiet but for the fans.
  18. A rich tourist complains loudly that the view is smaller than the brochure promised, and demands to see the stationmaster.
  19. The station cat has learned to push off walls in the weightless hub and sails past the party, purring.
  20. The station’s only doctor, a grey-haired woman named Sola, has not slept since the last shuttle brought a fever aboard.
  21. A teenager born aboard asks the party what wind feels like, and does not believe the answer.
  22. The dockworkers hold a meeting in the cargo bay. If the company does not answer by tomorrow, no ship gets unloaded.
  23. A woman in a company jacket asks pleasant questions about where the party has been, and writes nothing down.
  24. It is scrubber filter day. Every module lines up to swap its cartridges, and the stores are two short.
  25. The gym is compulsory: an hour a day on the treadmill against bone loss, and the queue is long and grumpy.

Adventure hooks

  1. The station's owner died, and her will leaves the air supply to the crew and the hull to her creditors.
  2. A docking clamp failed and a ship hangs half attached, its crew refusing to come aboard.
  3. Someone is stealing oxygen candles, a few at a time.
  4. The ring's spin is slowing, and the engineers say it is not mechanical.

Who and what is met

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

Other places among the stars

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, 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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