: Sourcebook

Sourcebook
Equipment Weapons General Gear Domesticated Animals
Setting Racial Reaction Summary
Environment Outlife Bestiary
Recommended Media List

Equipment

Weapons

Machine Pistol: CR: 10m, R: 50m, D: 1M, T: F, W: 2kg, MS: -1, C: 300C, Avail: 7
Grenade Launcher: CR: 500m, R: 2000m, D: -, T: X, W: 8kg, MS: +1, C: 1000C, Avail: 6

General Gear

MRE: Food and sundries, including a one-shot heating pad, not including water. Unappetizing but survivable. Avail: 6, Cost: 3C, Weight: 0.5kg.
Hazard Suit: Full protection suit, with an air filtration system and 30 minute sealed air supply, immunity to contact & gas poisons, a +9 bonus vs. radiation, and is flameproof and heat-resistant to ~150'C. Because the suits are fully heat-sealed, anyone in a hazard suit shows up very poorly, if at all, on thermal vision. AR: 1, Avail: 3, Cost: 300C, Weight: 5kg.
Pocket Laser: An essential all-purpose tool. At low power/wide dispersion, it can illuminate a variable-sized cone at up to daylight levels. Tight beam can be used as a cutting torch (anything less than metal at 5m long x 1cm deep per minute, metal at 1m long x 1mm deep per minute), or can be used as a weapon (CR: 3m, R: 10m, D: d6, T: X, MS: -). Weight: -, DPC: 1, Avail: 6, Cost 300C.

While humans cannot survive in Waste World's environment, many other life forms can. In particular, insects and reptiles have adapted well, with thousands of new species and great variations from their 10KYA ancestors. Symbiotic animals and fungi are widespread. Jungles of plants, trees, fungi, and symbiotic combinations have grown wherever the environment can be adapted to - most of the planet is toxic desert wasteland, but the swamps near Hydra, the coasts in general, and small pockets of less-hostile environs, usually with one or more habs nearby, provide fiercely-competitive habitats, and their isolated nature also encourages diversity.

Outlife

All life that can survive without a rebreather or symbsuit is classified "Outlife". These fall into several categories:

Plant (native)

All but a very few species are passive, though they may have odd properties, and many have adapted to take nutrients from something other than the generally poor soil.

Many species of trees, bushes, and flowers have no significant changes, though more have thorns and hard bark (often AR 1-2), and better fruit/nuts/odor to improve the parent's survival rate and get wider dissemination - in this environment, slow spreaders become extinct.

The ocean sludge still contains algae, geneered to survive the toxins it has to grow in, providing the oxygen used by all life on the planet and the base of the ocean's food chain.

Greenlife (xenid plants)

Most species are passive, but a fairly large number are mobile, active, and often supplement a photovorous diet with herbivorous and even carnivorous.

Insect

Native species adapted to the new environment quite rapidly, and they range from nearly microscopic up to 1m long; both herbivores and carnivores exist. Many species can fly.

Xenobug

Alien bugs (Swarm and other species) with segmented and reinforced internals, which allow them to grow much larger than insects; many exceed 2m long, and some are up to 10m long. A few smaller species can fly.

Reptile

Snakes, lizards, and turtles have evolved into every conceivable ecological niche except aerial, as insects, xenobugs, and the few surviving avians have a tight lock on it.

Xenoreptile

Very few species other than the reptars have survived well.

Avian

Only a handful of avians, the toughest scavengers, can survive in the wild.

Fish

Almost all native fish are extinct, but geneered and xenid fish have thrived in the new chemical soup oceans. Competition from aquatic reptiles, insects, xenobugs, greenlife, and sybmiotes has driven evolution fast, and the fish have developed into a dizzying variety of species.

Xenofish

As with the native fish, xenofish have done very well, but have to face constant evolutionary pressure.

Fungi

Xenid and native fungi are widespread, surviving anywhere there is sufficient biomass.

Symbiote

Fungus/Plant, Fungus/Greenlife, and Fungus/Animal hybrids are found everywhere, but especially in the new jungles, where their spores have infected and adapted to most of the other life; an old-growth jungle and all of its inhabitants may be solid white or grey from their symbiotes.

Amphibian

Essentially extinct, except for small pockets in underground caves with springs. Water-permeable skin does not combine well with the level of contamination in Waste World water.

Mammal

Nearly extinct, due to slow adaptation process and long lifespans. Humans and their attendant animals and rats are probably the only mammals left on Waste World.

Bestiary

Ambrosia Vine (Plant)

Fat thick leaves with a heavenly scent, tastes wonderful, but is deathly poison to all animals (ST 5, does 2d6 per round a save is failed). Seeds then grow in the fertilized ground.

