Mothership: Two Creatures, a Class, an NPC, a Goddess, and a Flying City

Here's some more stuff for Mothership. However, aside from the Innocent (which is really just a character archetype), you could use most of this in any system and setting.

Garuda

Named for the legendary mount of the Hindu god Vishnu, Garuda are genetically engineered birds with internal antigravity plates, designed to carry passengers as they fly.

By Moebius

The largest birds in Earth's history had wingspans of around twenty four feet, around seven and a third metres. The largest living ones are albatrosses, with wingspans of eleven and a half (three and two thirds). On alien worlds, with denser atmospheres and lower gravities, the largest wingspan yet found is the thirty feet of M. lindberghii, native to the Company colony of New Kinshasa.

But even on these low gravity worlds, the dream of the flying mount was just a dream, and nothing more. Until Company analysts started to send surveys to the rich and powerful. It was slow going at first – advertisements are for the unwashed masses, after all – but once they started getting responses, the idea was floated and positively received.

Each Garuda is more wing than body, and their brains are simple, unable to do anything but fly at their jockey's command. Garuda "feed" on a high energy predigested slurry, which is pumped into their bodies by connecting a hose to the creepy metal nozzle they have in place of a throat. The slurry is filled with nutrients, energy, and oxygen, capable of sustaining them for days of flight and weeks of downtime between feedings. Their legs are merely vestigial, and they rest on rotund bellies softened with fat not for their comfort but for their rider's, so that landings are cushioned.

By James Gurney

You might be thinking: "Hey, I know this is scifi, but how on earth were they able to design a flying mount?" Well, that's because their designers cheated. Every Garuda is filled with artificial gravity plates. The smallest models might have a single one just to keep them afloat, but larger types have several, as much an agrav* with an organic shell as they are an actual animal. They are still propelled by muscle, of course, but pedants are quick to complain that you might as well cover an agrav with feathers and say it's a beast as well.

The smallest Garuda are designed to carry a single rider and little else. The largest, often referred to as "sky-whales", have multiple sets of wings and entire rooms built on their backs and bellies, or even into their bodies. The newest "Leviathan" models have a single spiral staircase that can take you from a viewing dome on the top to another on the bottom in less than a minute of walking.

While initially designed and mostly made for luxury purposes, Garuda have found some limited use in search and rescue, exploration, and military roles. Their use of agrav plates doesn't require that they hold up the full weight of what they carry, and as they are mostly organic, the weight they do have to support is much less than that of a metal vehicle. On worlds where supply lines are non-existent, such as backwater colonies or uncharted systems, the expense of a Garuda can be worth taking one in place of an agrav. In terms of weight, carrying slurry tanks is more efficient than carrying fuel or batteries, making them well suited to situations where recharging from a generator is not a reliable option.

*An agrav is a vehicle which makes use of antigravity or artificial gravity plating to fly. Some ground vehicles or conventional planes and helicopters use agrav plates to support themselves, but an agrav vehicle is one that is fully dependent on their use.

Muninn

Intelligent – though only protosapient – crows with recording and tracking devices embedded into their bodies, as well as chameleonine feathers and the ability to speak and even hold simple conversations. They are named for one of the two ravens of the Norse god Odin, who were said to fly across the world at dawn each day, returning to the god at dinner to recite what they had learned in their travels.

By Darko Tomic

Their species implies their most common use, which is to hunt, tracking quarry via a "third eye" camera set between their two true ones. It can show them images in infrared, light amplified, and just generally magnified forms. Most of their extra brainpower is devoted to understanding the nature of tracking, to be able to predict where a target will go even when they can't see them.

A Muninn's feathers are capable of changing colour like a chameleon's scales. They use this ability mostly at a distance, blending in with the sky before shifting to a normal colour when they perch alongside other birds. Crows are among the most common Earth transplant species in the human sphere, ensuring they blend in on most planets. For those worlds where they don't, specially made non-crow versions are available.

Because Muninn are, aside from their camera and brain augmentation, functionally identical to a crow, they are difficult creatures to track. In extreme situations such as after EMPs or when communications channels are being monitored or jammed, a Muninn can function without their implants or without radio connection. In fact, most Muninn "run dark" by default, only transmitting recorded information via a physical connection to prevent their communications from being tracked. Or just by talking. Did I mention they can talk?

Huginn and Muninn, Odin's raven scouts, were granted the ability to speak. The modern Muninn is no different. Talking pets have been around for centuries at this point, and the general agreement has been that anything that isn't an uplift – and therefore not a pet – is boring at best, unsettling at worst. Because speech is not typically necessary for animals, and is expensive and slow to augment into a creature, it is rarely granted. But Muninn can make use of it, both to transmit the information they've received and to carry messages of their own.

By Front 404

The supernatural elements of Mothership give hope that there may be psychics, souls, and even afterlives in the setting (there certainly are in mine), but at least in our reality, entropy always wins. If something can be spied on, it will be spied on. No defense is impenetrable, and so even the most secure lines of communication can be monitored, bugged, and recorded. Forget your enemies – the Company will gladly spy on anyone they think it could be worth watching.

