Scenario 3 — Greywell

A ready-to-run single session — two to four hours — and the salvage scenario of False Light: a derelict crawl through the dark that is the setting's thematic heart and its signature way to die. Where the earlier scenarios taught hardware and the ledger, Greywell teaches the toolkit's deadliest corner — the salvage generator (Chapter 38), a stack of environmental hazards on clocks (Chapter 13) where The Cold Lantern showed just one, and a drone sent ahead into the dark (Chapter 25). It is also the fullest solo showcase of the set: the wreck crawl is the Oracle's natural home, and the margins carry it throughout.

Run it with the pregens or your own crew. Everything is built from rules already in the book. It runs GM-led, co-op, or solo.

The one-paragraph pitch. Out at Greywell, where the Coldwake Reach's dead ships drift in silent orbits, there's a fresh one — too fresh, the way they've all been lately. The crew goes to strip it before a rival does, into vacuum and killing cold and a hull that's still coming apart. They came for alloy and parts to feed the note. What they find is a hold of failing cryo-pods with people still inside, proof the wreck was made, and a GANYMEDE breaking-ship already burning in-system to claim what's theirs. They cannot take all of it. They have to choose what's worth the air.

Index§

• The situation behind the screen
• The wreck (pre-rolled; reroll freely)
• How the crew gets the job (the hook)
• Act I — Approach and Survey
• Act II — The Crawl
• Act III — The Breaker Arrives
• The choice — what's worth the air
• Wrapping up — rewards and threads
• Running it solo or GM-less
• GM cheat-sheet

The situation behind the screen§

The derelict is one of GANYMEDE's manufactured wrecks — a passenger hauler stranded by the same moved-beacon scheme behind Dead Reckoning, robbed of what its raiders could grab quickly, and left for the breaking-ship to render at leisure. GANYMEDE doesn't know the crew is here yet. It will soon: a breaking-ship is already inbound to finish the job, and a free trader poaching their wreck is exactly the kind of loose end the firm closes.

Two things make this more than a payday. First, the hauler's cryo-pods are still live — passengers who went under for a long haul and are now dying one failing pod at a time in the cold and the dark. Second, the hauler's last nav log and the stranding's signature are aboard, fresh proof that GANYMEDE is making wrecks (the lever from the Campaign Frame). The crew came to strip metal. The wreck has other ideas about what it's worth.

Faction beat. Whatever the crew carries out of Greywell tilts GANYMEDE's clock (Chapter 34): take the salvage and slip away quiet, it holds or ticks forward; carry out the people or the proof and use either, it ticks back — and GANYMEDE now has a name and a grudge.

The wreck (pre-rolled; reroll freely)§

Built on the Chapter 38 salvage generator and ready to run. Reroll any line that doesn't fire your table.

• What it is (Ch 38): a small passenger hauler / liner, recently dead, still cold-soaking — a manufactured wreck of GANYMEDE's making.
• What's aboard (Ch 38): three finds, in tension — reclaimable alloys and ship parts (the payday), cryo-pods with living Sleepers still inside (the people), and data: the last nav log and the beacon's tamper-read (the proof).
• What's wrong (Ch 38 — roll every time; here, a stack): a hull breach (vacuum and drift, no easy footing), killing cold throughout, structural collapse as the hull settles, a radiation pocket bleeding from the cracked drive, the cryo-pods failing one by one (a rescue clock), and a rival arriving now — GANYMEDE's breaking-ship (a time clock).

The Lantern variant. If The Cold Lantern ended with the station dead, the wreck can be the Cold Lantern itself — the ring the crew couldn't save, now a cold hulk drifted out to Greywell, its market and dock and the people who froze still aboard. A devastating callback; run the crawl through corridors the crew walked in life.

