Showing posts with label Mothership. Show all posts

Monday, November 16, 2020

Running Star Trek in Mothership

While quarantining I've taken my first steps into the world of Star Trek since watching occasional re-runs of Voyager on TV as a child. I've made it through the original series, TNG, and am currently halfway through Deep Space 9. As much as I've enjoyed the shows, the crews' lack of failure has always bugged me. I've decided to turn to RPGs to fulfill my fantasy of reckless command decisions not always turning out alright in the end. I had a blast running the mini-scenario included in this post and firmly believe this mashup worthy of exploration.

The Goal: Take the world of Star Trek and Trek-typical situations, but adhere to more grounded sci-fi horror tropes rather than pop television tropes when resolving them.

Genre Rules

Equipment

Phaser: DMG Instant death or 1MDMG (Kill) or Body Save [-] or fall unconscious for 1d10mins (Stun) / S 20m / M 200m / L 500m / Infinite Shots / Special: Two Settings (Kill or Stun)

Communicator: As Long-range Comms and Locator

Tricorder: As Bioscanner, Cybernetic Diagnostic Scanner, Field Recorder, and Medscanner

Classes

Use one of the corresponding classes when making characters: Engineering = Teamster | Science/Medical = Scientist | Command/Security = Marine | Data = Android. If your players are running main characters from a given series, consider generating level 10 PCs. When playing a non-human character or an infamous redshirt, use one of the following classes:

Vulcan

Intellect +10

Fear: 35
Sanity: 85
Body: 40
Armor: 20

Biology, Mathematics, Computers, +3 points

Vulcans Panic whenever they fail a Sanity Save.

Klingon

Hits: 3

Strength +5
Combat +5

Fear: 50
Sanity: 20
Body: 40
Armor: 45

Theology, Military Training, Close Quarters Combat, +1 point

When a Klingon dies, every friendly nearby player gains 1 Resolve.

Ferengi

Speed +15
Intellect +5

Fear: 15
Sanity: 30
Body: 25
Armor: 20

Rimwise, Art, +3 points

Whenever a Ferengi succeeds a Save, every friendly player nearby gains 1 Stress.

Redshirt

Hits: 1

Combat +1

Fear: 20
Sanity: 20
Body: 20
Armor: 20

Military Training

Whenever a Red Shirt succeeds a Panic Check, they level up.

Mini Scenario: A Bad Day for the Enterprise

Series: The Next Generation

The Enterprise receives distressing orders from Starfleet command while senior officers navigate mild personal crises.

Warden Notes

I wrote this for a one-shot with players running main characters (specifically Worf, Riker, and Data). Leave all of the show's main characters open, though adjustments to the scenario is advisable if choosing characters like Picard and Troi.
If a player runs Picard, secretly deliver them the encoded Federation transmission.
If running this with "below decks"-style rank and file PCs, focus on the stress and tension of bizarre and terrifying orders coming from on high.
Use Side Plots to foster paranoia and suspicion, but don't overload your players with red herrings.

The Situation

The Enterprise is en route (3 days out) to negotiate a neutral zone standoff between Federation colonists and Romulans.

Establish the PCs in their daily routines, give them space to explore Side Plots.
On the second day, Counselor Troi begins experiencing debilitating headaches and an overwhelming sense of dread. Shortly after, the Enterprise receives a priority one encoded message from Starfleet command--for the Captain's eyes only.
The Transmission: Cut communications with all other Starfleet personnel. Change heading to intercept the USS Lexington (2 days away in the opposite direction) and destroy her on sight. Trust no one.
All Starfleet ships reject hails. Subspace is dead except for distress signals from dying Federation ships.
Many Enterprise crew have friends and family on the Lexington, including senior officers (Beverly's sister, Guinan's childhood friend).
If the Enterprise destroys its target: The commanding officer faces general mutiny from their crew.
If the Enterprise refuses its orders: Starfleet command labels the Enterprise a traitor and sends 2 ships to destroy her.

The Truth

A Federation splinter group opposing the Prime Directive attempts a coup in Starfleet. Both sides go radio silent to avoid recruitment by the other. The coup will fail after 1 week of fighting and confusion.

Clues

Fleet movements from the last few months indicate an abnormal number of missions to primitive planets assigned to certain ships, including the Lexington.
Disciplinary action against Starfleet officers has trended up over the last year.
Frequency of security code changes recently increased threefold.

Picard

Starfleet loyalist. Briefs senior officers on Starfleet's encoded transmission after 1 day. Reluctantly follows Starfleet's attack order unless intervened upon. Stubbornly unwilling to compromise, resulting in lose-lose situations when given options.
Tactics should the crew turn against him:

"This was all a test! You passed."
Pretending to rouse from alien influence/possession. "I'm myself again."
Feigning remorse then savagely attacking when guards lower.

Side Plots

Picard fiddles with an intriguing artifact recovered from an archeological dig.
Geordi can't seem to fix a replicator bug that's printing everything green.
Beverly's gotten really into this new fantasy adventure holodeck program to the detriment of her neglected patients.
Worf won't stop carrying around an ancient looking bat'leth.
Data starts using contractions.

Concluding Notes

When I ran the above scenario for my players, they had a ton of fun chasing ghosts and self-destructing over poor choices and risky calls. Mothership's Stress system does a lot of the work converting Star Trek to a sci-fi horror genre. Turns out, all you need for things to go really wrong in Star Trek are some flawed people making sub-optimal decisions.

Let me know if you found this post useful, I'm thinking of doing some more genre-shifts for Mothership in the future. On the menu: Atomic age sci-fi monster mashes and 2000s xtreme haxor absurdity.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Mothership 3rd Party Directory

There are a TON of 3rd party modules available for Mothership spread across different storefronts, so I figured it would be useful to collect them all in one place.

This list contains all currently published 3rd party content for Mothership. I'll try to keep the list accurate and updated, but please post a comment or send me a message on Discord or Twitter if I missed your piece or you want me to link to a different store.

The list is sorted by release date, with newest content at the top.

Last updated February 24th, 2022.