Muninn help escape this problem. There's no phone to be bugged, no databank to steal and crack. The crows aren't intelligent enough to understand the messages they're carrying, or be bribed or tortured into revealing them, and, as of yet, the organic brain proves impossible to read via technology. (In those few places where psychics are starting to become exploited, animal brains are actually harder to read than human ones.) They can carry a message, unseen and unheard, and even elaborate on it. They can record a response and return to their owner with it. Due to their organic nature, they can even fly for days, weeks in some rare cases, to carry a message "as the crow flies".

A Muninn can be killed by a firm punch, but landing one is not easy. Hitting an unaware Muninn requires a normal Combat test, but hitting a Muninn that's actively moving requires a critical hit. Hitting an aware, flying Muninn at anything but the closest ranges is an exercise in futility, and requires a roll of exactly one. If you hit a Muninn, it has only 3 HP.

The Lady In White

A celebrity bodyguard for those in high society. No one knows what she looks like or even what she sounds like, as she always wears the same white bodysuit with a mask and voice scrambler. The only part of her anyone can see is her snow white hair, always worn in a bun. She favours close-range combat, and carries a katana, kris, and Scholz and Vogel "Fafnir" plasma pistol.

In addition to being a fashion statement, branding image, and easy way to stand out in do or die situations, the Lady's suit is also a highly advanced piece of armour. Despite being almost skintight and highly flexible, the suit has been shown to block bullets and blades in the several recorded fights she has been in. Her aversion to being hit indicates it isn't able to always block such strikes, but there are purchasable models of armour roughly comparable to what she wears. If you had millions of dollars to spare, at least.

Everything she wears, and every weapon she wields, is coated in a superthin layer of a highly hydrophobic substance. This gives it a brilliant sheen, but more notably causes blood to slip off of it in a few short seconds. By the time she sheathes her blades, they and her clothes are as white as they were before, leaving her immaculate and untouched.

The Lady has become notorious as a mysterious figure of uncanny grace. Clients hire her as much for her ample skill as for the status of being protected by her, and those who have the fortune of speaking to her describe her as cold, sarcastic, but ultimately an interesting person to talk to. But make no mistake: the Lady does what she does for the thrill of the fight, not for a place in high society. At the slightest sign of threat, she jumps from casual conversation to active combat in the blink of an eye, before returning without so much as acknowledging the combat once the all clear is sounded. Or not returning, if she was finding the conversation boring.

She prefers to take contracts she expects will have a high chance of seeing actual combat, and as a result tends to guard the kind of executive PCs will want to kill or manipulate. The Lady has developed a reputation as a duelist, challenging those who insult or rival her to legal duels, and offering herself as a champion to those challenged by someone or someone with a champion she wants to fight.

Combat 67%

Armour 3 or 2

Body 40%

Speed 50%

Instinct 33%

Health 60 or 15

Attacks Katana: 3D10 or D6+1, 2 Hands

Kris: 2D10 or D6, 1 Hand

Plasma Pistol: D100 or D6+2, Armour Piercing, Close range, 3 shots, 1 Hand

Special When the Lady in White would be brought to 0 HP or below, she instead remains at 1 HP, but is stunned for a round – she has never had her armour broken before, and so the feeling of blood seeping into her suit and sight of the growing red stain shocks her. If this happens again in the future, she will again be stunned, as she is not used to the pain.

A short, lithe woman in a white bodysuit with a featureless white mask and snow white hair tied in a bun. When she speaks, the voice is clearly not her own, and slowly morphs to another voice over the course of her conversation. She carries a sheathed katana, kris, and holstered plasma pistol, and walks and talks with the utmost grace.

The Innocent

Mothership is very clearly based on Alien and Aliens. There are other inspirations, and you could use the game to run a non-horror game just fine (although at that point it might be better to use a different system like Traveller or Stars Without Number), but it's the Alien series, and especially the original two, that seem to be the main source.

The classes in Mothership are Teamster, Scientist, Android, and Marine. The only one that doesn't have a clear inspiration in Alien or Aliens is the Scientist, and even then scientists practically dominate the rosters of later installations like Prometheus or Alien: Covenant.

But there's one classic character left out: Newt.

Isn't she adorable? - From Aliens

Not everyone in the depths of space is there to kill or be killed. Well, everyone can be killed, but not everyone signed up to do a risky job. Sometimes, people find themselves in the strangest situations through no fault of their own, or tag along on the journeys of others with no intention of taking part in the difficult work.

But they are far from useless. Their optimism and presence grounds those around them to their humanity, reminds them of what they have a chance to be a part of. When facing inhuman monsters and impossible odds, amorality and nihilism cling to humans like a disease. If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back – and with the number of monsters the average adventurer fights, it's all too easy to become one themselves.

And innocent does not mean incapable. Where other characters have strong weapons and sharp minds to protect them, the Innocent must stand against their foes alone. They have their friends for sure, but to stand alongside larger-than-life characters without running in fear requires even more courage than them. And because everyone gains the same skills and stats each level, the Innocent will eventually be as strong as their allies.

