The session begins with Luke introducing the game as Mothership, specifically the scenario Dead Planet, described as “another one-shot that’s not really a one-shot,” with the expectation that it will take at least two sessions.

The players introduce themselves, and Meredith is reintroduced as a returning player who had previously been killed by one of Chris’s characters in an earlier game. The group establishes a casual but ominous tone before beginning character creation.

Luke explains the core premise of Mothership to the group:

• It is a science-fiction horror RPG.
• It uses a percentile roll-under system.
• A roll must be strictly under the relevant skill or stat; rolling the exact number is a failure.
• Doubles count as critical results, similar to Delta Green.
• The game uses advantage/disadvantage by rolling twice and taking the better or worse result.
• Characters track Stress and Wounds.
• Failing saves or skill checks increases Stress.
• Panic checks are triggered by certain events, especially critical failures, and can result in harsh or deadly outcomes.
• Health dropping to zero causes a Wound roll, which can also be fatal.
• Characters can be incapacitated and dying if they accumulate too many wounds.
• Skill checks are only rolled when failure has a meaningful cost.

The group discusses party composition while making characters:

• Chris immediately chooses Android.
• Meredith also chooses Android.
• Robert asks about party composition, and Luke notes that the scenario may involve shooting, so having someone who can use guns would be useful.
• Robert volunteers to be the Marine.
• Brian chooses Teamster.

During character creation, the group settles on the following characters and notable details:

• Chris creates an Android with skills that include Linguistics, Computers, Mathematics, and Hacking. He describes himself as “a hacking expert.”
• Meredith creates X9, an android. She notes that her patch reads “Powered by Coffee”, and her trinket is a slightly frayed towel. She also has Psychology as a skill and a tranq pistol, which she explicitly frames as useful for sedating panicking humans.
• Robert creates Gunther Wolfgang von Richter, a Marine with Military Training, Athletics, and Firearms. His patch says “Eat the Rich.”
• Brian creates a Teamster, later named Gus “Smokey” Holloway, with Jury-Rigging and Explosives. He also has a Rubik’s Cube and a patch featuring Baphomet.

Luke explains how to use the character sheets and Foundry macros:

• Skills and raw stats can be clicked to bring up roll dialogs.
• Saves can also be augmented with a relevant skill if Luke approves the connection.
• The group confirms that the system is working, though there is some confusion with the minimum stress values being incorrectly set to 20 instead of 2 for multiple characters, especially the androids. Luke instructs everyone to set minimum stress back to 2.

The group also establishes several character and tone details before play starts:

• X9 intends to use Psychology and her tranq pistol to manage unstable humans.
• Chris jokes that the crew should have been entirely androids.
• Robert names his character in increasingly elaborate fashion until settling on Gunther Wolfgang von Richter.
• Luke reminds the players that their sheets track a high score representing the number of scenarios the character has survived.

The in-game portion begins with Luke selecting the ship and scenario setup:

• The player characters are part of the crew of the freight ship Persephone.
• The Persephone is hauling cargo along established jump routes from world to world and system to system.
• The work is difficult and isolating, but it is how the crew makes a living.

The inciting event occurs immediately:

• The crew is unexpectedly jolted awake from cryosleep by an emergency procedure that should only activate if the ship is in danger.
• Red emergency lights are flashing.
• The cryopod doors slide open.
• The ship’s total crew is 12 people.
• The four player characters make up one-third of the crew.
• Only the four of them emerge successfully from cryosleep.
• Eight other cryopods are flashing critical errors, indicating malfunctions.

The group learns initial facts about the emergency:

• The Persephone has been pulled out of hyperspace unexpectedly.
• The trip was not supposed to end this soon.
• They are not at their intended destination.
• They do not yet know where they are, only that they are far off course.
• Everyone is suffering from cryosickness, including the androids.
• Cryosickness imposes disadvantage on all skill checks for approximately a week unless treated.

Luke explains the function and risk of StimPaks:

• A StimPak can cure cryosickness.
• It reduces Stress by 1.
• It restores 1d10 health.
• It grants advantage to all rolls for 1d10 minutes.
• Additional doses within 24 hours risk overdose; the character must roll 1d10 and, if the result is under the number of doses taken in that period, make a death save.
• The medbay has 12 StimPaks, enough for the four survivors to take one each and still have extras.
• Gunther initially chooses to tough out cryosickness and simply carry a StimPak, while others discuss taking them immediately.

