TEXT: R e a c h  A d v e nt u r e  3 :  T h e  C a l i Xc u e l  I n c i d e nt 
  S c i e n c e  F i c t i o n  A d v e n t u r e  i n  t h e  F a r  F u t u r e
  
  R E A C H  A D V E N T U R E  3 :  T H E  C A L I X C U E L  I N C I D E N T
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  CRED
  S
  CLASSIC TRAVELLER
  Marc Miller
  Loren Wiseman, John Harshman, Frank Chadwick, Darryl Hany,
  Winston Hamilton, Tony Svajlenka, Scott Renner, Doug Poe,
  David MacDonald, Wayne Roth, Paul R. Banner.
  MONGOOSE TRAVELLER 
  Author
  Martin J. Dougherty
  Editor
  Matthew Sprange
  Layout and Graphic Design
  Will Chapman, Hannah Neads
  Interior Illustrations
  Amy Perret, 
  3D Model Design
  Sandrine Thirache
  Special Thanks
  Marc Miller, Robert Eaglestone, Loren Wiseman
  CONTENTS
  INTRODUCTION
  2
  REFEREE’S INFORMATION 
  4
  THE CALIXCUEL INCIDENT 
  11
  CHALCHIUTLICUE STARPORT 
  12
  THE GOOD SHIP-NOT-BOAT HABLEY 
  15
  CALIXCUEL, CITY OF HOPE 
  17
  SOMETHING DREADFULLY WRONG IN THE DEEP 
  20
  INTO THE RUINS 
  23
  CHAOS IN THE LOWER WORKING AREA 
  27
  NO PLAN SURVIVES CONTACT WITH A 
  HORDE OF COLOSSAL SQUID 
  29
  THE REACTOR COMPLEX 
  31
  SAVING THE CITY 
  32
  APPENDIX
  33
  
  INTRODUCTION
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  This adventure takes place in Sindal subsector of Trojan 
  Reach sector, though it could be easily transplanted 
  to any world with a signiﬁcant amount of surface 
  water. Most of the action takes place in and around 
  the underwater city of Calixcuel on the world of 
  Chalchiutlicue and does not require use of a starship 
  or spacecraft.
  Almost any group of Travellers will be suitable for this 
  adventure, though it will be helpful if at least one has 
  the Engineer skill; ideally with a Power speciality and/
  or a background in scout, merchant or naval service. 
  Seafarer and Vacc Suit skills will also be useful.
  In The Calixcuel Incident, the Travellers are visiting 
  an underwater city when a disaster causes it to begin 
  leaking. Amid the chaos they discover they have the 
  means to save the entire city, if they can only reach 
  and start the auxiliary reactor. However, the reactor is 
  located in a secure bunker on the seabed, separate from 
  the city, and between the Travellers and their destination 
  are mobs of panicking citizens, jammed bulkhead 
  hatches and several kilometres of ocean. Not to mention 
  the squid…. 
  RUNNING THE 
  ADVENTURE
  The Travellers must be in the city of Calixcuel for the 
  adventure to begin. They might go there for many 
  reasons, but the adventure’s introduction provides a 
  rationale which also gives the Travellers information 
  about how they might go about solving the problems 
  they will be faced with. The default setup for this 
  adventure is detailed in the ﬁrst section. If the Travellers 
  are in the city for any other reason, this section can 
  be skipped. 
  This adventure does not attempt to give the referee 
  detailed instructions on how to run every encounter 
  or what level of difﬁculty is appropriate for any given 
  task. This is a matter for the referee’s judgement, and 
  is already covered by the Traveller Core Rulebook. Apart 
  from anything else, a difﬁculty level appropriate for 
  one group of Travellers might be utterly impossible – or 
  ridiculously easy – for another. The referee should judge 
  what task checks are needed, and at what difﬁculty, 
  based on the circumstances and the needs of 
  dramatic narrative.
  Similarly, we do not attempt to present a ﬂowcharted or 
  ‘railroaded’ adventure. The Travellers are free to make 
  their own decisions and the referee must adjudicate 
  them. Additional encounters can be added, or the 
  Travellers may ﬁnd an entirely different path to the 
  story’s climax. In other words, this adventure dumps 
  the Travellers into a situation and outlines what is 
  happening around them. Subsequent events are at the 
  discretion of the referee and Travellers.
  There is no detailed map of the city of Calixcuel in 
  this adventure. One section of corridors and living 
  quarters looks remarkably like another, and mapping 
  the whole city would be an exercise in futility. Much of 
  the Travellers’ activities in Calixcuel will take a narrative 
  form; transiting three entire decks, during which nothing 
  much happens except that feet get wet and people 
  occasionally stumble in the darkness, can be glossed 
  over in narrative form with various incidents that occur 
  along the way forming focal points for more 
  detailed actions
  
  LIVING AND 
  WORKING 
  UNDERWATER
  Much of this adventure takes place underwater, though 
  the Travellers will mostly be inside a city that was 
  designed to keep the ocean out. Activities that take 
  place inside a pressure-tight vessel such as a city 
  deck or large submarine are little different to the same 
  activities undertaken in a starship or even out in the 
  open air. 
  Water presents a drowning risk, obviously, but deep 
  water has additional hazards. The most serious of 
  these is pressure, which is typically measured in 
  ‘atmospheres’. One atmosphere is the pressure exerted 
  at sea level by the planet’s atmosphere, which can vary 
  a little but is precise enough for most purposes.
  On Earth, water pressure increases by approximately 
  one atmosphere for every 10m of depth. Chalchiutlicue 
  has similar Size and Atmosphere type to Earth, so it is 
  reasonable to take this as a guideline. This is all that is 
  needed – The Calixcuel Incident is an adventure, not a 
  physics manual! Water pressure on the seabed around 
  the city of Calixcuel is 110 atmospheres. In other words, 
  an object or person at that depth is being pressed on 
  by 110 times as much force, from all directions, as 
  it would be at the surface. This will instantly kill an 
  unprotected human.
  One reason why starships make poor submarines and 
  vacc suits are only useful at shallow depths is this 
  enormous pressure. A starship will typically need to 
  to resist a pressure differential of one atmosphere, 
  though most can tolerate quite a bit more; stopping one 
  atmosphere of pressure from getting out into vacuum is 
  a lot different to stopping ten atmospheres getting in, or 
  a hundred!
  Up to a point it is possible to maintain a level of air 
  pressure equal to the water pressure outside, but 
  beyond a certain depth this requires exotic gas mixes 
  and extended periods in a hyperbaric (decompression) 
  chamber every time someone goes up to the surface. 
  People cannot live this way, not in large numbers over 
  an extended period. 
  The only answer is to build a structure – be it a 
  city, submarine or diving suit – so strong that it can 
  withstand immense pressures and support normal 
  conditions inside. At TL7, the local Tech Level of 
  Chalchiutlicue, it is possible to build a submersible 
  capable of surviving at 1,100m for a lengthy period. The 
  underwater cities of Chalchiutlicue are more advanced 
  than this, enabling people to live a normal life at 
  this depth.
  However, there remain hazards. A structural weakness 
  could cause the pressure hull of a submarine or city 
  to collapse, killing everyone inside. For this reason, 
  decks must be subdivided with pressure doors, with 
  heavy bulkheads between decks. A deck or section 
  of a submarine that is heavily breached will ﬁll with 
  seawater almost instantly, and this water will be at the 
  pressure of the outside ocean – i.e. not survivable by 
  anyone who is not in a hardened Very Deep Operations 
  (VDO) diving suit. However, it is possible for a smaller 
  amount of water to leak into a deck through a weakened 
  seal or a small hole somewhere, and not be at high 
  pressure. Thus it is possible to swim around holding 
  your breath in a partially ﬂooded section of the city 
  so long as the pressure hull remains intact. In short, 
  humans can survive in ‘leakwater’ environments but not 
  in compartments open to the ocean.
  Other hazards when operating in deep water include the 
  cold, which requires a considerable amount of power 
  expenditure to maintain habitability, and darkness. 
  Many deep-sea creatures display bioluminescence, but 
  vision is not a primary sense for most animals. Even with 
  powerful lights it can be difﬁcult to see far due to clouds 
  of silt stirred up from the seabed. The deep ocean is, in 
  short, a hazardous place to live and work. It is possible 
  to forget that whilst protected by thick pressure hulls 
  and armoured ceramic viewports, and those who do run 
  the risk of getting a fatal reminder.
  3
  
  REFEREE’S INFORMATION
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  SINDAL SUBSECTOR
  Sindal subsector was once extremely important in the 
  affairs of Trojan Reach sector, since it was the home 
  territory of the Sindalian Empire which had its capital at 
  Noricum. The collapse of the empire – and indeed much 
  of its reign – was extremely violent, with nuclear and 
  biochemical weapons used both during the ﬁnal death-
  throes of the empire and also against rebel worlds during 
  its reign of terror. 
  As a result, there are remnants of the great Sindalian 
  civilisation across the subsector, often surrounded 
  by wilderness or uninhabitable regions. Many worlds 
  regressed to a level little above barbarism, and some 
  achieved a sort of technological barbarism made all the 
  more nasty by the existence of high-tech weaponry. 
  Today’s Sindal subsector is of little economic 
  importance, though the Sindalian Main (also known 
  as the Dustbelt) runs across the rimward (bottom) end 
  of the subsector and is an important link for starships 
  headed from Imperial space to the Aslan Hierate or 
  Florian League. This is by no means a safe route; there 
  are pirate havens along the way and worlds whose 
  inhabitants can be extremely unfriendly. It is, however, 
  the most practicable route for ships with jump-2 
  capability. Faster ships can make a more direct transit 
  but for those that cannot cross a 3-parsec gulf there are 
  few alternative routes. 
  Worlds in the upper (Coreward) part of the subsector are 
  mostly within the Imperium or just outside its border. 
  These worlds routinely receive trade ships and also 
  naval patrols from the Imperial navy base at Realgar. 
  Relations with the Imperium can vary, but Imperial 
  trade is important to the economies of these worlds, and 
  Imperial citizens (or at least their credits) are usually 
  very welcome.
  CHALCHIUTLICUE
  Chalchiutlicue is a water world, with virtually no land 
  above sea level. Much of what little land pokes above 
  the surface is steep and rugged, and not well suited to 
  growing food nor to habitation. However, with no other 
  choices the population of around 40 million inhabitants 
  are jammed into crowded island-cities that stand several 
  hundred storeys high in some places. 
  These are not the towering arcologies of a 
  technologically advanced world; they are ramshackle 
  affairs with layers added atop earlier layers, in some 
  cases kept up by little more than hopes and dreams. 
  Sections do occasionally collapse, with casualties in the 
  tens of thousands. Material from these collapse sites is 
  recycled and used to keep another region habitable – for 
  the time being.
  The central part of most cities, built on the highest 
  land, is occupied by the highest social classes – 
  administrators, scientists and the engineers who ﬁnd 
  ingenious ways to shore up tottering buildings and keep 
  them supplied with water and power. 
  The world government is a rather bland dispersed 
  bureaucracy, under which each city has a ruling council. 
  These report to regional and planetary councils that 
  serve mainly to ﬁle those reports and forget about them. 
  It is notable that the planetary council is not located 
  at the starport or even close to it. This reﬂects the 
  general attitude on Chalchiutlicue to interstellar affairs 
  – the port is important to the economy and imported
  technology is necessary, but the goings-on of the wider
  universe are of little interest to the average citizen.
  Indeed, most citizens are not greatly concerned with
  affairs beyond their own city.
  The world government imposes a fairly strictly enforced 
  Law Level 7. Most weapons are prohibited and there 
  are regulations about waste, food use and, most of all, 
  population growth. This has led to signiﬁcant numbers 
  of ‘illegals’ – children born to those without ofﬁcial 
  permission. Illegals live a shadowy life without access 
  to the social support network that keeps legal citizens 
  warm and fed. Many work in fringe industries, often as 
  casual labourers or hazardous occupations for low wages 
  and, of course, there is a lot of crime. 
  Law tends to be quite ﬁrmly enforced; most cities spend 
  far more than they can afford on security personnel and 
  handling facilities for criminals. Ironically, the most 
  common sentence for a criminal or captured illegal is to 
  be indentured for a time (depending on the severity of 
  the sentence) to work in one of the few occupations that 
  employ illegals. Many that are caught go back to their 
  old jobs, more or less.
  
