(we roll up characters here!)
let's jump right into session two of our Mothership scenario!
GMSG: Okay, everybody leveled up after the first session, right?
Hettie: Well. Not quite everyone.
GMSG: Sorry, everyone whose character lived, I mean.
Ariel: I miss Spanky Spannerman already. But I did make my character smarter with my level 1 bonus!
Akane: Is this from a hard lesson of losing her friend?
Ariel: Ooh! It must be! I just did it because the book said I could increase two numbers and I didn't want Stickshift McDiggitt to stay so dumb.
Akane: Yamaguchi also increased in Intellect. For skill I took "Pathology."
Sasha: Narcy Danger is all fighting, all the time. Strength up -- Boom! Combat up -- Boom! And some Close Quarters Combat to pound on things if they get up in my face.
Ariel: I copied you on that Close Quarters skill.
Claire: Panda learned how to jury rig things better. And I got a couple of my stats up a little more above average.
Elle: Pol d'Eurothein sees no need to announce his improvements to everyone.
GMSG: I think this is just player-to-player information, Elle.
Elle: I prefer to stay in character. That way if anyone mentions an awareness of my skill or stat advancement, Pol can express surprise at their unusual clarity of observation for a human.
GMSG: Gotcha. So the first decision for the group tonight is, you're down one person with technical skills. Do you want to try to make up for that by seeing if you can lure Captain Kellerman out of his quarters and try to get him recovered from his stimpak addiction withdrawal? Or do you want to revive one or both of the mystery passengers from cryosleep and hope they have some useful skills?
Claire: Do we have any information on the passengers besides their names and that they got married to the ship owner recently?
GMSG: Not really. From their names, you'd assume Charmaigne Besson is female and Kleive Meiters-Besson is male, but they're unusual names, so who knows?
Akane: Yamaguchi forbids reliance on drug-fiend Kellerman. Also we don't know, is he part of insurance scam? Untrustable.
Elle: Pol agrees that Kellerman is erratic and perhaps dangerously unhinged, but if the two passengers are both human, there's no guarantee they're any better. I say take our chances on the one we know has both Piloting and Engineering experience.
Ariel: I just miss Spanky.
Claire: Are we making this choice because whoever we pick is going to be Hettie's new character?
GMSG: Yes.
Sasha: So we should just let her pick, then.
Hettie: MSG had me make up two characters for the passengers, and I'd be happy to play either one. And he said (if you don't mind my revealing it, dear) the captain is a higher level character, so if I end up playing him, he's got some advantages even if there's baggage along with that. So leaving the decision to the characters works for me.
Sasha: I was kinda trying to dodge a long discussion.
Akane: Can Yamaguchi's medscanner tell us about the cryosleepers? Perhaps one is big and strong, another runty or feeble?
GMSG: Make a Pathology + Intellect roll.
Akane: Oh, it's a 63 percent chance for improved-level Yamaguchi! I roll ... 80. So disappointing.
GMSG: The medscanner isn't designed to scan through metal containers, and the cryosleep field interferes as well, so you can't determine anything.
Ariel: Well, we're all girls here except Elle, right? Maybe we should just wake up the girl passenger.
Elle: Pol suggests that to be an illogical criterion.
Sasha: Narcy's fine with it.
Akane: Any but the Kellerman.
Claire: Panda is more into the ladies anyway, I think. I mean, she probably swings both ways, but gals have an edge with her.
GMSG: Okay, then, it sounds like you thaw out Charmaigne Besson. Hettie, here are some character notes about how you ended up in this situation. You can share whatever you like with the group once they fill Charmaigne in.
Hettie: Hmm.
Ariel: What's it say?
Hettie: Just a moment more. It's not long, but I'm digesting.
Claire: While you're thinking about it, what's your character look like?
Hettie: Spectacled. Small of frame. Indeterminate ethnicity, probably a mix of several genetic backgrounds. Light cocoa skin, a pair of highly arched pigtail braids. Her eyes are large and bright.
Ariel: She sounds pretty!
Hettie: At least moderately so. All right, as for these character notes ... if you tell her what's happened so far, she is of course shocked. But it's only because of the circumstances, not because she's devastated that she married someone who tried to kill her for insurance money. As far as she's concerned, her name is Charmaigne McAlastair, and her only connection to Besson is that he offered her free passage on The Inner Peace in exchange for her letting him list her on the manifest as someone else, for purposes he didn't disclose. It seemed suspicious to her, but she was desperate to get off of Walter's Sinkhole and had no funds for a ticket, so she accepted. She realizes now that the paperwork she signed must have included some fine print legally espousing her to Besson.
