GM: Alex (darkmagegames)
Players: Lee Randazzo, Devin Pike, Peter Wigno, David Deuel, Sean Nittner
System: Mothership
Content warning for this post: gore, body horror
Mothership is an award-winning sci-fi horror RPG where you and your crew try to survive in the most inhospitable environment in the universe: outer space!
Another Bug Hunt the official introductory adventure for Mothership®. The players’ crew must re-establish communications with a remote terraforming colony. However, when they arrive they find an abandoned colony and the remains of a bloody assault.
Our Crew
Yannis “Yogi Bear” Democrotitus, the pilot (teamster) played by Lee. A gentle giant who drank coffee all day long.
Jimmany Fisk, the gnarled vet (marine) played by Devin. A man on his last job who didn’t trust anyone else to do their own.
Smith Smith, the ex-head of a PR campaign that failed to elect their candidate (android) who never stopped trying. “The Logos Corporation wants what’s best for both of us.” Played by David.
Henre “The Goat” Goatard, a fuck-the-corp mechanic (teamster) played by Peter. “Fuck you, Fuck you, you’re cool, not sure about you, and fuck you twice on Sundays” kind of guy. Started smoking the moment he came out of cryosleep.
Dr. Natalie “Nat” Birch the exobiologist (scientist) played by me. Nat had a patch that said Drink/Fight/Fuck on her laptop (randomly rolled patch) and that was her personality. She was also the one who hat to autopsy all the bodies.
The Job
Samsa VI, a deep space terraforming and research outpost went dark. We were sent to go find out why, probably because we’re expendable.
Aboard the Metamorphosis we flew (in cryosleep) to Samsa VI the remote jungle planet that housed the outpost Greta Base and the Heron Terraforming station.
When we woke from cryo our barely-more-than-excrement of a manager Moss (definitely in the “Fight” category) handed us stims and told us the mission objectives. He didn’t have many answers and those he did have, he didn’t care about giving us.
Our mission objectives were to:
- Find 2nd Ltd Caplan
- Get the terraforming back online
- Find Dr. Edem, head researcher
- Find the core of Hinton, Dr. Edem’s android assistant
- Get the comms for Greta station back online.
- Preferably, don’t die.
Despite Moss’ uselessness, we pressed for information an found the following:
- Ten years ago: The Company detected signs of biochemistry on Samsa VI and decided to send a team to investigate.
- One year ago: A skeleton crew of researchers, engineers, and marines arrived at Samsa VI to establish Greta Base and Heron Terraforming Station. The discovered a species of arthropods, labeled them carcinids, or “carcs” and procced to terminate them on site.
- Nine months ago: The colonist captured a carc larva for experimentation and study.
- Six months ago: Greta Base ceased all communications.
- Six weeks ago: We headed to the the Samsa station and found Greta Base unresponsive to hailing.
- One hour ago: We touched down on Samsa VI to find torrential rain, no usable comms, and nobody present at Greta Station.
Going inside
The tromped through the jungle path (where Nat found a strange plant that had stone-like properties, she took a pod for further study) we found Greta base, powered down and looking abandoned.
Through ingenuity and raw strength Yogi got the front doors open and we finally escaped the rain. In the first hallway we found storage lockers with some equipment left behind, but also signs of a terrible fight. A few that were bashed in beyond being able to open and others that were hewn by massive claws. At the end of a hall was a door that had a mechanical lock which would only open when we closed the exterior doors, leaving us for a moment trapped in darkness.
One the interior doors were open the true horrors started. We found:
- “Happy Birthday Olson” banner drooping from the ceiling.
- Rain dripping through bullet holes in the ceiling.
- Bullet casings, blood splatter, and large claw-like gouges in the furniture.
- A makeshift barricade assembled from couches, tables, and chairs.
- A woman’s head, ripped from the neck
- An upturned table with cake splattered across the floor.
- A quiet, rhythmic thud only heard when we were quiet.
Further investigation revealed
- The body that the head belonged to (Lt Corporal Xavier) with a gigantic hole in her neck (and further investigation showed a large cavity from withing) and thin cuts all over her body.
- Entry to a pantry where we found another marine 2nd Lt. Lange who looks to have starved to death, despite being surrounded by food. A gruesome autopsy revealed a small arthropod creature inside that also looks like it was starved.
- A walk in freezer that was very cold (-40° Celsius) with another marine (Lt. Resnick) holding a tumbler with hydrofluoric acid and case with antiradiation medications.
The freezer included a vent the air was coming from, which we crawled up to, leading us to the med bay.
There we fond notes from Dr. Edem showing that Hinton did the majority of the work and that the carcinids replicated by some audible process they called the “crabsong”.
Within the medbay there was also a locked observation area where another terrible combat had taken place.
The Big Fight
We found a way to the garage and the thumping sound we had been hearing. In there we found someone mindlessly digging and throwing dirt behind them (the thump) and another station member hiding in an ATV with a live grenade in their hand. Both of them covered in paper cuts.
In the room was also a belt of fragmentation grenades, a sparking power line, six barrels of fuel, and the aforementioned ATV.
A ill conceived blow to the back of the marines head with a crowbar (from Smith Smith of all people) caused the carcinids to erupt from his body and rip him apart.
Fisk unloaded an entire mag into the creature with no effect.
Yogi calmed the worker in the ATV down enough for them to step out, but when the tried to give him the frag grenade it slipped (a literal fumble) and rolled to the other grenades. Had it gone off, it would have triggered a chain reaction that would have killed us all.
The Goat threw himself on the grenade and miraculously (after getting two stim packs from Nat and Yogi, and with the help of his hazard suit and throwing his bulky backpack down int front of him) only was in a coma for months after the mission.
Smith Smith was not so lucky. His dismembered body was abandoned in the pit as we all drove to safety. A single carcanid defeated.
Thoughts on this game
I love the simplicity of the rules system, the character sheet that has everything you need on it, the sanity, fear, and and body saves, the stress and panic system, and the skill tree. This was fantastic for a one shot adventure. Only rolling skill checks when things were dire was also a great implementation of the usually quite low stats.
Alex did a great job running it and David was hilarious as the failed PR android, down to his little booties he put on before exiting the pod into a torrential storm, so sorry Smith Smith didn’t make it, but in the end, he represented the Company, so he was the real monster afterall.
I’m definitely going to run a game of Mothership myself!
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