>> Moonbase Blues After-Action Report
I recently had my first experience GMing by running some friends through Moonbase Blues in Mothership.
Our cast of characters:
- Craig “Man of Tin” Savage - Scientist - A self-proclaimed doctor and man of action, always carries his kukri with him, even dangerously into cryosleep
- Stuntz Mcgee - Marine - A security guard from the Alabama colony, proudly support his spaceball team’s color with a can of red spray paint
- Ovibe-wan Kenchete - Teamster - Pilot of the shuttle transporting the new recruits, goes by his vibechete competition pseudonym
The players wake up in the security dome of the Azure Horizons research base to find only Ovibe-wan’s gear and a terminal giving them a set of routine maintenance tasks alongside an ominous countdown. From the terminal, they find event logs that show a violent conflict erupting between colonists a week ago and periodic power surges starting at the same time; the next of these should happen at the end of the countdown. The party grabs maps from the terminal, scavenges what supplies they can, and then cautiously clear the security barricade and head towards the greenhouse.
In the greenhouse they find their first colonist: a man with his face buried in some of the plants, mumbling numbers to himself, who pays no attention to the new arrivals. Ovibe-wan does some quick math and realizes he’s counting down to the same event as the terminal. Heading into the medbay they find a doctor calmly presiding over a patient in the autodoc happily receiving a blood transfusion of blue liquid. Craig attempts to save the patient with a nonlethal takedown, which starts an escalating conflict which ends with two beheaded colonists and sanity checks all around. Rattled by the conflict with the not-quite human colonists, the players smash the autodoc, and take the blue liquid for investigation. Ovibe-wan gains Stage 1 Meteor Psychosis while attempting to secure a vomit-covered blue rock found in a drawer, hoping to analyze it later in the Geology Lab.
Much more wary of the base’s threats now, the players divvy up Ovibe-wan’s gear, and head back to the greenhouse. Craig narrowly avoids gaining meteor psychosis as Ovibe-wan pulls out the blue stone to test the countdown colonist’s reaction (the reaction was to promptly swallow it). On the way towards habitation, they overhear a weather report with a warning of “meteor showers”, which they don’t like. Craig realizes too late there was a pattern to the static, perhaps morse code? Perhaps someone is still alive here.
Habitation is filled with signs of a bloody conflict and several blue-covered colonists, so the players fall back to try from a different direction. In the central connector, the party has another violent conflict with crazed colonists after disturbing some of their blue behavior and find habitation quite the same from this angle. Moving past a colonist with blue crystals for eyes, and another that seems to be staring at an unseen object through the floor, Craig looks into the Observatory through the airlock window. He is met with the sight of a cultist leader ritualistically jabbing crystals into a colonists eyes, surrounded by a circle of prostrate figures and geometric carvings. A failed sanity save later, Craig decides habitation is the better of the two options.
Luckily for them, the blue-encrusted colonists in habitation seem preoccupied with their own blue pursuits, and they split up to explore. Stuntz investigates the bathroom, finding the mutilated corpse of an apparently sane colonist that took the “easy way out” with a jury-rigged shotgun. Stuntz panics at the sight and becomes comatose, requiring the help of Ovibe-wan, Craig, and some shots of adrenaline to revive him.
Reunited, the party uses an oxygen tank and gurney from the med bay, an electric starter from the kitchen, and a cable from the outer airlock to assemble a bomb in the tunnel leading to the observatory that would trigger upon closing the airlock door to habitation. After they all don vacsuits in case the plan goes horribly awry, Ovibe-wan lures the blue-worshipping colonists into the tunnel with the bomb by using the blue liquid salvaged from the autodoc. With the help of Stuntz, Ovibe-wan makes it back to habitation just as Craig triggers the bomb; vaporizing the bulk of the “cult”. The party briefly celebrates the victory, unsure of why they took such a dangerous risk. With less than an hour left of the countdown, the players decide their best chance for an escape from the moon lies in the mechanics bay, and they head out to the surface.
On the surface, Craig spots the solar panels, mechanics bay, and a partially buried metal object, as well as blue light reflected through the broken comms satellite. Despite looking directly into the light, he manages to narrowly avoid meteor-psychosis again. As the blue light on the horizon intensifies, the players hurry to the mechanics bay, which they find besieged by a handful of suitless colonists. The party drives away the psychotic colonists long enough to convince the apparently sane survivors within to open the airlock for them, and make it inside with minutes to spare.
Inside, the survivors are running out of food and living in pitch darkness to make sure no light is getting in. The players determine they can’t trust that the survivors are sane without seeing them, and turn on a flashlight briefly to find carvings matching the observatory telescope around the engineer, Gozu. Tensions rise until one of the survivors, Aguirre, shoots Gozu, unwilling to risk them succumbing to the psychosis.
Craig and Ovibe-wan spend the meteoric event fixing the rover and using tarps, blankets, and a tent in an attempt to seal the rover interior from light while Stuntz makes the rounds with the remaining survivors to reduce tensions. As the party waits for the meteor to pass, they formulate a plan to head to the buried metal object, which they now know to be the pod that carried them here. Most of the remaining survivors are afraid to leave the relative safety of the mechanics bay, but Aguirre joins them, refusing to be left behind.
Once the airlock opens, the players are greeted by a large group of colonists led by the half-burned “cult leader” from the observatory, and the rover is peppered by fire from makeshift weaponry as Ovibe-wan floors it and drives straight through the crowd. After fighting off some colonists that managed to leap onto the rover, they arrive at the pod alive and intact (thanks to some fancy driving by Ovibe-wan and quick thinking by Stuntz). The pod is functional but buried, and with the colonists fast approaching they have to make a stand.
Aguirre raids the pod for Stuntz’s marine gear, giving the crew their first real weapons they’ve seen, and the players set up “Operation Bloody Condor.” As the colonists draw near, Craig and Aguirre provide a distraction with covering fire so Ovibe-wan and Stuntz can use the rover and a tethered rigging gun line to herd the group of colonists together. Once clumped, Craig, Aguirre, and Stuntz throw grenades to wipe out the colonists. The players discover that the pod has four cryobeds, and with stress running high, quickly dig out the pod and set off in the direction of the nearest inhabited system. They turn on a repeating distress signal and disappear into the black, leaving the remaining survivors to their fate.