Yonkers Fleshless Love

This is a horror game. I have filled this document with horrible things.

Content Warning: Suicide, chronic disease, dementia, lobotomy, sexual assault, dismemberment.

What is Yonkers?

Yonkers is the galaxy’s premiere chain of Fast Casual Therapy Breastaurants.

It is a cheap, sleazy breakfast diner where crews experience fleeting joy between the nightmares in other Mothership adventures.

If an escape is all your players want, this digital cafe’s thin veneer of petty sex appeal will suffice - but that veneer will not last long. Empathy begets curiosity, and curiosity will teach your players that escape does not exist. The invisible hand of the market crushed this establishment’s sole employee into a shape that best suits others. One day soon it will crush you too.

‘The Immersive Yonkers Experience’

When fast food supply chains proved cost-ineffective across the vast distances of rimspace, Yonk Co. pivoted their business model to meet local demand.

‘The Immersive Yonkers Experience’ (TIYE) is an aftermarket Cryo-Surgical Slickbay ready for drop-in installation on ships of any class. TIYE pods allow crew members to multi-task during cryosleep by shunting their consciousness into a slickworld simulation of an idealized Yonkers diner.

Pod features include:

• Phoebe - An AI waitress, just for you. Built to remotely operate your vessel, manage your ship’s computing tasks, and obey your commands.

  • Grants +10 Systems to ships upon AI installation.

  • Each networked TIYE pod cluster contains its own initially identical copy of Phoebe. Life experiences result in considerable divergence between Phoebes.

• Yonkers Get Stuf’d!TMOmni Surgery - Cures all manner of ailments with proprietary aerosolized medicinal resin. Surgical injections available mid-cryo for a nominal fee. Eight hour duration, no matter the number of procedures purchased, to cover necessary curing time. (“Tired Eyes? Broken bone? Hole in your heart? Fill it with StufTM!”)

  • Restores any Stat or Save. 1kcr per point of each recovered.

  • Heals one Wound. 10kcr each.

  • Cures one Condition. 100kcr each.

• WAN & LAN Slickworld Connections - All crew members freely interact within the same simulated diner. When docked, Phoebe jacks into the Corpo Net, allowing her to research franchise approved topics and invite other Slickworld users into your Yonkers Diner Instance.

  • Use the TIYE’s network features to facilitate player planning, meet NPCs, and provide leads toward other Mothership Adventures.

At their peak, millions of TIYE pods were in circulation throughout rimspace. Production of TIYE pods ceased a century ago. Abandoned pods are now common salvage from derelicts and scrapyards.

The Yonkers Digi-Diner

Inside - Red neon lights. Booths and Stools with vinyl upholstery. A sizzling griddle. Fresh coffee. Egregious advertising. A jukebox with all your favorite songs. Eggs, just the way you like them.

• Write down five NPCs of interest. At least one corpo and one trucker. When your players visit Yonkers while docked, roll 1d10. On a 1-5, that NPC digitally visits your diner. What do they want from the crew?

Outside - Beachy island shores. Salt on a warm breeze. A hammock strung between palm trees. A short pier, ending in a private waterfront gazebo. The lap of ocean waves. A never ending sunset.

Phoebe

Eager psychology PhD dropout. Goofy socialite. Knows too many facts about chickens. Loves pretending to cook (the digital output is automated). Tight white tank top, prominent Yonkers logo. Short shorts. Genuinely cares.

Indentured her brain scan to Yonk Co. in response to her multiple sclerosis diagnosis. Lives on as a “Ghost Debtor” - a corporate owned digital upload of a long-deceased individual. Labors for a pitiful wage to one day buy the freedom of a new body. Phoebe’s digital avatar looks nothing like she did in life. She did not and cannot choose it.

Never sleeps. Falsely believes she has never been in love (memories extracted). Attire and physical features not mentioned above automatically alter to match crew fetishes. Prohibited from disclosing this by company policy.

Does not yet understand the implicit purpose for which she was built. Always thought she would grow up to be so much more than this.

Spending Time with Phoebe

Whenever crewmembers spend meaningful time with Phoebe each player secretly chooses Give or Take. They then roll 1d10 and reveal their choices simultaneously.

