The setting of an abandoned cruise ship at sea keeps the claustrophobia constant; generating shocks and scares from the shadows, strange noises, eerie isolated corridors and the feeling of being lost in a maze of identical rooms. The alien presence within an alien, sterile environment allows the GM to show off the horror slowly and with greater impact. As the PCs slowly explore the ship and delve into the depths, larger and more horrific creatures emerge from the hellish cargo.
Adventure Background
Several of the crew haul in a net. Silvery fish flop in the bilge as the men transfer the bountiful catch into a hold. One of the crew suddenly sees something. The chatter and work come to a stop.
Silence. Except for the thumping of the dying fish, gulping for air.
With infinite slowness, a huge, derelict cruise ship floats into view, listing heavily. Its half-exposed bottom encrusted in barnacles and rust, the hulk dwarfs the Stewart’s ship.
A completely empty ship floating on the waters.
High on one side is a faded name: Resurrection.
The Sunset Empire edges up to the stern of the ship and you squint at the lettering across the white hull, red and illegible. They watch as the Sunset Empires deftly maneuvers around the ship’s bow, still awestruck by the size and unnerved by the deathly quiet.
During the course of his time at sea, a drifting abandoned vessel is not an unfamiliar object. Steward and his crew have boarded ships when the entire crew has jumped overboard with madness at the solitude of the Endless Sea and ships where murder had suddenly explored amid the incredible silence of the ocean.
There is no answer from the Resurrection, nothing but the hollow creak of shifting equipment. As the Sunset Empires comes along her port side, they can all see a lifeboat hanging from the davit, half submerged. There is a hole in the bottom.
"Ah, to own such a ship as this and sail the world at your leisure," Steward mutters enviously to himself.
Stewart orders his crew to prepare to board it. The smaller vessel draws alongside it, and a dozen of his crew prepare grappling hooks and ladders. The PCs are likely to volunteer to go aboard.
"Do not take any chances." The captain passes out weapons and bits of equipment. He looks nervous but steady. He isn't alone in his unease, the unknown. "It is far better to err on the side of caution than to come back a dead man. Good luck."
“Throw up a line,” Stewart says. One of the crew swings the hook and throws, the clawed metal flying up and clanking loudly against the lowest railing above. He gives it a jerk and the line tightens, the hook catching against iron pipe.
The first man starts up, hand over hand, dwarfed by the giant hull of the giant ship.
The blank white of the hull seems to go on forever, extending at least thirty feet up from the lapping water, and this is just to the lowest of the multiple railings.
He takes the bundled rope ladder out of the utility bag and loops it to the railing, breathing easily in spite of the climb.
You swallow dryly as you shoulder your equipment and prepare to board the lifeless ship.
You can’t see much from where you’ve boarded, the top deck well above eye level. Shattered glass and blackened holes announce where windows once were. The ones that remain intact watch you menacingly , their dark glare offering no secrets as to what they contain below deck. You come out next to the bridge, a raised structure as big as your ship entirely.
As with the aft section, the wide walkway is littered with deck furniture and other detritus — smashed plates and the like. These cast eerie shapes in the milky haze. Visibility is at about fifteen feet. Not a lot of forewarning if someone was coming their way.
Underneath the forward atrium is a glass-encased control room, twenty feet above the silent deck; you see stairwells and closed hatches, torn canvas, ladders---but no sign of life anywhere. There isn’t a single light blinking, no sound except for the creak of loose riggings, no sign that anyone was aboard. The effect is dramatic and overwhelming, a gigantic vessel alone, deserted and dead.
The fog is just on the water, though it hasn’t reached this far up, as you stand here now, taking in the huge deck that lays exposed before you.
You see chipped paint and punctured metal amidst coils of rope and hanging chain; you don't recognize a lot of the support structures, little towers of pipe and sheet steel that litter the deck, but you knew the aftermath of a fight when you see it. The outer walls of the bridge are riddled with bullet holes, several of the windows shattered. Dim sunlight sparkled against the jagged glass, pieces of it lying on the deck outside the bridge—
—which means that some of the shots were fired from inside; which means... What does that mean?
Exterior Decks: The hatches and windows are smashed, the wheelhouse crushed. Bloodstains blacken the decks; the stairs and ladders have been torn out and twisted. At the stern, a faded red and white flag with stars and stripes (American, though the characters are unlikely to know this; having been eight millennia since any form of that nation existed).