  MENORIAL
  EGRYN
  PAX RULIN
  GAZULIN
  YDDDRASIL
  DPRES
  TOBIA
  RANIB
  SILRAAIHE
  HKEA’AS
  RIFTSPAN REACHES
  SPINWARD MARCHES
  THE BEYOND
  REFT SECTOR
  BINARY
  NORA’A
  GOERTAL
  TLAIOWAHA
  THE 
  BORDERLAND
  SINDAL
  PARTIAL MAP OF THE 
  SINDAL SUBSECTOR
  TROJAN REACH 
  SECTOR
  DOLBERG
  ALBE
  CORD
  THEEV
  CHALCHIUTLICU
  REALGAR
  VUME
  B-B
  A-E
  A-F
  B-7
  B-A
  B-C
  0402
  0401
  0404
  0403
  0405
  0406
  0502
  0501
  0504
  0503
  0505
  0506
  0602
  0601
  080
  0604
  0603
  0605
  0606
  0701
  0704
  0703
  0702
  0705
  0706
  080
  080
  080
  080
  080
  B-6
  Gas Giant
  Secure System 
  Imperial Border
  X-Boat Route
  Amber Zone
  Planet (Dry)
  Planet (Water Present)
  Fuel Dump
  Imperial Navel Base
  Starport Class & Tech Lvl
  5
  
  It is quite obvious to the ruling councils that society on 
  Chalchiutlicue is steadily breaking down, and numerous 
  initiatives are underway to try to reduce the population 
  pressures the world struggles with. It lies beyond the 
  means of the world government to ﬁx the problem but 
  social programmes are still a source of hope to many 
  citizens and may be the only thing 
  preventing a revolution.
  Chalchiutlicue has no moons, and thus no tides, 
  although there are some very strong currents in the 
  deep oceans which can vary according to the seasons. 
  The oceans themselves are rich with ﬁsh and seabed 
  life, creating an ideal environment for aquaculture. 
  Chalchiutlicue’s main export is radioactives and other 
  minerals dredged from the seabed, along with seafood, 
  ﬁsh and processed seaweed which is used for a range 
  of purposes from starship emergency rations to special-
  purpose glues. 
  Seafood of various sorts feeds the populace, and 
  provides a measure of social status. The staple diet 
  of most citizens is concentrated pastes and protein/
  carbohydrate/vitamin noodles in a fairly bland sauce, 
  which has been described as one of the most soul-
  destroying diets in Charted Space. The ultimate luxury 
  is food that comes from the ground above water level. 
  Meat is truly a luxury item on Chalchiutlicue, but even 
  green vegetables are quite rare. Chalchiutlicue is among 
  the few places where people will get excited about a 
  handful of carrots.
  Those who can afford ﬁsh and other foods in their 
  natural state, i.e. not processed almost out of existence, 
  stand above the masses. That statement is literal – the 
  other key measure of social status on Chalchiutlicue 
  is how far an individual lives from the water. Indeed, 
  local ﬁgures of speech tell much about society on 
  Chalchiutlicue. ‘Close to the water’ means something 
  is trivial or not very good, whilst ‘below the waves’ 
  indicates that something is of no importance whatsoever.  
  This is ironic perhaps, given that the world’s very modest 
  wealth all comes from the seabed.
  The world’s starport is located on the only island group 
  of any size, with a large conventional landing area and 
  a lagoon in which some starships land directly in order 
  to load seafood products direct from cargo submarines. 
  6
  
  About two million people live and work at the port or 
  in the surrounding settlements, mostly in industries 
  that support offworld trade or in the world’s many sea-
  products processing plants.
  The starport archipelago also has a large submarine 
  construction and maintenance facility, building both 
  transport and working submarines of various types. 
  These include construction, seaweed-harvesting and 
  rescue boats. The cargo and ﬁshing ﬂeets based out of 
  the port archipelago are a major employer. 
  The port settlements display a mix of the world’s locally 
  sustainable TL7 and higher-tech offworld imports, with 
  commercial and power-generation equipment typically 
  being imported and most other systems locally made. 
  Fusion reactors built offworld are used to power many 
  submarines since they run for years without much 
  maintenance and require only processed seawater for 
  fuel. There is usually a maintenance backlog for those 
  reactors that do need servicing, since Chalchiutlicue 
  has difﬁculty attracting properly qualiﬁed personnel and 
  lacks the facilities to train its own.
  Offworlders are not unwelcome at the port, especially if 
  they spend a lot of Credits or bring useful items to trade 
  at a reasonable price. However, travel to the rest of the 
  world is generally discouraged, and most Travellers have 
  no real reason to leave the port anyway. There is a very 
  distinct startown area which is quite well-kept and runs 
  in an orderly-yet-fun sort of way. The city beyond this 
  district is generally in much better repair than those on 
  the rest of the world, but astute Travellers will probably 
  ﬁgure out the startown is a façade and that life on the 
  rest of the planet is not as pleasant.
  Citizens of Chalchiutlicue need a special permit to work 
  in the startown, and one of the conditions attached to it 
  is not revealing the squalid and overcrowded state of the 
  world’s cities. Those that live and work in the startown 
  (and to a lesser extent in the rest of the city cluster that 
  surrounds it) are aware – and are constantly reminded 
  – that they have it better than everyone else. There is
  a strong incentive to maintain the façade and keep up
  appearances. It is thus quite difﬁcult to get portside
  workers to discuss conditions on the rest of the planet.
  Indeed, many do not know how bad things are getting
  elsewhere, since they may belong to families who have
  worked at the port for several generations.
  7
  
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  Direction of Rotation
  9
  
  THE CALIXCUEL 
  PROJECT
  Things used to be a lot better on Chalchiutlicue. Much 
  of the population lived in underwater cities which were 
  spacious and modern. Some protruded above the waves 
  but many were completely underwater which protected 
  them from storms. As a result, some survived the fall 
  of the Sindalian Empire and the chaos that followed, 
  though they fell into disrepair and had to be abandoned. 
  Thus began the move to the island-cities and a sharp 
  decline in living standards. 
  Astute Travellers might ﬁnd a connection between the 
  fact that people on Chalchiutlicue have a tendency to 
  consider what happens underwater to be irrelevant and 
  the exodus from the deep cities. It is as if the world’s 
  culture is deliberately trying to forget the better times 
  before the island-cities. This is an accurate perception. 
  Most of the underwater cities were destroyed during or 
  soon after the collapse of the Sindalian Empire, or were 
  thoroughly scavenged for materials to build the new 
  settlements. However, some remained fairly intact. One 
  in particular, the city of Calixcuel, was discovered to be 
  salvageable. Built to hold up to a million people, the 
  city offered the world’s ruling council a chance to relieve 
  population pressures. 
  A project to return at least parts of Calixcuel to 
  habitability was undertaken. This was no small task, and 
  it was several years before work crews could move into 
  sections of the city and live there. Since that time, more 
  and more of the city has been repaired, pumped out, 
  and made habitable. Today some two hundred thousand 
  people live there, though work is still underway to 
  restore the rest. When it is completed, it is estimated 
  that two to three million people will be able to move into 
  the underwater city. It will be crowded, but less so than 
  the island cities these new colonists will be leaving.  
  The Calixcuel Project was not without its difﬁculties. 
  Lives were lost in the reconstruction, and personnel 
  exploring sections that remain ﬂooded sometimes go 
  missing. However, several areas are fully operational 
  with submarine docks, workshops, schools, even 
  theatres. Compared to the island cities Calixcuel is a 
  good place to live, though many potential inhabitants 
  have trouble overcoming the ‘underwater thus irrelevant’ 
  mindset they have grown up with.
  Calixcuel contains several areas still in ruins, and many 
  more that are ﬂooded. Other sections have been pumped 
  out but are not really safe, and picked over by salvage 
  crews or illegally scavenged by the inhabitants. Some of 
  these areas are a little leaky, which can be alarming and 
  sometimes downright hazardous. 
  The key to making the Calixcuel Project work is the 
  main city reactor, located underneath the lowest 
  level in a chamber cut into the seabed. This is a very 
  large starship-grade fusion reactor bought from a 
  naval scrapyard, capable of powering the entire city 
  for years to come. Unfortunately it is not ready to go 
  online, mainly for lack of skilled personnel to carry out 
  calibration and adjustment. In the meantime, habitable 
  sections are powered by a secondary reactor (obtained 
  from the same source, but much smaller) set up in a 
  temporary power complex further up the city tower. 
  Getting the main reactor online would be a huge 
  landmark in the Calixcuel Project, providing power to 
  light and heat the whole city and run its industries. 
  However, the project has hit a snag after the ﬁrm 
  originally contracted to assist with setting the reactor 
  up pulled out. With population pressures worsening, 
  the people of Chalchiutlicue are demanding action. The 
  Calixcuel Project has become a symbol of hope to the 
  overcrowded masses, and its failure could trigger an ugly 
  social backlash. 
  10
  
  THE CALIXCUEL INCIDENT
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  The Calixcuel Incident is essentially a disaster movie. 
  The Travellers are caught up in the middle of chaotic 
  events and must save themselves. They also have a 
  chance to save a very large number of other people and 
  indeed, the fate of the city may depend upon them. 
  The Travellers might of course decide to simply escape 
  without trying to save the city. If so, the referee might 
  choose to introduce a deus ex machina in the form of 
  a rescue mission from one of the island cities, but that 
  is a matter of personal taste. Travellers who save their 
  own skins whilst leaving thousands of others to die will 
  have to live with it, and the decision might occasionally 
  come back to haunt them in the form of media stories 
  or disgust from people they meet. On the other hand, 
  becoming heroes might open new doors – though that is 
  unlikely to be the main motivating factor for a bunch of 
  Travellers caught in the midst of disaster. 
  There is no rigidly scripted route from beginning to end 
  in this adventure, and the Travellers might wander off 
  into all manner of additional incidents. However, the 
  situation they are in requires a response of some kind; 
  sitting and awaiting rescue is not a viable option. The 
  impending failure of the city’s power system and its 
  subsequent ﬂooding can be used as a ‘clock’ to keep 
  the Travellers moving and create tension.
  The referee should keep in mind that the people of 
  Calixcuel are, for the most part, island-city dwellers 
  without any experience of living and working 
  underwater. They are shopkeepers, bar staff and 
  tradesmen who just happen to live in a seabed city, 
  and are likely to react in a crisis much like any other 
  random group of people. Some will panic, some will 
  try to take charge (with varying degrees of success and 
  competence), some will hufﬁly demand that someone 
  does something or object to some trivial thing like a 
  waterlogged carpet… and all will try to get themselves 
  and their loved ones to safety. 
  These people can spark all manner of incidents along 
  the way. Panicking mobs, people searching for lost 
  children, teams of submarine trawler operators trying to 
  improvise ﬂood defences, looters, minor ofﬁcials… the 
  list of people who might get in the way of the Travellers’ 
  mission is endless. Interactions with these people might 
  be ﬂeeting or of little importance, but they will help 
  remind the Travellers that they are in a bad situation 
  as well as adding to the depth and richness of the 
  adventuring experience.
  Overall, then, the referee should not allow Travellers 
  to reduce the adventure to its critical task checks and 
  little more. That style of adventuring is essentially 
  unsatisfying – true, the Travellers completed the 
  adventure and collected the reward, but it is what 
  happens along the way that makes an adventure mean 
  something. Far from being an irrelevance, a side trip to 
  ﬁnd a lost dog might become the most memorable part 
  to the Travellers. Those memories might of course be 
  heroic, comic or grim, depending on the 
  Travellers themselves….
  