How the crew gets the job (the hook)§

• The note, again. Vance's payment looms (Chapter 28) and salvage is the frontier's fastest, deadliest money. A wreck this fresh is a fortune in alloy and parts — if they reach it first. (Default.)
• A tip from the dark. Tace Driftwell (Ace's broker) or a Greywell hermit-keeper passes coordinates: a hauler that went silent on the corridor, not yet logged. (They don't mention who else is coming.)
• Following the thread. Straight off Dead Reckoning, the moved beacon pointed here — the crew came to Greywell to see what the stranding scheme leaves behind, and found it.

Per-pregen hooks:

• Echo (engineer) — the crawl is hers: Reads the Tunnels, the low-g frame, the toolkit, the read on what's structural and what's about to fail. The wreck is the kind of dark she was born into.
• Edda (medic) — the failing pods are exactly what she can't walk past; cryo-revival is her old-world art (Lost-Age Physician), and Old Grief has its opening among the sleepers.
• Ace (pilot) — matching the wreck's tumble to dock is a Always Finds a Way Through moment; he runs the survey drone like he was born to it.
• Bram (soldier) — Won't Leave Anyone Behind turns the pod bay into the only thing that matters; he'll carry sleepers out through the cold by hand.
• Jinx (fixer) — she does the math on the breaker's arrival and the angle on the proof, but her Maimed leg and Strength/Endurance Disadvantages make a vacuum crawl genuinely dangerous — keep her on the drone and the deal, not the structural stuff.

Act I — Approach and Survey§

Where: the Greywell graveyard, drifting hulls and long shadows, and the cold hauler tumbling slowly against the stars. This act is reconnaissance — and it rewards looking before leaping (the lesson the rad compartment taught in the Lantern, in a bigger key).

Matching the wreck. Docking or grappling a tumbling hull is a Piloting test (8+) — Ace's hour, Advantage with Always Finds a Way Through. A failure isn't a wall; it's a hard knock (a Damaged node to the Account, Chapter 25) and a second pass.

Send the drone first. Before anybody goes in, the crew can fly a survey drone down a breached vent (Chapter 25): operated through Recon to see, Piloting for the tight bits, on the control link that the wreck's dead, fume-choked compartments will test (interference, a Disruptive flicker, a jam — hold it with Communications). The drone maps the layout, finds the breach, paints the radiation pocket as a hot zone to route around (Advantage on Recon through good optics), and finds the pod bay still drawing power — the moment the job stops being simple. The drone is fragile (Armor 3, a single Wrecked node); losing it to a collapse or a live security mount just means going in blind.

What the survey reveals, the smart way in:

Two clocks start now. Make them visible (Chapter 33): the pods (passengers dying one failing pod at a time — a rescue clock) and the breaker (GANYMEDE's ship inbound — a time clock). The crew cannot empty both before the second fills. That is the scenario.

🎲 Running it solo. This is the Oracle's home ground — set an expectation and test it (Chapter 44). "A dead hauler this far out should be empty." Ask "Are there survivors aboard?" at Even. The Yes (the live pods) is the whole adventure arriving unbidden. Then map the dangers by asking: "Is the drive pocket hot?" (Likely — it's a stranded wreck), "Is the hull stable?" (Unlikely). Each answer is a hazard you didn't have to author. A spark (doubles) → roll What Intrudes (Chapter 43): a shift in the wreck, a new arrival, the environment turning.

Act II — The Crawl§

Where: inside the hauler — vacuum, dark, and a cold that bites through everything but a Sealed suit. This is the hazard set-piece, run on the hazard clock (Chapter 13): survivable if handled smart, lethal if rushed.