The party decides to check the other cryopods:

• X9 examines the cryopods and is required to make a Sanity save.
• X9 fails the Sanity save and gains 1 Stress.
• The conclusion is immediate and grim: the other eight crew members are dead.
• Luke states plainly that the four player characters are the only survivors of the Persephone.

The group asks about the voyage timing:

• According to the ship’s chronometers, they had been in hyperspace for about six days before being pulled out.

The players describe their characters on camera after waking:

• Gus “Smokey” Holloway:

  • Brian describes Smokey as probably late 30s in appearance, though he jokes the character could be much younger and just worn down by hard work.
  • Smokey’s face is always dirty, as if he had been working in the engine even while in cryosleep.
  • He has random wires hanging off his suit that look like they could be used in any emergency.
  • He bears a Baphomet patch.
  • He immediately uses a StimPak and then lights a cigarette, saying, “Well, fuck, this isn’t good.”

• X9:

  • Meredith describes X9 as a vaguely humanoid robot with gray synthetic flesh and a classic android affect.
  • X9 is calm and observant, merely noting that the others are dead without obvious emotional display.

• Merc:

  • Chris describes Merc as looking like Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner 2049, wearing a silver, futuristic one-piece jumpsuit zipped up the front.
  • Merc has an impassive face and projects unnerving calm.

• Gunther Wolfgang von Richter:

  • Robert revises his initial assumptions after reviewing the sheet and decides Gunther is not particularly ripped but rather a schlubby German man.
  • Gunther is nonetheless very comfortable with his pulse rifle.
  • The rifle is kept on a nearby rack by compromise with the captain rather than in the cryopod itself.
  • Gunther also has a cigarette hanging from his mouth and appears nonplussed by the disaster, as though he has been through similar situations before.

Merc’s first practical action is to turn off the alarm system:

• The alarm can be silenced from a nearby terminal.
• Luke notes that learning more will require going to the ship’s bridge.

When the group reaches the bridge, Luke calls for Sanity checks from everyone due to the sight outside the ship:

• The Persephone appears to be in orbit around a planet.
• It should not be possible to emerge from hyperspace so close to a planet, much less already in orbit.
• There is visible wreckage of other ships in space around them.
• In the distance, above the haze of the atmosphere, they can see what appears to be a moon.
• The sight is inherently disturbing because it is physically and navigationally wrong.

The bridge systems reveal more about the Persephone’s damage:

• The engine room has depressurized.
• A hull breach in the engine area appears to have exposed it to vacuum.
• There had been a fire in the engine room prior to depressurization.
• The jump drives are now offline and throwing multiple error codes.
• The Persephone still has thrusters and maneuvering jets.

Merc begins investigating the Persephone’s systems:

• He asks about cameras in the engine room.
• The camera feed shows scorching on the deck where the fire occurred.
• The jump drive array does not appear visibly exploded or destroyed from the camera angle.
• Merc then requests views of the exterior hull and sees evidence of floating debris around the breach.
• Some of that debris is not from the Persephone, indicating the ship collided with something already in orbit when it emerged from hyperspace.

The party asks whether the ship collided with something after coming out of hyperspace:

• Luke confirms that the Persephone’s logs support that sequence:

  • First, there were unknown errors during the jump.
  • The ship exited hyperspace.
  • Immediately after emergence, it collided with something, causing the engine-room breach.

The group asks whether this is their intended destination:

• Luke states that it is not.
• The Persephone’s computer does not know what this planet is.

X9 performs an Intellect check with Computers or Mathematics as support to analyze the raw jump data:

• X9 succeeds.
• She discovers there was a dramatic spike in some kind of exotic radiation that the ship could detect but not categorize.
• That radiation appears to have interfered with the jump drives and forced the ship out of hyperspace.
• By cross-referencing stellar charts, X9 determines the Persephone is now far outside normal human trade lanes, in a region beyond human-traversed space.
• The ship’s jump drive should not have been able to take them this far.
• Under normal sublight travel, it would take centuries to return to human-populated space.