  CHALCHIUTLICUE STARPORT
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  Chalchiutlicue’s Class B starport is mostly located 
  groundside, with a small orbital facility for vessels that 
  cannot land on a planetary surface. From there, shuttles 
  carry passengers and freight to the much more extensive 
  downport. If the Travellers have a ship, they will more 
  than likely head directly to the downport. If not, they 
  can get there by shuttle if their vessel does not land 
  directly. Either way, the downport is the only real choice 
  for visitors – the highport has little more than customs 
  stations, overpriced generic starport-goods shops and 
  maintenance bays.
  The groundside facility is much more extensive, with the 
  added bonus of being able to walk around in the open 
  air. That air smells salty and a little ﬁshy, courtesy of 
  the processing plants located around the central lagoon. 
  Much of the time Chalchiutlicue is windy, with thin and 
  unenthusiastic drizzle punctuated by heavy cloudbursts. 
  Unappetising as that may sound, to someone who has 
  been breathing scrubbed starship air for a week whilst 
  caged in a small cabin and common area it can be a 
  real delight to stand around in the rain.
  Thus as passengers disembark from shuttles and 
  starships, many choose not to wait for the electrically 
  powered buses to take them to the main port concourse, 
  instead walking across the open landing pad. Some take 
  a moment to just stand in the rain in their shirtsleeves, 
  at least until they notice how cold they are getting. 
  After that, there is a general scurry into the concourse 
  buildings. Entry is by way of a cursory identiﬁcation 
  check, after which the visitors are free to wander around 
  the port but not go beyond it.
  Like many starports, Chalchiutlicue downport is 
  considered to be separate from the rest of the planet 
  and is subject to a different set of laws. Sidearms and 
  most hand weapons are permitted provided they remain 
  holstered, sheathed or otherwise discreetly carried. 
  Some businesses do not permit weapons to be brought 
  inside, though many do. 
  Many crimes are dealt with by ﬁnes – some of which are 
  inordinately large, resulting in allegations that criminal 
  proceedings are a money-making scam for the port 
  operators – or by incarceration until the perpetrator 
  can be deported. If a criminal cannot afford passage, 
  the port authority will pay for a low passage to the ﬁrst 
  destination available and may conﬁscate goods to offset 
  the cost. This is not an uncommon practice; few port 
  authorities want the expense of imprisoning criminals 
  and the world government is unlikely to take them. 
  Unless the crime is serious, the usual practice is simply 
  to move the perpetrator on and not allow them to 
  come back.
  Chalchiutlicue downport has a reasonable variety of 
  shops, bars, restaurants and entertainment facilities, 
  most of which are of a decent quality level. The world 
  sees relatively little passing trade, so there are few 
  brokers and not much cargo to be had other than 
  minerals, radioactives and seafood. Overall, it is a 
  pleasant enough place to pass a few days as a stopover, 
  and for those staying longer there is a resort of sorts 
  connected to the port. However, using this does require 
  passing through the same security procedures as if 
  heading out into the rest of the planet.
  Security at the exits from the port complex is not 
  especially tight, but there are weapon scanners and 
  stiff penalties for attempting to take any sort of weapon 
  through. Storage (which is surprisingly inexpensive) is 
  available at the port for weaponry and other items a 
  Traveller might not want to take planetside, and there 
  are frequent reminders of the penalties for being caught 
  with a weapon. However, the process is fairly quick for 
  those wanting to use the resort. 
  For those wishing to visit the rest of the planet, there 
  are forms to ﬁll out. Lots of forms, including some 
  that seem to be little more than disclaimers that the 
  previous forms have been ﬁlled in correctly. Once these 
  are all completed they are presented to an ofﬁcial for 
  consideration, which typically takes a few days. It is 
  not uncommon for forms to come back to have parts 
  amended (and there is even a form to certify that the 
  amendment was correct and necessary) more than once 
  before permission is ﬁnally given. 
  There are two reasons for all this bureaucracy. The 
  ﬁrst is that the world government wishes to discourage 
  visitors from wandering around and seeing how 
  unpleasant conditions are in the island-cities. This is 
  compounded by the natural tendency for bureaucracy to 
  feed off itself and grow into a vast, strangulous mass. 
  Visiting the world outside the port is more trouble than 
  it is worth for most offworlders, especially as there is a 
  resort where they can enjoy themselves without any of 
  the hassle.
  12
  
  Shuttle Bus Route
  Maintenance Road
  Maintenance Road
  LANDING PADS
  PORT
  RESORT
  MAIN PORT CONCOURSE 
  ACCESS TO 
  PLANETSIDE
  Infomation
  Desk
  Help
  Point
  Security
  Checkpoint
  Loading
  Bay
  Loading
  Bay
  Security
  Offices
  Security & Customs
  Offices
  Security
  Checkpoint
  Security
  Checkpoint
  Bus
  Depot
  Fuel
  Storage
  Ground Crew
  Offices
  Secure
  Storage
  Self
  Storage
  Commercial
  Outlets
  Commercial
  Outlets
  Chalchiutlicue Starport  Downport
  Chalchiutlicue Starport  Highport
  1
  ecu ty & Custo
  s
  ff ces
  ecu ty & Custo
  s
  esks
  e p
  o nt
  e p
  o nt
  Ca go
  ay
  Ca go
  ay
  Ca go
  ay
  Ca go
  ay
  Ca go
  ay
  Ca go
  ay
  Canteen
  hutt e
  ounge
  Ma ntenance
  ay
  Ma ntenance
  ay
  DOWNPORT SHUTTLE DOCK 
  MAIN DOCKS 
  13
  
  STARTING THE 
  ADVENTURE
  Whilst the Travellers are in port, they receive a 
  communication from a junior ofﬁcial in the world 
  government requesting a meeting. The message is 
  vague but essentially offers the Travellers free dinner 
  and a night’s stay at the best hotel in the port if they 
  will ﬁrst meet with one Alyce Kolzein, whose ofﬁce is 
  rather unhelpfully listed as being Senior Assistant to the 
  Deputy Minister for Offworld Liaison… whatever 
  that means.
  Alyce turns out to be a rather elderly woman of stern 
  disposition, who does the Travellers the courtesy of not 
  keeping them waiting and expects similar treatment 
  in return. She is rather brisk, and gives the (correct) 
  impression that she is far more important than her job 
  title suggests. Without getting into much detail about 
  the situation in the island-cities, she tells the Travellers 
  that the world government has an important ongoing 
  project that is stalled at present for lack of certain 
  technical skills. People are getting frustrated and money 
  is being wasted, and it is her job to cut through the 
  whole mess and get the project back on track. 
  That is where the Travellers come in. One of the world’s 
  settlements, a city named Calixcuel, is powered by a 
  surplus starship reactor that was purchased – at a very 
  good price – from an Imperial breakers yard. Everything 
  is above board and legal, but installing it has proved a 
  challenge. What is needed is someone with experience 
  of starship reactors (she confesses that she does not 
  know the difference between a civil and starship reactor 
  and could not tell the two apart herself) to ﬁgure out 
  what is needed to get the system up and running, or 
  better still to do it then and there if that proves possible.
  Alyce offers transportation to and from the settlement, 
  government passes that make the usual bureaucracy 
  unnecessary, all board and lodging plus reasonable 
  expenses, and Cr50000 for a detailed report on what is 
  needed or an on-the-spot ﬁx ‘if all the damn thing needs 
  is bashing with a spanner’, as she puts it. She will allow 
  herself to be bargained up to twice the fee, maybe even 
  more, and is willing to agree that if the job turns out to 
  be very complex the Travellers will get a higher fee.
  Alyce wants to convey a sense of urgency to the 
  Travellers without admitting just how badly the Calixcuel 
  Project needs to get back on track. She neglects to 
  mention that the reactor is on the seabed, at least 
  until the Travellers have agreed to do the job. If the 
  Travellers seem likely to accept the job, Alyce will 
  provide additional information but prefers not to in case 
  something she says ends up being a deal-breaker. The 
  Travellers can get the following out of her if they try, but 
  only so long as they seem receptive to the task.
  •
  Calixcuel is a ﬂagship project for the world
  government, and a lot of people will be very angry if
  it fails.
  •
  The project is intended to reduce overcrowding in
  some of the most populated cities on the planet,
  offering people a better life in more spacious
  surroundings.
  •
  Calixcuel is an underwater city which is being
  restored after a long period of abandonment (Alyce
  fears that this will scare off the Travellers, but they
  might in fact be a lot more comfortable with the
  idea than the typical citizen of Chalchiutlicue).
  •
  The trip to the city (and back again) will be by
  submarine.
  •
  Thousands of people are already living in the city,
  and more are waiting to move in once the main
  power system is online.
  •
  There will be no need to work in the water; the
  power system is part of the city.
  If the Travellers are amenable to the idea, Alyce wants 
  them underway as soon as possible. She does not really 
  want to reveal how much tension there is in the island-
  cities (the world government has a long-standing habit 
  of concealing this) but she does mention that people are 
  ready to move in and becoming impatient. The sooner 
  the Travellers get the job done, the better for everyone.
  WEAPONS AND 
  ARMOUR
  Chalchiutlicue has Law Level 7, and the fact that the 
  Travellers are undertaking a government contract does 
  not exempt them from it. They will not be able to take 
  prohibited weapons (i.e. more or less any weapons) with 
  them on the mission, though tools and equipment will 
  not receive more than the usual routine search. It may 
  be possible to sneak small items through the checks if 
  the Travellers really want to, but they are not going to be 
  wandering around the underwater city in body armour 
  and carrying heavy ﬁrepower…
  14
  
  THE GOOD SHIP-
  NOT-BOAT HABLEY
  C
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  Transportation to and from Calixcuel is by way of the 
  submarine Habley, a large cargo vessel powered by a 
  fusion reactor bought offworld. Even those accustomed 
  to the cramped conditions of starship life may ﬁnd the 
  vessel claustrophobic, but it is in good repair and 
  well handled.
  The submarine surfaces at the starport lagoon to load a 
  cargo of spares and components for Calixcuel. Although 
  she is quite a large vessel, she is heavily automated and 
  requires a crew of only thirty personnel, most of whom 
  are technical specialists. Her captain is Joseph Brimley, 
  who is almost a stereotype with his white beard, worn 
  blue sweater and battered captain’s cap. Much like 
  Alyce, he is brisk but businesslike, and under most 
  circumstances he would have little time for passengers. 
  However, starfaring is a lot like submarining, he 
  presumes, and he would like to know a little more. 
  The Travellers have a chance to make a friend here. 
  Joseph is genuinely interested in how spacefaring 
  compares to submarining, and would welcome an 
  exchange of stories and ideas. However, he is a proud 
  man who will not tolerate being talked down to. He is 
  an expert in his own complex ﬁeld and demands the 
  respect due to him. If he receives it, he will return 
  in kind. 
  There is one good way to rub him up the wrong 
  way however – to refer to his vessel as a boat. This 
  is standard practice for submarines (as a result of 
  old Terran traditions) but on Chalchiutlicue large 
  submarines are ships and their crews resent what they 
  see as a diminutive reference when the craft is called 
  a boat. This could be connected with the ‘underwater 
  doesn’t matter’ mindset among the islanders, which 
  irritates submariners no end. Those that persist in 
  calling the Habley a boat may be semi-humorously 
  shown a life raft and told that this is a boat and they are 
  welcome to it if they want.
  There are ample opportunities to interact aboard the 
  Habley during the eight-day journey to Calixcuel. 
  Conditions are cramped and the vessel mostly runs at 
  high cruising speed at a depth of about 100 metres. 
  This puts it well below the effects of surface weather 
  conditions, creating a smooth and rather monotonous 
  ride much like being aboard a starship in jump. The 
  crew will be expecting offworlders to be nervous 
  aboard the submarine, and are likely to be equal parts 
  impressed and disappointed if they seem right at home.
  If anyone thinks to ask, the Habley and submarines 
  like her have a test depth of 600m. This is the depth 
  to which the vessel is tested during its sea trials, and 
  is its normal maximum operating depth. Design depth, 
  i.e. the greatest depth at which the vessel is designed
  to be able to survive, is 950m. There is always a margin
  of safety built into these calculations, but of course the
  vessel is not new, so collapse depth (the point where
  
  the hull begins to fail) should be more than 1,000m. 
  However, there is only one way to ﬁnd out and nobody is 
  keen to make that particular test.
  Several days out, there is a change in the routine when 
  the Habley surfaces. This is routine; cargo vessels 
  receive a small subsidy to take barometric and other 
  weather-related readings at various points on their 
  voyages. If the Travellers have not annoyed the crew, 
  they are invited to come up to the observation platform 
  and have a look around.
  The view is spectacular in a bleak sort of way. There are 
  several small icebergs in the distance, and an obvious 
  front of sleet or rain coming in from the north. Off the 
  port bow there is a steeply sloped rocky island; little 
  more than a spike of ice and black rock protruding 
  above the waves. The overall impression is of isolation; 
  the submarine is a speck in a vast and empty ocean. 
  After an hour or so, the measurements are complete and 
  the Habley dives back to cruise depth for the ﬁnal run 
  to Calixcuel.
  Joseph makes a comment about the island that might 
  go right by the Travellers. He refers to it as Spike Rock, 
  ‘probably the only thing above the surface without 
  ten thousand people perched atop it’. If the Travellers 
  pick up on this, they can learn a lot about conditions 
  in the island-cities, which (allegedly at least) are so 
  cramped the submarine feels roomy by comparison. If 
  conversation goes this way, the Travellers might begin 
  to realise how important their mission is to the people 
  of Chalchiutlicue.
  If the Travellers have become friendly with Joseph and 
  his crew, they are more likely to receive help later if they 
  ask for it. 
  16
  