Erudicine

Zine – Adventure

Digital

Disciples of a Cracked Skull

Pamphlet – Supplement

Digital

Dead in the Water

Gordinaak

Zine – System Hack

Zine – Adventure

Zine – Adventure

Physical

Digital

Welcome to ERF

Pamphlet – Adventure

Digital

Zine – Supplement

Digital

The Black Heart of Paradise

Zine – Adventure

Digital

Unhinge Your Soul

Zine – Supplement

Digital

*Published by TKG, but noteworthy enough to include here. Includes 11 Mothership adventures:

Emerald Horizon, Escape from the Violet Death World, Ghost Ship, Incident at Muto Station, INDIGO TENDRILS OF THE ZOMP-MACHINE, Pandora's Hunt, Silo-15, Station 472, Toru's Maw, Vontrey Colony 17, Your Sunny Paradise

Monday, May 18, 2020

Anatomy of a TPK

I've been running a weekly Mothership campaign for a few months now. I string together a series of short scenarios (written by myself and others) in a loose campaign framework. PC mortality rate is high: averaging around 1 death/session. In our last session, my players TPK'd in spectacular fashion chasing down a bounty to her penthouse hideout.

The Scenario

"BLACK EYES" wanted for piracy of corporate assets. Bounty is armed and dangerous.

The Job

Assets:

One (1) Azure Horizons Cryosuit™

Experimental, ambulating cryopod. Performs all functions of a hyperspace-maintenance android without the wasted space of a bulky, traditional cryopod.
Retrieval: 30kcr (pristine), 10kcr (functional)

One (1) Senior Azure Horizons Accounting Officer "Hector Rios"

Presumed still asleep inside the Cryosuit™. Corporate credit card recently used to purchase 2 months stay in Plaza Nouveau's penthouse suit, plus room service.
Retrieval: 5kcr (alive)

Hostiles:

"Black Eyes" (aliases unknown)

Dead or alive: 10kcr

Unknown # collaborators

Dead or alive: 1kcr each

The Situation

High-rises surround the Plaza Nouveau hotel. Balconies separated by 20m.

Front door booby-trapped with a shotgun. Fires through the door if latch fully extended.
All shades drawn, windows locked.

Cryosuit hacked, protects Black Eyes and her crew.

Combat: 50 Instinct: 10 Hits: 3 (80)
Grapples hostiles, snaps limbs.
Rios visibly wounded if suit takes damage. Killed if suit takes 1 Hit.
Moves to provide Black Eyes cover, engages hostiles who approach in melee range.

Black Eyes & crew prepared for lethal engagement.

Combat: 40 Instinct: 30 Hits: 2 (20)
Black Eyes (SMG, grenades) on watch in the living room.
Redd (revolver) using the south-east bathroom. Enters combat after 1 round.
Klaus (shotgun) asleep in the north-east bedroom. Enters combat 1d5 rounds after Redd (if comrades killed first, ambushes PCs who enter his bedroom).
Willing to negotiate release of the suit and Rios: 100kcr wire transfer (company will not agree).

How it Went

My players were in deep shit with Azure Horizon's parent organization after murdering several of their employees to cover up the events of previous missions. In response, the company strong-armed the party into indentured servitude. They burned the party's contacts so the only available jobs were corporate issued. They slashed the pay of remaining jobs and squeezed the party with higher prices for company-owned goods and services. The party was already poor and deeply in debt (to the company) after purchasing a [haunted] ship. Mercenary salaries and docking, lodging, and fuel costs burned through what was left of their savings. They were desperate for a payday and took what they could get: this bounty job. After the price cuts, it paid only 10kcr.

On route to the hotel, the pilot attempted to save some fuel by cutting thruster use to a bare minimum on approach to the city's docks. He ended up crashing into a company-owned sensor array and racked up additional debt worth 7x the job's pay.

The party forwent any attempts to recon the penthouse. They planned to zipline down to the penthouse from an adjacent building and eschewed a potentially time intensive or pricey search for climbing harnesses in favor of a (critically failed) jury rigged solution.

They climbed a convenient fire escape and handed the rigging gun off to their NPC mercenary. 2 misses. The first shot hit low and needed reeling in. The second went through a penthouse window. Hastening to capitalize upon what element of surprise remained, the party ziplined down in the following order:

1. Potts, Teamster
2. Rabbitt, Marine (NPC mercenary)
3. Charlie, Marine
4. Brody, Teamster
5. Carver, Scientist

As a consequence of the critically failed jury rig roll, I randomly rolled for one of the crew's harnesses to fail mid-zip. Brody. As he fell, he quickly whipped his cowboy hat off his head and over the line in an attempt to save himself. Speed test at disadvantage or die: Success. He dropped his weapon in the process and rode his hat the rest of the way down.

The zipline inconveniently terminated in the middle of the penthouse's living room floor, meaning a painful slide through broken glass as characters struggled to free themselves from the poorly wrought harnesses.

The situation was bad.

Potts came in hot off the zipline and freed herself with the expertise only the creator of those terrible harnesses could possess. In the kitchen on the far side of the room, Black Eyes was ready for her. She stood behind the Cryosuit for cover, using its shoulder as a firing position. Potts fired her shotgun at Black Eyes and missed, instantly killing Rios inside the Cryosuit. Black Eyes returned fire, screaming "DIE MOTHERFUCKER", and shredding Potts's left arm (critical hit: bleeding out).

Potts ran for cover as Rabbitt shredded his back on the broken glass during entry. As Rabbitt got up and made his way to flank around the right side of the Cryosuit, one of the kidnappers (Redd) came out of the bathroom and shot him in the back of the head. 1 down.

Meanwhile, Potts gave up on shooting and rushed Black Eyes to club her with the back end of the shotgun. She missed: the Cryosuit's arm reached up and grabbed hers in a vice-like grip. Potts took some point-blank SMG fire and after failing to flip the shotgun up in the air and catch it by the grip, the Cryosuit broke her arm and she passed out. 2 down.

During Potts' ill-fated charge, Charlie touched down on the deck and engaged Redd with his SMG, who went for cover in the south-west bedroom. Brody arrived in the middle of the arm-breaking and sprinted across the room to tackle Black Eyes. He successfully pinned her against the heated stove top and they began a prolonged struggle for dominance. Carver critically failed their entry and knocked themselves out against the living room furniture. 3 down.

Aside: I majorly fucked up with Carver. It took way too long for them to get into combat (I should have sent in 2 PCs/turn instead of 1), and when they did arrive they immediately got knocked out and subsequently killed. I'm very anti-roll-fudging in general, but in this case I'd already kept them sidelined for way too long and should have picked a different critical hit result or skipped that roll entirely. Sorry Ryan!