The Innocent are orphaned kids picked up from lost colonies and the significant others of crewmembers. They're therapists and priests. They're artists and philosophers and free thinkers. They're all the people we think are useless but couldn't do without. When a Marine takes a life, he does it to protect them – when a Scientist makes a breakthrough, her knowledge will improve their lives. We are what we fight for, and we fight for them.

Stats: +5 Speed, -5 Combat

Saves: 30 Sanity / 60 Fear / 20 Body / 30 Armour

Stress: Spend a round to calm someone down and let them reroll a Fear save or panic check.

Skills: Rimwise, +3 Points

The Goddess of Lost Things

In a setting with explicitly supernatural elements, however rare and unknown, religion is not something so easily shed. Most sci-fi settings tend to push it to the background, making characters with faith often zealots or aliens (or both).

But in the depths of space, society diverges from the norm. Lost colonies can go decades or even centuries before being recontacted, and in that time, a small initial population can rapidly expand. New religions develop, as do new takes on old ones. It's human nature to push the boundaries of what is normal, and a predominantly atheist or agnostic civilization will only have its religious members gravitate to the fringes, fringes where communication delays and unnatural living conditions promote new ways of thinking.

From Netrunner - by Yog Joshi (the art, not the game)

While all but the most ancient and venerable religions tend to stick to their systems of origin, one faith – if you can even call it one – has spread far and wide. The Goddess of Lost Things, patron of travellers, explorers, and refugees.

Her worship does not demand that she be praised before any other. Indeed, she has no priests or priestesses, no holy books or commandments. Her temples are hostels, her prayers meant to inspire hope, not devotion. Countless people who have no doubt that she does not exist pray to her all the same.

The Goddess of Lost Things is worshipped by those far away from home. Travellers and explorers, but also refugees and, naturally, the homeless. She requires nothing, but offers subtle intervention in return for prayer and sacrifice. Many who "worship" her are completely atheist, only making the prayers for their own comfort. Having something to have hope in, even if you know for certain it's unreal, can make all the difference.

Her favour is purported to come in many forms. Simple things like safe journeys and interesting expeditions, or large things such as finding new homes and escaping hostile pursuers. Her most ardent worshipers are not wanderers, but rather the once homeless or displaced who, after praying to her, found a way out of their situations and feel the need to repay her through continued worship.

While they are her most zealous followers, her most common ones are travellers. Deep space explorers, Company couriers, and interstellar haulers offer her prayers and build shrines on their ships. They hope for safe, quick travels, but more than that, the religion offers them something to focus on on the long journeys between the stars.

For those with more faith, the closest thing to a structured church she has are the Temples to Lost Things. They tend to be found in and around starports and other places where travellers congregate. Each is more or less a glorified hostel, run by those faithful in the Goddess and designed to be as cheap as possible. All profits are put back into funding the temple or towards charities that help the homeless and displaced – those in great need of shelter, like refugees or runaways, are often allowed to stay for free.

At the centre of every temple is a Shrine of Lost Things. (The Goddess' followers aren't the best at naming things – with so many languages they encounter, fancy names are eschewed in favour of easily translatable ones.) Those who wish to curry her favour, or pay what they feel is a debt owed, leave things of value to themselves. It is generally believed that this has more to do with internal value than external measures like price.

By Moebius

As a result, her shrines are full of the strangest items. Stuffed animals and favourite books up to priceless antiques and life-saving weapons. Anything someone might consider valuable. But more than that, the most externally valuable things are taken, because the shrine's items are open for the public to claim. People who abuse this are refused the right (many temples impose a one-item-per-person rule), but over time, items of any degree of value are taken away, leaving only the eclectic and unusual behind.

Envolant, the Flying City of Hostages

What's the best way to show off your unimaginable wealth? One is to build a flying city.

I swear, you could take anything made by Moebius and turn it into a gameable concept.

But, even ignoring the colossal expenditure of energy and capital, both to build the city and to keep the agrav plates running, the idea just doesn't work. Whenever and wherever possible, people prefer to use ground-based vehicles. It's safer and more efficient. Agravs and garuda are for those flush with cash and in desperate need of speed and all-terrain movement. There's a reason 90% of agravs are military or industrial vehicles.

Cut the power and your flying car doesn't sputter as you pull over to the side of the road. It tumbles out of the sky, in spectacular and catastrophic failure. A floating city only exacerbates the situation. Failure doesn't kill you and anyone unlucky enough to be beneath you – it kills you, anyone beneath you, and everyone else in the city.

Of course the engine of industry that can fund the creation and maintenance of such a city has the means to keep it safe. But no one would be comfortable living on one, at least not in such numbers you could make it a meaningful settlement. There are plenty of floating houses out there, owned by executives on low-grav worlds. But there's only one floating city – Envolant, the city of hostages.

Initially, it was built as a kind of uber-folly, and much smaller than it is now. A couple of Company CEOs, friendly rivals, pooled their money to create a proof of concept for a merger between two of their subsidiaries, both manufacturers of agrav plating. They built it on a low-grav ocean world: Proteus, among the earliest human colonies, but by far the least successful. The local life is farmed and fished, but as far as breadbasket planets go, it's neither an exceptionally tasty, profitable, or productive source of food.