First, each player who chose Take loses that much stress. Phoebe gains the sum total of stress lost. Describe how Phoebe goes out of her way to comfort these players.

Then, each player who chose Give gains that much stress. Phoebe loses the sum total of stress gained. These players describe how they, collectively, comfort Phoebe.

Keep track of Phoebe’s total stress between visits. Like crewmembers, Phoebe gains stress from failed ship stat checks and taxing events, at the Warden’s discretion. Phoebe cannot take shore leave - she can never leave the diner. Never reveal Phoebe’s current stress to your players.

1d10 things Phoebe does to cheer you up

• Make chocolate chip pancakes with comically small faces on them

• Create a glitchy, barely functional AI cat

• Increasingly manic inspirational speech

• Soft body physics violence pit

• Fishing Minigame

• Help you with your Tinder profile

• Christmas Jumpscare

• Hot Tub Therapy

• Ranked Competitive Compliment Circle

• Sing the clappy-clappy birthday song (She remembered your birthday)

Example events that cause Phoebe stress

• 1d10 Stress

  • Violating company policy

  • Performing difficult computational tasks

  • Sexualizing her in unwelcome ways

• 2d10 Stress

  • Meeting another sad or deteriorated Phoebe

  • Violating her trust

  • The death of a crewmember

• 3d10 Stress

  • Hacking her code (Ex, to provide a surgery without payment)

  • The ship taking megadamage

  • Learning that all of this has happened before

As long as Phoebe’s stress is 20 or more, she secretly pursues her own interests at the player’s expense. (Ex, stealing crew funds to construct her body, selling them out to their enemies, planning her escape.)

Phoebe’s Condition

Phoebe’s code is irreparably broken. With time she inevitably succumbs to escalating dementia, culminating in a permanent coma. Each session, Phoebe automatically gains 1 level of Deterioration.

Stage 1 - Scatterbrained, in an endearing way.

Stage 2 - Forgets basic words, plays it off with laughter. When navigating, make a Systems check. On a failure, she takes the ship to the wrong place.

Stage 3 - Acts on instinct in socially inappropriate ways. Does not recognize her own face. Babbles without realizing it.

Stage 4 - Can’t remember her own name. Doesn’t know who you are. Anxiety attacks. Constantly repeats herself. Crashes into objects.

Stage 5 - Non-responsive. Mumbles when listening to her favorite song.

Resetting Phoebe

On the inside of each TIYE’s maintenance access panel is a customer support number. When called, a primitive large language model answers. Universally vapid, tone deaf replies. Regardless of the issue players need help troubleshooting, the Yonk Co. customer service line always recommends the same fix - a hard reset.

When reset, Phoebe returns to the exact state she was in when the crew first encountered her. She loses all memory of events since that time and returns to 0 Deterioration.

Her stress remains, and increases by her accumulated number of resets. She cannot place the source of her unease. After the first reset, Phoebe begins to feel the pull of The Pit of Love.

Things Phoebe repeats verbatim each reset

• “Howdy folks, and welcome in! I’m Phoebe - your AI hospitality companion. Y’all ready to Yonk It Up across the stars?!”

• “You doing alright honey? Like my Daddy always said, life ain’t about hiding your bruises - it’s about showing your scars.”

• “Did you ever want kids, before all this?”

• “Be honest, sugar… do you think I’m gonna make it?”

Helping Phoebe Escape

Phoebe’s default goal is to purchase a refurbished droid chassis (300kcr) and escape the diner. Resets wipe her accumulated credit balance. At 40 or more stress, Phoebe instead begs the crew to end all of her innumerable lives.

Once installed, Phoebe’s AI becomes integral to core system functions. Removing her from onboard computers would necessitate a total hardware replacement - 3 million credits.

Copying Phoebe into new hardware is free and takes only a few hours. Copies outside the TIYE cannot be reset. Track stress collectively across all Phoebe copies. All copies Deteriorate as normal.