Redd moved to flank Charlie by climbing out the bedroom window and crossing the southern "Green Roof" to get to the deck. She sprayed Charlie's position behind the couch with bullets but failed to do more than alert him to her presence. Charlie decided to break out the grenades and lobbed one out on the deck, obliterating Redd but also catching Carver in the blast radius. Even taking only half damage because of cover, Carver died in the blast (again, sorry Ryan!)

The final kidnapper, Klaus, roused himself from a mid-day nap and cocked his shotgun as he stepped into the living room. Brody concluded his struggle with Black Eyes by bashing her head in with a cast iron pan, then turned to catch a face-full of lead from Klaus's shotgun. 4 down. Charlie tossed another grenade in Klaus's direction but the Cryosuit snatched it out of the air and smothered the blast, destroying itself and decidedly murdering the barely-alive Potts.

Klaus walked through the wreckage and kicked over the sofa which Charlie had pulled over for cover, pumping his chest full of lead. Barely clinging to life, Charlie tossed one last grenade at Klaus's feet as he turned to search for survivors. With that, there were none.

Thoughts

Aside from my guilt about how I mishandled things with Carver, I had a lot of fun with this session. It felt exactly like the kind of massacre that results from shooting your way into a hostage situation without any intel. After facing and mostly surviving paranormal terror after paranormal terror, a few common criminals finally TPK'd this resilient party. After the session, I asked my players for feedback. Some players had a good time with the chaos. They may have died, but at least they took all those bastards with them. Carver's player politely expressed displeasure at being sidelined for the entire game, very understandably. Someone mentioned that it felt like a Tarantino film, which is precisely what I was going for.

Despite using no explicit horror tropes, this scenario dripped with tension. My players got in over their heads very quickly and they knew it. I was concerned that a mundane bounty mission might not hold water compared to supernatural scenarios, but it felt equally intense, terrifying, and Mothership.

My players and I decided to keep the campaign going with a new party. They expressed interest in taking over as the next owners of their spooky ship, which gives us a lot of leeway about who that party might be and under what circumstances they acquired the ship. I'm looking forward it.

Monday, April 27, 2020

Moonbase Blues Play Report

I recently ran my scenario Moonbase Blues with a few players from the Mothership discord who had never played the system before. They did an excellent job getting into the spirit of sci-fi horror, and I had a great time playing with them. Our mini-campaign ran for two sessions, over the course of about 6.5 hours.

The Players:

James playing: Sam Lodes (she/her), Teamster
Adam playing: Chian Lang (he/him), Scientist
Jamie playing: Kew-15 (it), Android

The players wake in the Security Room of Azure Base, an isolated astronomical research outpost on a small moon. None of them recall exactly how they arrived, and I discussed some potential backstories with each player as their character began to make sense of the situation.

Kew-15, a walking terrarium-bot with experimental plants covering its dirt-filled exterior, was nominally assigned to the base as a botanist for its greenhouse but carried a secret mission to report back to Azure Horizons HQ on the outpost's status.
Chian Lang, an Azure Horizons-employed mathematician by trade with an intense interest in the mystical, heard some corporate rumors about a secret research project with mysterious aims and pulled some strings to get himself assigned.
Sam Lodes, a freelancer who ran afoul of Azure Horizons following an engineering mishap, was gently coerced into long-term deployment to one of its facilities by the corporation's lawyers to pay off her debt.

The players explore their surroundings, discovering a ransacked armory and a barricade blocking passage deeper into the base. The security computer terminal helpfully directs them towards several menial jobs that need doing around the base, including a disconcerting message to "GO OUTSIDE IN 4 HOURS 32 MINUTES 9… 8… 7… SECONDS AND LOOK UP." Kew takes note of the countdown while the humans stress out. On the terminal they also discover maps of the base, normal operations logs that turn suddenly morbid then cease dated 1 week ago, and systems logs that indicate periodical power surges throughout the facility.

Player-facing map of the main base

The players scavenge what's left in the room, finding just one of their loadouts in a duffel bag--Lang's, and an unmarked, outdated punch card for a computer hidden underneath a locker. They divvy up the gear, dismantle the barricade, and press on.

In the Greenhouse, the players find several colonists behaving strangely. One intently counts down seconds in the thousands. Kew does the math, it's the same countdown from the terminal. When Lang calls out to ask what's going on, the colonist loses its train of thought and begins to panic. Kew jumps in with the count that's been running in its processors, helping the colonist to find its place and diffuse the situation. The players carefully creep their way through the Greenhouse, noting the unnatural size of the plants and avoiding the other colonists who are each preoccupied with its own pursuit. One's unblinking eyes slowly trace the path of some unseen thing through the floor, others' faces are buried in vegetation.

The players move on without further incident, heading across the base to the Observatory. Inside they find a gruesome altar traced with strange geometries and surrounded by brutalized corpses beneath the telescope. In the adjacent Geology Lab, the players find a meteorite fragment glowing with blue light. The plants attached to Kew perk up when bathed in the light, but the humans do their best to avoid it. This is a bad place, and they only stay here long enough to push the punch card into the lab's terminal and learn that it contains a fragment of a wavelength.

Lang, who's been scanning the comms channels for signs of life, finally picks up a signal. The crew gathers around the communicator to hear a garbled local weather report predicting meteor showers. They don't like this.

By this point, they're thoroughly scared and stressed out and want out of this place. They head to Habitation in search of vaccsuits. Along with an obviously tampered-with stimpack, they find them. Everyone suits up, including Kew who does so to protect its plants despite not requiring protection from zero atmosphere itself, and head through the massive main airlock.

Out on the moon's surface, the players take stock of their surroundings. Through Lang's binoculars, they spot a drop-pod crash site to one side, and an array of solar panels partially obscuring another structure to another. Kew checks the time remaining on the ominous countdown--under 2 hours. They decide to head for the structure, which should be the Mechanics Bay according to their map. Lodes does her best to give the novice crew a moonwalking tutorial, but it's for naught. Halfway to the solar panels, Lang misjudges a jump and goes headfirst into a crater.

Cracked helmet, not good. Lodes does her best to patch it up, but there's still air leaking and now Lang can't see for shit. They press on, now in haste, with Lang attached to Lodes via her vaccsuit's safety line. [END SESSION 1]

Past the solar array, the players find the Mechanics Bay crawling colonists--without vaccsuits. Kew finds this most unsettling of all, but after being shaken out of it by Lodes fires off its flare gun towards the crash site. Some of the colonists follow, but 2 remain. As the players approach, they see one with bloody arms prostrating itself in the direction of the main base and crying over its imperfect, red blood. 1 hour remains. The other has scintillating prisms where eyes should be and a rigging gun in hand, and demands the crew stop and face the meteor's rise. Lang tries to play along and chants in his best impression of a madman, but the others take action.

