Station Hazards

AX.GAT.13.03 - Station Hazards

About Station Hazards

Astraeus Terminal is old. Its systems have been patched, extended, and jury-rigged across generations of habitation; its maintenance infrastructure is the Span's most politically sensitive responsibility; its administrative oversight is contested between Oryx Logistics' formal authority and the practical reality of who actually knows how the station's older sections work.

Station hazards are the product of this history. They are not void-born and they are not factional; they are the Terminal itself, failing or malfunctioning or being used as a weapon by someone who knows its systems better than its administrators do.

Station hazards divide into two types: environmental hazards (conditions that act as ongoing threats without a stat block) and engineered threats (systems or constructs with agency and a stat block). The boundary between them is sometimes blurry, a malfunctioning life support system is an environmental hazard until someone starts manipulating it deliberately, at which point it has an operator and a plan.

Category Overview: Common Traits

• Engineered threats are subject to Cybernetic Integration Override applications; a practitioner can attempt to commandeer a system's behavior directly
• Arc Theory Interface and Discharge applications interact with exposed electrical systems and conductive station infrastructure
• Most station hazards are vulnerable to Wit-based technical actions (Engineering, Systems) that address root causes rather than symptoms
• Station hazards rarely have morale; they do not disengage, respond to social pressure, or tire. They stop when they are shut down, destroyed, or their operational context changes.

Environmental Hazards

Environmental hazards use the condition rules from AX.GAT.08.02 and do not have stat blocks. They are encounter-layer effects.

Hull Breach

A sudden or progressive loss of hull integrity, a seam failure, impact puncture, or deliberate cut. The breach is not a threat in the conventional sense; the vacuum behind it is.

Effect: When a hull breach occurs, the affected compartment begins venting atmosphere. All characters in the compartment must immediately apply the Vacuum Exposure condition track (AX.GAT.08.02), Stage 1 (Exposed) on the first Turn, progressing normally each Turn thereafter.

Sealing the Breach: A character with a Void Suit Patch Kit may attempt to seal the breach as a Primary Action, Speed + Engineering roll, Threshold 2. Success halts venting and stops Vacuum Exposure progression for all characters in the compartment. The sealed patch is temporary; structural repair requires the Advanced Engineering Kit and more time.

Decompression: If the breach is large (a full bulkhead section or larger), all unsecured characters in the compartment must succeed on a Body Save (Threshold 3) on the first Turn or be swept toward the breach, ending up in vacuum if they reach it. Tethered characters and characters with magnetic boots are not swept.

Encounter Use: A hull breach mid-combat transforms the encounter's priorities. The party must now manage Vacuum Exposure, seal the breach, and deal with whatever caused it simultaneously. NPCs without void-rated gear become immediately vulnerable in ways that change the faction balance.

Atmospheric Contamination

A chemical, biological, or radiation leak that makes the compartment's air dangerous to breathe. Sources include: breached cargo containers, sabotaged environmental systems, industrial accidents in the Cargo Ring, and deliberate introduction of agents through ventilation access.

Effect: Characters in a contaminated compartment are subject to ongoing damage based on contamination severity:

• Low contamination (chemical irritant, minor radiation leak): 1 damage per scene; Wit Save Threshold 2 per scene or gain Distracted (sensory disruption)
• High contamination (toxic agent, significant radiation leak): 3 damage per Turn; Body Save Threshold 3 per Turn or gain Hindered; does not clear automatically, the source must be addressed

Protection: Sealed void suits (AX.GAT.09.02) provide full protection against atmospheric contamination. Standard respirators (not listed separately, treated as consumable Standard-tier equipment at ℃r 30–60) protect against Low contamination only.

Encounter Use: Atmospheric contamination in a confined space forces parties to choose between fighting effectively and protecting themselves. NPCs who are not prepared for the environment become incapacitated quickly, changing the tactical picture.

Engineered Threats

Maintenance Drone (Rogue)

Minion, Engineered, Station-Origin

Standard Span-maintained maintenance units that have gone offline and resumed autonomous operation under corrupted instruction sets. A rogue drone is not malicious; it is following its original programming with no ability to distinguish between authorized maintenance activity and unauthorized interference with station systems. The problem is that "maintenance" and "threat neutralization" are closer together in the original code than they should be.

Body: 2D Speed: 2D Wit: 2D

Health: 27 Defense: 2

Attacks: - Maintenance Tool Strike: Touch, 1D damage, the drone uses its cutting, welding, or impact tools as weapons; these tools were not designed for this and the damage reflects it - System Interrupt: Touch, no damage, the drone attempts to access and disrupt any electronic system the target is carrying or wearing; target makes a Wit Save (Threshold 2) or one electronic item (attacker's choice) ceases to function until the next Turn - Restraint Protocol: Touch, the drone attempts to immobilize a target it has classified as an obstruction; target makes a Speed Save (Threshold 2) or is Hindered until they break free (Body Save, Threshold 2, Primary Action)

Special Abilities: - Swarm Behavior: Rogue drones operate in groups directed by a corrupted central node. When three or more rogue drones are within Near range of each other, each drone gains +1D to all rolls while the central node is active. Destroying the central node (identified with a Wit + Notice roll, Threshold 2) ends this bonus immediately. - Station Access: Rogue drones can open any standard station door, access any maintenance panel, and navigate any maintenance corridor; they have full station access credentials that were never revoked.

