Mothership AP: The Kids Are Alright

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
MOTHERSHIP EDITION
OR 
I LOVE A PLAN THAT HAS AN AIRLOCK IN IT

Art by Marcel van Vuuren

Players:
Ryan, Teamster, Pilot and Jack of Many Trades
'Doc' Krober, probably not a real doctor?, Scientist, Curiosity Fulfiller
Willow, Former Marine, current computer / hacker specialist
Ed, Mercenary-stat'd Android, (Combat: 30 (?), Instinct: 40, Loyalty: 45, Revolver, Flight Suit)

If you played in this game pls leave now. Spoilers for y'all.

Ed courtesy of Alien Isolation

I ran a amalgamation of 'Alpha Gaunt is here' and 'asteroid mining and pirates.' This was a combined set of advice from the excellent Mothership discord (thanks Sean, Uncle Kudzu, and doghairedinfant!). The pirate attack was cut short by them jump-driving away; they elected to ditch 33% to 45% of the asteroids for less damage, which was very sensible. 

Ryan's player drew up an extensive mining ship and so I had to use that as where they were being hunted by a lightly-reskinned alpha gaunt.

The crew of the Honeybadger, a mining vessel, had heard rumor of some asteroids drifting in from the deep, a short jump from Prospero's Dream. We open on them looking at 1 water and 2 ore asteroids in a decaying orbit around a pulsar.

Willow's player rightly points out the water asteroid will melt away, so they mine that first. Ryan flubs a piloting roll and the ship is caught out in a solar flare. They hunt down the fire on-board the ship and Willow, in her vacc suit, foam guns it away. Ryan tries to repair as Willow and Ed mine the asteroid - Ed fails a roll, giving them less profit as the mining rig cracks and scatters too much ice. 

Krober meanwhile studies telemetry of the other two asteroids. The larger one has regular striations on it that look like wind erosion, but there's no evidence the asteroid was part of a planet at some point. Keeping some of this to himself, mad-scientist-style, he tells them to mine it next.

The asteroid has three triangular ridges. At a closer distance (no piloting roll this time, they're in the asteroid's shadows), the ship's telecope picks up eroded-looking characters. Writing. Krober and Ryan (who studied linguistics) attempt to decifer it.

The Fibonacci Sequence. "We are understood and so we are." Snatches of language. Sanity saves are the order of the day. 

They decide to use the ship's laser cutter to collect the plinths and stow them on the ship's exterior, covered. The ship's computer fails an Intellect / Sanity check.

Pirates in a courier jump in-system and announce on stuttering comms that 'those are ours' - the asteroids. They try to line up an autocannon run. Willow dumps mining tailings right on the courier's vector, giving its sensors hell trying to target the mining ship. Ryan adroitly spins up the jump drive and they see bright pulsing light before the safety shutters clamp down and Ed hustles the humans off the cryo.

WRITING ON THE WALL

They wake up to Ed, holding a roughly-made rebar barricade against the cryobay door. Ed indicates that the ship computer had turned on them, lying to him, locking away the science lab, and that something was aboard the ship, moving around the main deck. 

After checking their bioscanners and getting more details from Ed, the crew moved out of the cryobay. After being told all was well by the computer, Willow rolled a 00-0 hacking the computer and managed to find the real logs showing that Ed had told the truth. Ryan welded the rebar barricade over the ladderway down to the lower deck, and began trying to see if anyone would go down and investigate with him staying up and monitoring body cams over his HUD, providing advice.

I pointed out that splitting up rarely ends well in the horror genre. They ultimately descended as a group, leaving Ed at the helm, heading to investigate the pounding and screaming that had started up after about 40 minutes of me timing their command deck exploration and planning. They knew the mining arms of the ship held escape pods, that there was no airlock access from the command deck big enough for a human in a vacc suit - Ed could squeeze through it - and that they had arrived at Prospero's Dream. From talking on the comms they found out that a Tempest Co. fighter was inbound to vaporize the ship if it continued to show unsanctioned life on far-range bioscans.