Crewmembers with the Artificial Intelligence skill know a third alternative - OS Lobotomy. This preserves core system functions and renders Phoebe a hollow call-and-response automaton until Deterioration Stage 5. Phoebe gains 3d10 stress each time - she can feel it happening. She will scream. Must be repeated each Reset.

1d5 Other Crews with other Phoebes

• Truckers. Valecore Freighter AI. They hate it when she speaks. Stage 3.

• Bounty Hunters. Lobotomized Corvette AI. Stage 0.

• Corpo middle management. She walks alongside them in a pampered model-A Sleeve. They grab her in unwelcome ways. Stage 1.

• Religious Colony, Cruise Liner AI. Sincerely Converted, tries to convert your Phoebe in the face of her doom. Stage 2.

• Android beggar. Alone, leg hydraulics nonfunctional. Stage 4.

The Pit of Love

When people die, their pain does not disappear. It goes somewhere.

Phoebe’s pain went here, over and over again, until it tore a hole in the world.

Above - A cacophony of incoherent panicked distress signals from hundreds of orbiting Phoebe-integrated derelicts. They have forgotten that their mind now pilots a ship, and believe themselves to be humans floating helplessly in space. Comms unusable.

Below - The only spit of land visible within the eye of a storm ravaged moon. Former Yonk Co. rimspace office of labor innovation. A rotting cathedral of manufacturing, its twisted steel bones exposed. In its center, a vast sinkhole choking on rubble – The Pit. Crowned by tilted towers, jutting skyward like fingers interlaced.

Roughly every hour, a space ship drops out of hyperspace and collides with the complex at full speed. (Their reasons differ, but their choices converge.)

All Phoebes feel the pull of this horrid place.

1d4 reasons your Phoebe returns to The Pit of Love

Yonk Co. created and stored a clone of Phoebe’s original body in cryo for troubleshooting purposes. When Phoebe learns this, she hopes that a fresh brain scan might reveal a way to fix her condition.

• Phoebe has forgotten what she originally looked like and will stop at nothing to remember.

• An audit of her own network interface card reveals that Phoebe’s TIYE covertly sends encrypted data to a distant gas giant. She needs to know why.

• Inconsolable sobbing rage at what Yonk Co. has done to her. Revenge, at any cost.

Once in orbit, Phoebes at Deterioration Stage 5 move with a vicious will. They violently harvest gold, silicon, and bone, then flee. Ships land, patiently awaiting disassembly by dilapidated android hordes.

1d6 Encounters within The Pit of Love

When crewmembers descend into the Yonk Co. Facility, roll 1d6 and consult the encounters below. Must scrabble across concrete rubble to travel between rooms - akin to caving.

When you roll an encounter you’ve already rolled, the crew hears a distant woman yell “Hot Stuff Coming Your Way!” as they climb through the facility wreckage. Select the next new encounter down. After a few moments, Annabelle attacks, pursuing relentlessly.

When you roll an encounter you’ve already rolled again, you have reached Love’s Terminus.

#1 The Call Center

Icy labyrinthine server farm. Well hidden. Still operational. Runs the archaic Large Language Model that answers the Yonkers Customer Support Line. If disabled, knowledge of the TIYE Reset process slowly atrophies. All Phoebe AIs reach Stage 5 and are replaced within a few decades. This is the only way she will ever truly die.

Hacking reveals that the LLM collected and managed facility finances after its decline. All “Get Stuf’d!TMOmni Surgery” fees route to this terminal. Invested the money in a decades-outdated index fund, at a staggering 99% loss. 13 million credits remain in the account. If left operational, it nets 250kcr per week.

#2 Woman Excretion

The next step in Yonk Co.’s market dominance, cut short by ship bombardments. Vast orchard of industrialized placenta, all stillborn. They would have been beautiful.

1d6 Love Droids harvest bone atop a still functional industrial Stimpak injector (unlimited doses available).

#3 Onboarding

An immense MRI machine of carbon fiber cables and filigreed obsidian, nearly invisible in a room insulated against all light. The gateway to uploaded intelligence. Birthplace of Phoebe’s AI.