  CALIXCUEL, CITY OF HOPE
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  The cargo submarine Habley descends to just under 
  500m as she approaches the city. This is well within 
  her design tolerances and is entirely safe, though the 
  creaking from the hull (which is normal, if alarming) 
  might worry some of the Travellers. The city is built in 
  water some 1,100m deep, making her lower docking 
  bays inaccessible to most of the submarines used on 
  Chalchiutlicue. Some specialist deep-diving vessels 
  are capable of operating at this depth, but cargo and 
  ﬁsheries subs have to use the upper dock. 
  There are no windows or vision ports in the pressure 
  hull, but the submarine does have a good sensor suite 
  that builds a pseudo-visual image of what is around it. 
  First impressions of the city are of what appears to be a 
  slender spire rising from the depths, but soon afterward 
  it becomes apparent that the city is not slender at all; 
  it is just very tall. There are a few large submarines in 
  the area, most obviously headed in or out on transport 
  routes, and some smaller craft working on the outer hull 
  of the city at various depths. There is also an explosion 
  somewhere in the deep.
  The detonation does not seem to alarm Joseph and his 
  crew, who wave it off as ‘just a squidbang’. If pressed 
  for explanation, they add that there is a species of 
  very large squid-like creatures native to the world, 
  and they tend to be inquisitive about the work subs. 
  Small charges called ‘squidbangs’ are launched aboard 
  improvised torpedoes to scare them off, which works 
  pretty well.
  The city is essentially a broad tower about 1,000m high, 
  anchored to the seabed. At its very base is the main 
  reactor, located in a pumped-out area a couple of decks 
  high. Above that is a region about 100m high which is 
  breached and ﬂooded. Power conduits have been run 
  through it to the rest of the tower, but otherwise this 
  area has not been extensively repaired. Images of this 
  area from the sensors are fuzzy, as a result of the debris 
  scattered all over the seabed. Some of this is very large, 
  such as entire sections of deck, a wrecked submarine 
  nose-down on the seabed with its stern sticking up, 
  and a tangle of metal that used to be a very large 
  construction crane.
  Above this ﬂooded area is the ‘lower work zone’, about 
  50m high, which is pumped out and safe. It has docks 
  for work submarines and accommodation for their crews, 
  but not much else. Above that is a partially ﬂooded area 
  about 300m high, in which some sections still have 
  integrity and others are ﬁlled with seawater. 
  About 450m from the seabed the main inhabited 
  section begins. This is a completely salvaged and 
  refurbished section about 250m high where most of the 
  current population live and work. Above this, starting 
  700m over the seabed, is another partially ﬂooded area 
  which is currently being worked on to make it habitable. 
  Damage to the city is more extensive in the lower decks, 
  but all areas show signs of needing work to make them 
  safe or habitable. The tower terminates in a ‘top dock’ 
  level some 100m below sea level (1,000m above the 
  seabed), with a couple of antennae towers extending up 
  to the surface.
  The Habley docks without incident, settling into a cradle 
  before the docking area is pumped out. There are no 
  pressure or decompression issues to worry about; the 
  cargo submarines and the city operate at a more or less 
  normal atmospheric pressure. There is no way to build 
  craft or a city to survive at 1,100m with the materials 
  and technology available on Chalchiutlicue, but the city 
  was originally built at a much higher Tech Level and is 
  capable of surviving much greater pressures – including 
  the detonation of a nuclear device underwater providing 
  it is a fair distance off. In fact, it already has, during 
  what is bleakly referred to as the ‘great Sindalian ﬁeld 
  experiment’. The city was badly damaged but much of it 
  remains pressure-tight. 
  Of course, working with high-tech materials scavenged 
  from the ruined sections of the city is slow going, as it 
  often requires specialist tools that have to be bought 
  offworld. Work is progressing, however, and an area 
  of a few decks above and below the docking area has 
  been completely refurbished. Not surprisingly, this has 
  become the hub for the restoration of as much of the 
  city as possible.
  The Travellers are met at the dockside by a small crowd 
  composed mainly of workers who happened to be nearby. 
  There are a few families present too and a handful of 
  administrators headed by Sinclair Krenoff, a surprisingly 
  young man for his position. Sinclair greets the Travellers 
  in a businesslike and strangely formal manner, as if they 
  are important ofﬁcials or minor celebrities attending 
  some ceremonial event. A reception has been arranged 
  for them, he tells the Travellers, and ushers them from 
  the docks to a set of meeting rooms.
  
  The Travellers should be now be getting the impression 
  that their arrival is a big deal for Calixcuel. The main 
  reactor is extremely important to the project, and they 
  are the people who are going to get it up and running – 
  or so the local populace believes. Thus a lowly starship 
  drive hand is treated like a visiting Professor 
  of Engineering.  
  The reception is a rather odd affair, with most of the 
  city’s ruling council present. They try not to show 
  how eager they are to have the Travellers complete 
  their mission, and Sinclair treads a ﬁne line between 
  apologising that the buffet food is not great and trying 
  not to draw attention to its shortcomings. The buffet 
  is indeed not great, especially for those who do not 
  like seafood. It consists mainly of things like ﬂavoured 
  noodles, crispy seaweed ﬂakes and a variety of dishes 
  made with prawn-like creatures. This is much better 
  than the food the typical island-city dweller gets, but it 
  is not much above preserved starship rations in quality. 
  After some small talk, Sinclair gives the Travellers a 
  short tour of the main habitation section.  This is several 
  decks high, most it just complexes of apartments and 
  small recreation spaces between them. The submarine 
  docks are at the top of the main habitation section; 
  above them is an area that is slowly being cleared and 
  repaired. The inhabited section extends about 250m 
  down from the dock level. 
  Most of this area is remarkably like an orbital habitat or 
  starship, and inhabited by ordinary people going about 
  their very mundane business. One section the Travellers 
  pass is closed off with a heavy pressure door secured by 
  an extremely bored guard. The section beyond, Sinclair 
  says, is pumped out and safe, but has not been properly 
  inventoried for salvage. This does not stop people from 
  sneaking in to see what they can scavenge, which is 
  becoming quite a problem. 
  There are entrances to the restricted sector on several 
  decks, including some currently ﬂooded and thus 
  unsafe. Reconnaissance parties report it is possible 
  to link up with the lower working zone by descending 
  through sections that are not ﬂooded, and Sinclair 
  suspects there is a regular black market trade in 
  scavenged components sold to the work crews. 
  At the lowest level of the inhabited section is the rather 
  ramshackle secondary reactor. This is a frighteningly 
  complex affair of pipes and conduits, linking several 
  small fusion reactors into a larger whole. Some parts 
  are clearly ofﬂine to be worked on, but the whole thing 
  is quite competently done and pretty reliable. There 
  is not much that a technically minded Traveller could 
  immediately do to help the technicians. The only 
  problem with this reactor is that it requires a lot of 
  manpower to keep it running, absorbs a lot of spare 
  parts and has limited output. As more of the city is 
  refurbished the reactor complex has to be augmented to 
  keep pace, and this creates an exponential 
  maintenance problem. 
  The answer, of course, is to get the main reactor online 
  and relegate this one to its role as a backup.  That 
  is where the Travellers come in. Sinclair tells them 
  accommodation has been prepared for them, and 
  tomorrow one of the bigger work submarines will come 
  up to convey them to the lower working decks. They 
  can make a preliminary inspection of the main reactor 
  and will be presented with a full inventory of the spares 
  available to get it up and running. The city’s main power 
  source could be online by tomorrow evening!
  18
  
  1000 M
  Sea Level
  50 M
  MAIN REACTOR
  BREACHED DECKS
  LOWER WORK ZONE
  WORK SUB DOCKS
  PARTIALLY FLOODED AREA
  PARTIALLY FLOODED AREA
  SECONDARY REACTORS
  TOP DOCK
  ANTENNAE TOWERS
  INHABITED ZONE
  TOWER ANCHORS
  
  SOMETHING DREADFULLY 
  WRONG IN THE DEEP
  C
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  Preparations for the activation of the main reactor 
  have been ongoing at a rapid tempo for several days 
  now, with work submarines and divers (both robots and 
  humans in deep-diving suits) operating around the clock 
  in a ﬂurry of debris clearance and other work. This has 
  stirred up the silt of the seabed and made visibility very 
  poor even with powerful lights. More importantly, it has 
  agitated the local wildlife. 
  Normally the Pseudosquid (P-squid) content themselves 
  with the occasional probe into the area around the city, 
  and very rarely have come close enough to threaten a 
  diver. Robotic units sent further out have been taken, 
  but this was probably rather disappointing for the squid. 
  However, not only are the P-squid themselves agitated 
  by all the activity around the city, their food supplies 
  have also been disrupted.
  Close to the city lies a deep-water trench. The bottom 
  has been mapped at 1,600m at its shallowest points, 
  and as it runs further away from the city it deepens 
  considerably. This deep, cold water is home to several 
  species of large ﬁsh predated by the P-squid. However, 
  debris and silt stirred up around the city has been 
  falling into the trench and driven off some of the squid’s 
  prey. This has been taken as a threat, and during the 
  night as the Travellers prepare to undertake their task, 
  the P-squid launch an attack.
  Their target is the cargo submarine Nila, inbound to the 
  city. Normally the squid do not bother the big subs, and 
  on the rare occasions they do they cannot cause much 
  harm. On this occasion a group of ﬁve large P-squid 
  mob the vessel, grappling its hull and attempting to 
  drag it down to the seabed.
  There is little chance of the P-squid penetrating the 
  hull, but naturally Nila attempts to reach the safety of 
  the city as fast as possible. As she is rushing towards 
  Calixcuel’s dock area at ﬂank speed, one of the P-squid 
  becomes entangled in her screw and is slowly mashed. 
  By the time the carnage is over Nila’s rudder is disabled 
  and her screw is badly damaged. She is coasting 
  towards the city, still with four angry P-squid grappling 
  her hull, and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent 
  a collision.  
  The Travellers are more than likely woken by alarms, 
  and can get a data feed in time to see the stricken 
  submarine crashing into the central dock’s outer doors. 
  She rebounds, venting air from a torn pressure hull, 
  and begins to sink rapidly. It is hard to make out on 
  the sensor feed, but it looks like one of the P-squid has 
  managed to enter the hull through the breach and is 
  feeding on the crew. Fortunately for them they will have 
  died instantly when the water came in. Damage alarms 
  sound throughout the city and watertight doors slam 
  shut in every deck section. Meanwhile Nila settles on 
  the seabed as other P-squids close in. 
  It will be difﬁcult at ﬁrst for the Travellers to get ofﬁcial 
  information; everyone with a role in government is busy 
  with the current crisis. However, it is not long before 
  Sinclair remembers the visiting experts and sends an 
  aide to bring them to the council chambers. By this 
  time, the initial emergency response is over. Watertight 
  doors have been reopened in most areas and a damage 
  assessment is underway.
  Sinclair is torn between not wanting interference as 
  he deals with a major crisis and his conviction that 
  the Travellers are brilliant experts whose presence in 
  Calixcuel at this time is a piece of incredible luck. He 
  settles for giving the Travellers a fast sitrep and access 
  to a data console, saying that if they can see a way to 
  help he will be delighted to hear it. He then goes back 
  to issuing a series of directives that sound ominously 
  like instructions to evacuate ﬂooding areas of the city.
  THE NILA SITUATION
  Not all of the cargo submarine’s crew are dead. Those in 
  the breached forward compartment were killed instantly, 
  but internal doors were closed when the P-squid attack 
  began, saving about two-thirds of the crew of thirty 
  from immediate death. Injuries were sustained in the 
  collision and crash into the seabed, but at present there 
  are at least some survivors in the engineering spaces of 
  the wreck. 
  The survivors are in desperate trouble. They have 
  power, which will keep the air recycling system going, 
  but they cannot control the vessel. Nila is lying on her 
  
