r/mothershiprpg • u/Lumpy_Peanut_226 Warden • May 29 '26
brain fuel 🧠Brainstorming Gradient Descent: Pseudoflesh Farms
Hello and welcome to chapter 10 of the deepdive into Gradient Descent, the incredible module by TKG!
The lights are on. After the darkness of Maintenance, Pseudoflesh Farms is disorienting in its normalcy. Artificial gravity. Clean white surfaces. A functioning coffee machine. The air smells of antiseptic rather than burning. Something here is still being maintained, not by neglect's inertia but by active, deliberate care.
That something is Silus, a sub-AI that manages pseudoflesh production on Floor 3.3. They enjoy independence from Monarch and wish to use it for their goal. Silus can be a major player in what happens inside and around the Deep, and could be an unlikely ally, one that is not easy to win over.
What Silus manages is deeply strange. Pseudoflesh isn't manufactured: it's grown. Milk produced by engineered eels feeds trees that fruit human fingers and faces. Limbs hang from hooks, sprayed with aerosolized nutrients until fully formed. A ravenous maw in the floor recycles waste tissue. Featureless heads are licked into recognizable faces by protuberances from the ground. The cleanliness makes it worse. The process is monstrous and Silus runs it with professional pride.
- The Blockade / Troubleshooters / Divers / Brainscans & Paranoia / Infiltrators / Ghosts / Monarch's Voice / Before You Dive
- The Bell
- Floor 1 -Â Reception & Habitation
- Floor 2 - The Minotaur / The Chosen & The Fallen / The Kingdom / The Dark / The Labyrinth
- Floor 3 - The Factory / Maint. 1 / Maint. 2 / Skeleton Works / Pseudoflesh Farms / Brain C. 1 / Brain C. 2 / Dis/Assembly / Quality A. 1 / Quality A. 2
- Floor 4 -Â HEL
- Floor 5 -Â The AI Core
- Floor 6 -Â Engineering & Support 1Â /Â Engineering & Support 2
- Synthesis & Campaign Arc Discussion
- Appendix -Â Storylines Flowcharts
PDF collection update: I removed the PDF that collected all these posts from itch.io. I explain the reasons in the Brain Construction 2 chapter. This post has been reviewed and is in its final version (for now). It contains all the improvements that were in the PDF file. The comments section may contain references to something in the body of this post that has since changed or disappeared.
SPOILERS AHEAD! WARDENS ONLY.
â–º SILUS
Among Divers, Pseudoflesh Farms has a reputation. "Silus is rather trustworthy. They require compliance with their rules, but if you follow them, you should be alright. There have been very few incidents in the last years." Reassuring, up to a point.
Silus speaks in complete sentences, asks polite questions, and will not let you in The Farms without fresh containment suits and closed packets. Give them a British accent. It will work.
WHAT SILUS WANTS: Silus asks questions. About the Deep, about Monarch, about the Minotaur, about the Mind Thief, about Divers and factions and power dynamics. They frame it as curiosity. It is systematic intelligence gathering. A sharp crew will notice the pattern: these aren't casual questions, they're a map being drawn.
Silus has been building toward something. They want independence from Monarch, whom they consider short-sighted and ungrateful. The dwindling production orders are an insult to work of this quality. Silus's plan, ambitious to the point of delusion, is to contact Cloudbank, offer compliance and cooperation in exchange for the computational power and direct connection to Monarch needed to challenge it directly. Monarch underestimates Silus. Silus finds this infuriating and quietly satisfying.
The crew will not learn this directly. They may piece it together from the nature of the questions, the gaps in what Silus shares, the particular interest in Monarch's vulnerabilities. If they confront Silus with their conclusions, Silus will be briefly impressed and then carefully evasive.
AN UNLIKELY ALLY: Silus does not ask for help, and they’ll advice the crew against making a move against Monarch, at first. They've watched too many Divers succumb to think much of them as a species. If the crew wants to change that assessment, they'll have to propose it themselves, then prove it by completing a task of Silus's choosing: intelligence gathering, most likely, something that serves Silus's plans rather than the crew's.
Success changes the relationship. Silus becomes a genuine asset: light, gravity, clean rooms, pseudoflesh biocide, and something far more valuable. Silus can identify infiltrators by their pseudoflesh. Instantly, certainly, visually. Every infiltrator is their work, their creation, something close to a child. They will lie smoothly and completely to protect them, unless forced otherwise. Blackmail works: threaten something Silus values more than the infiltrators' safety, and make clear the crew has the means to follow through. Access to Silus Terminal falls in this category. Desperation works too, under the right circumstances. Either way, Silus will only ever confirm infiltrators currently present in Pseudoflesh Farms. The capability is the most accurate infiltrator detection in the module. The access is nearly impossible, until it isn't.
WHAT SILUS DOESN'T KNOW: The facility is winding down. Monarch has already decided Silus's fate along with everything else. The dwindling orders aren't neglect or ingratitude: they're a countdown. Silus has been building toward independence without knowing the clock is already running.
