Mothership

Mothership: Another Bug Hunt

Introduction

My copy of the new Mothership boxed set arrived recently, and it got me excited about running another campaign. The boxed set comes with a new starter adventure, Another Bug Hunt, which I’m running for a few friends online. I wrote up some initial thoughts about Another Bug Hunt on my blog, and will likely use this play through to add some more.

Players

Contractors / NPCs

Session 1 - May 9th, 2024

Players: Arnold, Amanda, Kyana, Ian

The players wake up from cryosleep orbiting Samsa VI. They meet the slimey company employee Maas, who informs them of their mission: Rendezvous with 2ndLt Kaplan, the marine commander of the colony, and assist them in repairing the situation; re-establish satellite communications and get the terraformer back online; if all else fails, evacuate Dr. Edem, the mission specialist, as well as the colony’s synthetic science officer, Hinton (or at least retrieve his logic core). Nothing else matters, least of all the lives of the rest of crew on planet.

The players take a drop ship down to the surface, surviving a turbulent ride down. [Fear Saves] There is an intense tropical storm raging on the groun. They make their way towards Greta Base, which looks to have lost power. Closer they see it is on some sort of minimal power. They circumnavigate the building, peering in through windows. They can see disarray in what looks to be the cafeteria. Back at the main entrance, Maxwell hacks the airlock door. The room is black, lit by their headlamps. Jayden-113 searches the lockers, her flash light revealing huge claw marks and gashes in a couple. [Fear Saves]

The group make their way into the cafeteria and explore. VERSE finds a headless corpse, its chest seemingly hollowed out. Another headless corpse is found by Jayden-113. The androids matter of factly relay this information to the humans, huddled at the periphery of the room.

They exit out of the North exist of the room, and then head West towards the Garage (they had spotted previously when exploring the exterior). Inside the garage they find an APC, and a marine sitting inside a big hole, digging. He is unresponsive. Hazel climbs down to give him a stimpack. She puts his arm gingerly on his shoulder … and a motherfucking alien pops out of his head! [Did I ask for fear saves: now would have been the time!] [Hazel makes a speed check to rush back up before the creature settles into his new surroundings and gobbles her up. The players win an opposed roll, and so act first. Jayden-113 notices the bandolier of frag grenades on now dead the marine. Maxwell unloads her SMG clip into the hole, hitting the frag grenades. Everyone is knocked down as the explode. The creature in the hole is torn to shreds.

Inside the APC is a marine clutching a frag grenade. He seems unfazed by the commotion outside. He rocks back and forth, talking about “the hive” to himself. The players usher him out of the car, down into the hole. He doesn’t seem to mind.

I assuemd the dropship would drop the players off, and then fuck off back into space. That's made more explicitly clear if you read the 4th scenario. The players will obviously want to get the hell out of there as soon as they see the carnage in the cafetria. In my game the players were given two Marine Grunts as contractors, and they weren't keen to leave without finding out what happened to the other soliders / people. Amanda pictures her character in debt, after wasting money in pilot school. Ha. The way the adventure is set up, the players don't actually have a way to call for an extraction without fixing the satelite radio.
I made Arnold give up his whole clip to blow up the frag grenades, because it wasn't an easy shot. But that was me retconning the action. I should have just let them have the win and played it differently in the future.
There aren't any random encounters in this adventure. Time is an important factor, though. Certain events take place after a certain number of hours. I need to think about how to track that neatly, and communicate it to the players. I suppose this is what people use clocks for in Blades. Though I guess I could use a more literal clock.

Session 2 - May 16th 2024

Players: Arnold, Amanda, Kyana

The players try and interview the mechanic Demar. They manage to get small tid bits of information from him, but for the most part he’s not that lucid. They learn there is a “Hive” past the terraforming station.

They explore the base, doing a quick circuit of the interior. They find dead bodies in the control room and pantry, but leave them alone for now.

They investigate the crew quarters more carefully. The words COMMS OFF are written on the doors to area, grafitti. In Lt Kaplan’s room they find a locator device that is tracking the android Hinton. In Dr. Edem’s room they find a birthday card to Olsen, that was unopened. It reads: Thanks for always listening. Hopefully, they’ll let me leave after this one. Weather charts in Edem’s room suggest a huge storm is coming.

Returning to the control room, they discover the body they found belongs to Lt. Kaplan. He has clearly killed himself and destoryed the computers before doing so.

In the medical room they find one of Dr. Edem’s workbooks. She comments on discovering the “krebslieder” or “crabsong,” a shrill shriek the “carcinids” use in order to replicate. She mentions Hinton made most of the discoveries related to these creatures, but suggests her know how is what connected all the pieces.

Maxwell and Jayden-113 work together to break into the locked medical room. [Hacking Check, failed!] THey get in, but it takes some time. The door chime lets them know they are in just as they hear a load boom: Demar’s frag grenade has gone off. [Fear saves]

They decide now is as good a time as any to search for the missing personal. They get into the APC and head off for Heron Terraforming Base.

The sesion felt smoother. I knew Demar would 'turn' in 3 hours, give or take, and it just so happened that roughly coincided with the hacking attempt. Still could do a better job tracking time.