X9 also reasons through the likely cause of the engine damage:

• The strange radiation probably caused a massive power surge.
• That surge overloaded systems, caused the engine fire, and likely fried the cryopods.
• The resulting damage was made worse or at least altered by the collision.
• Luke confirms that this is a reasonable conclusion.

The group asks whether the accident happened recently:

• Luke says the logs indicate they have only been in orbit for about 15 to 20 minutes.
• The accident is therefore very recent.

The crew begins scanning the planet and nearby space from the bridge:

• Merc uses the sensors to analyze the planet.
• The scan reveals signs of civilization on the planet’s surface—structures or perhaps cities—but no active power sources or other evidence of a thriving spacefaring culture.
• It may represent a dead civilization.
• There are some heat signatures, but they appear geothermal rather than industrial.
• Nothing suggests large-scale, active energy production on the planet.

The moon also shows signs of interest:

• There is one heat source on the moon that could correspond to a small settlement.

• Further focus reveals an area of roughly 10 square kilometers containing what appear to be:

  • Several power signatures, one stronger than the others.
  • Wreckage from one or more ships.
  • Scattered ship debris across the moon’s surface in general, but a notable concentration in this one region.

Merc scans the orbital debris in more detail and makes an Intellect + Computers roll:

• He succeeds.
• Luke then calls for a Sanity check as Merc processes what he has found.
• Merc succeeds on the Sanity check with the help of Mathematics.
• The scan indicates there are at least dozens of ships in orbit and possibly well over one hundred if all the debris is counted.
• The recognizable vessels are human ships.
• Their ages vary significantly; some are contemporary, others are multiple decades old.
• This means ships from across a long span of human history have wound up in orbit here.

The players begin discussing salvage possibilities:

• There may be intact or mostly intact ships that could supply parts for the Persephone’s jump drive.
• Some of the orbital hulks show minimal heat signatures, meaning they may still possess power or atmosphere.

One specific nearby vessel stands out:

• A ship not far from the Persephone is giving off a low-power distress signal.
• It could be reached and docked with in a little over an hour.
• Its call sign is Alexis.

Luke emphasizes a critical conclusion from the crew’s analysis:

• Ending up in orbit around a planet by random hyperspace ejection is astronomically unlikely.
• Achieving that orbital position would normally require intentional matching of trajectory and speed.
• This strongly suggests that some intelligence may have been involved in bringing them here.

The group begins debating possible causes and destinations:

• X9 suggests the intelligence responsible could be on the moon or on one of the ships.

• Robert suggests the Persephone itself may have been programmed in advance to come here.

• Merc inspects the Persephone’s secure systems in depth and rules out sabotage from aboard the ship:

  • He does not find signs that the event was initiated by anything on the Persephone.
  • He also performs introspection routines on his own mind with a Hacking check and succeeds.
  • Merc determines that his own system integrity is intact and there is no alternate personality or hidden routine running.

Meanwhile, Smokey assesses the practical side of ship survival:

• He wants to evaluate the physical damage to the engine room using his drone and his technical knowledge.

• Luke rules that no roll is required to determine the hull repair:

  • The engine-room breach can be repaired with the tools and materials on hand.
  • It is not catastrophic enough to destroy the ship beyond repair.
  • The crew can seal the breach and restore atmosphere.

• The jump drives, however, are much more complicated.

• The party does not really have the specialist training for major jump-drive repair.

The players acknowledge the repair priorities:

• First, make the engine room airtight again.
• Only afterward attempt anything more delicate with the jump drives.
• Luke notes that they could technically work in vacuum with vac suits, but repressurization would make things easier.

X9 asks for more detail about the moon’s heat signature:

• Luke clarifies that the power source on the moon resembles a small settlement.
• Further imaging shows several sizable pieces of shipwreck in that area.
• There are multiple power signatures, suggesting something active is down there.
• X9 explicitly characterizes it as a possible trap, saying it feels like “Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly.”

The group discusses the nearby distress-signaling ship in more detail:

• Merc scans the Alexis more thoroughly with another Computers + Intellect check and succeeds.
• He learns the Alexis is a Class II vessel, roughly the same size as the Persephone.
• It is a highly sophisticated archaeological research ship.
• It is registered to Null Point Dynamics, a corporation focused on deep-space exploration and extending human knowledge and capability.
• It appears to be a valuable and advanced ship.