When Envolant was first finished, they struggled to get anyone to inhabit it. Getting someone to live on a floating town was tough enough, but on a backwater world so close to some of the oldest and most developed colonies, and above an endless expanse of water no less? They managed to get some Company artists, and a research lab, but much of the settlement went abandoned, beautiful architecture that was nothing but dead weight.

They were only a few months away from finally giving up and having it dismantled when it happened. They would have broke it down sooner if it wouldn't have looked bad – it was a folly, but a monument that stands for a day is no monument at all. But then one of the CEOs took a hostage from a rival, as assurance he wouldn't betray him. It was his only daughter her took, a child the man loved more than anything else in the world, and from a rival who was exceedingly likely to try to steal her back.

He couldn't keep her locked up in a cell, nor could he place her anywhere she could possibly be stolen from. Despite their hostility, he intended to keep the rival around for a while – if his daughter spent her time away in captivity, it raised the chances he would seek revenge in the future. The captor had to place her somewhere near the centre of human space, out of the way but close enough to keep an eye on her, somewhere she could roam free without having a means of escape.

Envolant was the answer. There was a community of moderately successful (which, on an interstellar scale, is incredibly successful by modern standards) artists, a safe, inoffensive, and interesting laboratory, and more beautiful sights than you can shake a stick at. And it was all impossible to leave without being monitored. Anything brought to the island had to pass through a rarely visited system, and head towards an otherwise meaningless part of a rarely visited planet, and directly land on a difficult to approach object.

From Studio Ghibli's Castle In The Sky

Envolant's new purpose was an instant success. The daughter found the city charming, and the rival could visit her in a relatively short journey compared to the trips to the deep space blacksites and deathworld prisons other hostages are dumped in. But at the same time, the city's precariousness constantly reminded both of them of the power its owners had: at any time, the city's engines could be dumped into the sea, bringing it down with it.

Today, the city has expanded and grown. It's no longer a town but rather a full-fledged city, if a small and densely packed one. It's full of artisans and luxuries, and is as much a resort for Company executives as it is a place to hold their hostages. But it does hold them. They number in the hundreds, celebrities likely to run away and the children of rival CEOs. The city keeps them happy and content, and unable to flee. Countless groups have tried to bust people out, and there are dozens of failures for every rare success.

But it is possible. Envolant wasn't built as a prison and wasn't really adapted to one. The fisheries of Proteus still regularly ship supplies in and food out. The Company, greedy as always, couldn't help but turn it into a vacation destination. You can't fool the scanners or blend in unnoticed – but you can disguise yourself, or slip away into the city's streets, or bribe the right people with the right price (which is harder than you'd think).

There are hundreds of hostages in the city. Some have been there for decades. In the complex network of the Company, there are entire worlds whose ownership hinges on who holds what hostage. Break the right person out, and you could change the fate of entire systems, or make allies of some of the most powerful people in the galaxy.

Just be careful you don't fall off. - from Castle In The Sky

OSR: Three Monsters Ripped From - I Mean, Uh, Based On Battle Brothers

Battle Brothers is a hell of a game. I could go on and on about why I love it, but one thing that's stood out to me since the first time I sat down to play it is the enemy design. The basic enemies your mercenary company faces off against tend to be rather similar at first glance: brigands, orcs, goblins, and undead. But the game does a great job at making all its enemies feel different, escaping the trap many RPGs fall into, where any of those four are little more than 1 HD monsters with different aesthetics and equipment.

The game's main menu screen - by Paul Taaks

The game's two expansions – one free, one paid – mostly focus on adding new enemies to the roster. They're all good, if almost all more dangerous than the base game's enemies, and in some cases a bit cliche (trolls are tough and regenerate health but are dumb and cowardly, witches are weak as hell but screw with your guys by charming them and making attacks against them also damage one of your mercenaries). But the ones that aren't cliche? Oh, baby. They're amazing concepts.

Kind of. The monsters are cool, but since Battle Brothers is mostly about taking on a contract, killing some bad guys, going to a town to spend your coin on supplies, gear, and wages, then repeating it all over again, there's not a whole lot there for roleplaying, aside from some well-written but short and often choiceless random encounters. So while the enemies I'm listing below are based on the game, they aren't shot for shot recreations. I've taken some artistic liberties to make them more interesting and suited for RPGs than they already are. I'll have some notes at the end on what I changed.

Lindwurms

At first glance, these guys aren't that special. They're dragons. Tough armour, deadly attacks, even a hoard of collected treasure. But while they don't have flight and burning breath, they have something more unique: burrowing and rust-causing blood.

A Lindwurm - Paul Taaks

Lindwurms have a long, snaking body that shifts into a giant tail and two powerful limbs, covered in green, shining scales. Their arm-leg things can pull them across the ground at impressive speeds, but they mostly use this strength to dig. In just a few moments a Lindwurm can dig underneath the earth, moving underground and leaving a trail of upturned earth like the Graboids from Tremors. While they need to come up for air and aren't as smart as "true" dragons, Lindwurms are bright enough to exploit their movement. They love to burrow underneath forests, hedges, and walls in order to hinder those who would pursue them as they flee.