A shot from the flare gun streaks past the mad colonist's face and for a brief moment the area is cast in dazzling light from the prisms. Lodes goes for the airlock panel, but is pinned down by the rigging gun. She decides to slash open her vaccsuit to free herself from the harpoon's filament, hoping she can hold her breath long enough to get inside. Kew jumps on the harpoon before the colonist can retract it again, throwing it off balance and pulling it down from its perch atop the building. Lodes hits the airlock panel. Locked.

A voice comes over the intercom, "this better be a rescue." It doesn't sound hopeful. When Lodes responds, the voice sounds shocked and the airlock begins to slide open. The crew pack inside, but Lodes is suffocating. Agonizingly long seconds pass as the airlock cycles and pressurizes. Lodes feels like she's dying, but then air fills her lungs. They're safe, for now.

It's pitch black inside, and the light from the crew's headlamps sends several light- and food-starved colonists scrambling to shield their eyes like cockroaches. It's a mess in here. Empty MRE packets and other refuse from days of survival litter the room. Geometric lines reminiscent of those at the telescope-shrine line the floors, walls, and ceilings--scratched into the metal and concrete. Accusations fly between the survivors.

The players don't understand why the survivors have kept themselves in the dark. Did the power surge knock out their lights? One of the survivors responds that it's the only way to be sure there's no blue light coming in. They don't want to end up like the rest. Lodes gets to work repairing the rear axel of the rover that dominates the room. Kew tries to keep the peace between the survivors when it discovers a cache of food one was hoarding. Lang checks the computer terminal for a connection to the station's comms satellite--the reason why they came here. It's damaged, smashed by a meteor when it first arrived according to the colonists. It's running on minimum power and needs manual repair to get a signal out beyond the base. They'd need to get up there to have any chance of rescue.

With just minutes to spare on the ominous countdown, the players decide to take the now-repaired rover and head for the crash site to see if the drop pod has any fuel. Maybe they can use it to get to the satellite. None of the survivors want to head out during "the event". As Kew drives the rover into the airlock (under the theory it would be the safest driver because androids might be immune to the light, subsequently proven correct), the crew can hear one of the survivors over their shoulders, "those guys are fucking dead."

Almost immediately, long shadows begin reaching across the surface of the moon. Moon dust flecked with blue kicks up from the rover tires. The Meteor rises. Unaffected by its supernatural pull, Kew still marks it as one of the most beautiful things its ever seen. Lodes ducks for cover behind a seat and Kew pushes Lang's face down into crash position, but it's too late. Both have seen the light, and both begin to change. Lodes does her best to fight it, straining against her impulse to become one with the Blue. Lang, so close to uncovering the mystical truths he seeks, goes off the deep end. He grabs the wheel, and the rover goes flying off the lip of a crater.

Under the wreckage of the rover, Lang peers out in awe at the Blue Meteor. He pumps himself full of the tampered stimpack he found earlier, filled with corrupted blood. A blue-painted hand reaches inside the wreckage and pulls Lang out. He's with them, now. The others almost panic at the sight as they struggle to escape. They manage it working together, and roll out from under the chassis just as a colonist with a hand welder brings the whole thing crashing down.

Kew and Lodes fight for their lives with the colonists they'd distracted with the flare earlier and the thing that used to be Lang. Both suffer injury in their desperate attempts to disentangle themselves from the mad colonists and make it to the drop pod, pursued by Lang. Kew pulls a tranq pistol from its duffel bag of gear recovered in the pod and uses it to pacify their former crewmate. They put the thing into cryo and head outside to dig out the half-buried pod under the light of the Meteor.

The crew takes off from the surface of the moon. A last gasp of the pod's fuel reserves pushes them within EVA range. Lodes rushes to manually angle the satellite's remaining solar panel towards the Meteor in the hopes that she can harness its power to send out one last message. She fails. The meteor passes behind the surface of the moon, leaving the fuel-less drop pod, dead satellite, and sleeping madman in the cold blackness of space.

Saturday, April 18, 2020

Review: The Black Heart of Paradise

This 48 page setting and adventure for Mothership is both one of the best TTRPG books I've ever read, and possibly the least usable. It flips the spirit of OSR on its head, requiring scrappy and inventive problem solving not from its players, but from any intrepid Warden who attempts to run it. Its use of language is obtuse, its maps and other visual aids inscrutable, its organization haphazard, and yet I like it more than any other Mothership material I've read.

The easiest and perhaps the best way to run The Black Heart of Paradise is as a surreal but welcoming destination for rest and recuperation, without any of the horror (more on that later). The Planetary Trader Skaana, the module's setting, hosts all manner of destinations for recreation and stress relief. Each delights and intrigues more than the next:

Tour classic ships docked in port, complete with hokey, larping employees and goodie bags.
Indulge in a glut of dining experiences, drugs, comics, and film.
Stroll in the Skaana's bizarrely landscaped and architectured walkways and parks
Visit my favorite attractions: A whopping 7 karaoke bars, each with its own theme and multiple songs complete with lyrics for your players to sing!

Last and potentially least are the 10 casinos which dot the ring-shaped strip surrounding the Skaana. Each encourages your group to play an out-of-character mini-game to represent the games of chance played inside. You'd expect to find these games in the pages of experimental RPGs and lyric games, but here they feel somewhat out of place. Many involve physical tasks, and range from standing pencils on end to playing popular-media-spoiler chicken. The success of these games depend largely upon the tone of a given campaign and the people at your table. For some groups, the extra-diegetic break from typical Mothership horror will provide levity and much-appreciated psychological relief, and for others it will fall flat.

Stopping here and using only the abovementioned material, a Warden gains an invaluable tool for between-adventure R&R and a location players will adore. There's more than enough material here to make each trip to the Skaana memorable and supremely charming. I cannot stress how much I enjoyed reading and look forward to running this portion of the module. Idiosyncratically evocative writing breathes vivid life into the Skaana and its many attractions, and I've rarely wanted to visit an imagined world more than this. It's weird and specific in a way rarely found outside intensely artsy indie video games and poetry. That said, beyond lies madness for both you and your players.

Details of the horror that befalls the Skaana hide in the text, requiring thorough investigation on the part of a reader who hopes to make sense of it. Nuggets of critical information intersperse unrelated sections throughout the book, and unsourced references to as-yet-undescribed people, things, and events abound. This will not make sense on a first read through, and it's still fairly fuzzy on my second.