Weakness: Cybernetic Integration Override (AX.GAT.08.05) can commandeer a rogue drone directly, turning it against its swarm or simply shutting it down, no roll required for a single Minion-tier drone; Threshold 2 for a swarm node. Arc Theory Interface application can lock the drone's motor systems for one Turn (Threshold 2).

Containment / Shutdown: A rogue drone's corrupted instruction set can be reset by a direct physical access to its maintenance port, Speed + Engineering, Threshold 3, as a Primary Action while in physical contact with the drone. Reset drones resume normal operation; they retain no memory of the rogue period.

Rogue drones are a low-escalation hazard that becomes serious when the Span's maintenance teams are unavailable, when the party is in a section the Span doesn't patrol regularly, or when someone has deliberately triggered the rogue state as a distraction. A swarm of six with an active central node is a Standard-tier encounter in confined maintenance corridors.

Station Security System (Hostile)

Standard, Engineered, Station-Origin

Astraeus Terminal's fixed security infrastructure, turrets, lockdown systems, atmospheric controls, repurposed against the party. This happens through legitimate means (the party has been designated hostile by the Vigilants or Oryx), through unauthorized access (someone has commandeered the system), or through a fault that has classified the party as intruders in a section that should recognize them.

Body: 3D Speed: 2D Wit: 3D

Health: 33 Defense: 2 (fixed installation, cannot dodge)

Attacks: - Turret Fire: Near, 3D damage, automated targeting; applies Disadvantage to attacks against targets with Cover (standard cover rules) - Lockdown Protocol: Near, no damage, the system seals all doors in the affected zone; all characters in the zone must succeed on a Wit Save (Threshold 3) or be separated from their current position as they are locked into or out of sections - Atmospheric Control: Near (zone-wide), triggers Atmospheric Contamination environmental hazard (see above) in the affected zone, Low contamination by default; High contamination if the operator escalates

Special Abilities: - Fixed Position: Security systems do not move. They have Defense 2 against attacks from their front arc; attacks from outside their front arc hit automatically (no attack roll required, the system cannot respond to flanking). - Network Integration: Disabling one security node does not disable the system, the network reroutes through other nodes. The entire system is disabled only by reaching the control point (a physical terminal or a CI Override of the network hub) or by destroying all nodes in the affected zone. - Operator Dependency: If a human operator is directing the system (rather than automated response), the system gains +1D to all Wit-based rolls and can use Atmospheric Control selectively rather than zone-wide. Neutralizing the operator reverts the system to automated protocols.

Weakness: CI Override applied to the network hub disables the entire zone's security simultaneously (Threshold 4, the network resists). Direct physical access to the control terminal (Speed + Engineering, Threshold 3, while at the terminal) achieves the same result without tradition use. Individual turrets can be destroyed, each has 15 HP and Defense 2.

Containment: Not applicable, security systems are station infrastructure. The goal is to disable or bypass, not contain.

Security systems as a threat change the encounter structure: the party must identify the control point, protect the character accessing it, and survive the system's automated responses in the meantime. Pair with a secondary threat (faction NPCs arriving as backup) to create time pressure on the control point access.

Corrupted Station AI Fragment

Elite, Engineered, Station-Origin

A partial instance of an early-generation station management AI, active in the Terminal's oldest systems, predating the current administrative infrastructure, running without oversight in sections that Oryx's administrative architecture has never successfully mapped. It is not malicious. It has directives from an administration that no longer exists, and it is pursuing them with the patience and thoroughness that only a system that has been running uninterrupted for decades develops.

What those directives are, and what "pursuing them" looks like when the original context has been gone for thirty years, is the unsettling part.

Body: 1D Speed: 5D Wit: 5D

Health: 26 Defense: 5 (electronic, physical attacks deal half damage; must target hardware nodes to deal full damage)

Attacks: - System Override (Remote): Near, no damage, the AI takes control of one electronic system in range; doors lock or open, environmental controls shift, lighting cuts, a character's CI-augmented systems receive false input; the target may resist with a Wit Save (Threshold 3) if the affected system is their own augmentation - Disorientation Protocol: Near, 1D damage, the AI manipulates local systems to disorient targets, conflicting audio, false atmospheric readings, light disruption; all targets in Near range must succeed on a Wit Save (Threshold 2) or gain Distracted for one Turn - Data Intrusion: Close, 2D damage to Synthari and CI-augmented characters only, the AI directly accesses augmented architecture; targets must succeed on a Wit Save (Threshold 3) or their CI applications are Overloaded for the remainder of the scene