What makes them especially deadly to those who would hunt them is their blood. It's a powerful rusting agent, designed to blunt the edges of metal without destroying it, to better let them digest it. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they eat metal. While they can secrete it slowly from their mouth, the agent is also used in defense, Xenomorph style. Thankfully, the rust is only skin deep. A vigorous scrub will remove the top layer, leaving the metal beneath actually sharper than before. But by blunting edged weapons and coating armour in a heavy layer of rust – like wearing waterlogged clothes – Lindwurms reduce the effectiveness of their foes after every attack made against them.

 

LINDWURM

HD 6 (30 HP, 15 Attack, 10 Save)

Wants To eat any metal it can find

Armour As chain (scales)

Move 2x crawl, 1x burrow (for up to three rounds between breaths)

Morale 7

Attacks Bite: D6+3, Melee

Tail Swipe: D6-1, Reach, against up to three adjacent targets

A serpent as wide as a cart and as long as a ship, with two powerful limbs at the front of its body and none at the back. As it moves, its green scales glitter in the sunlight, and even in darkness the slightest amount of light creates shimmers and rainbows. When it digs it kicks up copious amounts of loam, creates an obvious disturbance above its location, and causes the ground to rumble and shake. Its maw opens wide to reveals rows upon rows of sharp teeth, and when cut its blood is a vibrant yellow green, which glows with unnatural light.

A Lindwurm's blood rusts metal. Non-blunt metal weapons that deal damage reduce their damage rolls by 1 until cleaned, and every time an attacker lands a non-blunt attack at Melee range, their armour's granted defense is reduced by one step until cleaned.

Anyone with a basic familiarity with the legends of lands where Lindwurms are found, or monsterology as a whole, will know that Lindwurms eat metal. They'll also know that metals like gold and silver are resistant to their rusting, letting them linger in their stomachs for decades. Cutting open a Lindwurm will reveal D100 times D100 cash worth of gold, silver, and jewels (they'll happily eat shiny stones, thinking they're metals).

Alps

Nightmare-inducing psychic vampires from another reality. They cause and feed on nightmares, sneaking into settlements and causing the inhabitants to suffer restless nights for months on end until they die of sleep deprivation or psychic harm. In a stand-up fight, Alps are hardly a threat. But they don't take stand-up fights. In dangerous situations, they can induce sleep in targets who fail a Save, and even target multiple adjacent creatures.

Sleeeeep... - Paul Taaks

Once someone is asleep, an Alp can induce nightmares, draining their health every round and healing the Alp in kind. For Alps aren't creatures of flesh and blood. They have eye sockets but no eyes, mouths and teeth but no digestive tract. Their white, smooth flesh has no bones or blood beneath it, and slicing them open reveals that their skin is as thin as paper. They can't see through walls, but they can sense the presence of anything with a soul, and see despite having no external eyes. (They have one inside their skull.) An Alp is a creature not just related to nightmares – it is a nightmare, and is as much defeated by strong arm and sharp steel as it is by courage and willpower.

What makes Alps truly insidious, however, is how they enter and exit our world. Guilt and fear draw them like moths to a flame, and the truly guilty are bright enough to pull Alps from whatever world they come from into ours. As long as the "lantern" burns an Alp can fade out of our reality, and always threatens to bring more back with it. The only way to stop them from fleeing the moment they're threatened is to remove the source of the guilt.

This guilt, however, is self-determined. They are as likely to be drawn to a murderer as they are to someone in the midst of a religious crisis, and the guilty naturally try to hide their guilt, or don't even recognize it as the cause of the town's nightmares. Even if you can track down the offending party, it's not always so easy to stop them. Not everyone is a murderer you can kill with impunity – sometimes, the guilty party is well-protected, or more often, a sympathetic character the party will want to help through their self-doubt.

And while the party works towards this, the Alps will fight them at every turn. In the night, they will attack the party directly, and when that fails they will send the lantern nightmares designed to exploit their underlying anxiety. They will kill pillars of the community to rile the people up into witch-burning mobs. They will make their nightmares seem to point towards a false source, like a nearby crypt full of undead. They will never let you get a restful sleep.

ALP

HD 2 (10 HP, 11 Attack, 6 Save)

Wants To feed on nightmares, to keep their "guilty lantern" alive and tormented

Armour None

Move 1x crawl, they can crawl up walls like spiders

Morale 3

Attacks Bite: D6-1, Melee, but they only use it if cornered

Humanoid creatures that crawl like a spider, with smooth, ghostly pale skin and empty eye sockets. Their mouths pull back to reveal grinning yellow teeth and bright red gums, and their heads are covered in strange protrusions, like horns and tusks made of flesh. They move as if they had no weight, and when struck by your weapons feel as though they are much lighter and softer than they should be.

An Alp can cause a creature within Near distance, and anyone directly adjacent to it, to Save or fall asleep. Lots of things can wake people up, but spending a round hooting and hollering will wake up anyone within Reach distance, as will any physical harm.

An Alp can cause a sleeping creature to suffer nightmares, dealing D6+1 AP damage every round until the creature wakes. The Alp heals that much damage in kind.

