Mundos de los Cataclismos

They get called Sleepers, mostly. Sometimes postapocs or just apocs. Formally they're supposed to be referred to as failed colonies, but even the government calls them Cataclysm Worlds when they're feeling sensationalist.

There are lots of them. The empire is big and space is full of surprises. Plenty of worlds have a colony ship, or ten, launched at them before the probes turn up any real data. Usually it's the air. Too much nitrogen, not enough CO2, unexpected clouds of acid, something like that. Other times it's the topsoil, or oceans full of some horrible poison cooked up by a brief flare of single-cell xenos a million years ago.

But then there are more interesting ones. Sometimes it's not even the world that's the problem. There's an issue with cryosleep, a problem in the reactors, a captain that just sort of snaps. The worst, of course, is when the world is too hospitable to life. The ship settles down, folds out into a city and fucked-up alien biology starts pouring in through the windows, through the walls.

All of them are worth huge amounts of money. They're the collected remnants of entire asteroid belts, pre-manufactured into everything that's needed to support life on hostile worlds. Power cells, atmo machines, medical supplies, seed stores, gene banks. One salvaged AI core or gravity compensator can set an explorer up for life, especially if the rest of the expedition is too dead to split the profits. The governments offer rewards, though they're not quite enough, and you can always find buyers on the black market. Though what a crime syndicate wants with a tailored strain of nitrogen-fixing bacteria is perhaps best left unexplored.

What's Wrong With This Cityship?

1. FOG
2. PLANTS
3. EVERYONE IS HATE
4. BUGS
5. ROBOTS
6. DINOSAURS
7. CRYSTALS THAT ARE BAD SOMEHOW
8. SHIP IS ALIVE
9. GHOSTS
10. PORTAL TO HELL
11. HIPPIE LOVE PLAGUE
12. COMPUTER WORSHIP
13. TIME IS BROKEN
14. PIRATES
15. BRAIN FUNGUS
16. SQUIDS
17. FISH MANS
18. ACCELERATED EVOLUTION
19. MUTANTS
20. FLOOD
21. PSYCHICS
22. ICE
23. MORLOCKS
24. PUNKS
25. ALL MEDIEVAL FOR SOME REASON
26. SHADOWS THAT ARE ALIVE AND KILL YOU
27. BIRDS I GUESS
28. FACE CRABS
29. APES
30. VIRUSES
31. MEMES
32. SHAMANS
33. ENERGY VAMPIRES
34. OOZE
35. THE SUN
36. JELLYFISH
37. CANNIBALS
38. SAND
39. CYBORGS
40. SHAPESHIFTERS
41. RADIATION
42. RATS
43. MAD SCIENTISTS
44. MOST DANGEROUS GAME
45. LEOPARDS
46. METAL HATES FLESH
47. MUTAGENIC PLAGUE
48. LUDDITES
49. GLADIATORIAL COMBAT
50. AMNESIA

If you have some way of choosing a famous historical personality at random this list also doubles as a Doctor Who episode generator.

we make thank for picture famous artist Kilian Eng