These relics from the Dark Age of Technology are highly sought after, able to send individuals instantaneously through the immaterium to appear on a ship or planet many thousands of kilometres away.
Surprise Strike: Characters may make Hit and Run Attacks do not require a piloting test, as they travel directly to the heart of the enemy vessel. When using the teleportarium to perform such an attack, the attacker receives +20 to his Command Test. While a few of your sorties may not make it to the enemy vessel, far more than would make it across with boarding torpedoes or shuttles are successful.
Beaming Down
Teleportariums allow explorers to travel between the ship and locations many thousands of kilometres away. This travel is not entirely without risk to both the Teleportarium or the explorers themselves. Follow this two step process unless a teleport beacon has been deployed, in which case teleportation happens flawlessly (for PCs).
Step 1: Target Lock To beam to a location, the explorers must be able to scan the area with the main ships auger. Make a full round, Challenging (+0) Detection test (
Scrutiny + Detection) - the GM may alter the difficulty of this check to represent difficult atmospherics or jamming devices. On a failure the explorers arrive 1d10m off target plus 1d10m per degree of failure. It is nearly impossible to keep a scan of this intensity from an enemies auger arrays - should the scan be detected, enemy forces could be directed more rapidly to the teleport destination. To hide the scan, the Detection test becomes Arduous(-40).
Step 2: Engage Teleporter Make a full round, Challenging (+0) Tech Use test (modified at the GMs discretion for such things as system unfamiliarity, general ship damage, etc). If the test is passed, the explorers (optionally after a brief time delay) disappear and reappear at their new location! If the test simply fails, roll 1d5 on table HR-1 to find out why. If the test fails by three or more degrees, roll 1d10 on table HR-1 and find out if you've done something really, really wrong!
Rounds here refer to 5-second combat rounds, not void battle rounds. Table HR-1: Teleportarium Technical Mishaps| Roll | Effect |
|---|
| 1 - 4 | Targeting Lock Lost: A nearby astronomical event overwhelms the main ships auger. The target lock on the location is corrupted and needs to be re-established. Roll again to get a target lock. |
| 5 - 8 | Cogitator Crash: You activate the teleportation sequence, but something is wrong. A glitch in the primary data vault, probably caused by stray radiation, has caused the cogitators which process the targeting data to freeze entirely. Backup systems abort the sequence and the whole lot will need to be reset - you should be able to try to re-acquire your target in 1d10 rounds. |
| 9 | Black-out: The teleportarium begins it's power-up sequence as expected - but something goes wrong. The massive capacitor banks which power the system detect a possibly lethal fault and discharge harmlessly, but impressively, along the walls of the teleportarium chamber. As the grav-plating deactivates and the lights go out, only the piercing blue lightning of the discharge lights the area and the air begins to smell of ozone. After a few seconds the emergency stablighting engages and the vast teleportarium is bathed in a dull red light. The teleportarium becomes de-powered and will require 1d100 minutes to recharge. Now, how to get back to a grav-plated area... |
| 10 | Warp Instability: The teleportation sequence engages but as the explorers vanish from the pad a number of warning runes on the console illuminate - their meaning clear... forces beyond the purely technical have affected the teleport. Roll 1d10 and check against table HR-2, Teleport Warp Instabilities. If there are any characters manning the controls who are trained in Tech Use, they may attempt to make a Hard(-20) Tech Use test and reduce the number rolled by 1 plus an addition 1 for each degree of success, to a minimum of 1 |
Table HR-2: Teleport Warp Instabilities| Roll | Effect |
|---|
| 1 | Abort!: The teleportarium aborts the teleport and the travellers flicker briefly before being returned to the pad. Try again. |
| 2 | Emergency Abort!: The teleportarium's cogitators analyse the warp instability femtoseconds after transport and redirect the travellers to a safe area. The travellers re-materialise in a random (habitable) part of the ship. |
| 3 | Missing Time: The ancient cogitators which administer the hyper-complex processes and calculations involved in teleportation go into overdrive and manage to steer the transport around the instability. The travellers appear at their destination 1d10 rounds after de-materialisation. During this time the teleportarium system are completely frozen. The travellers do not experience the time they spend de-materialised. If the teleportarium is damaged, unpowered or destroyed in this time the travellers are all lost in the warp. |
| 4 | Scattered: The travellers travel unscathed through the warp instability, but their signals are separated. Instead of arriving as a group, the travellers arrive individually scattered around the target area. If a firm target lock was achieved, this results in the groups marching order being randomised. |
