PLAYER BRIEFING // PART I
The Game
A complete cosmic-horror roleplaying system. Inspired by the Call of Cthulhu tradition — built for a universe that does not care whether you survive it.
FILE 020 // ROLES
What You Play
Workers, marines, auditors, investigators, Asset Recovery Agents, salvage crews, and corporate contractors — plus the manufactured beings working beside them.
Every character is, on some corporate ledger, expendable. The game is about what you do with the agency you have left.
FILE 021 // CHARACTER TYPES
Three Kinds of Person
Substrate · Biological (born)
Humans
Cheap, plentiful, and disposable. Start with POW × 5 Trauma and the three-tier human trauma response. Modified character creation: roll, swap any two, distribute 20 points across three Career-determined Primes.
Substrate · Mechanical
Artificial Persons / APs
Programmed minds in a networked machine brain the corp owns and can read. Detectable by physical examination. They experience horror not as panic but as fixation — a four-phase fascination chart that ends in Obsession.
Substrate · Biological (manufactured)
Biological Persons / Bios
Vat-grown, conditioned, often carrying implanted memories of a life that never happened. Undetectable without a Hall-Blum apparatus. Most don't know what they are. Deviation, to the corp, is "expected variation that crossed a line."
FILE 022 // DESIGN PROMISE
What the Game Rewards
The game doesn't promise effective heroism. It promises moments of meaningful agency in a universe that doesn't care about you.
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You will not win the universe.
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You may not survive the scenario.
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You can save individuals.
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You can deny the company an objective.
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You can choose how you face it.
TARTARUS // AFTER-ACTION
The crew is expendable. The data is not.
FILE 023 // CAMPAIGN TEMPLATES
Campaign Types
Pre-built frameworks for the kind of crew you want to run.
Template
CMC Against the Unknown
Compact Marine Corps deployments into situations the briefing did not — could not — prepare them for.
Template
Company Contractors
Corporate teams sent to audit, investigate, or contain. The mission is real. The full objective is classified above your clearance.
Template
Independent Scrappers / Traders
Salvage crews, freighters, and guns-for-hire surviving the Outer Rim with no corporate safety net.
Template
APs & Bios
Play the manufactured beings — uncertain of their directives, accumulating awareness the corp would rather they never reach.
Template
Corporate Internal Security
The invisible tier. Operatives in the quiet wars between megacorps that the public never hears about.
Template
The Eight-Year Service Contract
A long-form campaign built around a single binding contract — and everything it slowly costs you.
FILE 024 // CORE MECHANICS
Rules Preview
Crew Expendable descends from the Call of Cthulhu 7th-edition tradition but rebuilds its core for corporate cosmic horror with manufactured characters.
▣ EDGE
A POW-gated, per-session resource that replaces 7e Luck. Trauma-exempt and never negated by fumbles — your hard, finite reserve of "I refuse to die here."
▣ UNIFIED TRAUMA
Every character type starts with POW × 5 Trauma. On each loss, a d100 check; failure triggers an effect. Humans and Bios share a three-tier response table; APs use a four-phase fascination chart.
▣ ANOMALOUS KNOWLEDGE
One skill tracking accumulated cosmic-horror, xenobiological and Progenitor-tier material. Maximum Trauma = 99 minus current Anomalous Knowledge. The more you understand, the less of you remains.
▣ PARALLEL SANITY TRACKS
Humans and Bios break as horror. APs "Drift" — the same numeric loss expressed as fixation and Obsession. One system, two cognitive substrates, two ways to come apart.
▣ PANIC CASCADE
Trauma effects compound. A single bad check can chain through a squad, turning a controlled operation into a rout in seconds.
▣ ZERO-G OPERATIONS
Dedicated rules for vacuum and zero-gravity combat, salvage and survival — including the new Zero-G Maneuver and Astrogation skills.
▣ SPECIES 13 & HIDDEN DIRECTIVES
Universal armor and acid blood apply to all. APs and Bios carry programmed priorities — Synthetics always aware, Bios sometimes implanted and unaware. Mythos Knowledge can transfer between entities, with catastrophic consequences for human receivers. Full mechanics ship in the rulebook and Keeper materials.
TRANSMISSION // SUBSCRIBE
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