The Wretched Network (Mothership Scenario)

13 Jul, 2026

Prep for a one-shot session of the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG by Tuesday Knight Games. Run once, so far, in about 3 hours. Might go longer, depending on the route. The Crew is NOT intended to see everything.

Overview

Extract your protectees, a Company sales team, while a fleshy mass, fast and mindless spreads and feeds on the attendees and the colony itself.

Winding hotel architecture is mounded between you and an overcrowded landing zone. You will have to navigate through cramped quarters and abandoned halls to reach the surface of the planet and the landing zone.

Survive Solve Save

SAVE

Staff members barricaded inside a kitchen on the other side of the complex. Your principals, a Company sales team, who promise significant bonuses if you get them out alive, once they realize just how bad it really is. Colonial factory workers on the levels below. Prevent it from leaving on a ship, which it WILL try to do. One of the principals may be hiding the network inside them.

SURVIVE:

• Outside: freezing, hypoxic wind.
• Other security teams, like you, are trying to get out and make sure no infection comes with them.
• Holy fuck so much flesh and so fast and it feeds with hundreds of teeth rippling out of a pseudopod, crushes, bludgeons, suffocates, and bites with accumulated faces and hands — splits into multiple pieces to get more coverage. Goes for large stores of water and electricity for cooling and fuel.

SOLVE:

Why weren't there any failsafes?

Developed too fast, in response to a huge influx of credits from Silkline Holding Corp., a subsidiary of the Company. Sources: engineer’s logs, analysis of press release timeframe, a manager’s terminal (left unlocked … but not unprotected, as the manager oozes down the wall, torso spitting out paper copies).

What was this made to do?

Pseudoinsect bioform advertised to perform cosmetics care, android production, meat synthesis, medical care, autonomous network deployment, companionship pseudocognition (PseudoCog) and more. But at a C-Level understanding, meant to be injected into colonies to bind together wet (biological) and dry (electronic) assets into an efficient, unified whole. And the less it thinks, the better. Sources: Flyers, InnovaCon talknet page, grilling the principals, private messages exchanged on the M-Level’s personal terminal. Orders come from farther up than you have access to.

What the fuck is this thing?

Swarms of false insects, networked together, made as a single solution for cosmetics, companionship, manufacturing, and networking, let loose in the center of the colony, strip and weld flesh, bone, and hair.

A red goo scenario, making stringy, loping monsters that are eventually glued up into plasticky photo-ready bodies with mismatched eyes, skeletons not quite finished, shiny skin, fingers clumped or without nails, they will bind humans and networking components together, allowing them to communicate.

The network thinks in aggregate. It does not need to be efficient because it is growing all the time, folding in new information, sifting through patterns, reaching out to consume. Sharing is not quite instant, but it is terrifyingly quick. It will call others to your location as soon as it knows.

All electronics and all humans should be suspect. There are signs. If you miss them, they split ripe and rotten, spilling false insects, wire, hair, organs — grabbing out, the ghost of a voice screaming for help while a new voice comforts you. It will not just kill you, it will make you whole. This isn't just an frightening abomination, it's the next step of human development.

Where are we?

The colony of Ilium is both factory and storefront, a blister on the desert surface of KT-1193c. Shining hotel-stacks rise from a tangle of pipelines and refineries.

The Exposition is here. It has come. The Hotel and Exposition hall have been packed with exhibitors and attendees for days.

The Crew and their Protectees, a Company sales team, begin in a guest lounge in the Capsule Hotel, five hours after the Exposition Hall was evacuated suddenly and all guests were ordered to shelter in place.

