Doors
Standard room doors may be opened and moved through at half movement. Elevator doors are unpowered and act as a pressure door. To open an elevator door a character must stop in front of one, spend one turn opening it, and then can move through at half movement. All doors that are opened will remain open unless closed.
Space Suits
Space suits are fitted to the owner and normally take about 40 minutes to don. The player character will not be able to don his suit (if found) in time nor the suit of one of the NPCs. Even if he was able to do so he would have to be weighed down with at least 35 kg of equipment to have neutral buoyancy otherwise he would float on top of the water and become trapped against the ceiling in a flooded deck.
Elevators
The elevators are unpowered and at the bottom of their shafts. If the player character enters an elevator he must come to a stop and spend one complete turn opening the roof hatch before moving through at half speed. The elevator shaft has a recessed ladder that allows for climbing the shaft and the rate of climb for all characters is one deck per turn. If a character is in a shaft when the next deck begins flooding he simply floats to the elevator door for that deck and may spend the next turn opening it or may climb to the next deck up.
The Ship’s Angle
The ship is canted over at a 45 degree in the water. This affects all characters by halving movement and reducing IM by -1. The halving of movement compounds with the half movement for passing through doors. Once deck 3 begins to flood the ship will have enough of a vertical orientation that these effects are nullified.
Power
The ship’s engines are off line and the ship is on emergency back-up power. Each deck has a parabattery hidden behind a bulkhead wall that powers the lights and equipment on that deck. This power source will short out 8 turns after the deck begins flooding. If this happens and the player character is still on the deck, he will be plunged into darkness. If a character is forced to move in darkness he must make a INT check to move or the darkness confuses him and he does not reach the point he was making for and will have to make a INT check next turn to move.
Flooding
The ship sustained damage in space and upon crash landing in the water. It is flooding at a rate of 1 deck per minute starting with deck 6. If certain doors and hatches are closed as the player character moves up the ship, bonus time can be gained. This is covered in the deck description. If the player character is on a deck after the 10 turns of flooding for that deck he must begin to hold his breath. When the player character reaches his breath limit he begins to take damage (2d10 per turn). If the player character reaches 0 STA he drowns and the encounter is over. This STA loss is temporary and will be recovered at the rate of 1 STA per 10 minutes of rest once out of the water
Time
The encounter is played in Alpha Dawn game turns of (6 seconds per turn) and 10 turns to the minute. An extra sheet of paper will be required to track turns. Label six decks and mark hash marks for each turn of flooding for a deck until 10 then begin marking hash marks for the next deck unless bonus time is awarded by the deck descriptions.
Looting & Searching Pirates
Looting a pirate takes one turn and means the player character has collected all of the gear listed in their stat block except their defensive suit. A pirate may be searched once and it takes one turn. A search will turn up a random item plus their ID card; consult the “Search a Pirate Table”. It takes 3 turns to strip a pirate of a defensive suit and 1 turn each for the PC to undress or dress himself. In other words it’s possible to use the defensive suits from the pirates but they must be the same species as the player character and it takes time to undress and dress.
