A kilometre long, the Pale Sepulchre thrusts through space like a splinter of rough graphite, a fifty-meter high bronze and marble angel gazing into oblivion from its prow. Its complement is small and the truly living crew fewer still, but then its passengers are the dead and they have few requirements that need attending. Only the Keepers---grey robed scribes with faces like fine tallow, who book the ‘passengers’ in and out in gigantic leather bound ledgers---have an inkling of how many dead the ship carries, and they prefer not to say.
The entire structure of the ship, its crew and its wandering course are based around the commissions that the captain holds with the families of his ‘passengers’: Those who wish their remains returned to their birth world or buried in the sacred ground of a shrine world are taken in their lifeless hundreds by the ship, while those who are a single breath from death can travel in cryosuspension to a final destination of choice. The ship has plied its solemn trade for centuries, passing quietly from world to world taking on its cargo with whispered assurances and discharging its commissions with respectful precision. It may take many years for a passenger to reach their destination---but then the dead are in no hurry.
Beneath the outer skin of the ship are the great Corpse Halls. It is here that the majority of the ‘passengers’ are kept, bound in shrouds and resting on towering brass racks. Only servitors whose fleshly parts are next to none venture into these outer cavities of the ship, for the Corpse Halls are partially open to the void, the flesh of the passengers preserved by the coldness of the spaces between stars. These deathly spaces take up most of the internal volume of the ship. Access to this space is only via airlocks from the corridors that run the length of the ship. The corridors themselves are dotted with air locks, like the valves in a human vein, lest an accident occur.
As a Resource[]
What It Provides: The primary attraction of the Pale Sepulchre as a way of arriving or leaving somewhere is that it will raise no suspicion. As everyone knows, it only carries the dead. This most secret method of travel places those who make the journey in a state of suspended animation within the Corpse Vaults.
Prerequisites: None.
Resource Test Modifiers: Base Modifier –10; Peer (Underworld).
Price/Cost: The Keepers accept a fresh corpse for every ‘passenger.’