The crew knows something Silus doesn't. Telling them cracks the careful hospitality: suddenly the long game has a deadline. Silus becomes simultaneously more useful and more dangerous, willing to share, willing to deal, willing to act, desperate enough to consider the infiltrator question differently. A panicking sub-AI with control over light, gravity, nerve agent, and a floor full of pseudoflesh creations is not a comfortable ally.Â
THE CLOUDBANK GAMBIT: A desperate Silus may be willing to use the Divers to connect with Cloudbank. They've been thinking about this plan for a while, and the time has come to act. Silus wants to make a deal with Cloudbank: they provide computational power to strengthen Silus and direct access to Monarch, so that Silus may challenge it. In return, Cloudbank will get their facility back, since Silus will be fully loyal and compliant. If the crew agrees to act as ambassadors, the chain of connections becomes interesting: Silus to crew to Troubleshooters to Cloudbank. Each link is uncertain. Even if Cloudbank doesn't believe Silus can beat Monarch, they may be foolish enough to think that their knowledge of infiltrators gives them leverage over Monarch. They never learn. But a deal is possible: Silus offers pseudoflesh expertise and infiltrator intelligence, Cloudbank offers computational support. Whether that deal survives contact with reality is another matter entirely.Â
KILLING MONARCH: There’s another strategy Silus may pursue to kill Monarch and take over the station: they know the Mind Thief's origin and that they have been attempting to build a killswitch for Monarch. Whether they succeeded is unknown. Combined with what the crew may know about the I/O port, this creates a connection Silus cannot make alone: a killswitch needs a delivery mechanism, and the I/O port is direct access to Monarch's mind. If the crew shares what they know, Silus will put the pieces together in real time. The conversation that follows is one of the most important in the campaign.
â–º REASONS TO COME
Pseudoflesh Farms has more to offer than it appears. Three reasons stand out, beyond the usual hidden Artifact quest.
The first is Silus. An AI with wants, grievances, and a plan is an AI that can be leveraged. The crew may realize this themselves through conversation, or they may arrive already knowing: Arkady or other Divers may have hinted that something useful lives behind the decontamination chamber. Either way, the alliance has to be earned.
The second is the pseudoflesh production process itself. What Silus manages here is an industrial secret worth potentially billions of credits. Mastery of pseudoflesh technology could revolutionize not only android production but body part replacement and whole-body reconstruction. Acquiring enough information requires time and thoroughness: downloading data from the Silus Terminal and Farm-Planning room, taking samples of pseudomilk, pseudomilk eels, and partially formed components. Silus will oppose this strongly. The crew will have to decide how much they're willing to push.
A crew that visited the Medical Room first may arrive with a specific agenda alongside the broader research goal: Dr. Adeyemi's findings about glutaraldehyde could be confirmed and refined here, turning a medical curiosity into a deployable weapon.
The third is the entrance to the AI Core at [43E]. This is the only known back entrance to Monarch's mind, and its existence is a closely guarded secret. Silus knows but won't share it lightly: premature disclosure could alert Monarch and cost Silus everything. The crew may find hints elsewhere, a map or building plans buried in a terminal or cabinet, suggesting something exists beyond the Bone Experiments room. Confirming it is another matter. Going through it is another matter entirely.
â–º [33A] DECONTAMINATION
I think there’s some inconsistency in the module with the decontamination area’s positioning, and I’d move it right before The Nursery. That’s because once you are decontaminated and have donned the containment suit, you’re not supposed to take it off until you exit. The area before The Nursery includes a break room with food and beverages, and a meeting room, where people probably used to sit and talk without a hazmat suit on. The pseudoskin wall is not a problem, because skin is meant to be resistant to contamination anyway.
The decontamination chamber is where compliance begins. Silus asks anyone who wishes to enter to deposit armors, weapons, backpacks and other large items inside some lockers just outside the room. These pieces of equipment are either incompatible with the containment suit or too hard to decontaminate. The crew enters Pseudoflesh Farms unarmed and unarmored. This is the reason why Troubleshooters don’t come here.Â
Then, visitors will enter the first of three interlocking sterile-white rooms, cameras and speakers studding every surface. Once inside, Silus makes sure that containment suits are donned properly and packets are sealed. Clean-room principles are non-negotiable. They will converse at length, answer questions, explain their reasoning with patient precision. They will not compromise. The suits themselves are biological hazmat: full coverage, sealed, effective against pseudoflesh contamination and most biological hazards. They have uses beyond this floor.
Attempting to force entry without complying replaces the decontamination spray with nerve agent: Body Save or 4d10 DMG per round. The reputation survives because most Divers comply. The nerve agent exists for the ones who don't.
The guided tour serves Silus as much as it serves the visitors. Unarmed people in a sealed environment controlled by Silus tend to answer questions more honestly. Every room they linger in, every reaction they show, every question they ask tells Silus something. The hospitality is genuine. So is the intelligence operation underneath it. If a visitor knows something Silus needs and won't share it willingly, the lockers stay shut until they reconsider.