  side in 1,100m of water with a damaged pressure hull. 
  Her theoretical collapse depth is around 950m; it is a 
  testament to her builders that she can still support life. 
  But with Pseudosquid banging on the hull, looking for a 
  way in, things look bleak if a rescue cannot be mounted. 
  The initial and immediate attempt to help Nila, using 
  robotic divers, was a complete failure. The robots 
  were savagely set upon by frenzied P-squid and 
  dismembered. A human in a deep-diving suit would 
  stand no chance. A band of brave workers venturing out 
  in a salvage sub were driven back with damage to their 
  craft. The P-squid are taking little notice of squidbangs.
  It seems at present that nothing can be done for the 
  survivors of the attack.
  THE CALIXCUEL 
  SITUATION
  Calixcuel City is in mortal danger too. The main docking 
  bay doors are buckled and jammed, but are holding 
  for the moment. However, water is getting into the 
  structure at several – probably many – points. There has 
  been a catastrophic failure of the main pressure hull 
  at one point, causing hundreds of deaths. The area is 
  sealed off but structural integrity is questionable on the 
  surrounding decks. 
  The city’s pumps are not able to keep pace with the 
  leaks, making it necessary to evacuate sections of the 
  city. A few areas are in real danger of collapse and are 
  being rapidly cleared of people whilst in others it will 
  take hours or days for water levels to rise to dangerous 
  levels. Secondary hazards exist, such as electrical 
  shorts, but much of the city’s electrical system is – 
  oddly enough – watertight.
  At ﬁrst it seems like the city can ride out the disaster. 
  It should be possible to get the main docking complex 
  working again sooner or later, and although the 
  breached areas represent a setback this is what the 
  workers came to Calixcuel to ﬁx. Repairs should be 
  possible, though at present the ‘squid situation’ makes 
  assessment problematic.
  However, there is a more severe problem. The secondary 
  reactor deck is starting to ﬂood, partly as a result of 
  water getting in from other decks and trickling down 
  through weakened internal seals. If the water level rises 
  too high the secondary reactor will have to be shut 
  down. If not, water will eventually get into its reaction 
  chambers, which will not cause an explosion as such 
  but will create a great deal of superheated steam which 
  will have the same effect. A reactor breach could blow 
  out the secondary reactor deck and critically weaken the 
  whole city structure. 
  Without the secondary reactor, emergency battery power 
  will provide lighting for several days if the pumps and 
  heating are not used, but the city will ﬂood much faster 
  and it will get very cold. Even with the docking complex 
  working there would be no way to get everyone out in 
  time. There are simply not enough submarines and 
  rescue craft on the entire planet, and most are several 
  days’ transit away.
  Sinclair has already declared an emergency and 
  requested all available assistance. An enterprising Free 
  Trader crew has suggested landing starships in the sea 
  above the city to take off as many people as possible. 
  They can reach the surface by climbing the partially 
  repaired section and then ascending the maintenance 
  stairs in the antennae towers, but there are thousands of 
  people to funnel through two narrow staircases. It just 
  cannot be done in time even if there were a hundred 
  ships waiting to rescue the citizens… and there are not.
  If the secondary reactor could be kept running, that 
  would buy time to make emergency repairs. The city 
  might even be saved, and if not a far greater number of 
  people could be rescued. Unfortunately, the secondary 
  reactor cannot be kept running for more than few 
  hours. After that it will have to be shut down to avoid a 
  catastrophe, and the city will go to reserve power. The 
  pumps will work very slowly, and the leaks are getting 
  bigger all the time. The decks will begin to ﬁll up and it 
  is apparent that the internal seals will only hold for so 
  long. Calixcuel has hours or at best days to live once the 
  secondary reactor goes ofﬂine.
  Unless, of course, someone gets the primary 
  reactor started. 
  This is what the Travellers came to do, after all. If they 
  agree to make the attempt, Sinclair (though obviously 
  terriﬁed) offers to accompany them. He can possibly 
  delay the inevitable from the control room, but he may 
  be able to save the whole city by leading the Travellers 
  to where they need to be. If the Travellers will not make 
  the attempt, Sinclair declares he will try on his own. 
  Maybe he can round up some power technicians on the 
  way or something. The Travellers should realise that 
  21
  
  there is no chance of this succeeding. If local engineers 
  could get the main reactor online the Travellers would 
  not have been required. Sinclair knows it too, but what 
  other choice is there?
  Referee’s Note: It may occur to some of the Travellers 
  that maybe it is not in the interests of island-city 
  governors to assist with the rescue. People saved from 
  Calixcuel have to be rehomed, and there is no room. 
  Leaving them to their fate does allow the city to carry 
  out a part of its mission to reduce population pressure. 
  Bleak as it is, this suspicion is correct. Some island-
  cities make no attempt to assist at all. However, for the 
  most part the people and leaders of Chalchiutlicue do 
  their utmost to save the citizens of Calixcuel even if the 
  Travellers will not.
  Sinclair’s attempt is doomed to failure. If he goes 
  without the Travellers, he does not even reach the lower 
  work area before succumbing to some mishap along 
  the way. Rescue submarines and starships will manage 
  to save a few hundred of the citizens. Of the rest, the 
  lucky ones perish in the scramble for the rescue ships. 
  Everyone else drowns or dies of sudden structural 
  collapse either due to massive and sudden water 
  pressure or secondary causes such as falling through 
  collapsing decks. The outcome will be the same in 
  any case. 
  SINCLAIR’S PLAN
  With the main dock out of action, it will not be possible 
  to bring a work submarine up to take the Travellers to 
  the main reactor. One could be brought to the upper 
  docking area right at the top of the city, but there are 
  already hordes of evacuees making their way up through 
  the semi-repaired sections. It will take a long time to 
  get to the dock, even if it can be reached at all. 
  The alternative is to use the route Sinclair is pretty sure 
  exists through the lower decks. This means entering 
  the semi-ruined (but watertight… mostly) section of 
  the main inhabited area and ﬁnding a way down to 
  the lower decks. Smugglers and scavengers have been 
  doing it for some time, so it cannot be all that hard, 
  Sinclair reasons. Once the lower work area is reached 
  the Travellers will have to ﬁnd a way to get past the 
  fully ﬂooded section below it to enter the main reactor 
  complex. One option might be to use a work submarine 
  (as originally planned, in fact) but the ‘squid issue’ 
  will have to be resolved somehow. There will be time to 
  think of something en route.
  As to the Nila, Sinclair cannot afford to spend much 
  time on that. There are tens of thousands of lives at 
  stake in the city, compared to perhaps a dozen survivors 
  in the submarine. Numbers are not on their side, even if 
  there was a good way to get them out of the wreck. 
  22
  
  INTO THE RUINS
  C
  H
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  It should be apparent to the Travellers that their 
  prospects are poor if they just sit tight and hope for 
  rescue. An attempt to reach the top of the city and get 
  aboard a rescue ship or submarine offers a little more 
  hope, but not much. Getting through the crowds already 
  headed in that direction would present a problem, even 
  if the Travellers are willing to be extremely ruthless. 
  Heading down does seem to be the best option – if 
  nothing else, there are work submarines in the lower 
  area that could be used to escape. 
  The Travellers probably have their tools and such like, 
  but they were not permitted to bring weapons from the 
  starport. If they ask, Sinclair will arrange for them to be 
  given a handgun or a shotgun from the security arsenal. 
  There are very few ﬁrearms aboard the underwater city, 
  for obvious reasons, and none that can put a hole in a 
  bulkhead. Thus the Travellers have a choice between 
  an autopistol with two spare 15-round magazines or a 
  shotgun with six rounds in the magazine and six more 
  on a holder attached to the stock. Demands for more 
  ammunition will be ignored.
  Other equipment such as rope or ﬂashlights will be 
  provided as far as possible, though the living area 
  does not contain large quantities of such items. The 
  Travellers might have to scavenge and improvise a bit 
  to put together a suitable carry-kit. They will also have 
  to contend with Sinclair urging them to get a move on 
  (another incentive might be the groans from the city’s 
  structure and the occasional dull bang as a pressure 
  door gives way somewhere below) and people rushing 
  around in a panic or trying to grab everything they can 
  save during the hoped-for evacuation. 
  Referee’s Note: The referee can make as much or as 
  little of this as he pleases. The task of getting some 
  kit together could become quite complex, with many 
  opportunities for roleplaying as the Travellers interact 
  with frightened locals. There is no need to push the 
  storyline along or gloss over details if the Travellers 
  are enjoying the adventure. The storyline could end up 
  being about a doomed inter-species love affair amid 
  the chaos of the city’s last days if that interests the 
  Travellers. However, if things begin to stagnate there is 
  the ‘clock’ provided by the ﬂooding secondary reactor to 
  drive things along. 
  THROUGH THE 
  RESTRICTED 
  SECTION
  The restricted section of the main inhabited level is 
  closed off from the rest by pressure doors, but these 
  are fully functional and lead to areas startlingly similar 
  to those currently being lived in. The nearest corridors 
  and rooms have been scavenged, but in a careful and 
  ordinary manner since they are due to be refurbished 
  as soon as resources are available. Conditions are much 
  less ‘liveable’, with bare wiring and peeling paint, but 
  the ﬁrst areas entered are not strewn with wreckage. 
  This gradually changes as the Travellers proceed. 
  Lighting is dim, since most of the ﬁttings have been 
  scavenged, and here and there lie piles of material ready 
  to be moved into the inhabited areas. Much of it has 
  been sorted and neatly arrayed – support beams, wiring, 
  piping and tubing, electronic circuitry and so forth. 
  However, some of the piles have clearly been rummaged 
  through and smaller items removed. This becomes more 
  obvious as the Travellers proceed. 
  Descending the ﬁrst couple of decks is easy enough, 
  but after this the damaged state of the city becomes 
  more obvious. It is also colder, with a damp smell in the 
  air. Tangles of wreckage block some stairwells, forcing 
  the Travellers to detour and ﬁnd another way down. 
  Occasionally they ﬁnd a pressure door which is sealed 
  shut, and judging from how cold some of these doors 
  are, a proportion at least have ocean on the other side. 
  All the while the Travellers will be hearing groans and 
  bangs from the city’s hull, and soon they will ﬁnd 
  themselves squelching through wet carpets and then 
  walking in ankle-deep seawater. Trickles can be seen 
  running down some stairwells, though the pumps 
  are still working and water level is rising very slowly. 
  However, if any given deck gets too waterlogged it 
  will be automatically sealed off, which will cause the 
  Travellers some real problems – at the very least.
  However, there are problems of a different nature to deal 
  with ﬁrst.
  
