Mothership AP: Kids Are Alright 2: Hellslide to the Sink

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: 38, Instinct: 45, Loyalty: 50, Revolver, 3 reload cylinders Flight Suit)

Getting to the Dream

So the niece/nephew/brother-in-law/android merc squad dock just outside Prospero's Dream, because their 93 Hull mining vessel will not fit in the dry dock. They lose some stress from getting back to civilization, and then the Q-Team pointing pulse rifles at them and hosing them down with disinfectant stresses them out again. They head through the dry docks, down a corridor towards the Stellar Burn to buy drinks, look for weapons, and offload their cargo.

Art from Tsutomu Nihei's Blame!

The Slide

My first encounter roll is a deadly one. I roll an 8. I ask them who's in front of the group. Ryan's up front, and fails a Body save. The group (I rule) has blundered into a section of walkway that irises open and they tumble down a chrome-slick peristalting gullet. Random chrome slide to the Sink! When they awaken they're on a plateau of broken concrete. In the distance they see what looks dimly like a waterfall, with a few flickering yellow lights on a precipice atop it. Above them, cold blue lights shine like distant uncaring stars. Cracked buildings lean drunkenly, and in the distance a series of vast pipes seems to writhe. (In retrospect I should've had them roll a fear save or panic check, but I was so flummoxed that I was just trying to give them some semi-viable choice of direction). They manage to find an old O2 bottle with 6 hours of breathe left to it. Taking stock, they march towards the waterfall. I roll an encounter and get 8 Hunglungs with spears (and quite low speed) waiting in ambush.

The Ambush

The PCs wind up in a canyon formed of two colossal buildings leaning against one another, an alley between them turned into a small steep ravine. It's quiet, they don't see anything moving. Willow asks if she can see anything with her IR goggles, and I tell her there are dim handprints on one of the empty window-panes.

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So at the base of the buildings there's a shelf of concrete about as wide as a sidewalk, then the ravine, which bottoms out in a narrow trail. Willow sees someone looking out at them, just a sliver of face, partially masked by concrete and some kind of blocky monocle. The figure darts away.

Willow's player smartly asks if her bioscanner will help, and whips it out. She notices 8 signatures spread out between the buildings. Willow wants to sneak up to the 'sidewalk' and listen in on the larger cluster. I tell her there's enough debris on the ground she needs an auditory distraction, and Ryan obliges by smacking his crowbar against the ground like a maniac. The sneaking marine touches one of the metal 'vines' growing all over the Sink, and it is warm to the touch, despite not showing up on IR (Sanity save!). 

Willow listens in; the Hunglungs seem to think they're clueless tourists. As they spring out to 'ambush' them, Willow has gotten behind the Hunglungs and surprises them, snatching a spear from one of them and hurling him down the ravine. Doc, Ryan and Ed are stressed to receive a charge of emaciated, tired Hunglungs with spears, but manage to down 3 of them in the scrum. 

The Loot

The rest of the Hunglungs opt to flee, and the PCs watch them go. The PCs manage to salvage 5 spears, 2 ancient hazardous environment suits that are relatively undamaged / patchable, a flare gun (3 flares) and the IR monocle. Doc and Willow have begun to feel feverish as ACMD takes hold. Willow and Ryan don the environment suits and the four keep moving towards the waterfall. 

Takeaways

I'm playing around with encumbrance rules Sean is playtesting. Characters can carry Strength / 10 items. Stacks of 3 stimpacks/magazines/grenades are 1 item slot. There's a wearing slot for armor or otherwise wearable items (flashlights, RAW, and short-range comms at my table) outside of the Str/10 limit, as are slots for your mitts. So there was more deliberation at the Dream and when looting the Hunglungs about what to take, which seems very apt to me. Drives home 'survival horror' and doesn't seem to slow things down overmuch.

Also I was not at all ready for them to go straight to the Sink - there's only a 2% chance of this happening by default. But, uh, be ready for this. Just in case. You can just wing things a bit with random encounters, and a dim-and-vague description of the overall layout, which is awesome, but next time I'm going to use some of the landmarks specifically mentioned in that spread. Probably put together a small pointcrawl of where they've been, options for where to go. 

Also the rules for 'you don't have an O2 tank' in the Sink are on page 31 at the start of the Choke, which totally makes sense because you'd go through there first... unless this happens. So I forgot about that! But it's not a huge deal. They have a tiny amount of O2 and I can always say 'now that you've been down here long enough you feel really woozy' if they lose that O2 for any reason. Anyway, I do love that APoF has a Hellslide straight to the Sink.

d10 Ways The Company Tracks You

Inspired by the awesome d10 Reasons You're In The Corporation's Pocket over at traaa.sh. That site has some awesome Mothership resources. 