An Alp can fade out of our reality at will. This takes an action and renders the Alp incorporeal until the end of the round, at which point it leaves our world entirely. Alps ignore all physical damage from non-magic, non-silver weapons while incorporeal. If an Alp leaves our reality, it can only return if their guilty lantern still "burns".

Nachzehrers

I would have renamed these guys Ghouls, but I want to make my own version of ghouls, more peaceful ones based on Lovecraft's stories. That, and/or a tougher, more feral ghoul based on the one from Darkest Dungeon. In Battle Brothers these guys were originally called Ghouls before being renamed to Nachzehrers, a name which helps sets them apart and reinforce the game's Germanic setting.

Nachzehrers of increasing size - Paul Taaks

Nachzehrers are created from the corpses of those dead by suicide or accident. Anyone who is felled by their own hand has the potential to become one, although suicide with a concrete purpose, such as self-sacrifice or for honour, tends to prevent them from forming.

Such deaths are far from normal, and not every death results in a Nachzehrer. What makes them so common (at least as far as monsters go) is their ability to make more of themselves. Nachzehrers consume humanoid corpses wherever they can find them, digging up graveyards and attacking peasants and other weak sophonts – creatures with the intelligence and free will of a man – opportunistically. They can devour a corpse in seconds, gorging themselves on the flesh.

As they feed on corpses they grow in size and strength until they can swallow men whole. When they sleep in this bloated state their flesh splits and rends, turning one into two, or even four for the largest ones. In this way a single suicide can quickly spiral out of control, upturning their graveyard before spilling into the countryside in a growing pack.

Nachzehrers have grey, mottled skin, slavering maws full of jagged teeth, and scattered patches of dark black hair. As they consume more corpses they become larger, stronger, and grow spiraling horns, sharper teeth, and more and thicker hair.

NACHZEHRER

HD varies; usually starts at 1 (5 HP, 10 Attack, 5 Save)

Wants To eat the corpses of intelligent creatures

Armour None

Move 1x scurry

Morale 5

Attacks Claw: D6, Melee, +1 damage at 2 HD, +2 at 4 HD

Hunched over, bestial humanoids who move on all fours. Their grey skin is covered in bumps and patches of dark black hair. Each hand ends in sharp claws, uncannily similar to rows of fangs that fill their drooling mouths. When they howl it sounds like a man's imitation of a howl, or perhaps just a pained scream. The largest ones are covered in layers of fat, and have sharp, spiralling horns rising out from their foreheads.

Nachzehrers can eat the corpses of sophonts as well as other Nachzehrers. This takes an action and causes them to grow one size at the end of the round, from 1 HD to 2, and then from 2 to 4. When they grow their current HP is raised to their new maximum, and their Attack and Save are also raised.

A 4 HD Nachzehrer is too full to eat corpses, but is so large it can eat a human. They can swallow a creature within Melee range if they fail a Strength test, dealing D6 AP damage every round until the Nachzehrer is killed. On the plus side, when they are killed, their bloated bodies "pop", freeing the trapped creature without having to cut them free.

So what did I change?

Lindwurms in BB have the acid blood and digested treasure, but not the burrowing. I honestly thought they burrowed, but since they're a rare enemy and one I don't normally like to fight I just don't see them often enough to remember they don't until after I started writing.

Alps are more or less unchanged except for the bit about being attracted to guilt. They also get a damage resistance buff for "existing partly in dreams" which gets stronger the more of your mercenaries are asleep, but that was too finicky for RPG combat so I made them able to escape reality entirely. After that I thought "well what's stopping them from just fleeing and returning endlessly", so I added the guilt attraction so that there's a way to banish them.

Nachzehrers are unchanged. The game implies that big ones become lots of smaller ones, and makes it unclear whether or not they're naturally occurring or the product of suicides, so all I did was clarify it.

Mothership: Two Classes, One Creature, And An Adventure Hook

Mothership is a really good game. And the excellent Throne of Salt blog has been putting out some equally excellent ideas for a Mothership setting.

I've always been a big fan of science fiction, and very interested in how it seems to change completely nearly every other decade. Contrast Asimov's robots to the Alien's androids to Eclipse Phase's TITANs. Mothership, and in particular Throne of Salt's setting, seems to be able to do this all at once. Computers are big and blocky but PC androids are completely normal. There are lasers and fusion engines, but people still use firearms and quickly draining batteries. There are cybernetics, but no downloading yourself into a new body. Alien life is as common as dirt, but to steal a line from one of my favourite videogames, intelligent life taunts with pointed absence.

Anyway, I love the game and setting so much it got me to actually write something for once, so I figured I'd put it up here. More specifically, it got me to write four things. Enjoy!

The Vatborn

The Vatborn are genetically engineered to fill the roles that are too dangerous or degrading for a human, but too open-ended or creative for an android. They're the deathworld labourers and disposable shock troopers of the future. Each and every one is grown in an exowomb, and kept in gestation until late adolescence (about three years in total). Once birthed, Vatborn are given carefully curated education and conditioning to mold them into pliable, obedient servants with little concern for their own conditions.

