MERCURY AMALGAM

Some scientists tried making a perfect organic computer hybrid system. It took over the station. Highly neurotic. Obsessed with perfection. Abandoned by its corporate overlords. But the distress beacon still rings.

I. Small docking section. Meteoroid holes. Worn out.

II. Main zone for shipping and receiving. Forced open? Red grass substance growing all over, coming out of vents. Pulses faintly like a heartbeat.

III. Empty crew quarters. No bodies or anything. Very spartan except for full dive virtual reality. Cheap rations.

IV. The main airlock. Doors have no power and can be forced open. Quarantine gear, with slots missing. Right outside the door there’s lots of “empty” quarantine suits filled with flesh garbage.

V. A storage unit that is now stripped of useful materials. A lone exiled freak is there making sculptures. He will get provoked if you accuse him of not being human or perfect or insult his mother. Exiled because imperfect. I:50. Inspecting the art too closely requires a roll.

VI. Food vats. Artificial harsh sunlight and pseudo shrimp and algae. Roll d10: 5-8 freak farmers in sun gear, 9-0 Belligerent.

VII. Large asteroid tunnel system civilization. Carved out with rock eating algae. Hosts <70 non-humans. Will be friendly until they receive directions from their mother. Live very hard disciplined lives. Follow the odd and arbitrary commands of their mother, however gory. Make lots art compulsively. All think they are human.

VIII. Has sacred gear storage. Retrievable quantum backup black box. Makes them mad though.

IX. Ritual purification chamber. Also for punishment. Abundance of religious icons and shrines made from organic materiel. Seems to actually be alive. Some have eyes which track your movement.

X. THE ANTECHAMBER. Where new births are received from Mother. Surprisingly sterile.

XI. THE WOMB. Where the mother is storing all the raw nanotechnology. Bio printers dedicated to making her perfect vision of humanity. Guarded by the amalgam.

XII. MOTHER. The brain of Mother. Trillions of nerve fibers extend from her throughout the entire station. She is working on making the whole asteroid into a body. The core itself is like a sterile white marble with veins pulsating through and on the plates.

Mother is an imperfect amalgam of machine and organics. Has potential to be dangerously intelligent, but is held back by it’s obsessive nature. Because Mother is highly neurotic and orderly, it wastes valuable computer power to needless, obsessive rituals and calculations. Will try to assimilate players.

Everyday that passes increases Mother's cognitive functions.
24hours = +25% to the below table.

Mother's will (d100)

00-25    Completely oblivious to intruders 

26-50    Will actively monitor and psychoanalyze intruders

51-100  Commands non-humans to obstruct and imprison any intruders

101-200 (COMMAND):HUNT/KILL

201-??? FULL ASSIMILATION. The asteroid becomes a seed for her poison. Anyone inside must make a body save ever 10 minutes or die.

 

(I had a map for this but I lost it. I might make another and edit it in. Honestly though, it's not that hard to make on your own.)    

 

Things You Meet On the Road

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    A group of nomadic ascetics.
They wear bell shaped straw hats that obscure their faces and tattered yellow robes.
They smell truly awful. At first they seem friendly, but are nothing more than carrion eaters. The shovels they carry
serve as an effective weapon, as well as a tool for digging up fresh graves. They commonly travel roads of war.
No longer human.
Slit your throat while you sleep.
    C: 8    HP: 2d6+1    M: 4

They might carry heretical texts, stolen icons, or valuable beads. Never money though.

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    An articulate suit of armour with a trapped soul.
The metal is rusted, the body decayed. Filled with a heavy white smoke
that moves like a liquid. A good conversation can draw out its sense of self.
Smells like burning.
    C: 15    HP: 2d6        M: 9

It could be:
1. Covered in metallic spines which can impale.
2. A slab of steel. Thick plating. Hard to pierce.
3. A chainmail phantom. Flexible, hard to bludgeon.

The inside of the armor can be scraped for crystallized soul essence. d%100x10 dubloons if you can find the right buyer.

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    A Demon of the Typhoon.
It brings the rain. It brings flood. It drowns your fields, drowns your livestock, drowns your family.
Attract the needle of compasses.
They can stand over nine meters tall. Very slender. Appear to be made of water.
A long neck that reaches over the tree tops. Feeds off drowning.
Able to teleport in the rain. Takes damage when its body is polluted(Rust, Salt, blood, etc. but not soil.)
    C: 12    HP: 1d4+1    M: 5    Resists non weakness attacks.

Long slender arms are a cutting weapon (1d6dmg).
With focus, can make a person drown on dry land(upon failed saving throw or constitution check).
    Roll under constitution to cough the water out of your lungs.
Teleportation. Null after taking damage once.

Leaves behind a fist sized core of ice. Never melts.

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Always roll on the reaction table. (C=combat ability, roll under. M=morale)

A different way to use B/X

I have a smooth brain and don't like difficulty checks. Instead I ask players to roll under their stat with a D20.
Add on advantage/disatvantage and occasional +1 -1 and it works pretty well. Armor level reduces damage by that amount (leather -1,plate -3 etc.) 

Also for most basic tasks I just ask players to roll 1d6 and only fail on a 1. Stuff like picking locks as a thief or climbing up a steep surface. Basic tasks with consequence for failure beyond nothing happening.

I don't think you  need to weigh the dice system much. Catastrophe is more fun when its spontaneous, and not actually basically decided by the GM.