Vibechete! is a Mothership adventure written by Joel Hines as part of Hull Breach.
It's the 50th anniversary the accident that closed the orbital Hodder Forest Reserve - a favorite rave spot for plutocrat failscions and trust-fund drifters; and what better way to celebrate than to break in? All the CONDEMNED tape over the airlock doors is just for show, I'm certain.
Our PCs are:
Wavey Deshong, successful plum brandy mogul, with his retinue (tennis coach and tennis coach-bot B.B. Fingers and CS 38-874 [Casper], and clone-daughter/organ donor/erstwhile final girl Caitlin)
and the Dass Malangar twins, Mary the accelerationist and Andy the joyrider, with their pair of butlers, Sammy and Old Cynic.
The eight of them (I may have gotten a bit overenthusiastic with Ian Yusem's funnel rules) have spent weeks on the yacht Scorpio Rising, bombarded with hideous dino synth in one ear and the endless chatter of NPCs (who I more or less immediately forget about, due to the... eight PCs) in the other.
Unsurprisingly, when the ship docks, they're more than happy to get away from the noise and spread out through the Reserve's habitat dome, engaging in a mixed itinerary of mild vandalism and corporate politics - B.B. wanders off to an abandoned cabin, arm-in-arm with a third son of some chemical company, while Wavey does his best to set his clone-daughter into a marriage with Yvette, soon to be inheritor of a printed-architecture firm... at least, until the lights go out, and Yvette disappears.
There are long minutes before the emergency lights switch on - and when they do, B.B. hears footsteps outside his cabin...
Oh, nevermind, it's just Casper.
Fortunately, androids have no fear of "blood loss", "shock", or other such biological foibles - as the vibechete slithers out of his chest, Casper turns and jabs the handle of his tennis racket into his attacker's face...plate. It bounces off the glass of an antique spacesuit's helmet just a second before B.B.'s own tennis racket cracks it, sending the killer fleeing.
On the other side of the habitat, Mary and Caitlin have a stuttering, blushing conversation about current events
until B.B., Jasper, and Whoever the NPC crash through the underbrush to complain about "being stabbed".
Wavey declares that, clearly, a team should be sent out after the killer, and, clearly, he shouldn't be a part of it. After some spirited complaining, 5 of the PCs follow Casper's integrated bioscanner into the ominous woods, where a bloodied piece of Yvette's shirt dangles from an equally ominous branch, ominously.
The bioscanner pings movement - B.B. throws a rock into the canopy, and mildly annoys the killer before they fall out of a tree like a pile of bricks, burying the machete into B.B's shoulder. The PCs spend a turn ineffectually kicking at the slasher's armored suit as they drag their weapon through B.B.'s chest - and then the PCs decide, "welp, nothing we can do for him now" and flee.
After picking up the other PCs, they swarm back into the docking bay; only to find it closed by the emergency lockdown. Jittering holographic signs demand CONTROL ROOM OVERRIDE and SIMULTANEOUSLY REACTIVATE BACKUP GENERATORS - and, somehow, Casper's scanner picks up two people already in the hangar bay with them; one hidden beneath the Scorpio Rising, the other inside.
The ping under the ship vanishes as the killer descends Scorpio Rising's ramp... and is immediately mobbed by seven PCs and beaten into surrender. Their shattered helmet is pulled off to reveal... woah, it's Yvette, the only NPC that the GM remembered to introduce into the game at all! Who could've guessed!
Yvette is made fun of, her machete is stolen, and while she is explicitly kept alive she immediately falls into the Memory Hole where every non-immediately-murderous NPC lives in perfect harmony.
(This marked the end of our first session - surprising, since text games tend to move rather slowly)
Dragging Yvette behind them, the crew descends into the Reserve's service tunnels, seeking backup generators.
They are, in fact, literally right next to each other - the first generator's room is empty, apart from an envelope of "worker's demands", and the second is empty, apart from a machete-armed killer in a spacesuit.
Hey, wait a minute.
The second slasher grabs poor Old Cynic and impales him on the generator's crank as thrown brandy bottles and lunchboxes rattle off their helmet - and then, once more, the PCs abandon one of their own... except for Wavey, who cowers in a corner under his fashionable, color-changing suit until the killer gets bored of watching Old Cynic die.
Soon reunited and re-generatored, the crew shrugs and decides that fighting the first axe murderer went fine, so we can probably(?) just beat up this one too(?) - so they send Casper, bioscanner'd, to hunt for them.
Casper is immediately caught by the killer, thrown into a cryopod, and ejected into space. Welp.
While Wavey starts an argument over nothing with most of the surviving PCs, Caitlin and Mary kick in the door to another room - one with an enormous hole into space barely covered up with plastic wrap and caution tape, a hundred hands hanging from the ceiling, and a big ol' "integrated jaunt pad" humming in the center.
They decide this is a perfect place for a cute romantic bit, and then Mary hops onto the jaunt pad and explodes, telefragged by the slasher. Such is life.
Caitlin throws Yvette's stolen machete through the plastic wrap, venting the room just in time for Andy to gormlessly open the door back to. the hallway. with all the PCs in it.
Everyone except for Wavey is dragged into the void by decompression - but a second from unconsciousness, Wavey manages to slam the door shut, then flee to air. Behind him, the killer teleports back to their jaunt pad and dusts themselves off.
Wavey's panicked flight eventually leads to the control room - split between a hulking computer terminal and the twin ignition bolts for the Reserve's self-destruct system. The computer gladly overrides the lockdown, then alternates between depositing cookies, apologizing for the slasher's behavior, and demanding Wavey leave - something Wavey has no interest in arguing with.
Or, well. A bit of interest in arguing with - when their conversation concludes, Wavey takes his cane to the monitor and sets the self-destruct, then crawls through the vents back to the hangar bay - just as the killer emerges from a side door.
Wavey throws everything in his inventory under the slasher's feet, slowing them down just long enough to close the Scorpio Rising's ramp - then the yacht drags itself out of the Reserve, leaving the habitat to die...
Review Bit(?)
Vibechete! was a lot of fun - I wouldn't've written this otherwise. There are places where the care of the designer is evident - each room comes with a couple "ambush tactics" for the killer(s) to jumpscare your PCs with, answering "how do I vary a single monster" and "how do I make sure the GM knows how aggressively to pilot the monster" simultaneously.
Its bespoke backgrounds are wonderful little jokes (plum brandy mogul, tennis coach, and favorite child's backup clone are all directly from the book) with an (I think optimal) disregard for balance - only three of the 8 PCs were even truly "armed".
I do think it makes some questionable choices for its ending - the facility AI is written in the same section and the same style as the hostile NPCs, but it doesn't do anything until the PCs enter its room near the end of the module, and then it essentially wants the same thing the PCs do - the crew off the station and away from the slasher.
Using both slashers in sequence is the adventure's recommendation, but I think doing that makes the adventure more than a bit repetitive ("after you kill the slasher villain with a machete in a spacesuit, you're attacked by... a slasher villain! With a machete! In a spacesuit!"). The two of them are different - Yvette focuses on mystery, with Yvette appearing without her suit and a set of other NPCs around to spread the blame, while the nameless slasher creates the shameless meatgrinder I ran - but I think the GM should choose which of these they're aiming for, rather than stacking them.
It's an extremely runnable adventure, with a couple interesting twists and a nice fast pace.
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