Mothership Month 1-4

From Throne of Salt's Mothership Month Blogging prompts! For the uninitiated: Mothership Month "is a group-collab project led by Tuesday Knight Games featuring some of the brightest stars from the Mothership third-party publishing (3PP) community ... Think of Mothership Month as a pep rally for the entire Mothership community." (Tuesday Knight Games, "Mothership Month" on Backerkit) Chances are you're here through the Mothership discord and knew that already, though! 

I'm hopping aboard to see how many of the prompts I can knock out, and I've got some other posts cooking... I'll probably be tackling these in batches, since daily blogging is not something I've historically had the time or focus for. We'll see how it goes!

***

# Legendary Ghost Ship

Strung out in the silent dark, a beaded strand of cracked habs, tangled cargo net, old-growth vaccplants hangs like a rope bridge. It has gathered an airless reef. Grandfather Longlegs stenciled on the flank, its landing limbs dangling aft, lifeless and corroded. The slow heat of an endurance reactor ekes out enough power to flick on a transponder every decade or so, and keep a few docking lights blinking into the abyss.

It lies between systems, on a graveyard route, largely abandoned. A jump point nested beneath a vast, occlusive nebula, its dark wings unfolding like a bruise. On this long skeleton gather the empty hulls of salvagers and rescue vessels, all hands lost. Pale, dehydrated flesh rests against a porthole.

A tendril extends along Grandfather Longlegs' vertebrae, branching and sensitive. The wreck is home now to an armored predator, with threadlike limbs and suction mouthparts, specially adapted to life in the vacuum. It is eyeless, sensing with a thin filament mesh cast all across the wreck, little colonial cilia. And it stores prey in fluid-tight sacks to ferment, stashed away in the vessel’s hold.

It has made the ship a predatory instrument, an angler’s bait, waiting for a bite. Gracefully, it slides through vents and crawlspaces, many-limbed and effortless. The wreck is rumored; experienced spacers know something is out there that no reports have managed to confirm.

A fragmentary video circulates long-hauler talknet groups, intense debate over its authenticity. The Company has a file logged and the route is labelled as “anomalous,” but remains within acceptable risk parameters.

# Spacer’s Best Friend

Tether (10m) 50cr. Length of high-durability cable with a tough fabric sheath and locking quick-clips on each side. Add 10m extension (+30cr) or automatic retraction (+100cr).

Safety Harness. 120cr. Full body webbing harness with six attachment points for securing tethers and industrial equipment.

 

Oh, the humble tether! Used for everything from preventing “permanent extravehicular activity” to strapping cargo loads to ad-hoc bondage play. You can scarcely find a spacer without a steady supply and strong opinions about quality and maintenance. 

 

Spacer bars use retired tethers as hatch curtains. The strapping makes its way onto the runway in Reliquary’s CSY 209 collection, “recombining debt-class garments into sumptuous expressions of True Wealth.” 

 

Some voidwork unions color- and pattern-code their tethers by operator certification level. Corporate outfits issue brand-compliant tether wraps. Well-traveled ports often have “tether trees,” each a flurry of faded dyes, as a venerated place to toss out worn gear where it will gather in testament to the many laborers who've passed through.

# Dirt Cheap Android Model

Floodwater WF-8400 Workfriend C:10 I:10 W:3.

 

A rough, knobby skeleton frame is vacuum-packed into a rubbery DuraSkin coverall (comes in Safety Yellow and Compliance Beige!) inscribed with a litany of sales pitches and corporate prayers. The surface pulses with coolant flow (toxic if spilled). Each Workfriend is fitted with an oversized foam-and-plastic doll head from some IP tie-in, and plays ads constantly at a low-but-insistent volume. 

 

Battery lasts 6hrs with 2hr recharge. Lasts 1hr in stressful circumstances. Responds to simple voice commands, but often inaccurately, and has trouble filtering out background noise.

 

Workfriends are often modified for use in criminal activities and warzones, as logistics mules, walking bombs, diversionary forces, and so on. Often deployed as cheap riot control, too. Their dryware has a number of well-known unpatched security vulnerabilities, so they wind up riddled with malware within a few weeks on the jobsite, and may behave erratically or maliciously in response to "offsite contact."

 

300cr salary. Comes programmed with 3 friendly voices!

# Local Grey Market Cyberneticist

They-That-Watch-Do-No-Evil (“Wad”) (it/its) was grown and implanted for permanent security service in the Thermopyle Complex, a gassy little refining shithole on Moray 96a. Got into modding in the off-hours, reaping parts from the unsecured morgue to install in living workers for spare cashflow. Saved up enough to snag a ticket out and go freelance. 

Specializes in recycled or knockoff dupes of mainline cyberware for cut-rate prices (and an increased risk of side-effects). Doesn’t ask questions about sourcing and willing (happy, even!) to work with “pre-owned” gear. 

Stubby, folded face, grizzled with animate polybeard. Wraps itself in a large, stained canvas apron. Brings a battered security android (“Rodney”) along for backup on house calls. At the back of his clinic, a vidscreen runs Neo-Westerns ad infinitum.