The crawl stacks several dangers, each on its own clock — the GM dials severity by how fast each ticks:

• Vacuum & breach (Chapter 13). The hull is open; this demands vacuum-rated Sealed suits (a vacc suit or better). A breach, a Corrosive splash, or a bad tear drops a Wanderer into exposure — the suffocation clock starts at once, 1 Physical trauma per round, and the first round's decompression is an Endurance test (8+) or a Maimed-grade node. Patch a breached suit with a vacc-suit patch kit (a Significant Action) — which is why they ride on every hull.
• Killing cold (Chapter 13). Outside a heated suit, the cold is a Survival (Endurance) test (8+) each interval, 1 Physical trauma on a failure. A thermal cloak (Edda carries one) or Hardened gear eases it.
• Structural collapse (Chapter 13, falling/impact). The hull is settling; a weakened deck or a shifting spar is an Athletics (Dexterity) test (8+) to ride out or scramble clear, damage by the fall/impact if it goes (and at the worst spans, Maimed-grade). Echo's read on what's about to give is the difference between a route and a grave.
• The radiation pocket (Chapter 13). The cracked drive bleeds rads aft — Maimed-grade, against the Radiation rating (0 for an unprotected body, raised only by rad-rated/Sealed gear), and ordinary armor does nothing. Unlike the Lantern's mag-clamped grab, this hazard is avoidable: the survey marked it, so a crew that planned a route never has to cross it. A crew that rushes, or that must reach something aft, pays the Lantern's price.

The two prizes, pulled apart. The holds (alloy, parts — the payday) lie one way; the pod bay (the people) another; the data core with the proof is a quick pull from the bridge. Reaching all three costs time, and time is the breaker. Let the crew feel the tradeoff in their feet: every compartment crossed is a tick toward GANYMEDE's arrival.

The people in the pods. A failing pod is a clock of its own — stabilizing one is a Biology or Engineering test (Edda's Lost-Age Physician and Steady Hands shine; Untrained hands risk killing the occupant). Reviving a sleeper outright is the work of a Medbay and a jump (Chapter 26), not a field action — so the real question is how many pods the crew can pull and carry whole before the air, the cold, or the breaker runs out.

Optional teeth. If the table wants a fight in the dark, the hauler's automated security woke when the pods drew emergency power: a malfunctioning gun drone or fixed mount (Chapter 25/40 — fire it with the crew's avoid rolls, Disruptive drops it, Cracking turns it). Keep it a complication, not the point; the wreck itself is the adversary here.

🎲 Running it solo. Each compartment is an expectation tested: "This deck should hold." Ask "Does it give way?" at the likelihood the fiction sets, and let a Yes be the collapse. Run the hazards as written — most deal trauma directly, no enemy to play (Chapter 44) — and let trauma be the brake (Chapter 13): push as hard as the dice will let you, and let the Maimed-grade dangers, not your restraint, set when to pull out. Keep both clocks on the page and tick them honestly.

Act III — The Breaker Arrives§

Where: the wreck and the space around it, as GANYMEDE's breaking-ship slides in to claim its kill. The time clock fills; the choice comes due.

The breaker is not a corsair — it's a slow, heavy render-ship with a hired crew and a claim (in its own eyes, this wreck is theirs, Chapter 38). How the scene plays is the crew's to shape:

• Hide and slip. Go dark against the graveyard's clutter (Sneaking/Stealth, the Account's low profile) and let the breaker dock while the crew eases off with what they've got. Clean, if they're quick and quiet.
• Talk. The breaker boss will parley before they shoot — they'd rather not damage salvage. Negotiate/Deceive (Jinx's hour): a cut, a bluff ("we logged this wreck, it's filed"), or a hard truth ("there are living people aboard — you want that on the manifest?"). A boss is a scene, not a stat (Chapter 40).
• Fight or run in the black. If it comes to it, it's a ship beat (Chapter 25) — the breaker is tougher and slower than the Account; outrun it (Piloting) rather than out-gun it, or make the graveyard itself the weapon. A boarding standoff aboard the wreck is personal-scale combat with the hull as terrain (Chapter 11).

Whatever the crew chose to carry — alloy, people, proof — Act III is the extraction under pressure: load it, clear the breach, and break orbit before the breaker pins them against their own prize.