Elle: Pol asks what skills she has.
Hettie: She's a bit taken aback by the abruptness as she has been trying to process what's happened to her. But she indicates that she's a scientist and theologist by trade, endeavoring to mate the spiritual and mechanical natures of the universe through knowledge. Her specialties are Geology and Chemistry.
Elle: Okay, back in the fridge with her.
Sasha: You made this character up, Hettie? Not to be rude, but is the other one, like, any better?
Hettie: You would have to wake him up to find out.
Ariel: I like her. Can she fight, Hettie? Maybe with a specialty in killing robot spiders with zombie heads?
Hettie: She says she has a vibechete in her gear, but she's not really trained in using it as a weapon.
Elle: Fridge. Wake the other one up.
Claire: Panda asks if Ms. McAlastair knows who the other passenger is.
Hettie: Actually, it's Reverend McAlastair. Most people call me "Rev. Mackie" or just "Rev." But no, I have no idea.
Elle: Fridge. Fridge!
Sasha: Look, Pol. The way I see it, Spanky and Panda didn't come back empty-handed as a result of not having enough technical skills. They just didn't go over there loaded for bear. Now that we know what's up, we've got two marines here who can handle the spooky spiders. I say we gear up, go hit the spiders hard while Panda finishes cutting those power cables, then close up the doors and detach the ship so we can scavenge our hyperdrive parts and get out of here.
GMSG: Claire, it occurs to Panda that even with the hyperdrive repaired, you'll still need fuel to be able to leave the system.
Claire: And whatever's up on that station apparently has sucked all the fuel and power from all the ships that are docked.
GMSG: Maybe so. Definitely the one ship you've checked.
Claire: You said there are standard fuel-line connections for refueling ships at a station like this. Could we access those?
GMSG: Yes. But it would require powering up the docking hub's fuel pumps.
Ariel: So we have to go inside?
GMSG: It looks that way.
Elle: What if we just hooked into the station's computer systems? There's got to be some kind of connection port or space-wifi we could use for that. Then Pol could just hack the fuel pumps into powering on.
GMSG: Remember, your scans showed almost all of the station's systems being offline. If there's no power to the connections or wifi, you won't be able to access the computer systems that way.
Elle: Ugh.
Claire: Can our sensors scan the station well enough for me to figure out where there's an active power junction that could be routed to the fuel pumps? Obviously, I'd want the closest one to the docks, not like, the central power core or something deep in the station's guts.
GMSG: Make an Intellect + Engineering roll.
Claire: 82, dang it.
GMSG: You know there has to be a series of power distribution nodes between the fusion core and the extremities of the station -- the rings, the docks, the communications and solar array. The sensors pretty easily let you tell where the active nodes are, but you're having trouble pinpointing the inactive ones. The nearest active one is all the way down where the top ring joins the central spindle.
Claire: Well, I guess we'll head for that one and keep an eye out on the way for any that are closer. The question is, who all is going?
Elle: Does anyone need to go besides you and our two marines?
Sasha: Narcy points to her "Fix Me First" patch and says, "If we're expecting a fight, I want my medic real close."
Claire: If we get access to some power, it might be good to have Pol along to hack the computers for information or to control some of the other systems.
Elle: Oh, no it wouldn't. If you get access to the power, just power up the wifi and I'll do the hacking from here. Someone needs to stay here and make sure Captain Drug-hound doesn't do anything crazy while we're gone.
Hettie: Rev. Mackie is willing to go in case you need an extra hand with something. She finds the mystery of the station intriguing both scientifically and metaphysically. How many souls were on board when the disaster struck? That kind of thing.
GMSG: So Pol's holding down the fort and everyone else is going across?
Claire: Looks like.
GMSG: Okay. It's a tense crossing with so many people lacking Zero-G training. Everyone but Panda will need to make a Fear save. If you don't make it, you gain a point of Stress.
Hettie: I fail with a 46.
Akane: Yamaguchi also.
Sasha: Narcy is cool with a 29.
Ariel: 34 for Stickshift. She isn't digging this part.
Elle: Pol alerts everyone that three of the team just got elevated heart rates on the lifesigns monitor. He tells them to be calm, since the only person who's died so far did so on board a ship, not outside one.