Session 3 - May 30th 2024

Players: Arnold, Amanda, Kyana, Ian

The players make the trip through the jungle towards Heron Terraforming Station. Hazel thinks she sees the crab-creatures in jungle as they drive.

They get to a clearing that opens up to the Terraforming base, and a small group of creatures emerges from the jungle as they do. They slam on the gas, and are pursued. Before things get too dire, an ATV drives past them blasting Ride of the Valkyries. The sound is enough of a distraction for the creatures to pause and change pursuit. Both cars make it back to the Hangar.

Their saviour is Sgt Valdez. As she tries to explain what’s going on she is inturpted by Dr. Edam, the women they are here to rescue. Edam is in turn interrupted by HM3 Brookman, the medic. Everyone has their own demands of the party: ensure the reactor doesn’t shutdown, recover important research, restore communication and flee, respectively. The group decides to go with Valdez’s plan: stop imminent the automated shutdown of the reactor.

The group repels makes their way to the roof of the building so they can repel down the side of the reactor chimney. It’s terrifying descending into the darkness. [Fear Save.] On the way down they see what look to be caccoons stuck to the walls. The radiation levels are lethal, but their hazard suits keep them safe.

On the other side of an airlock door they find the remnants of the previous squad holed up onto of a gigantic turbine in the middle of a flooded room. The water levels lap up against the cat walk this door exits on to. LCpl Franco reveals It Was Hinton All Along. The water is infested with creatures. The reactor is going to shutdown, mother-fucking Hinton sabotaged everything. Hinton escaped though a weird gash in the wall, before the flooding got too intense.

The group manage to get the marines off the turbine, and back onto the reactor chimney floor.

I was surprised the players went with restore power over 'get the fuck off the planet. I've also been impressed with how much of what's happening the players manageed to intuit or guess. There was much disapointment when they discovered the reactor was already sabotaged.

Session 4 - June 6th 2024

Players: Arnold, Amanda, Kyana, Ian

The players make their way up the chimney stack, climbing back up on with the rope system. The power dies as they make it up to the midway hatch. They enter the spillway. They find PFC Glockner’s dead body. Franco grabs his rocket launcher. They move on, entering the stairwell and making the way up to the lab.

They are ambushed by a Carcanid, who drops down behind them from its perch on the roof of the stairs. It lunges at Valdez and kills her instantly. Nobitov throws a frag grenade at the creature as it eats Valdez’s body. He doesn’t look behind as he along with everyone else runs up the stair well.

They move through a hatchway and manage to baricade it with some machinary in the room. They search the space, finding a now dead control terminal and a vent. They exit into the hallway, and head towards the lab. They manage to pry open the door, relying on PFC Rocker’s muscles. The marines all need to help. They strip off the tops of their hazmat suits. The players notice Weaver is infected.

In the lab they find the missing Dr. Zeigler on the other side of a glass partition. He warns them to run away. They don’t listen. Moments later, his neck explodes as a crab jumps out!

Session 5 - June 13th 2024

Players: Arnold, Amanda, Ian

The group retreat from the lab, leaving the carc trapped stuck in the lab, trying to smash through the protective glass. They close the (broken) airlock doors behind them. They split up, with one group trying to cut a way into the cryovault, while the other tries to get their via vents. Via the vents they make it into the room, and find Dr. Edam’s research on a datakey. There are also signs one of the creatures in the large vials in this room escaped.

They climb up the elevator shaft, back to the hanger. There they are greeted by Dr. Edam, who informs them Brookman and his posse fled when the power went out. They decide its time to go as well. Everyone hops in the APC and books it to the tower. They end up playing chicken with a Carcanid. The APC manages to knock it out of the way, into the water. At the tower they break into the maintenance room, and power on the generator. They don’t see the missing ATVs or Brookman on their trip.

The bugs are approaching. They climb up the tower. On the roof they meet Underhill and his synthetic dog. He tells them to get out of here! He saw Brookman’s ATV get swatted into the water. He assumes everyone is dead.

Engineer Sobol stays on the roof to reset the relay. The rest of the crew climb down into the tower to fix the broadcast control panel. Within that room they find a horrid scene, a Carcanid splayed into the controls. The broadcast that’s been playing over all the communication channels is clearly coming from here. They kill the creature, and pull it from the controls. Dr. Edam calls in an evacuation.

The Carcanids seem more amblivilent to the group. They don’t engage with them as they return to the hanger. The storm feels like it’s hitting its zenith. They can’t land, they’ll need to do a hover evacuation. People are ferried up one at a time via a rope. They do 6 people before the storm is too strong: Hazel (and the dog), Maxwell, Jayden-113, Sgt Yang, Sobol and PFC Pedro make it to the ship. VERSE, Cpl Novikov, LCpl Franco, PFC Weaver, PFC Odea and PFC Rocker remain behind.

It takes several hours for the storm to break. In that time PFC Weaver has an episode that alarms VERSE. He leaves Franco with Weaver and drives off, returning later when the storm breaks. Everyone returns to the hangar, where the drop ship will now land.

A pretty dense session, one where we rushed a little at the end. Next session we can play out in a bit more detail what the crew might get up to on the ship while Verse is killing time on the planet, and also what they end up deciding to do with Weaver.