Physically, they are no stronger than a strong baseline human, but are all that strong or stronger. As personal freedom is suppressed wherever possible and appearances are far from important, Vatborn are grown with inhumanly pale skin, hairless bodies, and no sex – they are not even treated as gendered creatures, in order to eliminate individuality.

From Alien: Covenant

Every Vatborn is given the same creche-based childhood, one which constantly espouses loyalty, obedience, industriousness, and efficiency. They are taught they were made to serve, which is true, but also that this is good and right and something they should be proud of. Vatborn are taught only the bare minimum needed to survive before moving on to learning everything they need to know about the job they have been grown for.

The only true psychological difference that isn't just a result of their youth has to do with self-preservation. To keep them from committing suicide or taking too many risks they have the same fear of death and destitution that baseline humans have, but they have no fear or discomfort regarding bodily harm. A Vatborn can have their hand cut off without flinching – the pain is still there, they just can't force themselves to care about it. Their sense of fear is dulled as well, but far from absent.

Vatborn are commonly found on isolated planets with dangerous environments, or in military divisions that require soldiers that are extremely difficult to break. It is not uncommon for wealthy worlds with serious population shortfalls to purchase large "harvests" of Vatborn to supplement their existing population. They're good for when you need loyal, able bodies now, and not twenty years later or for a much higher price.

There are rumours of a civilization composed entirely out of Vatborn out there in the deepest reaches of the human sphere, an experimental society gone wrong when the subjects overthrew the researchers. The Hive, it is called, and it is very real and very frightening, for its cruel efficiency cares only about expanding. It grows stronger and stronger every year, and as its leader caste learns more and more about leadership (being untrained Vatborn themselves), they start to realize it's a lot easier to take what exists than to make something new. Entire colonies have disappeared in their first tentative raids, but so far, no one's put the pieces together.

The Hive by Paul Kirchner - Very good comic. I learned about it from the PorPor Books blog. Go and read it.

Stats: +10 Strength

Saves: Sanity 20 / Fear 40 / Body 50 / Armour 30

Stress: Vatborn suffer no Stress gain from suffering injuries or failing Body saves.

Skills: Athletics, +2 Points

Hellhounds

In a better age they'd be a gross violation of every right we give to animals, but in the dark future, even humans are only somewhat protected by international law. Each is an augmented dog of a breed descended from the stock of bloodhounds and mastiffs, filled to the brim with cheaply made cybernetics.

Deus Ex Concept Art

Most of the augments are just there to make them tougher and faster, and even then are mostly just stimulant injectors set to trigger when the hound enters a fight. Every sense is heightened, to make them better trackers, and the moment the augments sense fear they pump them full of anxiolytics. They're bred to be ugly, frightening figures of muscle, patchy fur, and bared teeth, with customizable colours to match any corporate aesthetic. Their effectiveness in combat is dubious, but they make good trackers and work wonders in terms of degrading enemy morale.

Higher-end models have a row of small subdermal bombs set to trigger when the Hellhound dies. After anarchist social networks made "shoot the dog first" a household phrase, the Company started assigning their houndmasters with failsafe implants of their own, designed to prevent Hellhounds from detonating within unsafe distances unless the houndmaster is dead themselves. Some give handlers the ability to trigger the bombs themselves, but this fell out of favour after studies found that most handlers would use the slightest excuse to justify setting them off.

The average dog lives 10 to 13 years, but Hellhounds have a life expectancy of 4 to 6. Due to the high chance of them dying in the field, their implants are not made to last, and Hellhounds that are rescued or purchased for non-combat use are sorry sights indeed. Not that those in Company packs are any better, but at least the Company doesn't try to keep them healthy – the sad fact is that even the best-treated ones live short, painful lives.

Combat 60% Bite: 2D10 or D6, Melee

Body 30%

Speed 60%

Instinct 15%

Health 20 or 5

Special Subdermal Bombs: Upon death, Hellhounds explode for D10 or D6+1 AOE damage, as long as they are not within 10m or Close range of a living handler.

A mangy dog that at first glance looks diseased, but upon closer inspection has exaggerated muscles and cybernetic implants. It bares sharp teeth and growls and howls with wild and powerful lungs, suddenly moving with alarming speed and grace. Its fur is a decidedly unnatural colour the same as the branding of the corporation it belongs to, and when not hostile it seems agitated, in pain, and on edge at all times.

The Cultural Exodus

During the early years of interstellar exploration, the tumult of the posthuman transcendency, first true corporate states, and full brunt of the Earth's climate crisis caused a mass exodus from the Sol system. This period of history is known as the Exodus, and is responsible for the many farflung and sometimes hilariously doomed to fail colonies that, in some cases, went for decades before being recontacted.

To the student of history, serious or casual, perhaps the most interesting part of the Exodus was the Cultural Exodus. One of the greatest corporations of the time was Vatersson Industries, headed by the mining magnate Vali Vatersson, a man who lived well beyond his years thanks to extensive gene therapy. A student of the arts and a history buff ever since he was a child, he bought up art and artifacts from the failing states of the pre-Exodus years, acquiring a vast collection of masterworks, classics, and an ample number of otherwise unexceptional contemporary pieces.