Bandolier Bush (Greenlife)

More a mass of thin green tentacles with 5cm seeds growing inside than a proper "bush", the bandolier bush has a powerful defense mechanism - it can throw its seeds at any creature within 20m, and the seeds then explode on impact (black powder and hard shell fragments), removing threats and spreading seeds at the same time.

Bloat Symbiote (Symbiote)

Coats of fungal symbiote over an animal, providing protection (AR 2) in exchange for feeding off the animal's wastes.

Devil (Xenofish)

A widely-differentiated genus of xenid fish, with 2 grasping tentacles and 2 flat flipper tentacles, wide round mouths rimmed with rasping ridges, internal gills, and no eyes - they use sonar. Though almost all are colored bright red and yellow, they can vary immensely in size and other features. A few of the dozens or hundreds of species are:
Flying Devil: Up to 1m long, can propel itself out of the water to hunt flying or water surface creatures, or to escape enemies. Can leap up to 3m high and 5m through the air.
Nipping Devil: Small predator, often bites at surface creatures' extremities dangled in the water. A common food fish for habs.
Spiny Devil: Like a pufferfish, fairly harmless until threatened, then the poisoned spines stick up.
Muck Devil: Bottom-feeders. Can spray a silt cloud into the water to make a getaway or a stream of silt to discourage predators and human fishermen.
Bloodsucking Devil: A small (10cm long) leech-like parasitic devil. See "The African Queen" for the effects of trudging through water infested with Bloodsucking Devils.

Devilbunny (Symbiote Mammal)

Soft, fuzzy, moldy, smart, and fast. They can spray a choking cloud of spores at attackers, and eating their contaminated meat is a death sentence. Cunning devilbunnies will sometimes taunt predators into attacking, removing a threat to their warren. Each warren will have 50-200 devilbunnies, and 1d3 of them will have 1d3 mutant or psionic powers, the latter at PL 1d6+1.

Drum Tree (Plant)

When it senses a nearby animal with its pressure-sensitive roots and leaves, it signals with a drumming noise; even if the would-be herbivore does not flee immediately, other animals come and eat it.

Fast Vine (Plant)

Only relatively fast - can grow and move up to 10m per hour, which can be enough to wrap sleeping animals for slow death & fertilization, or to overgrow abandoned buildings and vehicles.

Floater Pad (Plant)

Lily pads coated with sticky contact poison and digestive juices. Found in sizes from 10cm to 5m diameter.

Freaky Fungus (Fungus)

Mushroom that is hallucinogenic in small quantities and poisonous in larger amounts. There are many other similar species.

Furball (Insect)

Fuzzy, herbivorous, cute caterpillar, 20-50cm long, 10-20cm diameter, totally docile, often kept as pets.

Hellmonkey (Xenobug)

6-limbed, 150cm-long insectoids with rear limbs serving as prehensile tails and the other four as brachiating and grasping limbs; while the limbs only end in claws, they're as strong as metal clamps and fairly dextrous. Their exoskeleton has a chameleon effect. Despite their horrific appearance, they eat only fruit and small insects and lizards. Their chirping and clicking calls carry for long distances; they've taken the place of the monkey and macaw calls we associate with jungles. Occasionally domesticated and kept as pets in Hydra and Janus.

Megaroach (Insect)

1m long cockroaches, omnivorous. "Killah cahkroaches" -George Peppard, _Damnation Alley_.

Neon Bug (Insect)

Luminous butterflies. In the wild, their color displays are used to attract mates. In civilization, thread leashes can be attached to them with a dab of glue and given to children, or used in displays.

Petrochoral (micro-organism)

Often built on the bases of old coral reefs, the old coral builders now extinct, petrochoral is a plastic-like deposit refined from the oceans' sludge by a microrg evolved from oil spill cleanup bacteria.

Piranha Ant (Insect)

Hundreds of 5cm-long ants swarm & strip prey to bone in seconds.

Punji Pit (Plant)

Lines the inside & bottom of a pit with 30cm-long thorns, covers the top with a mat of vines. When a mobile creature falls into the pit, it cannot escape and decomposes into fertilizer.

Razorwing Roach (Insect)

2cm-long miniature flying roaches with razor-sharp wing cases.

Rebirth Tree (Greenlife)

Resurrects animals placed inside, but has partial control of the reborn as defenders and "recruiters" for several months, after which the seed planted inside sprouts, and the (late) defender gets to nourish the sprout.

Rot Beetle (Insect)

Flies into wounds, lays eggs there, grubs eat their way out. Also carries disease, ensuring that the victim can't fight the grubs much.

Shoveller (Xenobug)

Large grazer (4m long, 2m wide, 1m tall, 8 limbs) with tough skin (AR 4) and enormous strength (ST +9). Occasionally trained and used on hab farms and in circuses.

Slither Shroom (Fungus)

Like slugs, but fungal. Coprovores & herbivores.

