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Page 1 - Hook + Overview
# WHITE SIGNAL
**Subtitle: Some things are not lost. They wait.**
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The mining station **Arklight-6** has orbited Titan since 2069. Its seven crew members extract heavy silicates, process geological data, and tend their equipment in a silence only deep-orbit operators ever really understand.
On March 14, 2087, at 03:41, the automated communications system catches a signal. Old frequency. 2047 protocol. Identifier: **Probe Perseide-9** - a lost survey probe that vanished forty years earlier in an unmapped region between Titan and Hyperion.
Procedure says report, document, and wait for authorization. Nobody follows the manual all the way through, especially not at 03:41 when only seven people are left aboard and curiosity is the last thing that still feels alive.
When they activate the signal, the station begins to remember.
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Session parameters
| | | |---|---| | **System** | Year Zero Engine (Space Horror adaptation) | | **Players** | 3-5 (playing selected crew members) | | **Duration** | 3-5 hours | | **Tone** | Claustrophobic, atmospheric, slow horror | | **Promise** | Space mystery, paranoia between crewmates, gradual revelation, multiple endings |
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Stress Countdown - The White Signal
The core mechanic is a **shared Stress tracker** (0 to 12).
Add 1 Stress each time:
- A disturbing clue is discovered
- An NPC dies or disappears
- An unexpected system failure occurs
- A critical pushed roll fails
At **Stress 4**: the PCs begin to sleep badly. Their dreams are identical - white noise, a blurred shape. At **Stress 8**: one PC must pass a Resilience roll (Danger 6) or take an irrational action during the next tense moment. At **Stress 12**: the station answers something. The final phase begins.
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Immediate hook
The night-shift officer (one of the PCs or the NPC Orin Vass) hears the signal and wakes the others. Two questions emerge immediately: is it really Perseide-9, and what was inside that probe?
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Page 2 - Situation + Station Structure
Read aloud
*The comms screen pulses white. Not green, as usual. White. The sound is one long pure tone with something irregular underneath it - almost rhythmic. Almost a voice. The console says the source is an object 3,200 kilometers away, drifting slowly toward your position. At its current speed, it will enter your recovery radius in six hours.*
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Hidden truth (GM only)
Probe Perseide-9 encountered something in 2047 within Hyperion's inner rings. Not life, not intelligence - something older than those categories. It was altered there. It recorded. For forty years it drifted, broadcasting a standard distress signal while carrying something else in its memory banks.
That something is not malicious in any human sense. It is **indifferent**. It perceives. It saturates every system it touches with a kind of **residual memory** - the station starts remembering its own erased data, its past crashes, its unrecorded dead.
The threat is not physical. It is **mnemonic and psychological** - the station systems reveal what they should not know, and the crew must decide whether to keep looking or close their eyes.
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Station structure (playable zones)
**Command deck (Level 1)** Main console, signal source, ship logs dating back to 2069. One log from 2071 contains entries never written by the current crew.
**Life module (Level 2)** Bunks, mess, med bay. The common room sometimes shows text on the screens - names the crew does not recognize. Hidden clue 1 is here.
**Machine room (Level 3)** Reactor, atmosphere systems, propulsion. Constant noise that swallows voices. Someone carved something beneath maintenance panel #7 - in 2052, before the station was built.
**Recovery bay (Level 4)** This is where the probe will be brought in if the crew decides to tow it aboard. The automated scanner can read its memory - but that takes time, and the bay grows strangely cold while it runs.
**Science module (Level 5)** Lab, spectrometers, geological archives. The instruments begin returning readings they cannot explain. Hidden clue 2 is here.
**Maintenance corridors (Level 6)** A web of narrow tunnels linking all modules. Something moves inside them - the sensors detect it, but the cameras show nothing.
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Progressive revelation across 3 scenes
**Scene 1 - "The missing data"** While analyzing the signal, a PC discovers that Perseide-9 really was launched in 2047 - but its mission data were erased from Arklight's archives. Someone on the station deleted them. Eleven years ago. Under a different crew.