  THE SCAVENGERS
  Sinclair’s presumption that there are scavengers carrying 
  on a black market trade with the workers in the lower 
  area is in fact correct. There are several possible routes 
  from the main inhabited area to the lower one, though 
  none is especially easy and some have been closed off 
  by damage suffered in the current disaster. This has 
  resulted in some groups of scavengers being cut off or 
  having to ﬁnd an alternative route back up from the 
  lower decks.
  The Travellers encounter one such group while they 
  are descending through the damaged section. The 
  scavengers are aware that something very bad is 
  happening. They will have received garbled information 
  but enough to know the city is in mortal danger and they 
  need to get to safety. They are scared and becoming 
  desperate and, of course, these were not particularly 
  honest people to start with.
  The scavengers are not intrinsically bad people, but 
  they are used to ignoring the law when it suits them. 
  There are some quite harsh punishments available for 
  those that endanger the city by stealing components to 
  sell; thus they are inclined to put themselves ﬁrst and 
  are quite willing to let others suffer if that is what it 
  takes to get out of this situation. Violence is not their 
  ﬁrst inclination, but if they see a group that has good 
  equipment and think they can extort it or take it by 
  force, they will try their luck. 
  The composition of the scavenger group is up to the 
  referee but there should be at least a couple more of 
  them than there are Travellers, though they are not likely 
  to be armed with anything more dangerous than knives, 
  improvised clubs and perhaps one or two autopistols 
  between them. 
  The most likely form this encounter will take is a 
  confrontation in which the scavengers act tough and 
  try to extort some or all of the groups’ equipment from 
  them. They may not realise that the Travellers are an 
  ‘ofﬁcial’ party and may think they have simply run 
  across some other group of scavengers. 
  The scavengers can be reasoned or bargained with, but 
  it will take a lot to overcome their natural suspicion and 
  self-centred attitude. It is possible they could be co-
  opted to help, but more likely the Travellers will have to 
  dissuade them from attempted robbery or ﬁght them.
  SCAVENGERS
  STR
  7
  INT
  7
  SKILLS
  DEX
  7
  EDU
  5
  Carouse 0, Deception 1, 
  Electronics 0, Gun Combat 0, 
  Mechanic 1, Melee 0, Recon 0, 
  Stealth 1, Streetwise 2
  END
  8
  SOC
  3
  WEAPONS
  Autopistol (3D-3), Club (2D), or Knife 
  (2D)
  24
  
  If it comes to a ﬁght, it will be confused scramble in the 
  near-darkness, with debris underfoot; quite possibly in 
  ankle-deep water. The referee should play up the chaos 
  and uncertainty, with assailants appearing out of the 
  darkness and disappearing again, with it being entirely 
  appropriate for the referee to apply Banes to task checks 
  and attack rolls, and there is a real risk of hitting a 
  friend instead. Afterward, it will be apparent that anyone 
  too badly hurt to move will probably die here in the dark 
  and cold even if the city is saved. There is simply no way 
  a rescue party could get the casualties out in time, and 
  in any case there is no-one 
  available to do it.   
  The Travellers might have several encounters with 
  scavenger groups or ordinary citizens seeking a way to 
  the submarine docks. There is the real possibility of a 
  tragedy if the Travellers have had to ﬁght one group and 
  then runs into another who they assume have the same 
  intentions. The converse also applies; people who have 
  just been robbed for their few possessions may attack on 
  sight without either side being ‘bad guys’ as such.
  DESCENT INTO 
  THE WATER
  As the Travellers push deeper into the city, they 
  encounter more and more obstacles and blocked areas. 
  Searching for a way around becomes increasingly time-
  consuming, until there are no more detours to be had. 
  The Travellers ﬁnd themselves looking down through 
  a hole in the deck at a partially ﬂooded area below. 
  The water is a few centimetres deep on the level they 
  occupy; it looks to be over a metre deep and rising 
  below. Seawater runs over the edges of the hole and 
  cascades into the level below, occasionally taking with it 
  some small pieces of debris. 
  Getting down should be relatively easy, but there may be 
  no way to return to this level. In short, if the Travellers 
  choose to go on they are committed to ﬁnding a way 
  down to the lower level – which is not much further – 
  before the water ﬁlls this deck and they drown. There 
  are no pressure issues here; this is water that has leaked 
  in or burst into areas now sealed off. The water is, 
  however, cold, dark and turbulent. It is also
  rising quickly. 
  If the referee wishes to push things along – literally – he 
  could have a seal burst somewhere and cause a great 
  rush of water to wash the Travellers down into the deck 
  below. However, this is a form of railroading, and it 
  may be better to have the Travellers make the difﬁcult 
  decision themselves. 
  Once they get down to the deck below, the Travellers 
  must wade through waist-deep seawater in which 
  commonplace objects bob about. Drink bottles, 
  furniture and wall decorations ﬂoat past, which some 
  Travellers might realise suggests a current. Water ﬂows 
  downhill, so following the current should lead to a way 
  to the next deck down – assuming it is not completely 
  ﬂooded. The lower working area is only a deck or two 
  down now. 
  It is a real struggle to wade through the half-ﬂooded 
  deck, and nervous Travellers might begin to suspect 
  there is something in the water with them. Virtually all 
  the lights are out on this deck, with water splashing up 
  the walls and coming down through rents in the ceiling. 
  In the illumination of ﬂashlights and glow sticks, it is 
  hard to make out anything; familiar shapes can become 
  distorted and frightening. 
  The referee should play the scene for a few ‘haunted 
  house’ type tense moments, until the Travellers 
  become convinced they are just imagining things. Then 
  something bumps a Traveller’s leg. Something moving 
  and quite large…
  This will likely trigger a scramble to get out of the water 
  and onto something high, or perhaps frantic attempts 
  to ﬁnd, shoot or stab whatever it is. Eventually it is 
  found; a large deepwater ﬁsh which has been washed 
  in somehow. Like many such creatures it is horrifying in 
  appearance; slightly bioluminescent and ‘just wrong’ in 
  shape. It is ugly, disgusting and in some distress. The 
  greatly reduced pressure in the city is killing the ﬁsh, 
  causing it to thrash about in a distinctly 
  unsettling manner. 
  The Travellers might blast or stab the dying ﬁsh anyway 
  but in any case, it was not alone. Its movements have 
  attracted an altogether more dangerous creature – an 
  immature P-squid which was on the city’s hull when a 
  compartment collapsed. Swept in by the resulting rush 
  25
  
  of water, it was trapped when the pressure doors closed 
  and is in similar distress to its prey. However, P-squid 
  are tough creatures and this one will not give up the 
  ghost easily. More signiﬁcantly for the Travellers its 
  plight has triggered a compulsion to feed and ﬁght its 
  way free.
  The immature P-squid will try to grapple an enemy, 
  its tentacles giving it a Boon on all Melee (unarmed) 
  checks made when grappling, as detailed on page 74 
  of the Traveller Core Rulebook. Once it has secured its 
  prey, it will start to inﬂict damage with its beak.
  The Travellers are trapped in a half-ﬂooded habitation 
  deck with an angry squid, in the dark. They may come 
  up with some clever trick to confuse it and escape, or 
  they might ﬁght their way past. The squid will not stop 
  attacking until it is dead, though it may be driven off for 
  a time only to come back from a different angle. Indeed, 
  rather than a straight ﬁght this incident might best be 
  played for tension, with the P-squid launching attacks 
  from under the dark water and then disappearing again. 
  The Travellers might ﬁnd themselves in a running 
  (swimming?) ﬁght through this deck and the next.
  THE LAST 
  FLOODED DECK
  Finally, the Travellers ﬁnd where the water is ﬂowing 
  to; a rent in the ﬂoor of the deck. The level below has 
  lost most of its internal pressure seals, though it retains 
  integrity against the ocean outside. This is giving the 
  water coming down from above a lot of space to ﬁll up, 
  and so far the deck is only about 1.5m deep. The level 
  is rising however, so the Travellers need to ﬁnd a way 
  through to the lower work area pretty quickly.
  Finding one is not too difﬁcult as it happens. There are 
  maintenance shafts running alongside the elevators and 
  stairs between decks. Opening a stairway’s pressure 
  seals would endanger the whole area below, but a shaft 
  would not be very difﬁcult to close off. However, the 
  hatch down to the next level is, of course, at the bottom 
  of the shaft, which has about 4m of water in it. 
  The Travellers might come up with a clever way to pump 
  water out of the maintenance shaft more quickly than 
  it is getting in from the top, or might close off the top 
  and pump it out. Alternatively, they can do it the hard 
  way. This requires swimming down to the bottom of the 
  shaft and manually undogging the hatch in the dark, 
  underwater, in a narrow space using a Difﬁcult (10+) 
  Strength check (1D x 10 seconds). 
  If this can be accomplished, the Travellers will be 
  deposited on the deck below by a rush of water, quite 
  likely along with a great deal of debris, a half-eaten ﬁsh 
  and a dead immature squid. If the P-squid is still alive, 
  it will be dragged into the shaft and down to the level 
  below, causing still greater consternation among those 
  working there. The referee might decide that there was 
  a second P-squid, just for the fun of dumping one amid 
  the chaos below.
  In all likelihood, the Travellers are dumped onto a 
  brightly-lit deck among surprised and alarmed workers. 
  Water starts coming down the shaft, pushing people 
  over and setting off the ﬂood alarms. Doors slam down, 
  people yell in fright, random pieces of furniture and 
  debris tumble across the deck, and quite possibly 
  a confused and disoriented P-squid starts attacking 
  people at random. The shaft will need to be sealed 
  somehow, and quickly. 
  But the good news is… the Travellers have made it. 
  They are in the lower working area. Now all they need is 
  a submarine.
  IMMATURE P-SQUID
  ANIMAL
  HITS
  SPEED
  Immature P-squid 42
  9 m
  SKILLS
  Athletics (dexterity) 2, 
  Melee (unarmed) 3, Recon 1, 
  Stealth 1, Survival 1
  ATTACKS
  Beak (4D)
  TRAITS
  Armour (+2), Large (+1), Slow 
  Metabolism (-4)
  BEHAVIOUR
  Carnivore, Killer
  26
  
  CHAOS IN THE LOWER 
  WORKING AREA
  C
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  The sudden arrival of the Travellers sends a stir through 
  the lower working decks even if they do not appear 
  from a maintenance shaft in dramatic fashion. The 
  workers have somewhat patchy information from the 
  main inhabited levels, more because everyone there 
  is in a state of chaos than problems with the internal 
  communications system. They will want to know what 
  is going on, who the Travellers are and what they think 
  they are doing, and all manner of other details including 
  a barrage of requests for information about speciﬁc 
  people and areas of the main inhabited zone that the 
  Travellers are not familiar with.
  This all takes place while the workers are very busy. 
  They are hard at work on several tasks, which lack 
  overall direction and at times get in one another’s 
  way. Some groups of workers are readying their subs 
  for a massed rescue attempt on the wreck of the Nila. 
  Others are doing structural work on the city or trying 
  to improvise some sort of pressure-resistant escape 
  capsule to take a large number of people to the surface. 
  There are lots of good ideas (and less good ones), 
  several people who think they are in charge (and others 
  who think they should be) and a general air of chaos. 
  Smart Travellers might realise that a lot of this is 
  make-work. People are ﬁxating on small things they can 
  ﬁx, such as a section of busted piping or an electrical 
  outage in a small area, because they believe they cannot 
  do anything about the wider catastrophe. They might be 
  wrong about this; if the Travellers can rally and direct 
  the workers there is a lot they can do. 
  The Travellers have accomplished a lot by reaching 
  the lower working area, but unless they can get to the 
  main reactor and start it, nothing they have done so far 
  will matter. There is no way to get there through the 
  city itself; the supports and main structure are intact, 
  but the pressure hull has several large rents in it. This 
  means the only way to reach the reactor chamber is to 
  go outside, either in a deep-diving suit or submarine, 
  descend through the wreckage around the city and enter 
  the reactor level by way of its emergency airlock. The 
  main one is blocked by a section of Nila’s bow.
  The chief impediment to this is the horde of angry 
  Pseudosquid outside the city. They are showing no signs 
  of going away, and occasionally bash the wreck of the 
  Nila or the city itself in the hope of getting in. They have 
  attacked submarines that went out to help the Nila, 
  and managed to cripple her in the initial attack. Going 
  outside is not a simple or easy matter. 
  The Travellers have several potential problems, although 
  they do not need to deal with all of them. Rescuing the 
  crew of the Nila is optional – they will all perish without 
  assistance, but the Travellers may choose to play the 
  numbers game here. Alternatively they might try to go 
  for broke and save everyone.
  At the very least the Travellers need to:
  •
  Get from the lower working area to the reactor level
  by going outside in the deep ocean.
  •
  Negotiate the debris ﬁeld.
  •
  Not get killed by giant angry sea-monsters.
  •
  Enter the reactor chamber and start the system up.
  •
  Get back out and reach the surface if the reactor
  cannot be started.
  In addition they may choose to attempt a rescue of the 
  Nila survivors.
  Rallying and redirecting the workers will be a big help 
  with all of this, but it will not be easy. The workers are 
  tough and resourceful people – and more importantly, 
  they are proud. They do not need a bunch of offworlders 
  who came tumbling out of a maintenance shaft to tell 
  them what to do (actually, this is exactly what they need, 
  but they will not want to admit it). Thus the Travellers 
  might have some persuading to do.
  
