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™ CORE ™ SERIOUSly? Free-to-Play? Imagination is powerful. To quote Albert Einstein, “Imagination is more impor- tant than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and under- stand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Well said. We believe in the power of imagination and how it creates wonder and inspira- tion. Roleplaying games are one of the few things that can do what they do. Some might say they are the last frontier for wild imagination and creativity. We certainly believe so. That’s why we make roleplaying games – to help make that possible. Making roleplaying games the way we have hasn’t helped us spark imagination the way we’d hoped. We want to try something different. First, we’re adopting the Creative Commons license, so that you can contribute to the game in a meaningful way. That way, we can support you in your awesome ideas and help you get them out to your fellow players. Then, we’re going to give away electronic copies of the core book for free. We’ve all bought games that didn’t end up working out for us. That’s why we’re giving this to you for free – so that you can figure out if you like the game before you decide to spend money on it. If you like The Void and you play it, we’re going to put out a bunch of cool ma- terial at very reasonable prices. We’re going to do it buffet-style, so you can pick and choose what works best for you and your group. Buying these supplements supports us making more cool material, along with the rest of your fellow players. After all, life’s too short to waste time and money on games you don’t like. – The Staff of WildFire CREDITS Created By Thanks To christopher DORN • The Gen Con Referee Coordinator: Bob robert GLASS Arens matthew GraU • The Gen Con Referee Team: Bob Arens, fraser MCKAY Chris Dorn, Todd Frazee, Dave Stoeckel, mike VAILLANCOUrt Charlie Wong • The rest of the WildFire crew: Laurel Dorn, Written By Steve Pitcher, Travis Wickline christopher DORN • The rest of the Black Sky crew: Marcelo robert GLASS FIgueroa, Mike Muldoon, Owen Seyler, matthew GraU Matt Steele, Melissa Volkmann, Erik Yaple fraser MCKAY • Matthew Sprange, for asking us to mix stephen MCQUILLAN Lovecraft and Traveller, which became The Void. IP/Line Developer • Jonni Emrich, for being the light of my life matthew GraU – MG. • http://infrno.net – the place to play (and Editing playtest) roleplaying games on the inter- jonni EMRICH, matthew GraU net. Art Direction & http://fearthevoid.com 2 Graphic Design Forums, Information, Downloads mike VAILLANCOUrt WildFire LLC Layout & 23321 SE 291st St. Typesetting Black Diamond, WA 98010 matthew GraU www.wildfirellc.com Cover Art Black Sky marco MAZZONI www.blackskystudios.com Interior Illustration First Printing. ©2012, 2013 WildFire LLC. Creative Com- Jonas ANDREASSEN, Marco CaradONNA, mons License; Some Rights Reserved. The Void and Daniel CHaveZ, Empty Room STUDIOS, Tom the Cthulhu Saga are trademarks of WildFire LLC. All Rights Reserved. All characters, names, places, and text GARDEN, Zach Graves, David HammOND, herein are copyrighted by WildFire LLC. References to Alex IGLESIAS, Marco MAZZONI, Blake MCDER- the works of H. P. Lovecraft are from and remain in the MOtt, Sean MCMUrcHY, Oleg SAAKYAN, Adam public domain. SCHUMPert, Marek TARNawski, Chris TILstra, Mike VAILLANCOUrt, Frank WALLS This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported WildFire License. Management To view a copy of this license, visit: matthew BURKE http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ matthew GraU or send a letter to: Creative Commons, 171 Second fraser MCKAY Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA. [What this means is that you are free to copy, share, and remix the text and artwork within this book under the following conditions: 1) you do so only for non-com- mercial purposes; 2) you attribute WildFire LLC; 3) you license any derivatives under the same license. For spe- cific details, appropriate credits, and updates/changes to this license, please see: http://wildfirellc.com] TABLE OF CONTENTS (A) Fiction: Kinetofayetophobia 4 (1) Introduction 16 (2) Overview 20 (3) Teaching Adventure 26 (B) Fiction: The Hulk 48 (4) Setting 54 (C) Fiction: Training’s Over 70 (5) Characters 76 3 (6) Skills, Qualities, Talents 92 (7) Rules 110 (D) Fiction: Spin Control 140 (8) Technology 146 (9) Spaceships 172 (E) Fiction: Far Strider 178 (10) Worlds 184 (F) Fiction: Bad