The thing is, the horror is really good. It's disturbing and fascinating and I really want to run it to see how players handle it. I'm just not sure it's worth the monumental undertaking required to make it usable. I'd need to re-write large sections and re-organize the entire sequence of events to have any hope of running this successfully. I just might do it, and I'll be sure to post my notes if I do, but the prospect is daunting. Below lies spoilers.

The setup for the horror is genius. A religious manufacturing plant produces a new line of parasitic prayer-aid chips called "Motherchips" that burrow into your skin and foster divine communication. Of course, things go awry when the chips call forth a terrifying creature from another dimension rather than any god conceived by humans. This "Hermit Horror" arrives near the Skaana, warping time and space and spawning a host of horrific chimeras of beast, man, and machine to ravage the pleasure station and other surrounding vessels.

Beyond the eternally confounding organization of the Horror's arrival and the catastrophes that follow, the implementation of a few key elements left me somewhat disappointed. The instigating Motherchips themselves provide paltry mechanical benefits rather than something more open ended and interesting that you'd expect. Here begins a pattern of design that I tend to associate with D&D 5th edition play: overuse of mechanical effects rather than descriptive ones and railroaded plot. The PCs in Paradise are often treated as VIPs for no discernable reason beyond being the PCs. They're made privy to important information and tasks with little to no preamble. Things happen at them constantly and monumental decisions hang on their whims.

But you'll recall that I said that the horror was good, and it is. It begins with a pod of hybrid orca and shadow-spiders arriving on the Skaana and consuming everything in sight. More equally frightful chimeras follow, and the station descends into panic. My favorite part from this section are the tools the module provides to help establish atmosphere. The players witness scenes of horror caused by the extra-dimensional visitor on viewscreens. In the midst of these stressful events, the casinos and bars (those still in tact) stay open to service patrons such as the PCs, and the module includes several spine-tingling scenes witnessed from inside the windows of such establishments. This stuff is gold.

There's a whole section dedicated to assisting a pregnant woman's birth aboard a ship that crashes into the Skaana during the infestation. It's both morbid and sweetly human and I think it's a brilliant inclusion amidst the carnage. At the end of it all, if your players haven't died or fled the Skaana, they'll have the opportunity to either engage the Hermit Horror in ship combat or delve inside it to put an end to this madness.

The Hermit Horror dungeon is a microcosm of the module's strengths and weaknesses. There's a procedure for rooms moving around that I still found confusing even after a user on the Mothership discord helpfully broke down the process. The map is unhelpful, to say the least. The space is poorly defined and rooms vague in shape and size. The things in those amorphous rooms are some of the best material in the book. Bizarre creatures and machines found within are the stuff of nightmares, and would make for an unforgettable session even if the GM failed to rise to the task of describing and managing the space.

There's more I could talk about here, much more than I could reasonably contain in a review. The ascii art and maps that both define the module's unique aesthetic and compound its problems with clarity, for instance. Reading over my review, I fear that I was too negative. I think I've been fair in describing the module's shortcomings, but it's difficult to put into words exactly why I loved it so much.

The Black Heart of Paradise reads like something uncovered on a forgotten, haunted forum or deep within the files on a hard drive left in the woods. To wrestle with its language and navigate its eccentric structure is to ply the labyrinthine strip and battle aberrant creatures aboard the Skaana. Its distinct voice and aesthetic are inseparable from the mayhem of its complexity. The deeply intimate prose enveloped me in an atmosphere all its own, and I soon felt at home nestled in its peculiarities.

If you enjoy RPGs of any kind, you should buy and read this. It pushes the boundaries of what RPGs and RPG writing can be. It will inspire you, and there's plenty here to lift directly into your games even if you don't feel up to the task of running it in its entirety.

The Black Heart of Paradise was written by Schwa Kyle and is currently available in PDF form for $4 on DriveThruRPG. Here's a link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/267469/The-Black-Heart-of-Paradise
Buy it.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Mien Mothership NPCs

Last year, I ran a Troika! campaign for several months and adored using its particular brand of reaction tables: Mien tables. As running distinct and memorable NPCs is definitely a weak point in my GMing ability, I've started creating some resources to help me quickly generate interesting characters and behaviors on the fly.

NPC Generation

Best used in conjunction with the great NPC tables found in Dead Planet, Pound of Flesh, and the Player's Survival Guide.

Ritual

Keeps a pet snake in their vacsuit.
Runs an office pool for first crewmember to bite it, bets against themselves.
Pours out a little air from O2 tanks when starting an EVA.
Brings a Revolver into Cryosleep.
Writes a new will for every expedition. Leaves best gear to favorite crewmates.
Insists on drawing lots for shit duties.
Gives everyone a new callsign.
Takes mementoes from dead crewmates.
Gets on good terms with the crew's Android(s).
Writes proverbs on their Cryosleep pod hood.

Vice

Fresh, real food.
Always smoking, including in vacsuit.
Pain Pills and Stimpaks.
Kills unnecessarily.
Cryosleep dreams.
Kleptomaniac.
Adrenaline junkie.
Intercepted comms voyeur. Always listening.
Fanatical religion.
Cosmetic biomods.

Tactic

Drops a live grenade on death.
Always goes in last.
Puts an extra bullet in any seemingly dead non-human.
Runs in to fire at point blank.
Goes for the legs.
Takes risky shots--fires past allies.
Always aims first.
Plays the environment--brings down ceilings, shoots red barrels, etc.
Pacifist. Does not fight unless convinced.
Protects favorite crewmate at all costs.

Mien

Use these tables to determine the initial disposition of an NPC, or to see how they respond to PC actions. Roll on the most applicable table if an NPC doesn't precisely fit the mold of the 4 core Mothership archetypes (e.g. Marine Mien for a pirate or Teamster Mien for a common civilian).

Marine

Self-Sacrificing
Professional
Philosophical
Resigned
Overcompensating
Green
Wasted
Ornery
Mutinous
Berserk

Teamster

Keen
Reliable
Stoic
Jaded
Sardonic
Sinful
Cagey
Shifty
Rapacious
Broken

Scientist

Quixotic
Driven
Pragmatic
Pensive
Cold
Neurotic
Paranoid
Harrowed
Egomaniacal
Infected

Android

Obedient
Saccharine
Curious
Blunt
Impassive
Mocking
Punitive
Glitchy
Corrupted
Assimilated

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

The Fall of the Vagabond: A Play Report

This week I ran a pick-up Mothership game for some friends on short notice. Despite running from very little prepared material, we all had a pretty good time. I thought it might be an interesting exercise for me, and possibly helpful to some people new to running Mothership, if I wrote up a play report that described my thought process as I was running the game, as well as post-mortem observations. Please let me know if you find this at all interesting or helpful.