  ASSESSING RESOURCES
  The Travellers have a lot to work with. Items such as 
  tools, cabling and starship-grade structural members 
  are easy enough to come by, though there are no 
  weapons on the lower decks and certainly nothing that 
  would harm a colossal squid. The referee should let the 
  Travellers scrounge up reasonable items in a decent 
  quantity, especially if they are being inventive and 
  coming up with clever ideas to solve their problems.  
  The possibilities include:
  Robotic Divers are roughly human-sized and have two 
  manipulator arms. They are reasonably robust but can 
  handle quite delicate work semi-autonomously. They are 
  expensive, but with lives at stake their owners could be 
  persuaded to risk them in a rescue attempt or as decoys 
  to draw off the squid. More destructive ideas, such as 
  using a robot diver to deliver an explosive charge or 
  grapple a squid (or both!) will be more difﬁcult to sell to 
  the owners, but it may be possible.
  Atmospheric Diving Suits are designed to operate without 
  exposing the occupant to the effects of water pressure, 
  i.e. they maintain a normal atmospheric pressure
  inside. It is thus possible to get in and out of the suit
  in an airlock, making this a possible way to transit to
  the reactor chamber. TL7 suits manufactured locally
  are capable only of dives to 700-800m; the Very Deep
  Operations (VDO) suits used by the divers working
  at Calixcuel were bought offworld and are fabulously
  expensive, but they are tough. Most attacks that damage
  the occupant will not breach the suit, but simply bash
  the operator off the inside surfaces. Any suit failure is
  instantly fatal at this depth however, so ﬁghting in a
  VDO suit is not a great idea. The suit usually requires
  training but can be clumsily operated by an untrained
  person providing no attempt is made to perform
  complex or high-speed tasks. In this case the suit is 
  essentially just used to avoid being killed by water 
  pressure whilst moving from one point to another.
  Work Submarines are typically quite small one or two-
  man vessels ﬁtted with good sensors, powerful lights and 
  an array of manipulators. Most have an external tube for 
  one or two squidbangs. 
  The Escape Pod is a project the workers have thrown 
  together. It is essentially a pressure vessel made out 
  of a section of pressure-tight maintenance shaft, with 
  rudimentary buoyancy tanks ﬁtted and an emergency 
  beacon improvised out of spare radio components. The 
  escape pod is unpowered, but could convey up to ﬁfty 
  people (in very cramped conditions) to the surface – 
  once. It would have to be towed out of the city by a 
  submarine, but thereafter could rise using its own tanks. 
  Explosives and Other Improvised Weaponry are available if 
  the Travellers can get inventive. The existing squidbangs 
  are not potent enough to cause much harm. They will do 
  2D damage on contact detonation and 1D at distance. 
  This causes discomfort but no real harm to pseudosquid. 
  However, the warheads could be enhanced by various 
  methods. The most obvious is stripping explosives from 
  several squidbangs and jamming it into one warhead. An 
  enhanced squidbang capable of doing up to 8D damage 
  could be constructed by this method, but there is only 
  enough explosive to make four of them. However, if the 
  Travellers come up with clever ideas like improvising 
  underwater incendiary devices or augmenting squidbang 
  with a bottle of pure oxygen, additional weapons could 
  be made. It would also be possible to create a clumsy 
  bomb or mine with chemicals scrounged from around 
  the work areas, oxygen bottles and the like. Submarines 
  and robodivers could also be provided with improvised 
  spears capable of doing 6D damage if they hit.
  28
  
  NO PLAN SURVIVES 
  CONTACT WITH A HORDE 
  OF COLOSSAL SQUID
  C
  H
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  E
  A successful plan will need to drive off the squid or 
  keep them occupied long enough to reach the debris 
  ﬁeld and negotiate it. There is a ‘nuclear option’ here if 
  the Travellers are willing to take some big risks. A large 
  improvised bomb could be delivered by submarine or 
  robodiver into the debris ﬁeld and detonated. The blast 
  will not greatly harm the city but will clear debris away 
  from the main reactor entrance (and stir up a truly huge 
  amount of seabed silt) as well as causing the squid 
  to scatter for a while. This will gain enough time for a 
  submarine or Travellers in VDO suits to reach the main 
  airlock and enter. It will not be long enough to rescue 
  the crew of Nila, however. The squid will come back 
  during the operation, necessitating another means to 
  deal with them.
  If the debris is not shifted by some dramatic means, it 
  will be necessary to navigate through the debris ﬁeld 
  to reach the secondary entry point to the main reactor 
  chamber. This is hazardous at the best of times and 
  could be very dangerous if the squid are not at least 
  distracted. If the intent is to rescue the crew of the Nila 
  as well, the squid will deﬁnitely need to be dealt with, at 
  least temporarily. 
  There are three reasonable options for a rescue. The 
  ﬁrst is to use a cargo submarine to ferry some survivors 
  at a time into the working decks. This will take a while, 
  and there are no facilities for treating the injured on the 
  lower working decks. Taking personnel all the way to the 
  top decks of the city would simply take too long. The 
  second option is to tow the escape capsule out to Nila, 
  load the survivors aboard it and blow its tanks. This gets 
  them to the surface quickly but what happens after that 
  depends on what other craft are available to take the 
  survivors aboard. 
  The ﬁnal option is to ask one of the cargo submarine 
  captains to risk his vessel in a hugely dangerous 
  undertaking. Habley and vessels like her have a never-
  
  exceed depth of 950m, and Nila is lying in 1,100m 
  of water. There is always a margin of safety in design 
  calculations, and Nila is the same class as Habley. In 
  theory, if Nila can survive at that depth with critical 
  damage, the rather healthier Habley should be safe. 
  However, it is an enormous risk to take her down so 
  deep. Joseph might be willing to make an attempt at a 
  rescue if the Travellers ask if of him, providing they can 
  keep the squid away.
  So in the end, it comes down to dealing with the squid. 
  If they can be killed or driven off, other plans can 
  succeed. How the Travellers go about this is up to them. 
  One very dramatic option would be to launch all the 
  robodivers, some perhaps as suicide bombers, along 
  with the work submarines armed with sharpened girders 
  in their manipulator arms. A cargo submarine then tows 
  the escape capsule to the wreck of Nila with VDO-suited 
  divers clinging to it. 
  A big ﬁght between the workers and squid could come 
  about this way, or perhaps could happen for other 
  reasons. There is no need to resolve the situation in 
  detail – this is the backdrop to what the Travellers 
  are doing rather than the focus. The battle will be 
  a confused mess of ﬂailing tentacles and shapes 
  dimly seen through churned-up seabed muck, and 
  the Travellers will need to focus on the squid they are 
  launching a torpedo at or the one they are wrestling with 
  a submarine’s manipulators. 
  The ﬁght will be an almost stately affair of slow-
  motion manoeuvring, groaning hulls and shockwaves 
  of exploding homemade torpedoes. It can go on for as 
  long as the referee feels is necessary to the storyline; 
  individual squid can retreat and perhaps come 
  back later.
  Travellers who are trying to work under these conditions 
  will ﬁnd it difﬁcult, to put it mildly. Whether attaching 
  the escape capsule to Nila’s emergency hatch or 
  carrying out some other task, they will be interrupted 
  by aggressive squid and the occasional over-zealous 
  robodiver. All tack checks under such circumstances are 
  likely to be Difﬁcult (10+) at best, and Travellers might 
  have to frequently stop what they are doing to fend off 
  an attack.
  30
  
  THE REACTOR COMPLEX
  C
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  Whether or not a rescue of Nila’s crew is attempted, 
  the Travellers will need to get into the reactor complex. 
  Negotiating the debris ﬁeld is tricky, requiring a Difﬁcult 
  (10+) Seafarer (submarine) check (2D minutes, DEX) to 
  avoid entangling their vessel in the debris. The referee 
  can assign an alternate difﬁculty level to this task 
  depending on circumstances and the capabilities of the 
  Travellers – having the Travellers perish in a collision 
  with a submerged girder might not make for the 
  best story. 
  A collision is not especially damaging, but the 
  submarine will remain stuck until another task check is 
  made (an attempt can be made every 1D minutes), and 
  whilst it is stuck it will be attacked by an adult squid. 
  Radical solutions such as ﬁring an improvised torpedo 
  into the wreckage should free the submarine, but will 
  not do its hull much good. 
  Travellers who are using a VDO suit will not get stuck, 
  but are likely to be ambushed by a juvenile P-squid as 
  they approach the airlock. It is entirely possible that a 
  squid will cling to a suit or submarine and be carried 
  into the reactor complex. It will not live long once the 
  water is pumped out, but will pose a real hazard until 
  it expires. However, the Travellers are ﬁnally nearing 
  their goal. They will need to exit their VDO suits or 
  submarine, deal with any wildlife they have brought in 
  with them, and approach the reactor. 
  The reactor is a navy-surplus model, refurbished when it 
  was removed from its parent vessel (which will probably 
  be in a breakers yard by now) and shipped here in parts. 
  The reactor is very large and, although it has been 
  carefully reassembled, the people who carried out the 
  task were not properly trained to do so. They 
  made mistakes.
  Fusion reactors are designed to fail safe; that is, if the 
  reactor is in a dangerous condition its software will not 
  allow it to start. The Travellers will need to perform 
  a rapid faultﬁnd once they discover the initialisation 
  sequence does nothing but cause a FAILSAFE – 
  ENGINEERING SUPPORT REQUIRED message to 
  appear on the main display. 
  A little investigation will reveal this is not a software or 
  control problem – quite the opposite; the control system 
  is functioning perfectly well and keeping the city safe by 
  not permitting the reactor to initialise. The fault 
  must be physical.
  There are in fact several problems with the reactor. 
  Some are rather obvious, such as coolant pipes with 
  misaligned couplings. The Travellers should be able to 
  ﬁnd a few such problems and quickly repair them, then 
  triumphantly throw the switch. Nothing happens; there 
  is still something wrong. 
  Meanwhile, frantic messages come in from the city. The 
  secondary reactor is ofﬂine, emergency power is failing 
  and water is rising fast. People are panicking and there 
  have already been deaths in the crush to reach safety, 
  or the illusion of it at least. The city needs power, and 
  it needs it now. But as the Travellers renew their search 
  for whatever is preventing the reactor from operating, 
  they ﬁnd they have a ﬁnal problem to overcome.
  THAT’S NOT THE SORT OF
  HELP WE NEEDED!
  One of the robodivers – or perhaps one lost in the ﬁrst 
  attempt to rescue the crew of Nila – entered the reactor 
  complex along with the Travellers. It was not noticed 
  since it was beneath the water that remained in the 
  docking bay, along with some seaweed and a couple of 
  luckless and very unappetising deepwater ﬁsh. 
  The robodiver uses ducted props to propel itself most 
  of the time, but has a set of tracks to crawl along the 
  seabed or a vessel’s hull. It is now trundling about the 
  reactor complex on these tracks, intent on destroying 
  anything in its path.
  This is not normal robodiver behaviour, but this poor 
  machine got well and truly clobbered by a P-squid and 
  is essentially deranged. 
  Dealing with the robodiver should not be very difﬁcult, 
  but it is a distraction as well as a clue. Following the 
  robodiver’s trail of destruction back towards the docking 
  bay reveals that it managed to do enormous damage 
  to a cable bundle, probably by getting tangled up and 
  struggling to free itself. If these cables can be put back 
  into some kind of working order, the reactor’s self-
  diagnostics will tell it that it is now safe to start. 
  All that remains to do is to throw the switch, 
  metaphorically speaking.
  
