Metamorphasis Alpha

Healing of Body Damage
Languages
Surprise
Means of Exchange
Example of a Referee Moderating an Adventure
Example: Level 14 (The City Section)
The City
Example of Ship’s Level 11
Modular Dwelling Diagrams
Starship Cutaway Drawings
INTRODUCTION
Mankind’s urge to explore and expand its frontiers finally caused another push into the vastness
of space - first interplanetary, then interstellar. By the 23rd Century a great migration wave was
spreading from Old Terra to the hundreds of inhabitable worlds which had been discovered in
the Milky Way galaxy. During the next hundred years colonization ships of all types and
descriptions went out to the stars, bearing seedling colonies seeking a better life. Many found
their new homes - for better or for worse - but for one reason or another scores of these starships
never reached their destination. This game is based on just such an event, the fate of a colony
ship which became lost...
The starship Warden was created from the designs used in the United Western Starship Cartel
program, and it was laid down in the Trans-Plutonian Spaceyards in 2277. The design was the
most ambitious ever attempted, the blueprints calling for an oval spheroid of tremendous size
using a new metal alloy of tensile strength previously unknown. The ship was an incredible 50
miles in length, with a width of 25 miles, and a height of eight and one-half miles. Additional
levels above and below the central one brought the total number of decks to 17. Warden required
11 years to complete, and it did not leave the Sol System until 2290 because of the effort
required to outfit the starship. The vessel contained complete Terran environments, and the
colonists were not rigidly screened for the expedition, for it was held that Warden’s
accommodations would place few physical or psychological stresses upon colonist or crewman.
A description of the starship’s levels, as well as some of the equipment typically found on each,
follows. The vessel was basically given over to large, open areas, with a simple system of
electronic locks used to insure that colonists did not stray into command or possibly harmful
areas. With its cargo of the flora and fauna of Earth, 1½ million colonists, and 50,000 crew
members, the wonder of the Interstellar Colonization Age set forth to found a new world many
light years from its old home.
DISASTER:
Some one-third of the way to the planetary destination which had been selected for Warden
stretched the very fringe of a cloud of space radiation. This cloud had been charted and analyzed,
so that Warden’s captain was aware that he was to plot a course to avoid any possible danger.
Somehow the vessel came too close to the radiation, and the cloud contained disaster. The
energy given off at the fringes of this celestial hazard was foreign to all previously known