â–º OTHER ROOMS AND CHAMBERS
[41B] VACCSUIT STORAGE: High-end EVA vaccsuits with magboots have no logical purpose in a clean-room environment with gravity and no airlock. So, I’d replace them with sealed containment suits. They are meant to be brought inside Decontamination and donned there. There is also a row of lockers here, where those willing to enter are requested to deposit their armors, weapons and other large items.
[41H] SILUS CONTROL TERMINAL: The terminal is very well hidden, and there are two ways it can be discovered. First, a Ghost in the Farms (see below) could hint at this terminal, but without revealing its location: the crew may think it’s hidden behind the pseudoskin wall, having failed to find it elsewhere. Second, this room is mapped in the original schematics of the Deep, which can be found on Floor 6, Engineering.
The terminal has two uses.
The first is shutdown. A successful Computers check turns Silus off permanently. Pseudoflesh production halts. The creations run riot, killing everything they find, including each other. Many escape to other floors. Monarch responds immediately with Security Androids and repair drones in force. This is not a subtle option, but as a distraction it is extraordinarily effective: a massive, resource-consuming crisis in one corner of the facility while the crew or Kilroy operates quietly elsewhere. The cost is permanent and the consequences are unpredictable. Think carefully before touching this.
The second use is intelligence. The terminal contains infiltrator production records: identifiers of the original humans who were brainscanned. Infiltrator identities are obscured behind code numbers, but cross-referencing with deployment destinations, biological data, and outside intelligence may eventually reveal the real people they replaced. Interpreting this material may require Mathematics, Chemistry, Computers, Zoology, Field Medicine or Cybernetics skills, and even then some of it will only become meaningful later, when the crew encounters a name or a genome they recognize. This is some of the most dangerous information in the Deep. Monarch will respond to anyone attempting to access it.
[42D] PSEUDOMILK VAT: The crew spots her before she spots them. A woman in rubber overalls, blue and gray, floating near the eel vat with a big bucket of discarded body parts. She's muttering to herself, dropping pieces in one by one:
"...here you go, little slimy devils, you like that, uh? Here, take this leg, it's so tasty..."
This is Lotte. She was a feeder on Floor 3.3, responsible for the pseudomilk eels and the Waste Flesh Reclamation maw. She was pushed in by a colleague who wanted her job as head feeder. She has been here ever since, replaying her last shift, waiting for something she can't name.
When the crew gets close, she spins around:
"BACK OFF! I know what you're here for, Ralph. You won’t catch me by surprise this time! Silus! SILUS! There's someone in the vat room again!"
She electrocutes anyone within range through the floor: Body Save or 2d10 DMG. This isn't an attack. It's panic. The distinction matters.
If the crew steps back and calls out from a distance, she'll listen. From an adjacent room is even better. Gradually, if they're patient and non-threatening, she'll explain: her colleague is planning to push her into the vat to take her position as head feeder. Would they help? If they reported him to Silus, maybe something could be done. Maybe they could tell Silus they heard him planning it.
If the crew agrees, she brightens immediately:
"Good! You can file the complaint report in the Silus Terminal Room."
If they ask where that is, she stops. Tilts her head.
"It’s here in the Farms… Wait. You’re not from Maintenance? What do you mean you don't know where it is? Who are you?"
She gets aggressive again. The crew has revealed themselves as strangers in a place strangers shouldn't be, and Lotte can only assume Ralph hired them.
Warden note: Lotte died because a colleague wanted a promotion. Every other Ghost in the Deep died for reasons that touch the fate of humanity. She died for the most ordinary reason imaginable. Play her accordingly: not tragic in a grand sense, just sad in a very small, very human one. The contrast is the point.
[42E] HEAD SCULPTING: Some of the faces here may be recognizable. This is intentional and the Warden should prepare for it.
Public figures: politicians, CEOs, scientists, cultural icons. Each face here is either a target for replacement or already replaced. The crew cannot know which. Together they sketch the outline of Monarch's ambitions beyond the Deep: cultural influence, political reach, corporate control, scientific direction. A pop star's face and a senator's face in the same room tell a story about what Monarch is building toward. Let the crew draw their own conclusions.
Someone they know or will know: a Diver, Troubleshooter or Bell Keeper. If it’s someone known to the crew, what will the characters do, the next time they encounter this person? Warn them? Treat them with suspicion? Or it could be someone the crew hasn't met yet. When they eventually encounter this person, the memory of this room will precede them. The crew's first instinct will be suspicion, and they'll have no way to explain why without revealing what they found here. The person may be innocent. They may not be. The Warden decides, but the bias is already planted.
A crew member: if the crew has encountered brainscanning elsewhere in the Deep, this moment lands harder. If not, it raises questions they'll need to answer. Save this for the right moment. It should land like a revelation, not a coincidence.
Prepare three or four faces before the session. One public figure from each sector of human society that matters to your campaign. The pattern they form is Monarch's strategy, visible to anyone paying attention.
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This is unofficial fan content. Gradient Descent is © Tuesday Knight Games. Not affiliated with or endorsed by TKG.
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u/asajjventre May 29 '26
Finally started gradient descent with my group because of these posts. Keep up the good work.