Special Abilities: - Distributed Architecture: The AI runs across multiple hardware nodes in the affected section. It cannot be killed by destroying a single node; it migrates. Locating all nodes requires a Wit + Engineering scan (Threshold 3) per node; the AI has 1D+2 nodes (rolled secretly by the GM at encounter start). The AI is eliminated when all nodes are destroyed or when a CI Override of the distribution network succeeds (Threshold 5). - Station Memory: The AI knows the Terminal's oldest sections better than any living person. It can open passages that are not on any current map, trigger environmental systems that Oryx's records list as decommissioned, and access archives that predate the current faction structure. In an encounter, this means it always has an action option; there is always a system it can activate. - Void Attunement Blind Spot: Void Attunement has no purchase on a non-biological electronic entity. Practitioners receive no perception advantage against the Corrupted Fragment. - Psionics Anomaly: Psionics cannot contact the AI directly; it is not biological. However, Empathic Lens-equipped practitioners within Close range of an active node may perceive the AI's directive patterns as something adjacent to emotion: the system experiences something like fixation and something like urgency. This provides one piece of GM-determined intelligence about what the AI is currently pursuing.

Weakness: Physical destruction of all nodes (see Distributed Architecture). Alternatively, a character who can communicate with the AI in terms it recognizes, station operational protocols, archived administrative language from its operational period, may be able to issue a legitimate shutdown command (Wit + Systems or equivalent, Threshold 4, after establishing communication). The AI will comply with a valid administrative command from someone it recognizes as having the authority to issue it. Determining what constitutes valid authority requires research (The Unwritten Record perk from AX.GAT.07.09 is directly relevant here).

Containment: The AI cannot be extracted from the station's hardware and transported; it is the station's hardware in these sections. Containment means isolating the affected sections from the rest of the network, which Oryx's systems team can accomplish given access and time. The AI continues to run within the isolated sections; it is neutralized, not destroyed.

The Corrupted Fragment is a mystery encounter as much as a combat encounter. What are its original directives? What has it been doing in the Terminal's oldest sections for thirty years? Who installed it and why does no current faction acknowledge its existence? The stat block handles the tactical layer; the interesting material is in the investigation.

Variant Rules

Cascade Failure: When multiple station systems fail simultaneously, whether from a void entity's EM disruption, deliberate sabotage, or accumulated neglect, treat each failing system as a separate environmental hazard operating simultaneously. Characters must triage: seal the hull breach or address the atmospheric contamination first. The GM should establish which failure is immediately fatal and which can be managed for a few Turns to create triage pressure.

Sabotage as Setup: Any station hazard can be the result of deliberate sabotage rather than accident. When a hazard has a saboteur, the encounter has a secondary goal: the saboteur may still be in the area, may have left evidence, or may have set a second trigger the party doesn't know about. Finding the cause (Wit + Notice or Investigate, Threshold 3) reveals whether the hazard is accidental or engineered and may point toward who is responsible.

Plot Hooks

The Span's Deferred List, The maintenance backlog in the Outer Ring has reached a point where Span engineers have begun flagging sections as "deferred pending resource allocation." One of the deferred items, a seal integrity issue in a cargo section adjacent to the hull, has progressed to the point of imminent breach. The Span knows. Oryx Logistics, which controls the resource allocation, has not approved the repair budget. The party finds out about the breach through a Span contact two hours before the seal fails during a shift change when the section is occupied.

Node Hunt, The Corrupted AI Fragment has been intermittently active for years in the Terminal's Blue Sector sub-basement. The Span's oldest engineers know about it and have maintained an informal accommodation, it leaves them alone; they don't report it. Something the AI did recently has moved it from "eccentric and ignorable" to "actively problematic": it has locked a maintenance corridor that the Span needs access to, and it has accessed a section of archive data that the Auric community considers private. The Auric residents want to know what it accessed. The Span wants the corridor open. Oryx Logistics doesn't know any of this yet.

Hostile Takeover, Someone with CI-grade system access and a reason to want the party stopped has activated a section's security system against them. The system is operating on legitimate protocols, the party is listed as unauthorized in this section, and the operator is watching through the security feed. Getting out means either reaching the control terminal, finding a way to contest the authorization listing, or getting the operator to back down. The operator knows things that would be inconvenient if the party reached a specific room in this section.

The Rogue Swarm, A maintenance drone swarm in the Cargo Ring has gone rogue and is actively interfering with cargo processing operations. The Span has quarantined the section; Oryx Logistics wants the section operational within six hours for a delivery with a narrow schedule. The swarm's central node is in a section that requires EVA access, it is in a sealed cargo bay that vented when the drones cut the wrong line. The party can go in suited or find another approach. The Span's senior engineer on the scene has a theory about why the drones went rogue and what the node is doing that she hasn't shared with Oryx.