Merc learns additional facts about the Alexis:

• It is operating on emergency low power.
• It appears capable of supporting life, but there are no clear signs of active crew communication.
• The distress call is only the basic automated signal.
• It has not maneuvered under its own power recently; there is no thruster heat signature indicating recent movement.
• The ship is contemporary with the Persephone, not ancient.

Merc attempts to gain access to the Alexis remotely:

• Luke states that ships do not allow full external remote takeover because of the risk of hostile hacking, especially by highly capable androids.
• Merc may be able to access some subsystems or information, but not assume full command.
• Because the ship is in emergency mode, it is accepting very little outside access.
• It is mainly broadcasting distress and listening for incoming aid.

The crew discusses what to do next:

• Smokey argues that they are not going anywhere without fixing their ship, but also notes they may need parts or even another ship.
• The Alexis is closer than the moon and appears more useful for salvage.
• The moon and the Alexis are both treated as potentially suspicious, but the Alexis seems like the most practical next step.
• Smokey continues repairing the hull breach while the others gather data.
• Luke states that by the time the Persephone reaches the Alexis, Smokey can have the hull breach sealed.

The group also asks about shipboard armaments:

• The Persephone has no ship weapons.
• Luke notes that armed ships are uncommon except for especially expensive deep-space exploration vessels or corporate warships.

Before approaching the Alexis, the crew decides to finish the hull repair:

• Smokey seals the engine-room breach.
• The engine room can now be repressurized, though the repair is temporary and would need proper work at a space dock later.

The Persephone then closes with the Alexis:

• The Alexis can be accessed in two general ways:

  • Docking via the port-side external airlock using the Persephone’s umbilical.
  • Spacewalking over in vac suits and trying to enter via an airlock or the larger cargo access.

• The larger cargo door on the Alexis is intended for atmospheric landing operations and cannot mate directly with the Persephone’s umbilical.

• The players debate whether using the umbilical makes retreat harder or makes it too easy for something to cross between ships, but Luke notes that detaching it is actually quick if necessary.

The crew attempts to hail the Alexis:

• No human answers.
• Instead, the automated response system simply instructs them to connect the umbilical and render aid.
• This pushes them further toward making contact.

Gunther makes a Military Training check to assess the tactical implications:

• He fails and gains 1 Stress.

• Luke interprets his thinking as focusing on the absence of human replies:

  • Best case, the crew might have sealed themselves in cryo to survive.
  • More likely, something is wrong and no intelligent human crew are actively operating the ship.

The final decision is made:

• The Persephone extends its umbilical and docks with the Alexis.
• Before boarding, Merc makes sure that only the four of them have access back into the Persephone so no one can simply walk over and take their ship.

Luke opens the map of the Alexis and orients the players:

• They enter through the external airlock on the lowest deck.
• The corridor beyond is dim and claustrophobic.
• There is another sealed airlock to the left and a corridor winding to the right.
• Utility rooms line the area.
• Everything is pressurized on this deck.

Merc immediately wants access to the ship’s systems:

• Luke says full access will likely require reaching the command room, but there is a terminal near the elevator.
• Merc makes a Hacking check and succeeds.
• He is able to get information from the terminal and create a degree of back-door access.

What Merc discovers from the Alexis terminal is deeply suspicious:

• The ship is in emergency low-power mode.
• More disturbingly, the ship’s records appear to have been repeatedly deleted.
• The deletion occurs precisely every hour.
• This pattern goes back 18 days.
• After each hourly deletion, commands are issued about 13 minutes later attempting to reconstruct files from fragments.
• About 47 minutes after reconstruction begins, the files are deleted again and the cycle repeats.
• This means the ship has been locked in a regular pattern of deletion and partial recovery for over two weeks.

Because of his successful hack, Merc also gains access to the ship’s room data:

• He learns the layout includes:

  • A science lab
  • A command room
  • A captain’s quarters
  • A cryo chamber
  • A cargo hold

• Luke reveals room names on the map for the players.

• The cryo chamber is located down the corridor from the main airlock.

