Mothership

Gradient Descent Session 4

March 29th, 2021

Players: Brendan, Josh, Stephen

The characters leave the Final Testing chamber, travelling along maintenance catwalks that continue on and snake through the next room. Traveling through the space the players realize they are in the Nerve Threading section of the factory. Androids convulse in a disconcerting way as their nerves are woven through their bodies by needle tipped fingers. [A failed stress check causes UR182 and Kant to gain 1 stress.]

The Milk Injection room is up next. A cat walk stretches across the space, ladders leading down to the floor. Below them in the dark they see huge glass vats of psuedomilk. Though the room is as pitch black as the others, the few hazard lights scattered hear and there refract through the milk giving parts of the room an eerie glow. The players decide to cross directly to the next space, but as the near the end of the catwalk they encounter a man in factory coveralls, the first human they’ve seen in this space. Confused, they watch, and realize something isn’t right: the fellow seems strangely ethereal, living a moment on repeat. They do what anyone would: fold a paper airplane and toss it at him: it passes right through him and he turns to scold them “quit goofing, what are you doing!?” They apologize and ask for directions. This seemingly calms him down, and he lets them know what’s near by. They say goodbye to Glenn, and move on.

They move through the Final Construction zone without incident, watching the various parts of the androids get put together, and find themselves in the Flesh Sleeve Insertion zone. Off in the darkness, over the sounds of robotic arms picking up body parts and sliding skin over them, the party hears 3 people discussing how to try and steal some of this sweet skin for themselves. The group gets closer, and announces their presence: “we want to help!” And they do, in a way. 3 Androids need their help. And they do help, more or less. Two dead androids later, they are left with a new friend covered in pseudoflesh. The android doesn’t seem to bothered about her compatriots that didn’t make it. She tells the party about an artifact she found in an administrative room they found near by.

The party make their way to a small office space. It’s a bit disorienting to find themselves in such a small space after the scale of all the factory rooms they’ve moved through. The walls are covered with blueprints and charts. Inside a gutted terminal the group find a toolbox, and within, a strange artifact: tiny purple crystals which grow on Pseudoflesh. The androids try and interface with the thing, as one does. After some experimenting they hear a cacophony of voices in their heads—but that’s about all they can get the things to do.

The room seems like a safe space to rest, and so they do.

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