The surface of the Resurrection's main deck is strewn with debris from her final battle against the zombies and years of decay. The deck is a treacherous wasteland of cables, wire, broken deck plating, gaping shell holes, fallen timbers, shards of shattered wood and metal, broken glass, and other detritus. Simply walking through the maze of sharp, rusted objects is dangerous; one false step can result in small, but painful scrapes and cuts, or even grievous life-threatening injuries. Each time a character moves into an area covered by debris (or spends a round fighting while standing in such an area), it might step on something sharp.
The boarding party with the PCs fan out wordlessly, awed by the destruction. The men light torches and peer down the stairs. Water is everywhere.
You stare at the dark opening to the aft Lido lobby with renewed anxiety. The once fine glass doors has since been obliterated. They lay in a thousand sharp pieces spread out across the pool deck. From the spray pattern , they appear to have burst from within, however the hell that happened. The lobby they once protected looks just as uninviting. Without power, the elegant elevator receiving space now appears dingy and forgotten, a breeding place for less than nice things. Nothing moves in the gloom. A stairway on either side leads down into the dark.
Bridge: Stewart leads the others around the outside of the bridge, his excitement growing with each step across the deck of the abandoned Resurrection. He crouches down beneath the starboard windows of the wing, and the others do the same behind him as they near the door to the bridge. He is captain, it is right that he should put himself in front—and it makes his nervous crew respect him all the more.
The heavy door to the bridge is slightly ajar and Stewart scoots closer, gripping his flintcock tightly. In spite of his certainty that no one is aboard, he doesn't want to seem careless in front of his men.
Stewart rests the barrel low against the steel door and pushes it back slowly, a soft scrape of metal against metal in the silent air. The door opens easily— —and a half dozen pale shapes burst out of e darkness, frantic, inhuman, fluttering wildly, Stewart reels back, terrified
—and they all watch as the attackers take to the air, a few white feathers gliding down to rest on the deck. Terns. Just birds.
Stewart stands up and peers inside before cautiously proceeding into the shadowy room, ready to blow away anything else that moves.
Dull light filters in through the windows, barely illuminating the panels of equipment and outlining the blocky shapes of consoles and chairs.
It is empty of life, human or otherwise.
The light shows damage wherever it fell, exposing the dark corners of the silent room in terrible detail.
A semicircle of computer monitors and control knobs and buttons lies smashed before the great wall of windows at the front of the bridge. Behind the command center is a small area which once was a tidy little library. Books detailing all things nautical as well as a few trashy novels sit untouched on a small bookshelf. At the back wall next to the kitchen is a table dirtied by spilled coffee, the carafe itself tipped over probably during a struggle. Several file folders lie open beneath the small library area’s wall shelf, their contents spread across the floor. The quarters of the captain and chief mate hold typical office effects (pictures of family, small desk with unremarkable paperwork), a plain bunk, and small closet of work clothes. Blood stains the floor of the captain’s quarters. There are bullet holes in the walls, and the PCs see that whole panels of instrumentation equipment have been smashed. There are spatters and smears of dried blood across the devastated consoles, bits of circuitry and glass strewn everywhere, but there are no corpses (moving or otherwise) in either area.
You walk carefully around the bridge, deeply uneasy as you study the ruined equipment. The depth of violence implied is unnerving, and you wonder what could have gone down to inspire such brutality. It is obvious from the dried brown stains that people have been hurt or killed here...
The folder contents are manifests for the ship’s current cargo and personnel. They’re written poorly and in a shorthand the captain used as he was not fond of writing. Unless the PCs read English, the manifests are worthless. Still no details are penned that might be a ship’s log or give any clue as to what happened that caused the Resurrection to end up where it is. Perhaps the most curious piece of information missing from the bridge records is the vessel’s destination.
The final sentence is scrawled haphazardly across the bottom of the page . It is almost illegible . Oh God I can hear them ! I can hear them ! They're coming for me ! They're wearing the others' faces and they're coming for mine too !
Interior: The interior of the Resurrection is a dark, spooky place when the PCs begin their explorations. Decks and bulkheads are corroded, and the boat's heavy metal doors are rusted shut or stuck open; all are difficult to budge and screech loudly when moved. Narrow corridors give the interior a claustrophobic feel, in contrast to the yawning chasms that make up the nerve chamber and the large engineering room.
The PCs step into the port hallway that leads down the side of the ship . Passenger cabins dot the length of the hallway but it deadends in a large door marked " crew only."
Something about this hallway. this ship feels wrong somehow. It is watching them, playing with them like a cat with a mouse covered in catnip , it wants to juggle them around a bit before tearing them to pieces.
Lido Deck: The deck that stretches out in front of you looks the length of a couple of football fields. The mist would be a problem. It distorts sound. The watery haze also leaves a fine sheen of wetness on the deck slats. Could get slippery in a firefight.