The party goes first to the cryo chamber:

• Inside are 30 cryopods.
• All of them are empty and open.
• None are visibly damaged.
• The conclusion is that if the Alexis crew were in cryo when the ship came out of hyperspace, they all left their pods successfully.

The group next considers the cargo hold, which lies across from the cryo chamber:

• The cargo hold is behind a sealed airlock.
• It is pressurized on the other side, but someone has deliberately locked it.
• Merc does not physically open the room yet; instead, he attempts to hack the ship’s cameras for a look inside.
• He succeeds.

The cargo hold contains extensive expedition equipment:

• Two walker frames with laser cutters
• A pair of large earthmover vehicles
• A crane
• Multiple crates of equipment and tools suitable for archaeological work

In the center of the cargo hold is a horrifying object:

• A strange statue made of dark, twisted metal
• Roughly 1 meter wide, 1.5 meters tall, and 1 meter thick
• It appears to have too many limbs, too many joints, and too many eyes
• It is adorned with screaming faces
• It looks as though it had once been sealed inside a crate, but the crate has somehow burst outward
• Around the statue are six corpses, all kneeling, either touching the statue or pressing their foreheads against it

Merc shares the camera image with the rest of the party:

• Luke calls for Sanity checks from everyone.
• The group reacts with alarm and unease.
• Smokey notes there is no obvious sign of violence on the bodies.
• He jokes that perhaps it was a case of multiple simultaneous heart attacks.
• Despite the joke, the crew recognizes the scene is deeply unnatural.
• Smokey votes strongly that they should not go into the cargo hold.

Merc then asks whether there are any additional life signs aboard the Alexis besides the four of them:

• Luke applies the earlier hacking success to provide more information.
• There is movement on all decks.
• Some of that movement is in the vents.
• None of it is immediately nearby.
• There is also movement in the command deck.

Merc asks which rooms are sealed and whether there is movement in them:

• The science lab, captain’s quarters, and command room are all sealed.
• Of those, only the command room contains movement.
• There are two moving signals in the command room.

Merc attempts another hack to open communications with the command room:

• He makes the check successfully.
• A voice answers over the channel.

The voice introduces itself:

• The speaker says, “Has someone come to help?”
• The voice is extremely calm.
• When questioned, it identifies itself as Pander.
• Pander says something is very wrong aboard the Alexis.
• Pander says it is trying to understand what is happening.
• It says the crew is missing and that some of them are likely dead.
• It asks the player characters to come to the command deck and help.

The party questions Pander:

• X9 asks about the nature of the disturbance and what obstacles they might face.
• Pander replies that it does not know.
• It says records are fragmented and it is trying to reassemble them.
• Merc asks if Pander is an android.
• Pander confirms that it is.
• Pander also states that the ship’s other android, Crenaught, is with it in the command room.
• Together they are trying to understand what happened.

The players compare Pander’s statements with Merc’s discoveries:

• Merc points out that files are being deleted every hour.
• Pander says its own records do not indicate this, suggesting either incomplete awareness or tampering.
• When asked why the captain’s quarters and science lab are sealed, Pander says it does not know and scans for information, apparently without result.

The timeline of the deletion cycle becomes relevant:

• Brian asks how long it has been since the last deletion.
• Luke determines it has been 32 minutes.
• That means another deletion is expected in about 28 minutes, with about 15 minutes before the ship would normally enter the reconstruction phase.
• This gives the group a limited window if they want to investigate before the cycle repeats again.

The session ends with the crew still on the Alexis, standing near the lower-deck entrance and cargo/cryo area, having uncovered the following major facts:

• The Persephone was dragged out of hyperspace by exotic radiation into a region beyond human space.
• It emerged directly into orbit around an unknown planet surrounded by wrecked human ships of many different ages.
• The moon shows signs of power and wreckage.
• The Persephone’s original crew died in malfunctioning cryopods.
• The nearby archaeological ship Alexis is contemporary, powered, pressurized, and partially functional.
• The Alexis has had its records deleted with machine precision every hour for 18 days.
• Thirty cryopods on the Alexis are empty.
• Six corpses are kneeling around a bizarre metal statue in the cargo hold.
• There is movement elsewhere on the ship, including in the vents.
• Two androids, Pander and Crenaught, are alive or active in the sealed command room and are asking the player characters to come help.