Nine Brains, One Giant Rat, and a Million Credits: A Mothership 1e Mission Report
NOTE: Spoilers for the Mothership 1e module Year of the Rat below.
The following game took place during our annual Shopify meetup in Toronto on May 29, 2025. Eight crew members in nine brains were involved, and I hereby certify the accounts of this mission are unclassified and accurate to the best of my knowledge.
The Mission
The crew of the SS Shopify docked at the lost derelict casino ship, The Year of the Rat on behalf of the insurance company Flysafe in order to retrieve the black box so they could deny the insurance claim on the casino vessel. In return, Flysafe offered to let the crew keep any loot they could get their grubby hands on. Soon after docking directly into the hallway airlock, they proceeded to the Captain’s Quarters where they found the captain himself, dead behind his desk, with the teller room keycard sticking out of his shirt pocket. As one of the crew members went to grab the keycard, highly aggressive rats burst from the Captain’s chest covering him in biting, gnawing, little buggers. He was able to easily shake them off and in a fit of surprise and shock, the Marine named Wrath, opened up with her only charge from her flame thrower. Instantly barbecuing the nasty critters.
From there, the crew proceeded to the helm where they found the consoles smashed and life support mostly inoperable, accompanied by a dead casino guard holding a sub machine gun in one hand and a half eaten rat in the other. Undeterred, Ambrose, the other Synth, hooked into the only fully functioning computer in the room, the security system, and saw in her head the fate of the ship. A gang, dressed as crew members attempted to rob the casino and break into the vault, but during their heist they accidentally let loose the Casino’s living mascot… Shu Di. A cow-sized mutant rat, with human-like arms coming out from its side, which immediately began devouring the gang.
Torrid, the teamster of the SS Shopify, repaired the life support and other failing systems of the ship without a problem, unless you consider being covered in rats a problem, which she didn’t and effortlessly batted them off with her shovel onto the other team members.
But while this was happening, Reboot, our other Synth, snuck out of the room and opened the teller room where he found a case full of cash and casino chips worth at least 300ck. Being the upstanding citizen he was, went back to tell the crew and when they entered the room they found the vault had been mostly broken into by the gang. The gang had successfully broken through the main vault door before being eviscerated by Shu Di… but the big money was still behind a thick bullet proof and key-locked plexiglass door.
Wrath, for whatever reason, figured that this would be a good time to play them a little tune on her harmonica. Unbeknownst to her, or anyone else on the crew, Shu Di loves music and she spotted him poke his head out from under the bar across the casino floor.
With this knowledge in hand, the crew set up a plan to attack and kill Shu Di, while Reboot and the crew’s Scientist went to shuttle as much loot as they could from the teller room back to the ship. The two teamsters went around through the kitchen, where they unfortunately found that the crew that had been trying to survive had been butchering and eating the little rats on board. However, fortunately for them nothing else alive seemed to be in the kitchen. The plan was for the two marines to come in through the door by the slot maze and the teamsters to come out with a ukulele played by Torrid to distract Shu Di and for the others to attack it.
Upon opening the door into the casino from the kitchen, Torrid barely caught a glimpse of Shu Di crawling over one of the walls of slot machines then followed by a loud crash of a row of machines coming down nearly on top of one of the Marines who was hiding in position. Thankfully, he was able to dodge out of the way, but in a stroke of bad luck Shu Di attempted to devour him. Wrath, Ambrose, and Torrid attempted to help, but it became apparent quickly that while she was great with a flame thrower, Wrath was quite terrible with her backup shotgun weapon. Even when trying to hit a cow-sized rat at nearly point blank range.
The Marine being swallowed, started desperately stabbing Shu Di with his knife from the inside but the damage was not enough. After many missed rounds from Torrid, Ambrose, and Wrath, Torrid was able to FINALLY score a shot on the creature with her Rigging Gun entangling the creature giving Ambrose and Wrath the advantage they needed to start doing serious damage to Shu Di. But the rat was not going down, even after taking heavy damage.
Meanwhile, the two other members of the crew who had been filling the ship with the loot from the teller room became trapped on board their shuttle by a horde of at least a hundred rats, effectively blocking their way back into the casino. So, they made the decision to undock, swing around the casino ship to the other side and re-dock into the airlock that entered directly into the casino.
The Scientist, who up until this point had not been very helpful and was most fascinated with the rats he had been shoving into his pockets from the ship, fearlessly burst out of the air lock with guns blazing. He killed Shu Di with a SMG in one hand while ripping his shirt off with the other. Unbeknownst to the rest of the crew (and probably to himself) this scrawny looking nerd of a Xenobiologist turned out to be ripped AF and quite the badass when it came to weapons.
After killing Shu Di, the crew looted the rest of the ship, finding the black box that was wanted by Flysafe while putting down dozens more swarms of rats. In the end, they were able to make off with over 1 million credits.
Resources
- The brochure style module The Year of the Rat can be found on itch.io.
- Mothership 1e