| 5 | Staggered: The travellers travel unscathed through the warp instability but their signals are shifted and separated. Instead of arriving as a group, the travellers arrive a random intervals, randomly scattered. All travellers roll 1d10, this is the turn after teleport in which they arrive, in a random location (see Scattered). If the teleportarium is damaged, unpowered or destroyed during this time, any un-materialised travellers are lost to the warp. |
| 6 | Stunned: The travellers have a rough journey and arrive at their destination stunned for 1d5 rounds. |
| 7 | Tormented: The travellers are briefly exposed to pure chaos - they experience thing that human minds just can not comprehend, try as they might. Travellers with the Warp Sight talent are unaffected, all other travellers gain 1d10 insanity. Cargo is unaffected. The teleport is successful. |
| 8 | Corrupted: The travellers exposed minds are preyed upon by warp entities. All travellers must make a Challenging(+0) Willpower test, applying any bonuses to resist possession or demons, or take 1d10 corruption points. Cargo is strangely tainted; food no longer tastes wholesome, water seems flat and stagnant, cogitators and data slates seem to take longer to function, and glitch more. The teleport is successful. |
| 9 | Torn: Shear stresses and tidal forces pull and twist your signal as you travel through the warp instability. This deals 1d10+5R damage to the torso, ignoring armour. Critical damage is applied when the traveller re-materialises. Cargo being transported is destroyed. The transport was successful. |
| 10 | Malevolent Hands: The travellers feel their very being ripped and torn as chaos entities of untold power attempt to steer them from their course. Make a Difficult(-10) Willpower test, applying any bonuses to resist possession or demons. A failure results in the travellers soul being consumed by chaos, the body arrives at the destination a charred husk. Cargo is lost in the warp forever. The teleport arrives on target, and any survivors gain 1d10 corruption and insanity points. |
Beaming Up
For explorers to return to the ship via the teleportarium is a different matter. The vast bio-scanners, immaterium-augers and cogitator banks which allow the teleportarium to perform its wondrous technical miracle are not usually available at your destination.
Returning Unaided
To return to the ship unaided requires the teleportarium operator to make both the Detection and Tech Use during the teleport Hard(-20). The process relies on the skill and hand-eye co-ordination of the teleportarium operator.
Should the Detection test be failed, scatter the area teleported by a number of meters equal to the number of meters off target rolled. Assuming the Tech-Use test is passed, a 5m radius sphere is teleported to the ship from this location.
If the Tech-Use test is failed then roll on the tables as appropriate and then retry... if you can. If Warp Instability is encountered, these apply to the returning cargo - any scattering effects scatter the returning cargo around the ship (or if our explorers are really unlucky, into space or a plasma engine!)
Teleport Homers
Each teleportarium has a set of Teleport Homing Beacons, created by a dedicated micro-factorum built into the teleportarium systems. This beacon contains a complex astro-positioning system which allows the teleportarium to fix and track the travelers with enough accuracy to scan them, and plot their path through the immaterium from orbit.
The teleport beacon weighs 10kg, and is a cylinder approximately 100cm tall and 10cm in diameter. It has 4 points of non-primitive armour and 3 wounds. It sits on three thin legs and is activated by a simple twist. Deploying the beacon takes 1 full round and can be achieved by anyone who knows the method.
Once the beacon is deployed, anything within 5 meters of it may be teleported to the ship without error or incident and inbound travellers always arrive safely within 5m of the beacon (should they choose it as their teleportation target). Beacons operate on a set of frequencies and secure cogitator uplink codes unique to each teleportarium and can not be used by any other teleportarium, or intercepted and altered by any known technology.
The teleportarium can manufacture a new homing beacon in ten days, and can only be coaxed to allow three teleport homers to be in existence for any single teleporter at any single time. No one knows how the machine spirits of the manufactorum know when to begin manufacture of a new beacon, but a replacement is always initiated within hours of an existing beacon being destroyed or lost. The teleportarium can be queried to return the approximate location of any extant homing beacon.
A beacon which is kept more than a light-hour away from the teleportarium for more than a day is considered 'lost' and will no longer function as a homer. The teleportarium will commission a replacement.
A beacon can be retrieved along with the teleported cargo, recovering it for re-use. Once activated, a beacon will continue to transmit for six hours and then deactivate. The beacon recharges it's internal cells when not in use through unknown means on a 1:1 basis.