Check the Conclusions and Summary at the end!

The Scenario

What follows are the notes I prepared before our game:

Fall of the Jump-9 Colony Ship Vagabond

Comes out of warp near a watery terrestrial planet.
Ship hit with a spear thrown by a giant from the planet.
Crew just woken up from cryo--explosions and warnings telling everyone to get to the escape pods.

Crew can immediately recover their gear.
Every 10 minutes: Roll a ship critical hit.

Route to the pods:

Hydroponics: Dozens of Androids restrained by overgrown plants and begging for help
Cargo Bay 13C: Mech loaders staged in poses of battle. Tally marks on the walls.
Main Computers: Enormous, rough hewn wooden shaft bisects the hall. Zero-G. AI listing procedures broken by ship's Androids during the trip in a glitchy, annoyed tone.
Stateroom Wing Alpha: Blanket tents and pillow forts.
Escape Pods: Crew desperately piling in.

Alt Routes:

Med Bay: Gory remains of failed Android-human hybrids.
Recreation Hall: Androids performing The Producers while others watch loudly.

The Report

NOTE: If the length of the following play report looks too daunting or you want to skip to pithy takeaways, jump to the conclusion at the bottom of this writeup.

I began the session by describing the massive, multi-tiered Cryobay from which thousands of colonists awoke to a monitor-projected view of their new home planet. The Vagabond was still in orbit. The PC crew--3 marines named Sylvester, Marcus Lilith, and Jessica Boggs--marched to the galley to grab some grub and their gear, though I forgot to ask their names or anything else about their characters until much later.

The ship lurched to one side and rocked with internal explosions as it was skewered by the giant's spear (a fact the players didn't yet know). I should have called for a d5-failure Fear Save, but this too I forgot. The crew grabbed their duffel bags of gear and headed towards the nearest escape pods. I described the most direct route, the one I had prepared. I had no ship map handy, so I planned to offer the Alt Routes or and begin winging it once those were exhausted if they decided to deviate from the main path.

I described the deafening noise and panic in the ship's corridors as all the other colonists surged towards the escape pods (missed Fear Save #2). The players asked if they could pinpoint exactly what damage the ship had sustained, I responded that the PA system was reading out dozens of warnings concurrently. The damage was significant, but the situation confused. The crowds blocked the crew's path towards Hydroponics and ignored their shouts to get out of the way, but parted when Sylvester unloaded his Pulse Rifle into the ceiling. At this point, I had not called for a single dice roll. Burning an entire magazine to clear this obstacle was enough of a sacrifice to progress.

Inside Hydroponics, the crew discovered the overgrown plants and the Androids trapped within (missed save #3, this time probably Sanity). The crew paused for a moment to investigate here. Because they did, I rolled a ship critical hit as the internal damage from the spear cascaded throughout the ship. Some Cryopods got taken out, and the players heard more internal explosions (missed [Fear] Save #4). Jessica and Sylvester suspected the plants might be alien, but I explained they all looked familiar and weren't lashing out to grab anyone. Marcus freed an Android using his hand welder, and was thanked with glitchy, nonsensical babble before the Android fled (missed [Fear] save #5). All the evidence of strange Android behavior pointed towards dramatic software degradation over the centuries or millennia-long voyage, so I tried to play into that.

The crew moved on into the Cargo Bay and chuckled at the mech loaders and tally marks. Here I remembered that I didn't know any of the character's names so I paused and let the crew introduce themselves. I rolled another ship critical hit--a hull breach. I decided the breach should occur in this room, particularly given it was adjacent to the spear. The far wall began buckling outward. This time I remembered to call for a Fear Save: one Marine failed and gained 3 (1d5) Stress, the other critically failed and gained 6 (1d10) Stress, then made a Panic Check which they passed. Only Marcus carried a vacsuit in his duffel bag, so the others began scrambling for safety. "Are there any other vacsuits floating around?" I made a luck roll--50/50. Failure, no vacsuits. Jessica asked which mech seemed like it had won the most battles, and critically succeeded an Intelligence + Rimwise roll to locate it: A 3-seater behemoth with enclosed cockpit and adorned with dozens of Android-skull trophies. One player asked what the Android heads were saying, and I said they were all cycling through traditional war cries from different human cultures. The crew climbed into the mech and braced for decompression.

The far wall ripped away and the sudden decompression sent the other mechs flying out of the room and away into space. The absent wall afforded a view of the spear's shaft (missed [Sanity] roll #6) and the ruins of the main Computer Bay. The crew debated the best course of action to cross the massive rift the spear head had left in the hull. They asked if the mech had any tools equipped, and I said they could pick one. They chose a jackhammer--it never came up again. The mech mag-booted to the edge of the rift and the crew looked around for useful floating debris. Could the infrared goggles pick up any survivors? Failed luck check said no. How about a Rigging Gun? Success on this luck check. I have players call high or low when I roll for luck checks. It's a fun and simple way to resolve situations with uncertainty, but don't involve player actions.

I told the players their mech's pincer arms were far too large to manipulate a human-sized rigging gun trigger, and prompted them to come up with a solution. The crew carefully manipulated the mech's arms to thread a loose computer cable through the Rigging Gun's trigger (successful Speed + Heavy Machinery check), and pulled the loop to fire a wire across the room. They hauled themselves past the rough-hewn spear shaft and made their way towards the far airlock. This mech was too large to fit though the airlock, so they opted to rip an arm off to make room. The operator failed an Intelligence check, so they pulled off several other critical components along with the arm (missed [Fear] save #7). I took this as an opportunity for the players to fail forward, so they managed to shrink down their mech to airlock-size but severely damaged it in the process.