**Scene 2 - "The unknown names"** The station starts issuing emergency alerts in the names of crew members who do not exist. No system bug: the names belong to real people - dead on other stations, years ago. Somehow the station "knows" them.
**Scene 3 - "The probe's memory"** When the probe readout is complete, the screens display a single image: Arklight-6 seen from outside, in distress - but the image is dated 2047, twelve years before the station was built.
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Page 3 - NPCs + Obstacles + Stat Blocks
The crew of Arklight-6
*(The PCs play 3 to 5 of these crew members. The rest are NPCs.)*
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**DR. VESNA OKAFOR - Ship doctor** *Woman, 52, measured voice, has spent 11 years aboard stations.*
She is the oldest person on board. She knows things about the Perseide-9 mission she never shared. Not out of malice - out of fear that she misunderstood them.
*Motivation:* Protect the crew, even from itself. *Secret:* She worked briefly on the Perseide project in 2046. She knows the probe carried more than a mineral detector - an experimental recorder for "cosmic residual signature." She thought it had captured nothing. *What she hides:* All of the above.
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**ORIN VASS - Systems engineer** *Man, 31, nervous, excellent technician, chronic insomnia.*
Orin is on watch when the signal arrives. He activates it before informing his superiors - out of reflex, out of curiosity. He has not really slept since.
*Motivation:* Understand what he has done. *Secret:* This is not the first time he has heard that tone. He heard it in a dream once, three years ago. He never told anyone.
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**JURA MALET - Mining operator** *Woman, 27, practical, flat affect, very direct.*
She wants all of this to stop so the crew can go back to work. The probe disturbs her in a way she cannot name - as if she recognizes it.
*Motivation:* Finish the contract, go home, never return to a station. *Secret:* None - but hers is the first name the station displays in the ghost alerts.
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**THEO CASTILLO - Station commander** *Man, 44, authoritative but fair, under pressure for six months.*
Theo received an encrypted company message a week earlier ordering him to report "any anachronic signal in this sector." He received it, but still has not acted. The company knew something.
*Motivation:* Keep everyone alive without losing his job. *Secret:* The encrypted message. If he had fully decrypted it, he would have found the order to isolate anyone who made contact with the probe.
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Obstacles and tension scenes
**Isolate or retrieve the probe (Technical, Danger 5)** Pulling it into the bay speeds up the revelation. Leaving it drifting slows the Stress buildup, but the company sends a recovery ship in 72 hours.
**The maintenance corridor (Stealth/Perception, Danger 6)** Sensors detect something. Cameras show nothing. A successful roll reveals: nothing is there - but the walls are cold in exact places, forming a map of the station.
**Convincing Vesna to talk (Relationship, Danger 7)** She resists. She spent 11 years convincing herself it meant nothing. A success breaks her resolve and she tells everything - add 2 to the shared Stress, but the PCs gain an edge for the final scene.
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YZE Stat Block - The Mnemonic Presence
*It is not a creature. It is a state. The "threat" is the station itself, altered.*
**The Presence cannot be fought.** It answers the PCs' actions.
| Trigger | Effect | |---|---| | A PC tries to erase the probe data | The systems resist (Technical, Danger 8), +2 Stress | | A PC spends more than 10 minutes alone in the recovery bay | Resilience roll, Danger 6, or a hallucination of someone they knew dead | | A PC tries to communicate through the console | Empathy roll, Danger 7 - success: one clear image, one incomprehensible warning; failure: +1 Stress, sleepless night | | The probe is destroyed | The signal stops. All systems return to normal. Something is missing - the PCs do not know what |
**Presence Level** (evolves with the Stress countdown)
- **0-4**: Minor anomalies, ghost text, pockets of cold.
- **5-8**: Brief hallucinations, unknown names, synchronized shared dreams.
- **9-12**: The station actively "answers" - shutting down and restoring systems according to its own logic. It keeps the ship from leaving orbit until someone "listens to the end."