This is some setting infrastructure, but don't feel like it has to be this Universal Solution. It could be that in this quadrant things are a certain way, but not in others. The Company has to adapt to different markets and sectors. 

If you've already started a game and need to introduce this, 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 are pretty easy to work in; some of the others are 'hidden behavior / things in the PCs' and may or may not work.

Art by Xenya Dominguez

d10 Ways The Company Tracks You

1. Ship burst-transmits whenever it jumps; the Company has an elaborate system of message-receiver satellites and couriers that pull data from them. Burst-transmitter is built into your ship's jump calculator.
2. Hidden cameras on the ship, hidden brain-in-a-jar somewhere on the ship, secret network of space-brainwave transmissions in these sectors.
3. Civilization scabs sell your data as soon as you're getting docked; they're buying data from the station manifest-checkers and selling it to the Company.
4. Hypnogogic command dream-locked into the humans causes them to lose a tiny bit of time at each port transmitting reports up to the Company. Androids unaffected.
5. There are a lot of spy scouts and couriers in the area that fly into scanning range and jet away again.
6. Preinstalled cyberware (1 slot, body camera and transmitter) broadcasts data to corp networks every so often. Reapable, as in, you could try to get this cut out and sold, however the Company will see this as a breach of contract and try to retake any loaned goods.
7. Obvious cameras in ship, 'tamper proof' physical data dumps when in civilization when docked. Spacewalking best way to have a private conversation.
8. Spot bonuses incentivize self-reporting - jobs often pay less as this is how most ships cover fuel, O2, stores.
9. Locator/IFF beacon and cargo scanners that you need to work track data and transmit it to Company systems.
10. Jump-space monitoring by a fleet of Android pilots who are begging for any kind of release from where they are stationed, but also still doing their job. 

Mothership AP: CompanyLands Night Drive, 1 & 2, in-person crew

Writeup physical game nights 1 and 2. I ran my Night Drive desert delivery 'module' for some coworkers. 

Marine with examination loadout - WHooooo that is a real (awesome) warning sign. Don't fear the scientist, fear the marine with this gear, for they will be a butcher of all things. Also if a mysterious benefactor pays for a delivery, but you want the PCs to get into all kinds of hijinx, tell them that the benefactor will pay them for any interesting/weird/anomalous discoveries. Also, don't forget that vehicles have a speed stat - driving fast is more about that than a character's speed stat.

It's Friend's Nighttime Delivery - Geoff the marine, Jeff the Teamster, and Steaksauce the Android driving an A-6 Grizzly from Bixby to Lyons, a strange box in the cargo hold, at the behest of Friend. I'm running the same scenario with two different groups.

Art by Karl Sisson

Session 1 -> The android drives because it, nicknamed 'Steaksauce', cannot become bored. He fails a driving check and the roadkill encounter gets lodged under the Grizzly. The marine finds some roadkill and cuts out its brain for science. They drive off and the roadkill drags itself away. They come across Roland's Bait Shop, hear Sara asking for their help over short-range comms, warning them of automated turrets around the place. They use the Grizzly to shove 2 wrecked vehicles at a turret until it expends a lot of ammo. They bolt the remaining still-moveable wreck to the front of their Grizzly and ram a turret - it gets off a shot at the Grizzly but the ATV's armor handles it well, and the turret is destroyed in the collision. 

They bust into the Bait Shop looking for Sara in her panic room and pallets of food to scavenge. Not in that order. They find a computer and watch CCTV footage of the God destroying Roland and Darren, Sara's Dads, who with her had run the gas station for years. Sanity checks as it mists its way through a fist-sized hole, reforms in its pale maggot-colored flesh, and wrecks havoc on Darren and Roland. 

Then bioscanners detect a strange reading vectoring in on the Bait Shop. They frantically break into the hatch leading to Sara's panic room, she clambers out and deals with what has happened as they load themselves into the Grizzly. Jeff stares out at the God through his IR goggles but fights down panic. As they climb aboard the Grizzly and drive off, Roland's corpse begins to stand up, shouting that "God is here." Sara panics and wrestles for her pulse rifle, Jeff and Geoff try to de-escalate the situation, and Steamsauce slams the gas and Sara hits a bulkhead and is knocked out. Geoff and Jeff look for rope with which to tie up Roland, who comes at them. Overall, lots of good tension buildup.

Session 2 -> Sara's knocked out in the cargo hold, Roland pins Geoff's arms to his side. Steaksauce is driving away from the God, Jeff is watching it in the turret through his IR goggles. Jeff, hearing Geoff struggle, slides down the ladder and runs behind Roland, hitting him with his crowbar. Roland, distracted, let off some pressure on Geoff, who struggled free and levered up his stun baton but missed. Steaksauce, listening into comms from the driver's cockpit, slammed the brakes and only Geoff remained standing, who snatched up some stowing rope and struggled against Roland to tie up his hands. Roland stood and launched himself at Jeff, headbutting him and biting him. Geoff failed to trigger his stun baton optimally - eventually Steaksauce briefly halted the vehicle, ran back to tranq Roland, and sprinted back to the cockpit to drive the ATV away. 

