ABYSS // EXE - Mothership
Been a minute since I got to be a player, but I'm back with more Mothership. This is fast becoming one of my favorite systems to run and play in.
The Stat Sheet
| The Label | The Details |
|---|---|
| Date Played | December 12, 2025 |
| Adventure | ABYSS // EXE |
| System | Mothership |
| GM | Lyndsey |
| Player Count | 3 |
| My Role | Player (Becky - Teamster) |
| Number of Sessions | 1 |
The Snapshot
- Sent to a deep-sea lab for data extraction
- Found puddles of water in said deep-sea lab
- Crew became weird TV static nonsense
- Saw the abyss and the abyss looked back
- LEFT IMMEDIATELY
The System
I love the Mothership system. Ever since Over/Under ended, I’ve been running and playing it a bunch! My deluxe box set had been sitting on my bookshelf too long untouched and now its gotten more use than ever. The extra box I purchased as an add-on to fill with modules is fast becoming full.
The Party
- Aaron - Verlin (Marine)
- Pat - Niles (Teamster)
- Kati (Me) - Becky (Teamster)
Both Aaron and Pat brought characters from a session of Mothership that I had run earlier (Year of the Rat) this month. I was the only stress-free character, Becky, a perky teamster that served as the Union Rep.
The Brief
Deep sea lab in a trench with lots of classified information. It’s been a long-term isolation for its current project. We’ve worked for the company in a variety of ways. Verlin and Niles are contractors, while Becky is a salaried employee. The lab has gone silent, and we’ve been sent to retrieve the data/salvage from the lab. They don’t seem to care about the crew and have specifically told us it is not a rescue mission…
We dock with no issues and find water in the docking bay and airlock. The air lock was mechanically damaged, but we made it through fine thanks to the union folk using their mechanical repair.
The Central HUB has overturned furniture; the crew quarters are barricaded with a bookshelf. We found a maintenance hatch next to some lockers that require biometrics.
Half eaten black, pulsating and moldy food in the mess hall, and there’s an emergency med kit with 1 used use in it. Nutrient injectors that look like guns. We all take one.
Shattered beakers and a free standing 10-gallon fish tank sit on the back wall of the Research Lab. It looks like it is filled with television static. We hear a slight hum in the background. There are terminals in the room with video logs and under a microscope, I see only ones and zeros. There’s a body on the floor in a lab coat, face down. Verlin lightly kicks the body, revolver out. A loud static rings into the room, and the body is void of all pigments, sickly and translucent. The air hums with static. Its jaw unhinges and approaches us, humming. TV static tendrils whip out of its open maw.
I crack a cold one and chuck it at the thing. Water doesn’t seem to bother it. Verlin panics from our inability to attack it effectively, and we’re stressin’ hard about this whole situation. It screeches a song to Niles and me. That static seems to be influencing us, but after killing this lab employee, it starts to subside. We spray a nutrient injector in the fish tank, and it seems a little calmer. Is it consuming organic matter and converting it to TV static??
Niles saw off the hand of this employee. We plan to use it for the hatch that requires biometrics. Verlin finds a cryo syringe, and we head to the server room.
The servers seem to be dying and are breathing warmth into the room. Niles reads the logs, and it appears the AI allowed an infection to set in. The AI is not housed on any of the servers here. We take all the data from the servers. Becky frantically unplugs the servers, and it seems to put pressure on the hull of the deep-sea lab as it groans.
We take the hand to the hatch, and it takes us to the Overlook. Looking out from the Overlook into the deepest part of the trench where it feels like it is sentient and looks back at us. Something about a trench mother??? A convergence??
WE LEAVE LIKE BATS OUTTA HELL. Shockingly, no one dies, and we're able to evacuate before
The Takeaways
As I've said, I always enjoy running or playing Mothership. This session was my friend, Lyndsey's, first time running Mothership. She did a fantastic job. Perhaps more skill checks to induce extra stress, but it was still fun. Also one of our players had a tight 90 minute window to play, and we did all that in the alotted time, taking a "snap decision-making" approach. Impressive to do that and still have suspense with a system you're unfamiliar with in such a short amount of time.