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Page 4 - Endings + Tables + Follow-Up + Credits
Running the final scene
Evaluate the shared Stress and what the PCs know.
**Stress < 8 + Vesna has spoken**: The PCs can make an informed decision. Resolution is difficult but possible.
**Stress >= 8**: At least one PC is in crisis. The final scene requires someone to stay behind and operate the console while the others prepare to leave.
**Theo decrypted the message**: The company arrives in 12 hours. A decision must be made: cooperate, or make sure the probe disappears before they get there.
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Three possible endings
**ENDING A - Full survival**
The PCs find a way to "satisfy" the Presence - let it record what it was always recording, then let it go. The probe is sent back drifting into the outer orbit. The station returns to normal. But every PC shares the same dream for a week: a space between the stars, vast and patient. The company arrives, finds a normal station, and leaves with questions.
*Cost:* Vesna decides to remain aboard. She says she still has things to finish. She does not explain.
**ENDING B - Partial survival**
The probe is destroyed or the Presence is forced out. The station systems suffer heavy damage. One to three NPCs die in the complications. The survivors return. They report a systems failure caused by signal interference. Official report: minor incident resolved. Real report: in their nightmares, the space between the stars grows closer every night.
*Cost:* One or more NPCs dead. The company gets the data anyway - someone transmitted them before dying.
**ENDING C - Heroic sacrifice**
To sever the link between the Presence and the station, someone must stay inside the recovery bay and manually trigger the probe jettison from within, knowing the bay will be ejected with it. Jura Malet volunteers - hers was the first name to appear in the alerts. She thinks it was only ever a warning for her.
*Cost:* Jura vanishes with the probe. The others return. One year later, a signal is detected at the position where the bay was ejected. It contains one line of text, in Jura's handwriting: *"I know now what it meant. Do not come back."*
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1d6 table - What the station remembers
| Roll | Memory | |---|---| | 1 | The names of everyone who died on deep-orbit stations since 2040 | | 2 | An erased conversation between two engineers in 2052 about something they saw and could not describe | | 3 | The exact positions of seven unrecovered probes bearing the same mission identifier | | 4 | An audio recording of the probe capturing something that sounds like music - but spectral analysis says it is silence recorded in reverse time | | 5 | The face of a crew member who died 11 years ago in an "airlock accident" | | 6 | Something only the character you have recently thought about in intimacy could know |
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1d4 table - Endgame complications
| Roll | Complication | |---|---| | 1 | The rescue shuttle engine will not start - physical link or sabotage? | | 2 | An NPC triggers the station self-destruct in panic - 90 minutes | | 3 | The company is already on the way, 4 hours earlier than expected | | 4 | The Presence "speaks" clearly exactly once, in every language known on board, one sentence: *"This is not an ending."* Then silence |
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Follow-up hooks
- The company retrieves the logs and discovers a series of similar anomalies on four other stations over the last 20 years. Someone is compiling these incidents. Someone else wants them erased.
- One of the PCs starts hearing the white signal in dreams - not long, not loud, but regularly. Three months later, they receive a message from an unknown address containing a set of space coordinates.
- Jura Malet (if she survived) leaves her contract one month after returning. She disappears. Six months later, her security badge is detected on a station four systems away - a station abandoned 15 years ago.
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YZE mechanics used
- **Shared Stress**: group tracker from 0 to 12, with threshold effects
- **Resilience**: Mind-equivalent rolls against revelation
- **Technical**: handling station systems
- **Empathy**: communication with the Presence (risky, but informative)
- **Stealth**: moving through corridors without triggering fresh anomalies
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License note
Scenario designed for the Year Zero Engine (YZE). No proprietary setting names used. Compatible with any space-science-fiction YZE system. May be published under Creative Commons BY or ORC depending on YZE policy.
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Credits
- Design and text: MythCore Studio
- Line: Flash Scenarios - Multi-Genre Pilots
- Genre: Space Horror | System: Year Zero Engine