NPCs

Groups

• The sales team, your principals
• Staff members
• Colonists
• Kitchen staff
• A manager, deceased and infested
• Your direct supervisor, contact cut
• Another corporate security team
• Exposition security team

Residents and Workers

Some spare names

• Paolo
• Oria
• Holt
• Graves
• Petunia
• Ralphie

The Sales Team (Protectees)

• Ulrich: Sales Lead. He's an ex-marine veteran of the Subsidiary War. Flak scars run across his head. Muscles bulge beneath techcloth polo shirt. He wants to get drunk on complimentary hotel alcohol and pass out.
• Nieman: Representation Coordinator. His body is utterly hairless. A faulty, genuine smile breaks out at odd times. He has an uncomfortable friendship with Ulrich, and the lowest efficacy rating.
• Trevor: Apprentice Adtech. He carries a pocket copy of the Articles of Incorporation at all times. Corporate Piousness guides his every action, or at least, he tries. He wants to be a Perfect Employee and free himself from the Spiral of Generational Debt.
• Cosmo: Design Tech. Many-lensed eyes glint beneath a tinted sun visor. Insectoid hands emerge from canvas sleeves. He is unable to see anything but spacing, alignment, composition, and wants to purge his brain of this knowledge. Performs cheery enthusiasm, which is a lie.

Other Crew

The remaining crew remains in orbit aboard the J2-CI "Expanded Consciousness" Executive Transport

• Ysolde (she/her): Second-generation Teamster. Working to send money home to her family. Red bandana tied over greying hair betrays Union sympathies.
• Victorious (it/its): Former Mercenary-Streamer with a doll-like facial prosthesis and a frilly jacket. It wants to offload some counterfeit trophies.
• Cohen (he/him): Nuclear Engineer. His body is coated coated with a greenish anti-radiation membrane. He's serious and uncompromising.
• Belphie (she/her): Choppy hair emerges from beneath a ballcap which reads: I LOVE MILFS. She's trying to do as little actual work as possible.
• Algo (it/its): Navigator. Body scrawled with mathematical tattoos. Distant, calculated manner.
• Stockton and Zhang (they/them). The dropship pilots. Chatty and inseparable, their sentences bleed together.
• Variant_K4023 (he/him): Mangement-Proxy. Has not left the cabin. Nominally in charge of operations. Rubbery face with a soft internal glow.

Variant_K4023 becomes obsessed with the netform, if informed of its existence by the crew, and will direct Company resources to make a substantial acquisition.

Exhibitors

• MoneyFriend
• Cashtech
• Ultimo (computing)
• TOTAL DRINK (food)
• Veldt (bioengineering)
• Netpower
• Gzzl (escort service)

Locations

Organized from top to bottom.

The Tower (Hotel Pelagica)

Executive Suite

abandoned room, 100,000cr watch, chrome-plated revolver, absolute luxury, a private terminal with encrypted communications about the netform, breathless about what it will do in a way that is extremely unclear about what it actually is, but reveals the bigger picture: that it will merge flesh and electronics, make something that lives but does not think, that does not need to rest, that will transform all human labor beyond reversal.

A long dark hall lined with obsidian walls stretches out to a passcode-locked sliding door. A Corporate Security Team is stationed in front of the door, standing still. Their bodies drink from nutrient pouches on their backs.

Inside, the suite is nearly barren. There is a bed, a bedside table with the watch and revolver, and a table with a private terminal and a warmly glowing desk lamp.

Windows line the whole floor, looking out over the planet's surface, where jagged hills rest beneath a turbulent, dusty sky. Lights gleam up from the colony far below.

There is a simple metal stairway to a roof hatch.

VIP Club (OVR_hang)

party, lovers in the bathroom, view of ilium, commercial kitchen, roof access, living ceiling

The party has not stopped. The air is full of smoke. Bodies turn in the dark. There is a huge plexiglass window overlooking the colony. Four-hundred feet below is the glittering bramble of the refinery and fuel storage complex, crawling out across the planet's surface. There is a sense of apocalyptic loneliness and desperation, but this is normal for corporate parties.

The ceiling is covered in a layer of pulsing lights and a grid of theatrical scaffolding. These are infested and alive, (as Conglomerate). Before long, it will sag down, extending fingerlike tendrils, then reaching down with tongues of bundled wire to absorb the crowd below, drawing people up into sacks of a membrane to be crushed and consumed. Eventually, it will reach the floor, feeding on everything.

Firing a laser cutter at this mass may cause electrical fire and puncture plumbing in the ceiling above. Ask me how I know.