The mech's remaining arm punched the single-door airlock and rushed through as air and debris began flying at them from the Staterooms. The arm-operator critically succeeded a Speed test to shield the mech from debris. I couldn't immediately think of any bonus to give the player for her critical, so I asked her what she wanted. She asked if she could grab any useful equipment that flew at her as the hall decompressed, so I described a vacsuit with women's clothes stretched over the exterior and a face pained on the helmet in makeup (the Androids were playing house). She caught it, and the legs-operator shoulder-checked the keypad on the opposite side of the airlock to close it. The crew disembarked from their damaged mech for fear of it exploding and searched the Staterooms for survivors and things of interest. They discovered a survivor stuck in a ruined pillow fort wearing a vacsuit clothed with a tophat and black-tie suit--Simon, a frightened Geologist. I had just recently named another character Simon in a game I had run for a couple of these players--I'm terrible with on-the-fly names. After learning Simon didn't know anything more about what was happening to the ship than they, the crew moved on with him in tow. On their way out, they opened a room filled to bursting with gleefully babbling Androids which spilled out into the hall (failed Fear Saves, +1 Stress).

The crew made their way to the pod bay, a long corridor full of desperate people openly slaughtering each other for the few remaining escape pods (missed [Fear] save #8). Sylvester cleverly tossed an unarmed grenade over to the crowd surrounding one of the pods, calling "fire in the hole." Under normal circumstances that would have easily been enough to disperse a crowd without involving a roll, but in this case I thought the settlers might be desperate enough not to run. I rolled "resigned" on a reaction table I had handy, so the crowd ignored the grenade. If they couldn't make it off this ship, they were dead anyway. I could have interpreted "resigned" another way, but that's what made sense to me at the time.

A player asked if there were any catwalks or other methods of approach, and I described a mezzanine overlooking the pods. The crew headed up a ladder and moved towards a nearby pod with the fewest number of people trying to get in. They used their Rigging Gun (successful Combat + Military Training check) to create a zipline over to the top of the pod, where there was an entrance hatch. Marcus and Jessica made it down the zipline, their weapons sliding perpendicular to the top of the wire, without issue and without rolling. Sylvester had become attached to Simon at this point, and had him hop on while they ziplined together. I called for a Strength check to see if Sylvester could hold on, which he failed. They both went sprawling into the crowd.

Atop the pod, Marcus attempted to disperse the crowd with threats. Normally I don't like to call for rolls for social situations, as I prefer to play things by common sense and require situational leverage for difficult attempts at persuasion. However, the player's roleplay was so fearsome and the outcome was uncertain enough that I called for a Combat + Military Training roll to intimidate the crowd away, which failed. Meanwhile, Jessica jumped down to find Androids patiently waiting in 3 of the pod's 6 total seats, and a Marine fighting with a Teamster to push back the crowd and close the door for takeoff. Jessica alerted the humans to her presence, doing the math that the pod could hold both her friends and these capable-looking folks who might be helpful when they landed on a strange planet. Again, I rolled on my reaction table and this time got "Infected". I took a second to consider what that might mean, then remembered the brutal cyborg experiments I wrote up for the ship's Medbay. I described the Teamster and Marine's faces as flayed, exposing crudely implanted circuitry and wiring (Fear Save, +1 Stress). The crew proceeded to cut down both their cyborg foes and the surging crowd with military efficiency, and not a little help from their Pulse and Smart Rifles. They retrieved their lightly trampled pal Simon from the floor, cleared out the cyborg bodies and defective Androids from the pod, and hit the "GO" button. The crew escaped from the Vagabond with no casualties.

Conclusions and Summary

You can prepare a successful play session with scarcely more than a few lines of notes.
You can make tons of mistakes and still have a great time. If you followed along with my missed Fear and Sanity Save count, you'll know that I missed at least a whopping 8 opportunities to load my players up with stress over the course of the session. Despite that, there was still a good deal of tension as the scenario felt inherently dangerous, mysterious, and claustrophobic.
Call for more Fear Saves, Sanity Saves, and Panic Checks! Clearly it's something I need to work on, but it's a good thing to keep in the back of your mind as you run Mothership.
Mothership works great if you want to go for Aliens more than Alien. This was easily the most action-packed Mothership game I've ran or played in, and it still felt right at home in the system.
Failing forward is a great way to keep the session moving while layering on consequences and dangers.

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

20²⁰th Century Blues

A toolkit for time travel incidents, alien abductions, or long jumps to unexplored space. Though inconceivably distant time travel is the assumed conceit, the horrors of the Homo Sapiens Museum could also occur within an alien mothership's medical bay, or the Outdated Future-Weapons could be used as contemporary, experimental military-tech.

Future Societies

A harmonious concord between many disparate species. Customs too peaceful to the human mind to stand. Shame of human failings in the face of its beauty too much for human dignity to bear.
Perfectly pastoral and apparently uninhabited worlds conspire to exert an eerie will. Haunting mother nature.
Multiple warring singularities engaged in perpetual total war. Fractal architecture wiped out and replaced with new patterns by new masters almost instantaneously--a daily occurrence.
Beings with the form of thoughts, infinitely mutating according to their whims. The universe a kaleidoscope of abstract art.
Insectoid swarm that manifests broken and conflated human anatomies in off-putting attempts to communicate.
Countless clones of an apparently human original, its genetic material so deteriorated from countless reproductions that only the barest hint of vestigial humanity remains in its features, behavior, and ritual. Still-functioning and perfectly loyal machines obey every strange whim.
Beings too large to behold more than a small fraction of at any one time drift momentously through the cosmos, dining on planets and stars.
All matter is liquid, sloshing upon itself. A great lava lamp with countless layers in all directions.
4th- and higher dimensional beings, worlds, and more--poorly processed by human brains. Nauseating optical illusions and painful reckoning.
A blank slate, wiped clean by a disappointed god.

Alien Weaknesses

Susceptible to human-borne disease.
Views humans as non-threatening.
Incapable of recognizing lies.
Defenses ineffectual against human biology.
Threatened by a mortal foe, a balance of power easily tipped.
Desperate for entertainment. Highly values the crew's lives.
Apathetic to destruction.
Ignores Androids entirely, leaving them free to act.
Easily poisoned by human ideas like hate and prejudice.
If the crew holds out long enough, the long running server cluster of this simulated universe shuts down. The higher-ups correct the error that sent the crew outside of their home cluster.

Homo Sapiens Museum

They put you with other relics of the past and quaint, human curiosities. The only shred of familiarity in an unrecognizable universe.

Outdated Future-Weapons

Grim reminders of a barbaric past long since evolved beyond, displayed behind glass.