Sprawltree (Plant)

Giant complexes of trees, limbs, and roots, covering many square km and often 30-50m tall. Entire ecosystems and tribes exist only in these trees.

Thorngrass (Plant)

A wheat-like tall grass, covered with very small but painful throns. Thorngrass covers most of the non-desert plains & hills. Shovellers, many other insect and reptile herbivores, and their attendant predators live in Thorngrass. Many habs and outposts subsist on Thorngrass farming.

White Worm (Symbiote Insect)

In static form, appears to be merely a small pile of dessicated worms. Given an energy/food source and water, they awaken, breed, and divide hyper-fast into a white worm mass, engulfing prey. They can grow at a rate of 1m^3/round.

Zombie Worm (Symbiote Insect)

Invades & possesses animals, when it dies both parts breed & feed. The victims retain their brains for a considerable time, only having control of their bodies taken from them.

Recommended Media List

[book] Against A Dark Background by Iain M. Banks: Isolation, war, futility, and bizarre high-tech gadgets.
[movie] "Alien", "Aliens", "Alien Resurrection": aka Swarm.
[anime, manga] "Appleseed": Islands of civilization amidst a wasteland; Olympus is very similar to Prometheus, except cleaner, and they'd replace the bioroids with Panzers.
[anime] "Battle Angel Alita": I think this is the right one - about a junkyard city beneath a floating city, with cyborgs organlegging each other down below and civilization above.
[movie] "Brazil": A Promethean accounting prole dreams of being an Ikarean.
[book] The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov: Life in a stifling self-contained metropolis.
[book, movie] Damnation Alley: Post-apocalypse wastelands, the guided tour.
[book, movie] Dune, by Frank Herbert: Hardship as the forge of superior warriors, great houses warring over a limited commodity only found in deserts inhabited by giant worms and gathered with big crawlers...
[book] Feersum Enjinn by Iain M. Banks: The sourcebook for the Ultramundae, reincarnation, and the star tower. *VERY* good book.
[anime] "Fist of the North Star": Get the subtitled version, the dubbed one was Mutilated by Macek(TM). Bizarre martial arts and mutants in a post-holocaust world.
[movie] "Hardware": A romance in Prometheus between a scavenger and an artist who never leaves her computer-controlled apartment. Oh, and a voyeur. And a killer robot (obviously infected by the Apokalypse Virus).
[book] He, She, and It, by Marge Piercy: An independant habitat trying to survive, economically in a world dominated by a handful of large megacorporations, and physically in an ecologically poisoned world, using "cyborgs", as they call humaniform robots, and with genetically- and cybernetically-enhanced humans.
[short story] "Johnny Mnemonic": The original short story would work perfectly in Prometheus.
[movies] "Mad Max", "Road Warrior", "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome": Skavengers roaming the wastelands, and a few people trying to maintain civilization around the habs.
[movie] "Metropolis", by Fritz Lang: The first sighting of Prometheus.
[books] Metropolitan, City On Fire, by Walter Jon Williams: Another world isolated by outside forces, with a single essential commodity, and thousands of years spent huddled in the same (world-encompassing in this case) city.
[book] The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle: An isolated world with dwindling resources fought over by geneered warriors; Wasteworlders are the Moties. Crazy Eddie is probably all but eliminated from the Wasteworlder spirit, too.
[manga, anime] "Nausicaa: Princess of the Wind": Demolished and toxic environment, with surviving humans fighting over it.
[movie] "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone": Strange stuff in a wasteland with Molly Ringwald.
[movie] "Steel Dawn", et cetera: There are hundreds of post-apocalypse desert movies, most of them remakes of westerns. Watch these at your own risk.
[movie, comic] "Tank Girl": Yah, deserts, big guns, punk, evil empires, roo fucking. Looks the same to me. Well, except for the roo fucking. Only Rebecca does that.
[movies] "Terminator", "Terminator 2": The future battlefield scenes are perfect visuals for this game.
[comic] "Young Ex-Mutant Samurai Humans": Weird post-holocaust goofiness and splatterpunk. There's some excellent source material in this and the two spin-off series.

This sourcebook is © Copyright 1998 by Mark Damon Hughes <kamikaze@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>
Waste WorldTM and all associated trademarks are owned by Manticore Productions Ltd, and no challenge to their trademark is intended.
Permission is granted to print and use free of charge, but do not redistribute - always refer others back to these originals at
<http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/WasteWorld/>

Last modified: 99Mar25
Added Machine Pistol and Grenade Launcher

Blog Archive

Blog Topics:

Links:

iPhone Games:

Computer Games:

Utilities:

Site Pages:

: Sourcebook

Equipment

Weapons

General Gear

Domesticated Animals

Setting

Racial Reaction Summary

Environment

Outlife

Bestiary

Recommended Media List