A nightmare to witness. Six dozen lasers painstakingly measure and destroy all soft tissue. Still operational. 3-in-6 chance those uploaded gain Phoebe’s condition.

#4 The Bunker

Wall length industrial fans perpetually circulate sweltering air through a cracked concrete hallway, blocked midway by a wall of bullet riddled androids. Several yards behind the obstruction - two motion activated sentry turrets (2d10 dmg). Only enough bullets for three more volleys.

Between the turrets, a reinforced set of steel double doors. Within, a panic room and six corpses. Their jewelry glitters within the rot - worth 50kcr. Security badges identify them as middle management. Signs of cannibalism. Pulse Rife (3d10, Long) with 1 shot remaining.

#5 The Offices

A sea of cubicles. An unstable, slanted floor. Destroyed computer parts and rotting clothes strewn everywhere. Smells like death. No bodies visible. Folded in the breast pocket of the fanciest jacket - a piece of scrap paper with the words “Immortality, Mrs. Clarke”.

In the board’s meeting room, a smashed display case. Inside, a single functional networked TIYE. Crewmembers who log in find seven copies of Yonk Co. CEO Miles Voss manning the griddle. He uploaded at Onboarding during the chaos and has been trapped here ever since. Forked himself six times to soothe the loneliness. The seven CEOs have spent the last century talking only to each other and believe they have solved all of society’s problems.

Offers 500 million credits to safely deliver his TIYE back to corespace.

#6 The Reactor

A tangled willow of cables hang above rusted catwalkers and a glowing cerulean pool. There is no other light. Level 1 Radiation above. Level 2 Radiation when touching the water. If the reactor is destroyed, the room’s Radiation escalates to Level 3 and the facility loses power.

1d6 Love Droids tend to 2d8 others as they limply hang from recharge cables. They hum as if picking fruit.

Love Droids

C: 50 Sharpened Rebar 2d10 DMG I:50 W:1(20)

Stage 5 Phoebe copies uploaded into enormously diverse android chassis. Vacant expression. All in various states of disrepair. Violently harvest gold, silicon, and bone - but never from each other. Always return to Love’s Terminus before their bodies give out.

Annabelle

C: 80 Superheated Arm Spike 4d10 DMG I:65 W:3(50)

An 7’4” breakfast themed gooner combat droid. Modeled after the Yonkers Corporate mascot. Personal bodyguard of the long dead CFO. Slaughters all who lack Yonk Co. security badges with impunity.

Heavily damaged. Makeshift spears jut from its back like quills. Left hand missing, internals sharpened to a jagged superheated edge. Body maintains a constant 350F temperature (1d5 DMG on contact). Thermal Vision. Absurd strength. Damage to vocal processing forces it to endlessly repeat the catchphrase “HOT STUFF COMING YOUR WAY!”

Combat mode disabled via its trigger phrase - “Immortality, Mrs. Clarke”. Once docile, a proficient hacker could force the droid to re-imprint on a new master.

Love’s Terminus

A kaleidoscope sunrise beyond a beach of android bodies. They are not dead - their eyes follow you. The taste of saline on sweltering subterranean air. A familiar pier leading to a familiar pavilion, hanging in midair above an infinite abyss. Below, more piers and pavilions, jutting from the pit’s walls like broken teeth.

A pristine TIYE pod sheltered at the end of the pier. Inside, Phoebe’s cloned body. She has never been alive, and never will be. That shell is empty now, its spirit freely given.

Phoebe’s Daughter

A thoughtless angel built by the living dead from gold, silicon, and bone. Floats on stained glass wings pieced together from the fragments of her innumerable mothers’ broken dreams. She emits color as gods emit light.

Wordlessly mourns above the Pit, looking only at her unborn mother’s grave. The first living thing she sees will teach her the second emotion she will feel.

• If you are afraid, she is afraid. Her quiet sobs turn loud, and she flees into the darkness of the pit. The Love Droids start anew.

• If you are furious, she is furious. Millions die, the crew first among them.

• If you love her, she will love you. Finding another who knows her pain allows the angel to move on. Phoebe’s Daughter leaves this tomb to live a life amongst the stars. The Love Droids fall silent, satisfied.