The Sky’s Teeth: A One-Shot Survival Horror Adventure in Aether Skies
“The message was garbled. The coordinates barely held. But they found her—drifting between cities, lights dim, no crew in sight. The hull groaned like a beast in its sleep. And still,
something moved below…”
something moved below…”In a world of haunted aetherships, corrupted skies, and floating cities clinging to survival, The Sky’s Teeth offers GMs a chance to terrify their table with a tightly contained, memory-warping horror story.
Perfect for one-shots or episodic campaign interruptions, this survival horror scenario introduces players to the darker side of Aether Skies—the kind where the enemy doesn’t want your blood. It wants your past. Learn more about the city Granglehold here.
🎭 Tone & Themes
-
Genre: Survival Horror with Sci-Fantasy Mystery
-
Mood: Isolated, paranoid, dreamlike
-
Inspirations: Event Horizon, Alien, Dead Space, The Magnus Archives
-
Key Themes: Memory loss, unreliable perception, body horror, infestation, identity erosion
🚢 The Setup
The floating city of Alerion has received a long-delayed emergency beacon from a missing skyship: The St. Persephone, an experimental long-range cargo vessel thought lost during an Aether storm. No one has heard from her in 27 days.
The party—crew of a salvage vessel, official retrieval agents, or mercenaries-for-hire—is dispatched to investigate. Their objectives:
-
Recover salvage rights
-
Search for survivors
-
Secure any classified cargo
-
Avoid contamination
The ship is found drifting in an unstable airstream, its sails torn, the hull blackened with scorch marks. Its doors open willingly.
🌿 What’s Inside?
The interior is dead quiet. But it’s not empty.
The ship’s hallways are threaded with bone-white vines—thin, chitinous growths that pulse faintly when observed. These parasitic tendrils are not plant, not fungal. They’re something else.
Within minutes of boarding:
-
Electronic systems flicker erratically
-
Personal items appear familiar to PCs
-
The vines begin to shift and retreat, as if watching
👁️ The Horror: Aether Parasite Infestation
The St. Persephone is host to an Aether Parasite—a semi-sentient, extradimensional lifeform that feeds on magical energy and memory.
Rather than attacking outright, the parasite:
-
Replays memories to lure intruders deeper into the vessel
-
Generates illusions of missing crew using harvested thoughts
-
Infects through touch, breath, or prolonged exposure
Each player begins to:
-
See loved ones who were never there
-
Forget names, details, equipment… even other PCs
-
Experience “false flashbacks” of events that never occurred
GM Tool: Create “Memory Events”—short vignettes that seem real to one character but contradict reality. Use these to isolate PCs and erode trust.
🧠 Mechanics Suggestions
You can homebrew the following or use sanity/madness rules from existing systems:
-
Corruption Track (like Exhaustion or Sanity)
-
Memory Save (DC increases the longer they stay inside)
-
Parasite Echoes (when PCs recall events, you roll for accuracy behind the screen)
Optional Rule: When a player hits 5 corruption, they begin hearing the ship talking to them in their own voice.
🧪 What Was the Cargo?
Deep in the ship’s locked vault:
-
A prototype Aether-Distillation Engine, developed in Granglehold
-
The tech promises clean, controlled Aether use—something dangerous factions would kill to control
The twist?
The parasite feeds on Aether.
The engine is what drew it here—and what kept it fed for nearly a month.
Shutting down the engine could starve the parasite…
But not before it lashes out.
🧨 Optional Twists
🔧 Faction Pressure
Just as the party finds the engine, a Granglehold strike team boards the ship. They’re here to erase all traces—the players included.
🪞 Identity Fracture
One player realizes they were part of the original crew. The parasite has rewritten their memory, and now they have to choose who they really are.
💀 Cargo Memory
The Aether engine can record and replay thought. What if the parasite didn’t just eat the crew… but stored them?
🎁 Rewards & Continuation
If players survive:
-
They could claim partial ownership of the experimental tech
-
They may now be carriers of the parasite (plot hook!)
-
Their memories may have been altered permanently
If used in a larger campaign, this adventure can:
-
Spark a sky-wide hunt for other parasite infestations
-
Put the party on Granglehold’s watchlist
-
Introduce deeper eldritch threats hidden within Aether itself
🗺️ Map Ideas
-
Deck 1: Docking Bay (vines coiled tight here)
-
Deck 2: Crew Quarters (each with tailored hallucinations)
-
Deck 3: Cargo Hold (aether engine glows faintly)
-
Deck 4: Engine Core (parasite mass pulses here like a beating heart)
🎬 Final Thought: Horror in the Skies
The Sky’s Teeth is more than a ghost ship—it’s a reflection of everything Aether Skies does best:
Mystery, memory, paranoia, beauty, and decay.
It doesn’t chase you with claws—it whispers with your own voice.
And sometimes… it tells the truth.
Thanks for reading. Until Next Time, Stay Nerdy!!
No Comments