Ancient Artifacts
Ancient Artifacts posted in Gamma World forum comment posted by derek_holland If the resulting roll is the worst possible when examining an artifact something bad happens to the character (in addition to the artifact breaking). If this is a normal artifact, it is usually a small explosion, shock or weapon discharge. If it is a superscience artifact, the result can be much more unpleasant. I had a brain storm and here are the results. Some are automatically lethal but the chances of that happening should be very small compared with others effects.
The artifact adheres to the character and then launches to orbit. (Hopefully they didn't have any essential gear for the party.)
A temporal burst ages everything within X meters by Y years.
The artifact teleports away, along with half of the character.
The artifact is reduced to dust and half of the character is transmuted into base element X.
The artifact transforms into a cloud of acid-filled bubbles. In effect this creates a mobile mine field the character has to navigate to escape.
The artifact shorts out and the escaping energy forms a cage around the character for 1d6 months. An early escape requires an EMP or similar effect if the mutant can not teleport on their own.
The artifact becomes a city seed and germinates. Within X months an area Y kilometers in diameter will be covered in infrastructure. (Hopefully this won't happen underground, that would be really bad.)
The artifact absorbs the tools used on it and transforms into a robot, its AI complete insane.
The artifact scrambles all data storage within X meters.
The artifact transmutes all food within X meters into Y material.
The artifact summons a Fortean storm that will last for X hours.
The character gains a defect. (Could be something new like hypersensitive hearing, hostile seal flippers, or no temporal sense.)
The artifact's AI and character switch forms. The AI was an uploaded Ancient and finally they have a body once again.
The artifact does not break and now is a constant beacon to X.
The artifact does not break and now activates all technological hazards within X meters.
The artifact does not break and now activates all alarms within X meters.
The artifact downloads gibberish to the character's mind. (This costs skill points or inflicts an Intelligence penalty depending on edition.)
The artifact drains one skill from the character.
The artifact fuses with the character and becomes an annoying symbiont. Damage is shared so removal is very difficult.
The artifact turns 1d4 power cells within X meters into bombs that will go off if used.
The artifact animates the closest corpse/carcass into a mindless zombie.
The character contracts a technological illness.
The artifact creates addictive music or color pattern and then dies. All hearing or viewing it suffer from withdrawl.
The artifact scans the minds of all present and projects terrifying images (realistic holograms) for 1d6 minutes before breaking down.
The character's stock species changes. This may be within their original category (e.g. alligator to wasp or cactus to sunflower) or between categories (e.g. human to plant).
The artifact creates an air tight force field X meters in diameter. The only way to shut it down is to break the artifact.
The artifact melts down and forms a volcano within X days.
The artifact does not break and transforms into much less valuable technology.
The artifact creates 1d4+1 duplicates of itself from nearby superscience artifacts. All are broken.
The artifact creates 1d4+1 duplicates of the character from other characters nearby. The duplicates consider themselves the original even though their clothing may indicate otherwise.
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