The Imperial Interstellar Scout Service places hidden caches of mission-relevant materials throughout the frontiers and beyond to support its various missions. These repositories are protected and hidden from prying or serendipitous eyes, placed far away from IISS logistical centers where Scouts range from. They are meant to provide resupply and touchpoints for scout activity “far from home,” and the IISS has been placing them for centuries.
Consider a remote system along the frontiers of the Imperium, or outside that boundary where Scouts might someday tread. An IISS cache might be buried or located in a cave in a remote location on the undeveloped shirtsleeve world, or dug into the regolith of a cold rockball. It could be sunk into the side of an asteroid in the outsystem belt, or just floating in space coated with emission-absorbing composites to make it necessary to know its precise location.
Most caches are the size of a large shipping container. They are sealed against the environment, accessed by a small airlock if necessary, and store materials that an individual or wandering team of Scouts far from home would find supportive, or invaluable.
Almost every cache offers food, medical supplies, scanning and detection gear, local system information and weapons to visiting Scouts. A cache can be thought of as an extended, localized “ships locker” containing not just regular useful items for a Scout but gear such as Local garb and data, local system info, and lists of useful contacts, resources, and problems if any are present.
Caches are always placed full and pristine, though they might not be that way when the Travellers come upon them.
Some very rare caches tell an odd, mysterious, or dark story. Strange items have been found left behind, sometimes with no notes or evidence as to why. Bodies, blood, incriminating evidence, sacks of gold bullion, dirty laundry, and an endless litany of stranger material has all been rumored to have been found in caches.
For your particular game, a cache might be introduced to drive the plot (the cache holds a key clue left by some knowing Scout), save the PC’s bacon (by introducing a key component at just the right time), or to introduce a bit of color (by adding some interesting items, backstory, or hinting at a Scout presence in this place).
Configurations
All caches are based on shipping containers and can be general purpose or designed and placed for special needs. They are always concealed, either by virtue of just being buried and having some natural camouflage over the entry, or perhaps obscured more elaborately with technology. They are sealed against the environment and locked, opened only by a rotating encrypted key available to those with a need to enter, as well as a swipe of their Imperial ID. Sometimes this is any active or detached-duty Scout, sometimes it’s keyed specifically for a certain mission and team.
Some caches can be “activated” to broadcast their location when receiving the correct “reveal” key, but this is not universal and some remain “hidden,” where the Scout seeking the cache must know its location from some source.
All caches are locked and extraordinarily durable; it is very likely that the force required to open one without a key would destroy the contents. It is a formidable task to open a found cache without the proper encrypted key. When entered inappropriately or vandalized caches are set to broadcast a signal to some other point, where a broadband signal is sent to any Scout assets in the system, a burglar alarm, as it were.
All caches have a powersource and computer system up for the maintenance of inventory, to log entry, withdrawals, resupply, and so on. Caches may also be “in contact” with or have access to other local Scout or Imperial resources if they exist – go-to lists and keys, identities of helpful local agents, access to IISS survey sats or information in-system, and similar.
It’s not uncommon for Scouts to leave something personal or enigmatic when visiting a cache, with the idea that the next Scout might take it and leave something of their own and thus the original object travels through the Imperium in just a
Cache types
4A90 – “hunting lodge” – TL 12 – 12 m long, 3m high, 3m wide. This is in effect a small sealed habitat and storage facility, equipped with power and environmental controls. Room for 2 to live a very Spartan existence, much more a protected supply shelter than any kind of base of operations.
4C90 – “broom closet” – TL 12 – 6 m long, 3m high, 3m wide. As above but with no bunking capacity.
4D05 – “junk drawer” – TL 12 – 3m long, 3m high, 3m wide. This cache is sealed against the environment but provides no temperature control or environment, so items stored here (or their packaging) must be able to withstand the environment.
Varieties
General – this type of cache is meant to (re)supply Exploration, Survey, and Special Operations Scout teams with standard gear as mentioned above. The supplies in general cache are available for any active Scout that needs them.
Specialized – the gear here is to resupply a specific team or a particular type of mission. The gear will be more specialized and probably of higher tech level. Scouts who are covert observers or on long-rage surveys usually visit specialized caches set for them. As above, any active Scout may use items from this cache but if it is meant to purposefully resupply a particular mission, only members of that mission will have the key to open it.
S3 – some caches are set specifically for Scout special operations groups (my GT is showing, I know) sweeping through the area on mission. These will be more weapons- and armor-centric. Only active S3 teams will have keys to access these caches, and they might be keyed to particular teams with a particular mission.
Little surprises
Sometimes caches contain items not in the inventory…
- An unconscious injured Exploration Scout. Or an S3 operator, in battledress. Oooops.
- What looks to be a murder victim, stashed away from prying eyes.
- A crate of contraband, almost assuredly not listed in inventory
- Blood. Lots of blood.
- An alien presence of some kind. Or a cat.
Roll up a random cache
Type
d6: 1-4 hunting lodge, 5 broom closet, 6 junk drawer
Variety
for hunting lodge d6: 1 general, 2-3 specialized, 4-6 S3
For broom closet d6: 1-2 general, 3-4 specialized, 5-6 S3
For junk drawer d6: 1-4 general, 5 specialized, 6 S3
Condition
d6: 1-4 never opened, 5-6 visited.
Never-opened caches are fully stocked and in pristine shape.
Visited d6: 1 almost empty, 2, trashed, 3-6 full
Quirks (present on roll of 6 on a d6) d6:
1 enabled with a personality program
2 a strange odor is present
3 a smaller, locked cache is present inside
4 signs of failed attempted entry
5 colored and labeled for a different, non-Scout service
6 has an excess of personal tokens left behind