4. Asteroid monastery

The small, rotating asteroid seems almost uninhabited, until you spot a few crude appendages on its craggy surface: towers, wrought of iron and concrete. One is adorned with a huge crucifix, blackened by micrometeorites. Another sports the primitivistic likeness of an angel. There is but one airlock and no other vessel: no way out for the anchorites within - until you came along.

Type: Habitat

Function: Monastery

Power source: Solar cells

Gravity: 0.2 SG

Size: 200 m diameter

Affiliation: Church

Population: 113

Sells: Prayers, manuscripts

Buys: Small amounts of food, water, cloth and crafting materials


The cloister-asteroid is home to a small group of devout monks. They have chosen a life in stark conditions, cold, darkness, hunger and low gravity. The life support system is designed to barely support them and long years in this environment has transformed the oldest among them into thin, pale ghosts.


The interior consists of stark chambers and tunnels carved into the rock. There are places to work, small cells to sleep in and a rather grandiose, gothic chapel with a beautiful, vacuum-proof stained glass window. 


The illuminated manuscripts produced in the refectory and stored in the library, are valuable collectors items. The right buyer might pay good money if one were to be procured somehow.


Brother Clyde, a gaunt, middle-aged man, wishes to leave the monastery; something that is strictly forbidden under the rules of the order. If this were to be discovered by his brethren or the emaciated abbot Laurence he would surely be put into permanent isolation in one of the towers. Nevertheless, he approaches the PCs given a chance. He can offer a stolen, beautiful, handwritten bible as payment. Chances are he will contact passing vessels in secret, using the transmitter in the abbots quarters.

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