The Lido deck is a tornado trail of debris. Railings are rent. Deck chairs are thrown every which way. The Forward Atrium has partially collapsed. The cage-like dome of glass has exploded inward, offering a partial glimpse into the nine story lobby beneath. Between the fog and the lack of light within the ship, they can't see much, no movement anyway . It's what you feel that tally bugs you. The place is unnaturally still. It is holding its breath, anticipating their arrival.
Lido Lobby:
You watch the dark opening to the aft Lido lobby with renewed anxiety. The once fine glass doors had since been obliterated. They lay in a thousand sharp pieces spread out across the pool deck. From the spray pattern , they appear to have burst from within, however the hell that happened. The lobby they once protected looks just as uninviting. Without power, the elegant elevator receiving space now appears dingy and forgotten, a breeding place for less than nice things. Nothing moves in the gloom. A stairway on either side led down into the dark.
You creep forward toward the doors, sweeping the lobby beyond with your eyes. The shadows remain as still as ever. Unnaturally still. Expectant. It is as thought the ship is watching you closely, waiting for the real show to start.
The lobby is clear — well, at least empty. The blood trail smears through the gloom and abruptly ends at the base of the golden doors of one of the four elevators. It is the red carpet leading to some nightmare of a show.
You tiptoe around the blood and move towards the stairwell on the far side. The ship's interior produces a whole different kind of eerie silence. Soft carpet squishes under your feet. Something rocks distantly with the ship's sway.
Crew Quarters:
Each of these areas houses five simple bunks for the crew. The showers and restroom facilities are communal and sit in an area at the bridge end of the entrance hall for these quarters (see map—nothing remarkable lies in that area). Foot lockers sit at the end of each bunk (a random 85% chance of being locked if one is checked by a survivor) and contain various personal items of little worth except to the soul who used it. Each room has a central long table which might be used for card games during down time or for someone to dine alone if the mess proved too crowded. One silent deadly zombie (Boogeyman-type) walks idly around the center table inside two of these rooms (determined by the GM). These poor crew members were slain in their sleep by Zombie Crewmembers . Gun shots here will certainly attract the two Zombie Crewmembers in the mess hall.
Sick Bay:
The PCs throw open the door and find the lights, the bright fluorescents chasing away the shadows and showing them a gleaming white medical lab. There are wide lockers, gurneys, stainless tables—it seems to be one of the only places on the ship so far that hadn't been wrecked.
There is blood splashed out on the deck just before the door, a lot of it. Whoever it belonged to hadn't been shot or stabbed. Too much blood for that sort of thing. Anything beyond that would just have to be left to your imagination since there is no body to accompany it. Nothing suffering a wound that could have left such a mess would be able to get up and walk away on its own.
Crimson streaks smear away from the sticky puddle toward the lobby doors. Someone had dragged the body away, for what purpose you really didn't want to know.
Game Room:
The PCs go around the comer into the vast whirring playground of slot machines and game tables. There are a total of four exits in the room counting the one they currently occupied. The two larger ones empty into the ship's main atriums. The exit across the way is a side hallway access.
The Encounter with the Sole Survivor
You move to the far side — all panel glass windows and a glass door — and let yourself out onto the misty balcony. The warm air snatches you in its comforting embrace as you blink away the darkness of the ship's interior. You inhale deeply. You had no idea how badly the ship stank, how much you hated its rank cold air, until you were free of it, and for one insane moment you want to hurl yourself overboard and swim away from this hateful place.
is loud, dark, hot, stuffy, and stinks like a slaughterhouse and machine shop rolled into one. The smell of machine oil and rotting meat permeates the air.
The machine shop is a complex system of assembly lines and robotics. Pieces of human bodies, cybernetic systems, high-tech weapons, bionic limbs, and metal scrap are carried along tracks by conveyor belts, mechanical hands, and meat hooks. The tracks twist and turn all over the shop, shooting off in different directions. Stitching and soldering lines connect dead flesh to recycled metal. Everything is constantly moving at blinding speeds. Hooks and robot hands dip into large vats of gory limbs, combine them with all sorts of technological devices, and before you know it, a new, fully-functional Scrap Zombie rolls off the factory line and is ready for service.
Then it walks from the shadows.
Four massive limbs carry its great bulk forward. It is a mass of flesh and steel, metal plates cauterized to a body of seething blubber. Two great claws reaches out to the fore and clack together menacingly. But it is the head that was the most hideous - a twisted, bloated replica of a face that might once have been human, but was now so savage and malign as to be almost unrecognizable.