Ghost Ship Lazarus

A One-Shot Adventure for Stars Without Number: Revised Edition A distress beacon has been silent for over three hundred years. Then, without warning, it answers. The Lazarus was a Mandate-era generation ship carrying nearly twelve thousand souls to a distant colony before vanishing during the chaos of the Scream. Lost to history, it suddenly emerges from metaspace—dark, crippled, and broadcasting a single automated docking request. When your crew boards the derelict vessel, they find no welcoming committee. Emergency lights flicker through abandoned corridors. Skeletons still wait in customs lines. A lonely dockmaster AI has spent centuries maintaining impossible quarantine protocols while desperately hoping someone would finally answer its call. But something aboard the Lazarus never truly died. As players explore abandoned docking bays, security offices, cargo warehouses, maintenance tunnels, research laboratories, and vast cryogenic chambers, they slowly uncover the truth behind a catastrophic containment failure that destroyed an entire civilization-in-transit. Every clue reveals another piece of a tragedy built on isolation, desperation, and one scientist's fatal mistake. Ghost Ship Lazarus is a slow-burn science-fiction horror adventure focused on investigation, atmosphere, and difficult moral choices rather than endless combat. The adventure rewards careful exploration, engineering, diplomacy, and problem solving while maintaining constant tension through an escalating lockdown system that turns the ship itself into an active threat. Inside you'll find: A complete one-shot adventure for 4–6 Level 1 characters Designed for one long session or two shorter sessions 13 full-color tactical maps ready for tabletop play Atmospheric NPCs, including the haunting Dockmaster AI ARBITER Memorable allies, rivals, and tragic survivors New alien horrors and biological threats Handouts, terminal logs, and recovered documents Salvage, treasures, and meaningful player choices Multiple possible endings based on player decisions Hooks for continuing the story into an ongoing campaign Rather than relying on constant combat, Ghost Ship Lazarus builds suspense through environmental storytelling, abandoned technology, corrupted records, and the creeping realization that the greatest danger may not be what stalks the corridors—but what players choose to bring home. Will you rescue the sleeping colonists? Will you preserve the quarantine... or break it? Will you help the lonely intelligence that has stood its watch for centuries? Or will you become just another forgotten entry in the Lazarus's final log? Perfect for fans of Alien, Event Horizon, Dead Space, The Expanse, and classic science-fiction horror, Ghost Ship Lazarus delivers cinematic tension, unforgettable exploration, and difficult decisions that will stay with your players long after the final airlock opens.