Grim Merchants - A Suite of Vendors for Mothership RPG

"It's exactly what I want from Mothership - cool, funny, grimy, thought-provoking."
- Quinns, Quinns Quest

Grim Merchants is a campaign supplement for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG introducing five shady new vendors to the notoriously lawless city-station of Prospero's Dream! Each one offers exciting and dangerous new wares alongside a host of novel role-play opportunities:

• Delve a trove of hidden treasures at Ephemera4Cheap, a black-market pawn shop packed with all kinds of oddities. 10 new weapons and 90+ strange new curios to pick through and haggle for!

• Go to auction at the TITAN Interstellar Aftermarket and generate second-hand spacecraft layered with history and damages. Become owner-operators for the company or work their docks on the side during shore leave!

• Acquire corrupted Skillslicks in the Craftsmen's Play, the illusory playground of the mad mechanist Dr. Theseus. Buy and sell your memories, inherit the traumas and quirks of those who came before, and dig into 6 brand-new custom skills.

• Make high-stakes bank with Attica Destinations, a coreworld corporation that lets poor saps rent out their bodies out as tourist sleeves for rich Coreworlders to inhabit. Brave an unhinged carousal table to see what consequences your tourist passengers incur, or see rimspace through a whole new lens as the Tourist class!

• Test your mettle by visiting the Krosus Menagerie, where dangerous alien beasts are bought and sold to only the bravest spacefarers. 5 new xenobiological horrors pets, paired with quick-and-easy, double-edged loyalty mechanics and a suite of equipment to help keep them on a short leash.

Each vendor is a plug-and-play toolkit of new ways to make and spend credits, compatible with any ongoing campaign or adventure. No matter how you're tackling the behemoth that is Prospero's Dream (or whichever corner of the Rim you're stuck in for that matter), it'll always be better with more shops!

Written by Joshua Kramer and Michael Kramer

Vendor Portraits by Simon Taylor

Other illustrations made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication (creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) or otherwise as public domain works.

Crowdfunded as part of Mothership Month 2025! Thank you to our 865 amazing backers for helping bring this project to life!

This product is based on the Mothership® Sci-Fi Horror Role Playing Game, published by Tuesday Knight Games. This product is published under license. MOTHERSHIP® is a registered trademark of Tuesday Knight Games. All rights reserved. For additional information, visit www.tuesdayknightgames.com or contact contact@tuesdayknightgames.com.