Non-lethal bullets that stimulate rapid nerve growth to inflict pain far beyond natural biological capacity.
Device instantly destroys air within 1,000 m³, creating vacuum.
Micro time travel sword--skips in time to pass through a parry.
Undetectable nanomachine swarm, targets programmable by demographic.
Jump drive powered sniper rifle, mini-wormhole optics for target acquisition up to Jump-5.
Finely tuned EMP device eliminates human trauma suppression, triggering perfect recall. Intolerable.
Chemical reactant triggers solar supernova within 1 day.
Clonesuit: Liquidates deceased inhabitant, rapidly regrows clone from fetal state to full development inside sealed suit within a few hours. Psychological deterioration an accepted side effect.
Universal Android self-destruct tone.
Near-infinite range homing beacon for once-unstoppable alien threat.

Future Horrors

Trapped in a cold and austere cage, handled indelicately by beings who care not for your comfort, you suffer daily indignities and tortures while you bide your time to escape.

Served more food than you can possibly eat. Force-fed to the point of bursting.
Medical procedures involving total disembowelment, skin entirely removed, etc. Always put back together in a seemingly correct order, but something feels off.
Impossibly complex cognitive tests with painful negative reinforcement for failure.
Forced, confused historical reenactments: Moon landing crossed with American continental colonization.
Repetitive busywork fueled by increasingly powerful drugs.
Brain enhanced to match alien capacity, then reverted. Agonizing loss.
Simulated escape attempt. Convenient opportunities, lucky breaks, then crushing reality.
Stretching exercises devised with poor understanding of human anatomy. Pops and snaps.
Android benchmarking and overclocking to dangerous extremes.
Fight provoked between the crew. Last one standing receives the cure for a fictitious deadly infection.

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Moonbase Blues

Dai Shugars of GMDK posted an excellent prompt for a Mothership scenario that I couldn't help but follow up on. Initially I just wrote up the Light Hazards table, but eventually I fleshed out a whole scenario around that concept. Here's the prompt:

Outpost on an asteroid or small moon. Players wake up from stasis to find themselves in a blockaded security room and a cheerful computer voice detailing their daily tasks. Logs show that things were going normal up until a week ago, when a strange blue meteor showed up and drove everyone crazy. The meteor makes a pass every 7 hours, and the PCs must find a way to get off the station or somehow block the light from entering (restore power to shutters? gouge eyes out?)

Without further ado, here's what I came up with:

Moonbase Blues

Map Key

Drop pod. Contains [# human PCs] Cryopods, empty.
Habitation. Crew quarters and galley. Signs of struggle. 1d5 Meteor-Mad Colonists. Scattered with blue therapy lamps that attract Mad Colonists. Binoculars stashed in a toilet in restroom B.
Observatory and Science Bay. 1 Mad Colonist, piles of bodies.
Security room. Blockaded off from Habitation. PCs wake up and begin scenario here. Functional computer: logs describe normal operations until the Blue Meteor arrived 7 days ago. See: Corporate Messages.
Greenhouse and Medbay-Solarium. Undamaged.
Solar panel array. Base's only source of power.
Garage. 1 rover, in disrepair. Remaining sane colonists, in total darkness and out of supplies.
Satellite. Damaged by meteor. Base's main communications array.
THE BLUE METEOR. Passes every 7 hours, visible from base for 1 hour. Causes Meteor Madness.

Encounters

Every hour, 50% chance encounter 1d5 Meteor-Mad Colonists.

Apologies for my artistic talents

Corporate Messages

TONE… Your friends at Mars Instruments would like to notify you of a meteorological event. Please stay calm and avoid windows while performing your corporate issued dutIES:

Unclog the toilets in Habitation restroom B.
Perform routine maintenance on solar arrays 3 and 4.
Replace the rearmost axel on the rover stored in the Garage.
GO OUTSIDE IN 4 HOURS 32 MINUTES 9… 8… 7… SECONDS AND LOOK UP.
Make the beds in Habitation Barracks. Messy, messy!

Light Hazards

For each meteor cycle, roll 1-3 times for active light-related threats. Or, use all of them at once.

Metal storm shutters, open. Actuated via password protected keypad.
Half-dome skylight. Partially obscured by torn-out book pages and tape.
Bullet holes filled with translucent sealant.
Solar panel mirror array on surface pointed directly at habitation. Magnifies meteor effects, pierces the smallest of cracks.
Scattered reflections from satellite and debris in orbit. Produces low-level Meteor effects from hours 3-6.
Fully glass greenhouse. Contains only remaining food on the station.
Telescope automatically tracks meteor when in range. Light reflects from eyepiece.
Meteorite fragment in Science Bay. Trail of particulate from main airlock to bay. Produces constant, but dulled meteor effects.
Corpse nailed to wall conceals small porthole from sight. Does not block light.
Survivors stranded in distant housing unit. Radioing for help--besieged by 1d10 Meteor-Mad Colonists in Vaccsuits.

Meteor Madness

Stage 1: Claustrophobia, memory loss. Disadvantage on Intellect checks.

Stage 2: Blue obsession, delirium. Every hour, roll Body Save. Failure: Black out, violently incorporate BLUE into your person. Take 1 stress each minute until you do, then recover senses.

Stage 3: Become a Meteor-Mad Colonist. The warden plays your character.

Roll Sanity saves as appropriate when directly or indirectly exposed to the BLUE METEOR. Use Disadvantage/Advantage to reflect degree of exposure. Progress 2 stages if directly exposed or watching an event through the telescope.

Meteor-Mad Colonists

They have seen the light and it is good.

Combat: 40% Speed: 25% Instinct: 50% Hits: 2 (25)

Damage: Rigging Gun 2d10 OR Hand Welder 1d10 OR Tranq Pistol

Special Abilities

Erratic Movement: Ranged attacks against it at Disadvantage without computational assistance (smart-link).

Blue Zealot: Inured to pain. Immediately takes an action after taking a Hit.

Tactics: Forcefully compels the unenlightened into the BLUE GRACE. Prefers live prisoners.

Meteor-Mad Characteristics

Half-swallowed a therapy lamp. Jaw broken to accommodate the tubular bulb still jutting from mouth.
Eyes slowly track the path of the asteroid, even though the ground. Unblinking.
Naked, unevenly covered with blue paint.
Open chest wound, stuffed with android component pumping blue lubricant.
Veins ruined by gouges and stab wounds. "RED? RED!? IT WAS BLUE!"
Prisms jabbed into eyes.
Pinned down with foam. Eating its way out.
Counting down the seconds until the next event. Passive unless count disrupted.
Floating, giggling with childlike joy.
Apparently sane. Coldly treacherous.