The choice — what's worth the air§

The crawl forces the question the whole scenario is built on, because the crew cannot take everything before the breaker arrives:

1. Strip it for the note. Fill the hold with alloy and parts and go. The best payday the Account has seen — and a pod bay full of people left to the cold and to GANYMEDE. Clean credits, and a thing the crew has to live with (and that the Coldwake Reach may learn).
2. Save the sleepers. Pull the pods, burn the time and air on people who are legally "cargo" with old claims (Chapter 30), and leave the metal for the breaker. Little coin, a deep debt of gratitude, woken Sleepers who owe the crew their lives — and GANYMEDE robbed of both its wreck and its silence.
3. Take the proof and the truth. Grab the data core and a token of the rest, and get out to use what they now hold — expose GANYMEDE's manufactured wrecks across the Coldwake Reach (the Campaign Frame's lever). The most consequential ending, and the one that makes the firm a true Enemy.

Most crews split the difference under the clock — a few pods and a partial hold and the data, none of it complete. Let the tradeoff be real, and change the Coldwake Reach to match (a rumor, a faction tick, a woken sleeper who recurs).

Wrapping up — rewards and threads§

The payday. Salvage runs at roughly half list (Chapter 28): a stripped hold of alloy and parts is a strong purse (Cr5,000–15,000, Chapter 38), more for intact drive components or a moveable section. The sleepers are worth no credits and everything else — gratitude, claims, a new Contact or even a crew member (Chapter 38), and a medic's whole reason for being aboard. The proof is worth more than any of it, spent (the choice).

Advancement (Chapter 20). Mark any skill failed at Trained+ — a blown Athletics over a collapsing deck, an Engineering on a failing pod — and resolve at session end. +1 XP for the session; invoked Banes earn theirs (Edda's Old Grief, Bram's Won't Leave Anyone Behind, Jinx's Owes the Wrong People).

Lasting trauma. The crawl is the likeliest place in the set to take a Maimed node — decompression, a fall, the rad pocket. That's a full recovery session waiting (Chapter 10), and a natural next beat: a port, a surgeon, the medic's hour. Jinx's existing Maimed leg makes her the cautionary tale in real time.

Threads to pull next:

• A woken Sleeper with an old-world claim is a campaign in a pod (Chapter 30) — who they are, what they own, and who wants them re-frozen.
• GANYMEDE knows the crew now. The breaker saw their hull; the firm's clock is moving (the faction turn), and the grudge is personal.
• The proof, if they kept it, can break GANYMEDE's deniability across the Coldwake Reach — the back-tick that turns the whole campaign (Chapter 34).
• A courier drone in the clutter (optional — the doorway into Dead Air, WC02). Not every hull in the graveyard is a ship: one is a sealed message-drone, very old, with something still live in its core — and within a week a soft-spoken buyer is paying far too much for it, asking far too little. Pull that thread and it leads out of the Coldwake Reach entirely, across the dark toward the next sector. Wholly skippable; a table that wants False Light to end here never need find it.

Running it solo or GM-less§

Greywell is the set's deepest solo experience, because a derelict crawl is exactly what the Part X loop was built for (Chapters 42–45):

• Expectation, then test. Almost every beat is "I expect X; is it true?" — the deck holds, the pocket's hot, the occupant's alive. Frame it, judge the likelihood, ask the Oracle, abide by it (Chapter 42). The wreck surprises you because you let it.
• Hazards need no opponent. Most dangers here deal trauma directly (Chapter 13) — there's nothing to play against yourself. Roll your crew's resist tests, tick the clocks, and let trauma set the rhythm of how deep you push.
• The breaker by intent. When it arrives, ask the Oracle for its disposition and its moves (Chapter 44) — it acts in its interest (claiming salvage), not yours. A spark escalates (it brought muscle; it spotted you).
• Keep the threads and run the turn. Log the sleepers, the proof, your standing with GANYMEDE, the note (Appendix A4 solo sheet), and run the faction turn across the jump home. This is where a GM-less False Light campaign coheres.

GM cheat-sheet§