Sasha: You're not helping, Blue.
GMSG: Once across, the airlock you entered before isn't large enough for everyone. Two people will have to stay outside while the first three cycle through.
Sasha: Doc, you're with me and McDiggitt.
Akane: It's okay. I am stressed from outside. Inside may be better.
Claire: Panda will handle manually cycling the airlock.
Ariel: I have my vibechete out!
Sasha: Narcy's submachine gun is locked and loaded.
GMSG: When the inner door cycles open, the three of you find yourselves in that eerie quiet of the lifeless ship.
Sasha: I do a quick look each direction down the corridor, ready to shoot anything I see.
GMSG: For the moment, it's clear.
Akane: My equipment list has "Stun Baton," I see, so I take it out.
Sasha: We'll move out into the hall, me in front of the doc, Stickshift behind her.
GMSG: Panda and Charmaigne cycle through without any difficulties. Sash, at the forward end of the hall, Narcy sees the open door into the EVA prep room of the ship's main airlock.
Sasha: I'll move forward cautiously. What do I see once I get to the door?
GMSG: The airlock is on the far side of the prep room. The inner door is open, and the outer door appears mostly closed but jammed on some cables and tubing. The tubing appears to have been severed. Lying face-down in the center of the airlock, with its limbs sprawled unnaturally, is Spanky's motionless corpse. Nearby is the laser cutter he dropped just before he died.
Ariel: Stickshift hurries over and turns him face up to make sure he's really dead.
GMSG: Totally dead, head rolling loosely in the dome of his helmet, eyes open and coldly, sightlessly still. A trickle of blood flows from the top of his head once you've flipped him over, and you see that there's a round hole bored through the crown of the helmet.
Ariel: Why did it have to do that when he was already dead? Stickshift is really choked up.
Sasha: Maybe these things aren't very smart. That would be good news.
GMSG: Aers, roll a Fear save. You can roll it with advantage, but if you roll it straight and succeed, I'll let you remove a point of Stress instead of adding it, as the sadness saps some of the tension from you.
Ariel: I'll roll normally ... oh well, 39.
Sasha: I'm covering the gap with my submachine gun. I'll also suggest that Panda ought to get cutting on the cables.
Claire: I'll do that.
GMSG: You get them severed without any problem. The outer door is still clamped tight on them, though, which both prevents it from closing and keeps you from moving that end out of the way.
Sasha: So what now? We've gotta open our outer door and the station's outer door to get this stuff out of the way, but then what?
Hettie: If we all leave to find the power node, some of those spider things might get on board while we're gone.
Claire: Yeah. But I could use my hand welder to seal the station's airlock doors, and then when we came back, we'd know if something managed to get them back open.
Akane: This plan increases challenge for a quick escape, though, right?
Claire: Sure. If we're running back here with an army of zombie-head spiders chasing us, cutting the door welds to get out won't be ideal. But the station has to have secondary airlocks too. MSG, I think Panda would have been scanning for that when we were preparing to come back over here. I mean, our characters had longer to plan this than we've taken here, right?
GMSG: I think that's reasonable. It would also be pretty standard from an engineering viewpoint to know that with a rotating station design like this, they would probably alternate large cargo airlocks for ships with smaller personal airlocks for repair personnel along the ring of the docking hub.
Hettie: Not sure I know what that means, but I'll assume it makes sense.
GMSG: Here, I'll draw a sketch. Here's the ring of the docking hub ... and here's how the ship is positioned. The whole thing rotates this way, which causes a force that feels like an outward pull of gravity. The airlocks fit together ... like ... this, basically. These hexagonal shapes are the locks for the ships. The little rectangles are the personnel ones. The hub can extend catwalks from the personnel locks to the ships ... when there's power.
(this is a much nicer version of what he drew!)
Hettie: Ah. That's making a lot more sense. Thank you.
Claire: So the game plan can be, get all the cables and fuel lines clear of the airlocks, get inside, crank all the doors closed while welding the station doors shut along the way, go find the power node, turn on the pumps, hurry back here, and leave through the personnel lock. While we're doing that, Pol can program the autopilot to track this ship we're salvaging and follow it once we blow the explosive bolts and it drifts free.
Hettie: Are we going to pump the fuel into this ship first? Or come back and connect The Inner Peace to refuel it?
Claire: Well ... it's possible if we refuel this ship, we wouldn't have to repair anything. We might be able to just power it up and get the hell out of Dodge.