Salvage 194 (11) Monsters 200 (G) Fiction: Level 23 210 (12) Gamemaster 216 Appendices 236 A KinetoFayetophobia That’s all there was to it. The solar No time to lose, Anastasia did the system was going to hell in a hand- one thing she could. She grabbed the basket. biggest locker she could find, way to- wards the back, and dove into it. For- Those are funny the thoughts that tunately, she could lock the door by occur when being chased by dozens putting her hand through one of the of tentacles that burst out of the walls holes. She didn’t figure the thing was and floor, one by one. Each lashed out smart enough to work a digital lock. at Anastasia, trying to gain purchase on some part of her body to do only Her Bandit pistol wasn’t going to god-knows-what. do much when the time came, but it was all she had. The thing had al- The wriggling, sour-smelling, slimy, ready claimed her Blizzard subma- 4 boneless limbs brought out a primal chine gun back outside. She looked fear in her, the kind that makes the frantically around the container for back of your legs go numb and your anything that might help, but there knees go rubbery. The kind Anasta- was nothing. Then, she froze. sia had to choke back with every last shred of her will if she wanted to live The first slender tentacle gently through this madness. wormed its way through one of the holes, about hip height. It probed Right, left, right – it didn’t matter its way through, cautiously but de- anymore. In her panic, she’d totally liberately. The second wasn’t far forgotten the layout of this tragic behind, this one much thicker than little building stuck deep in the Mar- the first. It could barely push its way tian outback. She hoped desperately through, but barely was enough. The to find another door out, so that the fear gripped Anastasia again, much thing might get caught up in the build- worse this time. She grabbed hold of ing long enough for her to get clear. a cargo strap, just to help keep her from collapsing. Charging through the only door she could see, her only way forward, More tentacles followed, backlit by which was marked storage. Looking the lights of the storage room which around, this was probably the last poured through the holes. She hoped door she wanted. There was no oth- they weren’t going to notice her er way out. The room was filled only – hoped against all hope – but she with storage lockers, but that wasn’t knew better. In a few seconds the the worst of it. The doors to the lock- probing monstrosities would zero in ers weren’t solid – they had holes in on her and rip her limb from limb. If them. she was lucky. 5 Warden Anastasia Kiss: Martian Outback One of the larger tentacles inched the other side, closer every moment. its way towards her. The tip touched The command came from her brain her uniform and slowly slithered its to fire the gun, but something short- way up. If terror hadn’t already para- circuited the thought en route. lyzed her, the smell would have made Anastasia vomit. Another came from This was a hell of a way to die. Suddenly, the storage room ex- the bright lights of the casinos. Its ploded with a bright orange light and mayhem felt like home. she could smell burning flesh. The tentacles spasmed and began to Coming back from the restroom, yank their way out of the locker. The she practically melted into the chair. room lit up again, but this time some “Finally,” she said. “A hot meal in a of the flames shot through the holes civilized place.” in the locker, singeing Anastasia’s eyebrows and bangs. The last of the Marcus looked carefully around tentacles slithered out and she was the room, taking in each person in thankfully alone. turn, which was something he did ev- erywhere he went. “I ordered for you Anastasia kicked the hot metal while you were gone.” door as hard as she could. Her com- bat boot took the worst of it, but the “Thanks,” she replied. “I didn’t want door shot open. The wriggling things to wait. I’ve missed Asian food so were withdrawing into the ground as much. What did you order?” 6 a figure shot another burst of fiery death at them. It took a minute for Marcus smiled. “It’s a surprise.” Anastasia to overcome her shock to figure out who it was. “So I’ve been correlating the data and this isn’t good.” Felius had his It was Felius, who looked downright nose in his computer again. funny – a bookworm with a flame- thrower. What the hell. It wasn’t the Anastasia took a sip of her water. weirdest thing that she’d seen today.