Mothership: The Ghost of the Sanchong

I recently ran my first Mothership adventure, a home-brew called The Ghost of the Sanchong. Here is a play report.

The player characters started aboard the Claymore, a courier ship run by a careless pilot named Lewinksi, heading for new horizons where they hope to find work on an asteroid mining outpost. The party consists of:

• Skylr: oblivious moon child, constantly doodling, makes meditation mixtapes, took some machine shop and zero-g training but only to fill out her time studying chakras, astrology, and crystal healing
  
• Nix Jaxer: straight-laced, zero-g mechanic, Just Wants To Get The Job Done(TM)
  
• Bruce Andersen: ex-marine, seriously overweight, possibly discharged for incompetence, chain smoker, speaks with a thick neo-Melbourne accent
  

The PCs are leaving the overcrowded artificial habitat Vitalian's Shield and heading for the outer reaches of the solar system. In particular they are headed for Remote Site 12-T, an asteroid mining station also known by its common callsign Paradox Terminal.

Paradox Terminal was an amalgamation of a ruined moon base and a decommissioned frigate called the Sanchong; the moon base accounted for the habitable upper parts of the station, while the Sanchong sat underneath and provided power, computation, and other logistical systems.

After arriving and going through de-lousing, ID checks, and a short series of questions from Maddison Spencer, the station's dockmaster, the characters find themselves in the crowded social hub. They hear that the dockmaster might have work for them but they want to look around and get acquainted with the station first. As soon as he has paid his 24hr O2 tax, Andersen lights up a cigarette. Jaxer and Andersen quickly agree that Skylr will probably get eaten alive if she's left unsupervised and make sure to keep her in view.

After getting some rumours (plus two flat beers and a heavily-caffinated corporate-brand cola) from the local bar and investigating the failing hydroponics garden (run by neo-shinto priests who have a side-business repatriating expired teamsters for a small donation), the PCs rendezvous with the dockmaster and ask her if she still has a job for them.

Spencer promised the party one kilocredit (ie: a thousand credits) each if they could EVA to the lower portion of the station, enter the Sanchong, recover the old frigate's flight recorder, find out what was drawing power from the fusion reactor, and rectify the situation. Two more teams had already attempted the task but had failed to return - Spencer warned the PCs that, aside from the danger of terawatt power lines within the shell of the Sanchong, there was also the danger of micrometeorites that ocassionally broke through the station's automated laser defence grid and peppered the hull. The micrometeorites were not enough to penetrate the station's armour, but the characters' vaccsuits would likely not withstand them for long.

The characters agree and don their vaccsuits. Andersen doesn't have one and so has to borrow a poorly-maintained company rental suit with outdated interfaces and missing features. Skylr's suit had doodles and brightly-coloured patches all over it, much to Jaxer's disgust.

Despite the dockmaster's warnings, the PCs run afoul of a micrometeorite storm and Andersen is almost knocked tetherless into the dark void. Jaxer and Skylr repair Andersen's suit but he has lost a lot of oxygen and is a little shaken up by the ordeal. By the time they reach the Sanchong's nearest airlock the characters are ready to get indoors and out of the inclement space-weather.

The interior of the Sanchong is illuminated only by dim red lights fed by emergency power. Everything is covered with dust and seems uninhabited but there is evidence of another investigation team that passed through this way. The characters find a dead body - a woman in a vaccsuit who appears to have been killed by a rigging gun harpoon through the chest. They also find a terminal which they bring to life and begin to explore.

After pulling down a map from the terminal and exploring their options (limited without a security keycard), the PCs pushed on into the ship. Shortly they heard what sounded like a human scream followed by a deep, monotonous chanting: "a black box... a white room... a red dress..." The players were naturally quite cautious going forward.

The next room was a cargo bay that had been converted into an aquaponics lab. A large bundle of cables ran into the room from further within the ship and it was clear that the jury-rigging that had gone into this science project was drawing way more power than it ought to. There was also a dead android in the aquaponics room but more screaming and chanting drew the characters on towards the medbay.

In the medbay the PCs were greeted with a gruesome scene. Two teamsters were strung up from pipes in the ceiling by their wrists, both were screaming, and one was covered in blood. Before them stood a towering individual in an antiquated, armoured vaccsuit. The figure was chanting ominously " a black box... a white room... a red dress..." and cutting the bloodied teamster with a scalpel. As the characters recover from the initial shock, the figure grabbed a fistful of the bloody teamster's scalp and pulled - skinning the man alive and splattering the deck with ribbons of gory human hide. Andersen opened fire with his SMG while Jaxer and Skylr let rip with their laser cutters.

The combat was absolute chaos. Someone hit a pressurised duct and obscured the whole room with steam. Someone else hit the lights. Someone else punctured the hull with their laser cutter. Someone lost their battery pack. Someone ducked behind the surviving strung-up teamster and used them as a human shield (they did not survive). Skylr was extremely lucky and managed to shear off the rigging gun attached to the hostile figure's right arm; Andersen leapt forward, grabbed the rigging gun, and fired it into the menacing figure's face-plate. This, combined with more blasts from Jaxer's and Skylr's laser cutters, stopped the chanting and toppled the armoured giant.

Investigating the armoured form revealed that instead of a man or woman, the armoured vaccsuit was inhabited by a writhing mass of long, black worms. The party was uncomfortable with this revelation but, content that the danger seemed be over (and there was no one left to save), they moved to investigate the server room where they found a security keycard that allowed them to access more systems on the terminals.

As they were exploring the terminals, however, they heard stomping and chanting. "A black box..." The armoured figure was back on its feet and stalking down the corridor towards them, slime-covered worms slipping out of its cracked visor with every step. Jaxer and Skylr hustled over to the command module while Andersen drew the revenant in the opposite direction towards life support.

The ex-marine made a courageous attempt to trap the monster between airlocks but was caught in a crushing bear-hug; he took a frag grenade and tried to jam it into the monster's worm-filled helmet but fumbled it and had his lower leg blown off in the resulting explosion. He tried to crawl away but even the grenade hadn't stopped the armoured figure and it stomped towards him menacingly. His SMG overheated and out of ammunition, his right foot gone, and his acidic ex-wife standing to inherit any possessions that survived him, Andersen gloated and untwisted the arming caps on two grenades as the monster leaned in to finish him off.

Jaxer and Skylr were hurrying (as much as anyone in a vaccsuit can hurry that is) back down the Sanchong's corridors towards the cargo pod where they entered when they heard Andersen's grenades go off. They broke through the exterior airlock and stopped only to seal it with their hand-welders. Skylr peered through the window one last time before leaving, only to see the silhouette of an armoured form stalking the darkened corridors within...