Elle: Potentially with a brain-drilling zombie-head spider hiding out somewhere in the new ship, just waiting until everyone is in cryosleep to come out and go on a killing/drilling spree.
Claire: But if we leave and come back, we'll be hooking The Inner Peace to the station where a spider might get on it anyway, and the spiders on the station might figure out how to shut the pumps back down while we're gone.
Sasha: So damned if we do, damned if we don't.
Claire: I kind of like topping this ship off. If it turns out to be fixable, great, but if not, I can jury-rig something to transfer the fuel to The Inner Peace. But if we're going to try that, I need to make sure whoever ran these fuel lines through the airlock didn't do something with the fuel tanks that screws the whole idea up.
Sasha: Great. McAlastair, why don't you go with Fatale in case she needs help. McDiggitt, the doc, and I can stay here and guard the entrance.
Akane: Is Ms. Danger now in charge?
Sasha: Fatale's calling the mission plan, but this entrance ain't gonna guard itself. I'm the only one with a gun, so I feel like that gives me a claim to take the combat lead.
Claire: Works for me. Ready to follow these tubes into the ship, Rev?
Hettie: In other circumstances I might take a minute to pray, but I think we can spare that for efficiency's sake.
Claire: Pray along the way. It can't hurt.
Elle: Pol notes over the suit comms that you might not hear a spider sneaking up if you're listening to a bunch of religious mumbo-jumbo.
Hettie: Some of us know how to be quiet, Mr. d'Eurothein.
Sasha: Ooh, burn!
Elle: Hmph.
GMSG: Claire, it's easy enough for you and Charmaigne to follow the fuel lines. They lead down some corridors you haven't been to yet, and down an open access tube to Engineering with a ladder you can use to climb down. Once there, it takes a few minutes for you to decide that if you just shut off some valves and disconnect the lines, the ship's tanks should be good to refill.
Ariel: Whew! That was easy enough! So now we head for the power thingajobby?
GMSG: Hold on, I didn't say nothing was happening at the airlock while Panda and Charmaigne are gone.
Sasha: Way to jinx us, Aers.
Ariel: It was just a question!
GMSG: Not long after Panda and Rev head into the bowels of the ship, the characters in the airlock hear something beyond the door.
Akane: Skitters of spiders?
GMSG: No, it doesn't sound like that. It's indistinct, distant at first, and when you try listening for it, there's nothing but quiet for a moment.
Ariel: I listen for more than a moment.
Elle: I think he was getting to that, dear.
Ariel: Hush! I'm roleplaying.
GMSG: You hear the sound again a few seconds later. It's almost like ... a voice.
Akane: Zombie-head kind of voice?
Sasha: What would that even sound like?
GMSG: It actually sounds like Spanky Spannerman's voice.
Ariel: What?!
GMSG: The hair on the back of your neck stands up as the voice grows louder. "Why did you leave me? I needed your help ..." It's definitely Spanky's voice.
Sasha: What. The. Hell.
GMSG: Somewhere out in the darkness beyond the gap, you can see something faint and glowing, growing nearer as the voice continues, "Why? I thought we were friends ... why didn't you come help me, Stickshift?" You think ... even though it's still a ways off, you think the figure looks like Spanky too. Everybody in the airlock needs to roll a Sanity save.
Ariel: I don't think I'm even going to roll. I think I'm just panicking right away.
Elle: I mean, it's obviously a hologram from the station being a VR resort. You know that, don't you? This is Elle speaking, not Pol.
Ariel: Even if I do, Stickshift only went up to a 28 intelligence from 23! She's still not the brightest, plus she's got 5 Stress! But fine, I roll, and it's a 79. Happy?
GMSG: Two points of Stress. Akane?
Akane: It's 18 for Yamaguchi! Science will explain this somehow!
Sasha: Narcy gets a ... 13. Whew.
GMSG: "You could have helped me," says the apparition, close enough now that you can make out Spanky's face. "You could have helped me, but now I'm trapped here, forever." And just like that, the vision blinks out and there's only darkness and silence.
Ariel: OMG. The spiders totally sucked Spanky's brain out of his skull and put it in a jar somewhere and made him into a hologram ghost.
Elle: That's legitimately horrifying. Did Stickshift say that out loud?
Ariel: Well she doesn't have a brainstorm like that very often, so she's not going to just keep it to herself!