As Steaksauce had driven well and put in a big lead against the pursuing God, and as he was away from the cockpit for ~15 seconds, I figured It had not caught up with them, though he had a 3rd drive check to speed away from It. I sadly forgot to use the vehicle's speed for these checks; the God would have probably caught up to the ATV had I remembered. Fancy maneuvers - I could see using the Android's stats. Pure 'drive fast' - should have used the vehicle's speed. Regardless, out-driving the monster is less scary, but it's how the dice fell. It'll turn up again, I'm sure.

They tried to understand Roland. They hypothesized that the God might be broadcasting and receiving data from him. They turned their bioscanner, medscanner, cybernetic diagnostic scanner and electronic repair tools to the task, and knew it was so. Roland's cyberbrain prosthetics were doing this, as were the burnt-looking black marks upon his scalp, which seemingly wired into his cyberwear.

Sara woke up and as usual, seems to roll well, passing a 'panic check or no' Instinct check. She spoke to Jeff and Geoff as though in a dream. She seemed surprised that they were keeping her father's body when it was clearly dangerous, when it was raving about God, back from the dead but clearly Wrong; she asked them why they were studying Roland's body rather than dumping it. She indicated that it wasn't Roland anymore.

They rolled up on a curve in the road, boxed in somewhat by somewhat steep sides. Boulders on either shoulder. The road itself had a patch that was carved up as though by a laser cutter. Jeff threw a box of twinkies at it from the pallet, to no effect. Geoff knew, from his military training, that mine triggers are set to weights close to what they are designed to attack - an anti-vehicle mine won't go off from a 5 pound weight. He crept close and noticed detonator pressure sensors and mines or IEDs wedged into the road carvings. Steaksauce drove the ATV around, critically succeeding and thereby running over an android hiding under camo blankets near one of the boulders. 

They came up to a Grizzly parked 200m or so from the IED ambush, and watched as a rubber-faced android climbed into the turret and pointed a pulse rifle at them. It told them to turn off their engines and dismount. Steaksauce locked all external doors and came in the back to scheme, and because he wasn't sure if the pulse rifle rounds would punch through the driver's cockpit. The android promised them shelter, and that it was not familiar with the God of Route 11b, and the party was not wholly convinced. They decided to dump Roland out the back and see what the Android did with him. As they roll up the backdoor, they spot another 2 androids in the distance, behind boulders, aiming weapons at them. They throw Roland out and slam the cargo door shut as pulse rifle rounds impact off it. 

The android on the radio calls them. 'We tire of this. Step out of your vehicle, it is time to meet God.'

I figure the next session starts with a panic check. They were very convinced androids would not be swayed by the God, as Roland was. When hope is drastically cut away, panic checks.

Art by Leo Haslam

Sleevejacker

Sleevejacker is a class for Mothership, inspired by one of the random encounters from A Pound of Flesh, which most of us are still hungrily awaiting in physical form or otherwise. This is not playtested. Anyway, here is the encounter:

Yuvenko | Sleevejacker | “You haven’t lived until you’ve lived twice.”

All their non-immediately-dangerous encounters have a _name_ and a _quote_. If you roll the same number as before you now have a reoccurring NPC, and the quote does a good job of suggesting personality. Like Yuvenko, who is an unrepentant sleevejacker. 

Resleeving in A Pound of Flesh gives a +1 minimum stress to 'the sleeve' - so perhaps if you get back to your original body you get rid of that, perhaps not. Either way, bodyhopping is not undertaken lightly - except by sleevejackers, whose minds seem almost designed to be transmitted from body to body.

Art by Sebastian Szmyd

Sleevejacker

You might not have even meant to start. You might've woken up in a strange body, remembering the shrieking backup machine sifting through your mind with its magnetic fingertips, but not why you were embodied. You might have deliberately kidnapped someone to wipe their brain and commandeer their body. You might have returned from penal cold storage in new flesh. Either way, you discovered you had a knack for resleeving that others lack. Otherwise you're awfully similar to the background-noise masses of void urchins and star vagabonds.

Special: When you resleeve you don't gain +1 minimum stress. You start out backed up somewhere semi-useful to you, to be discussed with your Warden.

Skills: Rimwise, Scavenging, +2 skill points

Saves: Sanity 35, Fear 40, Body 25, Armor 30

Panic Effect: When you fail a panic check, in addition to whatever happens, you have a moment of Sleeve Rejection Syndrome. The Warden gets to take an action as your sleeve runs semi-autonomously, often acting as though its former occupant was still within.