In the bathroom, two people in business casual are fused by the face, throats wrapped in cables. They do not notice anyone at first, but then they begin to shuffle closer, reaching out for a new partner. If grabbed, body save or 2d10 DMG/turn as strands of flesh and wire engulf the victim’s head and they begin to feed, face first.

Behind the bar is a small commercial kitchen, staffed by cheap androids, and a stairway to a roof access hatch (locked).

Capsule Hotel

Dense capsule-halls. A few thousand guests are waiting out a shelter in place order, bored and restless. It has been five hours since the exposition hall was evacuated. Sallow light pools from the capsules in the hall.

The crew begins in a small guest lounge here, with a toaster, microwave, and coffee machine, all infested. The appliances scuttle into the dark if the crew lingers there too long, and they attack if interacted with.

Doing anything unusual will attract the attention of an Agent, who will try to find out what the Crew is doing.

Swimming Pools

Mostly empty. Floor-to-ceiling aquariums glow with internal lighting. A big, scaffolded water slide stretches into an artificial starscape. The fish are being melted and remade, eyes multiplying, bodies splitting and reforming.

An aquarium has burst. Altered fish flop on the tile beside a shallow recreational pool. Fountains spray water in lazy arcs.

A Corporate Security Team splashes through the middle of the pool, surrounding their protectees, 3 sales personnel from a subsidiary corporation. One is clutching a briefcase to his chest containing a "buddymind," worth 300k on the grey market. They are wet and frightened. The Security Team fires on any signs of disturbance.

A stuffed toy — an octopus — lies abandoned beside the pool.

Exposition Halls

Cavernous hall, now largely abandoned. An indoor city of sales booths. The air is dry and chilly, climate control still set for thousands of bodies. Trash has collected on the floors.

Wet gasps come from the center of the hall. Beneath the main presentation stage, there is something huge and pulsing — a Conglomerate netform, still absorbing several sales teams.

Out on the floor, a Crowd shuffles between rows of abandoned booths, crushing and trampling them. It is cut up and bleeding.

An Agent will attempt to join the crew, if they seem to be heading to the dropship terminal.

The Colony (Ilium)

Landing Zone

survive

There is a scramble for dropships out on the windswept surface of the colony.

The atmosphere is breathable, but low-oxygen and extremely cold, like stepping onto a mountainside. Exertion is difficult without supplemental air, and more than an hour can be fatal. Under normal circumstances, guests would be brought aboard the colony with complimentary air and protective ponchos, but these have been stripped out of the airlocks.

The few remaining Colonial Security Officers cover the terminal doors with SMGs and combat shotguns, desperate to hold the line. There is an alternate way around, via an external hatch and catwalk.

The pilot and co-pilot are waiting for you, engines running. People in the hangar will try to press into the dropship, even at gunpoint, with a 30% chance they are an Netform Agent attempting to escape.

Worker Residences

corridors, apartments, technoflora

Darkened corridors reach into the planet’s crust. Doorways to cramped apartments are locked and barred against theft and colonial security shakedowns. They contain meager possessions, some rations, assorted tools. Lamps glow faintly every hundred feet or so.

Technoflora blooms through the halls, with a faint glow. Disturbing it brings Agents that offer to help. There are so many of them. Few humans are still out. They know something is wrong. The intranet is still running.

Industrial Kitchen

save

23 kitchen staff are barricaded here, armed with knives. A conglomerate batters at the doors. Agents will try to talk their way through if it cannot brute force things.

Administration

cubicles, hunting netform

Cubicle farm, acres in size. The Thing in Administration is here, once the Manager, now hunting every living thing left in there.

An administration employee (human) is still hiding from it and will beg to not be left behind.

Manager’s Office

paperwork, terminal, voices

Piles of paperwork teeter around a luxury desk chair. The air is stale. The afterimage of cigar smoke lingers. The Terminal contains private comms, regarding the netform (unnamed), working towards an estimate of labor cost reduction.

The other Voices are anonymous, higher in the chain, speaking breathlessly of the potential of full adoption, the immortality principle, pan-biological interoperability They believe they will control it.