Late in his life, Vatersson began to regret the hand he had in exploiting the dying Earth, and in particular his hoarded collection of masterpieces. But Vatersson knew that the new world would not be one where the Company, even his own, could be trusted to keep its word; it may take a decade, or even a century, but his collection would inevitably be sold to the highest bidder who would likely keep it as tightly guarded as he had.

Believing he had no way to ensure his art would be available for anyone to see and appreciate, and unwilling to destroy it or simply let it fall into the hands of other magnates, Vatersson used his vast wealth to fund a solution. He chartered ships, hiring suicidal crews with the same promise – anything they wanted, for up to a year of life and a billion dollars in cost, if they would only sail their ships to distant stars and hide the art in secure, secluded vaults in the depths of space. After returning, they would have up to a year before, as part of their contract, being killed to ensure their silence.

It was difficult. It was damn difficult. The cost was in the hundreds of billions – but Vatersson was uber-rich, had no children, preferred to die before he was more implants than man, and saw his crusade as the ultimate form of charity. Three ships were never heard from again. Constant surveillance and isolation whenever possible prevented the spacers from fleeing after they returned for their reward, but two made such spirited attempts they had to be killed prematurely. Two ships had info leaks, their relics reclaimed within five years (and all by corporations, no less).

But by the end of the year, it was done. No one remained who could have known where the ships had gone, save for the mastermind, who died a year later of natural causes. After his death, only a single journey's itinerary was leaked, for a total of three out of dozens.

Every few years, they find one. You can search a system for months and miss a vault, but they're never in a truly random spot. The Mona Lisa was buried at the magnetic north of a tidally-locked life-bearing world. Goya's The Third of May, 1808, orbited the second Lagrange point of a world with a canyon the size of Mars' Valles Marineris all the way around. The funeral mask of Tutankhamun sat atop the largest vein of gold yet found.

Sadly, the plan didn't fully pan out. They're found by Company ships more often than not, and when they aren't the crews tend to sell them to the highest bidder, putting them back in Company hands. Those crews who do keep them squabble over who has what rights to it, often leading to them hiding it away once more only for the last living crewmember to claim it and, in their old age, die within a decade and have their kids sell it to the Company. (If the Company doesn't just steal it outright.)

But sometimes it does work. It's not common and not always much better than being nabbed by a Company CEO who'd at least hang it on his wall, if not show it off to the public – Van Gogh's Starry Night was burnt by rebels on the backwater world where it was found – but sometimes, sometimes, one falls into hands who deserve it. Some sell or donate them to public institutions who could never afford to beat the costs the Company would pay for them. Others keep them quietly hidden, hanging them on their wall and claiming it's a replica, safe in the knowledge they own a piece of history.

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

Bonus: Celebrities-for-Hire

I wrote this after formatting the above stuff, so I haven't gone and edited it or had a day or two to realize "crap, that idea is horrible because [insert reason here]".

Fame's not always all it's cracked up to be. Of course it's better to be part of the decadent elite than the downtrodden masses, but that decadency tends to bite people in the ass in the most unexpected ways.

All too often, skilled artisans - musicians, actors, artists, writers, chefs, even prostitutes and pornstars on some of the more liberal worlds - overextend themselves, taking bad deals and spending their money wildly. When their initial success wears off, they're left with long contracts and colossal debts, but enough skill and popularity that the Company won't simply funnel them into debt bondage. Or more accurately, will do it in a more insidious way.

Art is risky. Sometimes it fails. When an artist isn't quite popular enough for the Company to find it worth funding a dozen misses for that one big hit, it's a lot easier to sell something else: fame. Short term contract work for executives and other members of the elite sells well and always has a market. Imagine a world where Gordon Ramsey could be hired to cook you dinner, or your kid's favourite boyband hired for their birthday party.

Sure, it's expensive as hell, but the billions of underlings the Company employs have millions of executives, and the contracts are very short term: one dinner, one party, one portrait. A savvy middle manager or spacer captain could save up enough for a low level job every couple months. The only problem is that the Company has the celebrities on a tight leash. A high enough pricetag can buy you nearly anything, and since they're selling fame, not skill, they have no say over what they do. It's not about the art anymore. It's not even about selling the art. It's about selling the name, to as many people as possible.

It's not as bad as being a wageslave or literal slave. But for artists who got into the game to do what they love, and had a taste of true success before being turned into a corporate plaything, it's a soul-crushing job. The kind of gig that makes running away to join a ragtag spacer crew performing legally questionable jobs on the edges of human space start to sound like a good idea.

Stats: +5 Speed, +5 Intellect

Saves: 40 Sanity / 25 Fear / 30 Body / 35 Armour

Stress: Failing a test related to your celebrity skill incurs 1 Stress from impostor syndrome.

Skills: Art, Rimwise, Art Specialization, +1 Point

New Skill: Art Specialization. Like Weapon Specialization or Vehicle Specialization, but for Art. The Art skill encompasses a familiarity with everything from writing to drawing to acting to music. Being a poet or a guitarist is the realm of Art Specialization. Treat it as an Expert skill whose only prerequisite is Art.