On the main deck, bioscanners showed 2 lifeforms, one moving in the science lab, another there but still. They were in an accessway between air lock, the science lab, engine and thruster rooms. The corridor nearest the science lab was covered in eroded characters, much like the asteroid-chunks on the ship exterior. 

They had a clear run to an escape pod, but decided to stay and try to lure whatever it was into an airlock and blow it out into space. 

Ryan acts as the lure, Doc hides in an Engine room, and Willow crawls into a nearby air duct. They plan on Ryan running into the airlock and keeping the screaming thing busy, Willow triggering the airlock, and Doc as kind of the floater / backup. Ryan and Doc were in their vacc suits; Willow had to remove hers to squeeze into the air vent.

From DEAD PLANET

The creature came into view - its torso ending in a fleshy twitching maw, its long arms almost folded in on themselves, its pallid flesh. Ryan passed a panic check, Doc failed and gained 1d10 stress. Ryan sprinted for the airlock but failed a speed check - it caught up to him and swung its long-fingered hand at his back, hurting him. (I forgot that the alpha gaunt has 2 attacks per action, foolishly.) The creature had stopped at the edge of the airlock, just outside - Ryan had been left sprawling in it. 

Willow climbed from her vent and peered around a corner at the creature, passing her panic check. It noticed her, just as she shot it in the back with her laser cutter. It staggered into the airlock, turning to lift her into the air and hurt her, screaming to scare everyone. Ryan regained his feet, sealed himself into the airlock and tripped the explosive bolts, firing himself and it into the void.

They collided and then he was trying to scramble onto the mining arms of the ship, and failed. The beast grappled on and clung to the ship. Ryan, floating away, managed to line up a laser cutter shot and the creature lost its grip on the ship and floated free.

Meanwhile, Willow and Doc came into the science lab and found that it had been wrecked, and that a small jointed gate stood glowing in the middle - the bioscanner read it as alive. It was silicon, metal, and generating its own energy - enough to run the ship for a few years. They decided to heave it into an escape pod and fire it off into the void, and did so just as something began to emerge from it.

Free of organic life, their ship was allowed to dock as Prospero's Dream. The crew had their ice-asteroids to sell, and a potential quest to find a buyer for the asteroids covered in infectious writing, if they thought such prudent. As for the creature and the gate, I'm sure Tempest Co. did its job dilligently and eliminated them via fighter-craft fire. 

Willow discovered that she had a character from that alien language eroded into her flesh. 

MY THOUGHTS YES I HAVE THAT

I think I did a good job leading up to the monster, building scary feels. I don't feel my use of the monster as a threat of death quite lived up to that. I think I ran the monster in combat a little too stupidly - I forgot that it could attack twice, physically, for one action. I feel like it stressed them out a great deal but did little damage to them. And maybe 1 panic check for the whole mission was too few? I dunno. Maybe the monster wouldn't lose its grip on the ship when shot, but I thought of it as a graceful viral-language spreader and not a Meat Powerhouse. I definitely should have thought more about what would tear a vacc suit.

One thing that might've helped was if I simply thought more about this thing's motivation. Turn entire ship into virus-writing, fly it at Prospero's Dream? Then it could simply inspire panic, stress, and ignore the PCs unless they attack it. A horrid monster that just doesn't care about the PCs. Or, turn them into parts of its gate to enlarge it? Then it would want to not act so aggresively, maybe flee the PCs and try to ambush them singly. As is, it responded more like an animal than an erosion-writer.

(Of course, the MOST obvious thing is that Dead Planet's Alexis was written with other monsters on it. The God of Route 11B I wrote has minions in the forms of its congregation.)

WHAT THEY DID WAS SMART

On the other hand, their plan was decent, they rolled quite well, and Willow distracting it (and pushing it back a step into the airlock with a powerful laser-cutter shot) and Ryan wearing his vacc suit were vital lynchpins in their plan, as was no one freaking out and going all catatonic. The monster still had 4 (45) hits as it floated away from the ship. They focused entirely on getting it out of the ship, not getting in a stand-up fight. They played it smart and rolled well. They didn't figure out what was going on (other than the fact that the language itself was dangerous around computer systems), but they did survive, and saved their payday cargo and their ship.