  SAVING THE CITY
  C
  H
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  Once the main reactor is online, the city of Calixcuel 
  lives again. The lights come back on, the heating starts 
  to work and, most importantly, the pumps start getting 
  ahead of the inﬂux of water. The immediate crisis is 
  over, though there is a long way to go if the city is to 
  remain habitable. 
  The damaged sections must be assessed and repaired 
  before work can resume on clearing and refurbishing 
  the living areas. There is a lot a band of resourceful 
  Travellers can do, especially if they have experience 
  working with advanced materials and complex systems. 
  Sinclair (if he survived) and the rest of the ruling 
  council would be grateful for the help. 
  However, in the meantime the Travellers have done 
  more than they were hired to do. They are assured they 
  will receive their fee when they return to the starport 
  (in fact, it is likely that it will be doubled) and in the 
  interim they are given use of apartments in the section 
  used by the ruling elite. They are lionised as heroes, 
  and rightly so. There is no room for a parade, or the 
  people of Calixcuel would probably organise one. 
  The work of making the city safe and habitable goes 
  on constantly, and there are many deaths to deal with. 
  Set against that is a sense of joyful relief at having 
  survived, and gratitude for the Travellers’ part in it. 
  They are in demand for celebrations and parties, which 
  could become quite weird. Most of the people just want 
  to show their gratitude, but some treat the Travellers 
  as a sort of status symbol – ‘they came to my party, not 
  hers…’ Life as a local celebrity could become wearying 
  quite quickly. 
  If the Travellers were paying attention along the way, 
  they will have realised what a big deal Calixcuel is to 
  the whole world’s population. It represents living space 
  for tens of thousands, and had the project failed the 
  world’s population problem would have been that much 
  worse. So, the Travellers may come to realise that they 
  have not just a saved a city, they have made things 
  better for the people of an entire world. There is not all 
  that much money in being a hero, but perhaps there is 
  satisfaction to be had from knowing things are better 
  here (or at least, they did not get vastly worse) because 
  of the Travellers’ actions. 
  Some people want to leave Calixcuel, and more than a 
  few will have permanent psychological problems such as 
  a phobia of drowning or seafood. Most of the populace 
  are invigorated by the experience, however. Their city 
  has been tested and emerged victorious. Whatever the 
  future brings, Calixcuel and her people can meet it 
  head-on. The Travellers who made that possible will 
  never be forgotten.
  Staying for a while in Calixcuel might result in new 
  adventure opportunities and patrons. There are 
  resources to be scavenged from the damaged areas and 
  technical problems to be solved. People with experience 
  of working with advanced (i.e. starship-grade) materials 
  can make good money as consultants in the next few 
  weeks. The Travellers might also become aware of how 
  bad conditions are in the island-cities. Perhaps a new 
  career as activists or celebrity revolutionaries awaits?
  Eventually, though, it will be time to move on. Calixcuel 
  is one city on one planet, and the stars are beckoning. 
  After all, being a celebrity is only fun for so long….
  32
  
  APPENDIX
  Sinclair is basically a good guy, and quite talented, 
  but also the product of the island-cities’ stratiﬁed 
  society. He has a very strong sense of social order and 
  expects people to ‘know their place’. The Travellers 
  will receive respect from him as he has a high opinion 
  (which may or may not be well-founded) of their 
  credentials and capabilities. However, he has a habit 
  of treating underlings very briskly and has a certain 
  amount of contempt for the ‘lower orders’ – which on 
  this world is a literal term. Despite this attitude, he 
  works for the betterment of everyone and accepts that 
  lower-class people are valuable; he just has arrogant 
  habits picked up in the high-class society where he 
  grew up. If the Travellers spend much time on-planet 
  they will come to realise that Sinclair’s viewpoint is 
  positively egalitarian compared to many of his peers.
  SINCLAIR KRENOFF
  City Administrator
  STR
  5
  INT
  8
  SKILLS
  DEX
  7
  EDU
  9
  Admin 3, Advocate 1, Carouse 
  1, Diplomat 1, Leadership 1, 
  Persuade 2
  END
  6
  SOC
  A
  33
  
  Joseph comes from a long line of mariners who have 
  operated out of the starport for generations. He has 
  few of the islanders’ prejudices but is a proud man 
  who will not tolerate a slight. In appearance he is 
  almost a cliché of the salty old sea-dog, though he is 
  capable of getting cleaned up and wearing a dinner 
  jacket at need. This is sometimes a necessary part of 
  the merchant-submariner trade, a part that Joseph 
  really rather likes. When ashore he likes to party hard 
  but does not behave in a manner that will embarrass 
  himself later. He is one of the few people who can 
  carry off being blind drunk in a digniﬁed manner.
  Joseph does not normally carry weapons but there 
  is a ‘mutiny gun’ (an autopistol) in his desk drawer 
  aboard his vessel. He is permitted to keep this as 
  part of his duties as a submarine captain, but cannot 
  legally carry it ashore.
  JOSEPH BRIMLEY
  Submarine Captain
  STR
  6
  INT
  7
  SKILLS
  DEX
  8
  EDU
  8
  Carouse 2, Engineer (power), 
  Leadership 1, Navigation 2, 
  Seafarer (submarine) 3
  END
  8
  SOC
  8
  
  PSEUDOSQUID
  ANIMAL
  HITS
  SPEED
  Orbney’s 
  Pseudosquid
  60
  12m
  SKILLS
  Athletics (dexterity) 3, Melee 
  (unarmed) 3, Recon 1, Stealth 1, 
  Survival 2
  ATTACKS
  Beak (6D)
  TRAITS
  Armour (+8), Large (+3), Slow 
  Metabolism (-4)
  BEHAVIOUR
  Carnivore, Killer
  ORBNEY’S 
  PSEUDOSQUID 
  Orbney’s Pseudosquid (known locally as ‘P-squid’ or just 
  squid) is a large, intelligent and territorial creature. The 
  P-squid is shaped like ‘a cross between a kraken and
  a nightmare’, with a conical central body and multiple
  tentacles. These are arranged in symmetrically with
  three long grasping tentacles with two shorter ones
  between each. A set of secondary feeding tentacles
  guides food to the central mouth, which lies between
  the tentacles.
  P-squid are typically 3 to 4m in length, with occasional
  specimens reaching just under 5m, and can dive to at
  least 1,400m. They average a mass of 600-700kg, with
  larger specimens potentially weighing a lot more.
  P-squid typically operate in groups of 2-6 animals,
  cooperatively hunting large deep-sea ﬁsh. Their
  metabolic rate is usually slow, allowing a group of
  squid to cruise for long periods of time without using
  much energy thus requiring little food. It is thought the
  P-squid may ﬁght among themselves or perhaps prey
  upon one another when there is little other food, but
  this has not been directly observed.
  P-squid are smart enough to realise that human
  activity is localised and there is little to gain from
  venturing into the worked area. Squidbangs do not
  actually frighten them as such – not in the manner of
  an unintelligent animal anyway – but the detonation
  does cause discomfort. The P-squid recognise the use
  of squidbangs as a willingness to ﬁght for territory the 
  squid do not really need. 
  Thus while they might stray into the worked zone or 
  chase prey in, and will sometimes test the resolve of 
  humans to defend their territory with a foray close to 
  the city, for the most part the squid keep their distance. 
  They are not afraid, however, and instinctively consider 
  the humans to be encroaching upon their feeding 
  grounds. If they get the chance or are agitated enough, 
  they will attack a diver or a small submarine. Attacks on 
  larger craft have happened, but they are rare.
  A P-squid will try to grapple an enemy, its tentacles 
  giving it a Boon on all Melee (unarmed) checks made 
  when grappling, as detailed on page 74 of the Traveller 
  Core Rulebook. Once it has secured its prey, it will start 
  to inﬂict damage with its beak.
  
  36
  TL 
  SKILL 
  AGILITY 
  SPEED (CRUISE) 
  RANGE (CRUISE) 
  CREW
  PASSENGERS 
  CARGO 
  HULL 
  SHIPPING 
  COST
  7
  SEAFARER (SUBMARINE) 
  -4
  VERY SLOW (IDLE)
  50 YEARS 
  30
  10 
  27 TONS 
  675 
  110 TONS 
  MCR11.83
  Autopilot (improved), Bunks x 20, Communications System (basic, increased 
  range x 2), Computer/1, Crane (medium), Fire Extinguishers, Freshers x 2, Fusion 
  Plant (basic), Galley (mini), Navigation System (basic), Sensor System (improved, 
  increased ﬁdelity, increased range, underwater
  ARMOUR
  DESCRIPTION
  CARGO SUBMARINE
  FRONT
  8
  REAR
  8
  SIDES
  8
  These general purpose submarines 
  operate below the seas of planets such as 
  Chalchiutlicu on a regular basis, and are 
  the main source of supplies and trading for 
  underwater settlements. They are functional but 
  robust, with notoriously little space for crew and 
  passengers, despite a respectable cargo hold.
  Safe Depth: 300m
  Crush Depth: 950m
  Life Support: 100 days
  EQUIPMENT,TRAITS AND WEAPONS
  
  37
  TL 
  SKILL 
  AGILITY 
  SPEED (CRUISE) 
  RANGE (CRUISE) 
  CREW
  PASSENGERS 
  CARGO 
  HULL 
  SHIPPING 
  COST
  7
  SEAFARER (SUBMARINE) 
  -1
  VERY SLOW (IDLE)
  100 (150) 
  1
  1 
  0.5 TONS 
  36 
  6 TONS 
  MCR1.52
  Bunk, Communications System (basic), Control System (improved), Fire Extinguisher, 
  Manipulator Arms (basic) x 4, Navigation System (basic), Sensor System (improved, 
  increased ﬁdelity, increased range, underwater)
  Hardpoint (Squidbang Torpedo, front) Hardpoint (Squidbang Torpedo, front)
  ARMOUR
  DESCRIPTION
  EQUIPMENT,TRAITS AND WEAPONS
  WORK SUBMARINE
  FRONT
  12
  REAR
  12
  SIDES
  12
  These small submarines are used to 
  perform surveying, construction and repair 
  work at crushing depths unreachable by other 
  means. Though extremely cramped for their tiny 
  crews, they are durable in the extreme and can 
  suffer years of tough work without much more 
  than regular maintenance.
  Safe Depth: 400m
  Crush Depth: 1,200m
  Life Support: 100 days
  Weapon
  Range Damage
  Magazine
  Magazine Cost
  Traits
  Fire Control
  Squidbang Torpedo
  5
  2D
  1
  Cr1500
  One Use
  -
  
  01/92323
  01/89789
  01/08316
  ROBODIVER
  Manufactured offworld, robodivers are expensive human-sized robots 
  capable of operating at crushing depths beneath the ocean. They are 
  typically used for repair operations, though are capable of rudimentary 
  reconnaissance roles too. They are equipped with two manipulator arms 
  and are extremely robust. On dry land, robodivers can move around on 
  their tracks at a slow walking pace, but submerged they operate with 
  variable buoyancy and are propelled with a series of 
  ducted props.
  Robot
  Hits
  Speed
  TL
  Cost
  Robodiver
  40
  4 m
  11
  Cr222000
  Skills
  Mechanic 2, Melee 0, Profession (diving) 3, Recon 1
  Attacks
  Claw (3D)
  Traits
  Armour (+4)
  Programming
  Advanced
  ATMOSPHERIC DIVING SUIT
  Capable of allowing a diver to operate safely to depths of around 800 
  metres, the atmospheric diving suit is large and clumsy to wear, but 
  allows underwater expeditions of up to three hours without modiﬁcation.
  Item
  Protection
  TL
  Kg
  Cost
  Required 
  Skill
  Atmospheric Diving Suit
  +4
  7
  20
  Cr8000
  None
  VERY DEEP OPERATIONS DIVING SUIT
  The Very Deep Operations (VDO) diving suit is an extremely tough piece of equipment 
  that will allow a wearer to descend safely to depths of more than 1,200 metres. Its 
  manipulators are rather clumsy (providing DM-2 to any physical task check), but there are 
  few better choices for working outside a vessel in the deep ocean. The internal air supply 
  will run for six hours.
  Item
  Protection
  TL
  Kg
  Cost
  Required Skill
  Atmospheric Diving Suit
  +12
  8
  24
  Cr19000
  Vacc Suit 2
  38
  
  V I S I T  T H E  M O ST  D A N G E R O U S  S Y ST E M 
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  The Theev Cluster is notorious as a 
  ‘piracy hotspot’ and has been swept on 
  many occasions by the Imperial Navy. 
  Naval vessels are deployed to the 
  cluster on a not too-infrequent basis; 
  all the while, pirates and smugglers 
  enjoy huge freedoms, subject only to 
  the Pirate Lords of Theev.
  This supplement is perfect to ﬂesh 
  out encounters upon Theev in the 
  Pirates of Drinax campaign, or for any 
  Travellers who visit this region of the 
  Trojan Reach. Theev itself is a prime 
  destination for those who have the 
  right contacts for it has that golden 
  pairing - a low Law Level married to 
  a high Tech Level. Anything can be 
  purchased or hired here and visitors 
  are free from restrictions - so long as 
  they do not disrupt the business of the 
  Lords who rule the system.
  
  (Order #10550371)
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Traveller/10 - Traveller 2nd edition (Mongoose)/MgT 2E.-.2016.-.Reach Adventure 3 The Calixcuel Incident.pdf