Welcome to Hell Station

Preface

This story spawned out of my most popular prompt on Reddit. It's been a few years since I gamemastered the scenario for anyone, but thinking back fondly on the many contestants who were thrown naked and afraid through the blast doors of Hell Station has inspired me to adapt my memories of those roleplaying experiences into the "official story version" of Hell Station Season One. I developed a simple ruleset to document players' progress through Hell Station, and I will do the same for Kim, with her current statistics and status effects documented at the bottom of each chapter. If you are curious, you will find the rules after the bulk of this chapter as well. Leave a comment below to let me know what you think and what you'd like to see in future chapters!

Introduction

A holographic display flashes to life and displays a generally humanoid robot with a paint job meant to resemble a tuxedo snapping his fingers and swaying his hips as he steps onto a pristine metal stage. Broad windows behind him look out into the void of outer space. Stars glisten as campy game show music plays. A compartment in his chest opens and ejects a microphone into his hand. He flashes the camera a cheesy smile through metal lips and brings the microphone to his mouth, speaking in the voice of an overdramatic radio announcer that would have been at home on the airways a few centuries ago.

"Welcome to Hell Station! The only show of its kind, where you get to watch the galaxy's hottest females go up against the hardest, most grueling, most depraved, and most ingenious challenges that our collection of intensely perverted focus groups could dream up."

The show's theme music begins playing again and the mechanical host spins around in a graceful pirouette, winking at the camera as it circles him.

"I am your illustrious host as always, Dick Remington! I know you're all dying to meet this week's unlucky contestant, but first, let's say hello to our live... studio... audience!"

The camera whips around to frame a crowd erupting in applause and cheers. It is a wide collection of species that includes people from all across the known systems, sporting all colors of skin and all manner of appendages that they are clapping with. With the wild menagerie being what it is, only someone with a discerning eye, or someone who has seen the show before, would realize that the audience is disproportionately male.

"Alright, alright, enough screen time for those shmucks, back to the star of the show... me!" As the camera swings back to the robotic host he lets out a hearty laugh. "Just kidding folks! Well, half kidding. Are you ready to meet the real star of tonight's show?" Thunderous applause sounds from the audience.

Dick turns and looks directly into the camera, speaking in a hushed voice that gradually grows to a shout. "Here she is folks, all the way from Nova Sacra 9, plucked from her insignificant little life just this morning, with a body to die for... tonight's contestant!"

The screen switches from the studio stage to another room on the station, small, plain, and empty. A hydraulic door slides open on one side of the room, and a petite, well-proportioned woman with green skin is pushed through, stumbling and barely catching herself from falling to the cold hard floor. She is nude, and the audience can see that her skin is flawless, freshly cleansed of hair, bruise, or blemish by Hell Station's beautification team. She shivers and bows her head, trying to cover her most private areas with her hands. The thick metal doors close behind her with a hiss. She looks up through the curtain of her short green hair at the door in front of her. A glowing panel at the top of the door frame blinks from red to green, indicating that the door is unlocked, but the woman takes a moment and tries to gather herself.

Her name is Kim Takura. She is a starship mechanic in the city of Liyuru'jen on the planet of Nova Sacra 9, or at least she had been this morning. On her way to work she was drugged into unconsciousness with a needle in the neck, kidnapped, and transported who knows how far across the galaxy to this heinous, off-the-grid space station.

She woke up strapped to a table, naked. The 'beautification team' was a pair of robots with all manner of special attachments that they used to burn or freeze her freckles and moles away; heal her blemishes, bumps, and abrasions; laser away all her hair except her messy bob and eyebrows, and generally violate her privacy in an impersonal, clinical way that only mechanicals can.

As they worked an android that looked just real enough to be unsettling approached and informed Kim that she had been 'chosen' as a contestant for a depraved game show called Hell Station. Reciting a prewritten script, the android told Kim that her only hope of getting back to her life on Nova Sacra 9 is to traverse twenty rooms filled with sexual horrors designed to test her resolve, constitution, intellect, and sanity. Oh, and it will all be broadcast live to billions of viewers across the galaxy.

Kim had already felt like curling up into a ball and crying when she woke up naked on that table, and now, as she stands on the cold floor of the antechamber before the first room, that feeling of hopelessness presses down on her ten times as heavily. But Kim Takura is no fainting flower. Being a female mechanic in Liyuru'jen she deals with all manner of leering men and harassment. Granted, she isn't usually naked, and it's only ever a few people, not billions, staring at her tits. Kim shakes her head, mentally focusing herself. I will make it through this, she tells herself. She looks at the door in front of her, indicator light glowing green. Just like the android said, the only way out is forward. Forward, into Hell Station.

The Rules

I've developed an extremely simple game system in order to simulate the risks of Hell station. You will have four statistics: fortitude, integrity, psyche, and virtue, that all start with a score of ten. As you progress through the twenty rooms of Hell Station, enduring the tests set before you, these stats will inevitably be depleted. If one of these stats reaches zero, you are at a disadvantage, the physical or mental strain hindering you in some way. If two of these scores hit zero, then the stresses of Hell Station have overwhelmed you, and you are unable to go on. Each challenge will test one or more of your stats, and it is up to you to get through the challenges without losing too much of any one score.

Fortitude: This stat is all physical, it represents your body's ability to withstand physical strain, and is reduced when you undertake something too strenuous for your body to handle easily.

Integrity: This stat relates to your moral fiber, or your ethical treatment of others. It reduces when you make a decision for selfish reasons that leads to the suffering of others.

Psyche: This stat represents your mental health, or at least your ability to rationally process the things around you. Hell Station is filled with all sorts of traumatizing, and sometimes downright maddening things. This stat reduces when you witness or experience something that is too terrible to rationalize.

Virtue: This stat represents your sexual purity or innocence. It assumes that the contestants on Hell Station are relatively vanilla. This stat decreases whenever you make a conscious decision to do something sexually depraved, or give into pleasure in the midst of a depraved situation.

When you undertake a task that could fail, and I deem it necessary, I will roll two six-sided dice to determine the outcome of your efforts. A total of ten or above counts as a total success, having flawlessly accomplished what you set out to do. This does not necessarily guarantee that you will be safe from stat reduction, depending on how you are attempting to conquer the specific challenge. A result on the dice of seven to nine counts as a partial success, meaning you accomplish your goal, but not flawlessly, usually resulting in a reduced punishment, a setback, or a wildcard. Finally, a result of six or lower counts as a failure, usually resulting in a larger stat reduction and/or a major setback. However, just because your roll was a failure does not mean that you don't move any closer to your goal. Depending on the cleverness of the task attempted, even a failure may hold some reward.

Kim Takura

Stats:

Fortitude - 10

Integrity - 10

Psyche - 10

Virtue - 10

Status Effects:

None