GMSG: Now Pol can roll a Sanity save too. You're not personally present to hear the hologram or ghost or whatever it was, and probably only saw it indistinctly through the camera feed, so I'll let you roll with advantage.
Elle: Peachy. I'm sure you remember what Android Sanity saves are like. I roll 36 and ... 88. Great, that's a Critical Failure.
Ariel: No, you use the better roll if you have advantage, don't you?
Elle: Oh right.
GMSG: Only one point of Stress for Pol, watching over the comm feed.
Sasha: What exactly do we know about this VR resort we were all going to, anyway?
GMSG: That's a good question ... I wondered if anyone would get around to asking it. You know that there were supposed to be two kinds of VR for resort guests to experience here: a real-world environment where you can walk around and interact with holograms, and a true VR world where you go into a pod like the ones in a cryo-chamber, and the images and sensations of a simulated reality are induced by electromagnetic fields interacting with the synapses of your brain.
Elle: And they didn't foresee this going horribly, horribly wrong?
GMSG: Apparently not.
Ariel: Or they're even bigger insurance scammers than Mr. Besson!
Akane: MSG, Yamaguchi brought the medscanner with her. Can she detect a brain inside dead Spanky's skull?
GMSG: The tissue is there, but it's hard to get a good reading on it with his helmet in place.
Akane: Can I remove this helmet? It's a question for Ms. McDiggitt, not the gamemaster.
Elle: Psst ... it's "Warden" in this game.
Akane: Apologies. Warden.
Ariel: Stickshift just nods.
GMSG: Roll Intellect + Pathology, Akane.
Akane: *sigh* These dice. My roll is 96.
GMSG: You can tell that some kind of physical intrusion was made into the brain, but you can't see exactly where it extends to or what purpose it had, if any.
Akane: I try to reassure Ms. McDiggitt. It's mostly an intact brain. Perhaps the hologram only simulated from information in our comm transmissions.
Ariel: Stickshift doesn't really get all your doctor-talk. But she knows she didn't say anything about being Spanky's friend over the comms. So why would it pick her to talk to instead of like, Panda, who was there when Spanky died and really might have been able to do something? It's like it actually knew who was who.
Claire: This is a pretty distracting-sounding conversation. If it's going on at the same time Panda is working in Engineering, she'd ask Rev. Mackie to keep an ear on what's happening and she'd turn her own volume off so she can focus.
Hettie: Thumbs up from the reverend.
Ariel: Maybe they didn't steal her brain, but they stole something out of her brain. So she might really be trapped! We have to do something!
Hettie: I'll gently suggest that if some part of Mr. Spannerman survived, we could choose to take that as a good thing -- his continued presence in the universe.
Ariel: No. I have a vantablack marble from an archaeology dig, and it's thousands of years old but it's still perfectly smooth and black, and it spent those thousands of years in the dark, with nothing but darkness, and it would have been there forever if I hadn't found it and brought it out into the light again. How long will this station last floating here in space? And what if Spanky isn't the only one who's trapped here forever? Maybe that's the disaster that happened to all the people here, these spiders drilled their brains to make ghosts out of them and maybe there's thousands of them suffering in hologram hell.
Elle: You got all of that just by going from 23 Intellect to 28 when you leveled up?
Ariel: Stickshift used to be a genius, remember. Maybe there's flashes of the old her that come back sometimes. Maybe going from 23 to 28 was her brain healing, I don't know.
Elle: Well, it doesn't matter to Pol. He says, "I'm perfectly fine if all of you fix the ship and then go out to save the cybernetic spirits of the damned. But let's not delay the first thing for the second."
Claire: Whenever I get finished closing those valves and the reverend fills me in, Panda will have to agree with the android. None of us has any choice about trying to get the ship fixed, but we have to get that done before asking who wants to take on an extra level of risk.
Ariel: Fine. But if we see something along the way that looks like it could help Spanky, Stickshift McDiggitt isn't going to pass it up.
Claire: Panda shrugs and says, "We can't stop you if that happens."
Elle: Pol adds, "But it's your funeral. And since we have a minister now, there's literally a funeral option available."
Sasha: Narcy checks the slide on her submachine gun and asks if we're ready to go, then.
GMSG: All you have to do is open the door.
(p.s., we're having fun with this no matter what, but if anybody else is out there actually reading it and enjoying themselves, please leave a comment! that way we'll know these posts aren't just vantablack marbles buried in the dark somewhere ...)
