20. Haunted mine

On the receiver, the voices of the damned. The abandoned mine is has been dug from a huge asteroid, once saturated with lithium, all depleted now. The place is wrapped in legends, spoken of only on late nights in hushed tones: the Tomb they call it, all six thousand miners dead from asphyxiation due to corporate neglect, their souls forever stuck in those tunnels. Your floodlights reveal the antique airlock mechanism in stark detail. Better turn that radio off…

Type: Mine

Function: Abandoned, haunted

Power source: Thermonuclear batteries

Gravity: None

Size: 8 km diameter

Affiliation: Criminal 

Population: 8

Sells: Secretly extracted ore

Buys: Food, booze, water, fuel

The mine is occupied by a few squatters who remained after depletion and some admittedly serious accidents drove the owning corporation away. They found that a small but dense vein of ore remained, not enough for large scale mining, but quite sufficient for a few hardy prospectors to make a good living. Drawing on the reputation of the place, they began spreading rumours about ghosts in order to keep others away. The few who are attracted to the place anyway, they deter with clever use of remaining corpses, aerosols, transmitters and holo projectors, together with some passages rigged to collapse at dramatically appropriate moments.

Divide play into 10 minute turns during exploration. Each turn, roll on the random table and increase depth by one. You may re-roll any previously rolled results if you wish. If the PCs have obtained some kind of map, they may start at a depth determined by the roll of some appropriate die.

d10 + depth	Result
1	Dark, empty tunnels.
2	A room full of floating, human skulls. About 20% are real, the rest are 3D-printed, but finding out requires some examination.
3	An imploding archway! Save dexterity or take light damage.
4	Sudden shrieks and howls on all receivers! This is due to a nearby, powerful short-range emitter which can be found with some searching.
5	A cavern full of headless, deep frozen corpses.
6	A flickering light disappears around a bend in the tunnel. It’s a drone, designed to look like a will-o’-the-wisp. It leads headless intruders into a trapped room which implodes, save against medium damage.
7	Strange vapours rapidly expand into the vacuum. They are acidic and cause light damage.
8	Ghostly lights around the bend, keeps disappearing.
9	Ghostly apparitions of dead miners. The holoprojector is well hidden (difficult search check)
10	A flickering, skull-shaped cloud attacks the PCs. It’s aggressive nanites which have to be evaded or distracted with some kind of area effect, or will keep causing light damage.
11	Animated corpses slowly attack! Scrutiny reveals that they are equipped with remotely controlled exoskeleton, allowing them to move.
12	Darkness, stillness. All lights flicker. The ground softly vibrates.
13	A fresh excavation site, recently vacated. Abandoned mining equipment. Searching reveals a lost keyfob (which unlocks the habitation module).
14	Hellish rumbling (from the spinning habitation module) propagates through the walls. Everything shakes.
15+	A large, rapidly spinning cylindrical habitation module in a huge natural cavern. It used to be occupied by the administrative staff of the corp. In here, the squatters maintain quite comfortable living quarters. The doors are locked and the squatters are hiding inside with weapons ready.