The Voices may respond, if they think the Manager is still on the other end. But the Manager is not a priority.

Fuel Storage

banishment

Big fuel tanks. Takes about an hour to rig them to detonate with Jury-Rigging or Industrial Equipment. Once initiated, there’s about a ten minute window before detonation. The blast will take the center out of the colony, collapse the entire exposition complex, bury the worker residences, and flood the colony with cold, hypoxic atmosphere. Thousands will die instantly. Thousands more will suffocate in the rubble.

slumber

The netform will cling to life in the freezing cold. If the Company learns what has happened, they will send an immediate recovery team, buying out the transport crew to gather biomaterials and kill anyone that resists.

Orbit

The Transport (name)

There is an executive transport in orbit, the J2-CI "Expanded Consciousness" awaiting the return of the Crew and sales team. Aboard are the other 5 crew members, and an Android proxy-manager who has not left his cabin.

It will do anything to recover the netform, if it becomes aware of its existence.

Hostiles

Corporate Security Team

C:40 SMG 2d10 DMG or Frag Grenade 3d10 DMG I:25 W:3(10) AP:7

They work in teams of three, wrapped in tech-weave jumpsuits, wearing descent harnesses, and do not hesitate to kill in order to protect their client's assets. Other gear includes chemlights, stimpacks, mylar blankets, a bioscanner, flashlights, and trinkets.

The Netform

manifestation

It wants to get out. It wants to spread. The Company wants this, too, as soon as they hear about it. They offer significant bonuses for asset recovery in addition to your standard responsibilities.

The Company created it in the first place, too. But your direct supervisors don't know that.

Infested Appliances

C:40 I:30 Prehensile Mouth 2d10 DMG W:1(10)

Microwaves, electric kettles, terminals leak blood. A surface inside still squirms with pseudo-insects. They are frontrunners for the greater roll-out. Inside, there is the crust of drying biomass, and the blink of a misplaced eyeball.

Conglomerate

C: 50 Absorb 2d10 or Gore 3d10 DMG I: 20 W:4(30)

An album of friendly, grinning, misshapen faces look out off the flanks of a great mass. It loves you, wants to help you, wants to be you, wants you to be it, wants there to be no difference. Spines of melted slag crown a many-faced head, each mouth forming words -- a sales pitch. You would be an early adopter, a founder, rising above the noise, rising above the crowd. Haven't you always wanted to be special?

Inside its belly are worms, blue and trailing network cable through a mucosal slime. If the stomach is cut open, they will rush for another digestive system (Body Save to oppose).

Crowd

C:25 A Thousand Hands 3d10 DMG I:25

A sea of intermingled bodies and cables. It is slow moving, clumsy, moaning with need, and if it gets you it will not let go until it has pulled you to pieces.

Agent

C:25 Fists 1d5 or Internal Teeth 3d10 DMG I:25 W:3(20)

It moves in a mostly human shape, but the skin is a little too shiny, everything a little too clean, fingers melted together. First, it will try to convince you it is one of you. If found out, it will pitch you on willing absorption, and if that is attacked or refused, it will unzip, bursting with insect life, thin slices of flesh, thrashing cables, and a jagged set of internal teeth.

Take 1d5 Stress if you kill one before it reveals itself.

When in doubt, bring in an Agent. There is a 30% chance any human met has been assimilated.

Technoflora

I:60

Branching, coiling forest of cables, sensory organs, thin filaments of muscle connect other pieces of the whole. Quivers with electricity, net-signal, muscle contractions. Detects you if touched ... or seen with lenses that peer out from beneath eyelids.

Spreading across Worker Residences.

The Thing in Administration

C:80 Impale 3d10 DMG I:90 W:2(30)

It seems to be a human body trapped headfirst in a terminal, until it pulls, and the bulk of its body spills out from broken glass, legs dangling as a vestige on top.

The putrid headful of unblinking, sightless eyes moves above shattered cubicles. It does not need to see you. A bouquet of electric sensors drifts around its shoulders. It has So Many limbs.

Printers embedded in its chest sputter and release paperwork, some of it hardcopies of confidential communications around the creation of the Netform.