In the
comments a couple of posts ago, Alzrius asked when you’ll see Otherverse America
adventures or even a full Adventure Path. I’ve been thinking of a good starting
adventure for the setting, something that could equally involve Choicer, Lifer
or Fed-Gov PCs, something that touches on the themes of the setting, and
something that showcases the insane level of diversity. I also want an
adventure that’s mostly non-linear, allowing for sandbox play, or to be dropped
into any existing campaign.
So what the
hell, let me show you the bare skeletons of an adventure. I’m thinking of
expanding this idea out into the first adventure for Otherverse America, so let
me know what you think of it. Now, remember, this is only a skeleton, a basic
framework of an adventure, not a complete product.
You’ll have to do a lot of the work
yourself to bring it to life. In addition to the Campaign Setting, this
adventure will heavily reference Species of Otherverse America and
Never Born Again. (Some of the background elements and revelations about Sanger
Genomics, found in Fursona III
will also be used). Other books will be helpful, but that trio will be core to
the adventure. Also, you’ll want to pick up Rite Publication’s Monsters of
Taboo: Taker of the Unborn. (Rite Publications, 2009). I’ll explain why that
last book in just a minute.
The
adventure takes place in late fall or winter 2106.
This adventure can take place in
any North American city, but works best in ‘mixed communities’ where there is
both a Lifer and Choicer presence within easy driving distance. The adventure
is designed for first level characters, and they should reach 3rd or
4th level by the time this story arc is all said and done. I’ll
mention some ‘entry points’ for Lifer, Choicer and neutral PC groups as the
outline progresses.
Flight of the
Parrots
(Stock image by Char Reed, Ignitus Innovations Inc)
A Choicer Megacorp has genetically
engineered a race of bird-like symbiotes (use the statblock for the Taker of the Unborn, with some
modifications). These symbiotes can attach to a pregnant woman, and absorb her
fetus without harm or pain to either mother or fetus. The Taker (which is
recast as a more bird like creature than the stirge-like critter it was in MOT) can store the fetus within itself almost
indefinitely, and can later than inject the fetus and amniotic sac in any
living creature as a parasite, bringing the pregnancy to term in any mammal,
regardless of species or gender.
The project
that created the Taker was initially funded as commercial genetech, maybe even
a way to de-escalate the rising tensions, to solve the problem of the Abortion
War once and for all, by completely eliminating the need for abortion. Good,
idealistic research. The only problem is once the first generation of Takers
are decanted and field tested, the Megacorp realizes they don’t have any market
for these things. The Takers scare the shit out of Lifers and creep the hell
out of most Choicers. The Takers are basically an interesting biological
curiosity that will never see the outside of a testing lab.
So as the adventure begins, the Choicer Megacorp is transporting the Takers from its Main Lab to an Offsite Lab, for
some final testing, to see if the project can yield anything really useful and
eventual destruction of the experimental animals. The Takers are in stasis in
the back of a commercial van, being driven to the Offsite Lab at about 0300,
when the roads are mostly empty. Nobody is expecting trouble, because the Taker
project has mostly flown under the radar.
Of course, the van gets hit.
Hard.
The drivers and solitary guard get
badly injured or killed, and in the process, most of the Takers escape their
stasis tubes and make for open sky. The culprits are a half bright gang of Lifer Eco-Terrorists- idealistic kids
from some nearby Wealthy Lifer Enclave. These
kids want to make their bones, do something dramatic, but aren’t up to full on
conflict with Choicers. They didn’t even want to seriously hurt anybody during
the raid, but something goes wrong and suddenly, the kids are major felons.
Several dozen Takers escape, and
most survive long enough to take shelter in the city. Over the next few days,
really weird shit starts happening. Shit that is going to involve the PCs.
First, lets talk about how I’m
going to modify the Takers from the Rite Publications version: drop their
intelligence dramatically to INT
3-4, though the Takers can still understand and respond to properly formatted
commands in English or Spanish. (Of course, determining the proper format for
commands will make recapturing these things a lot easier, and will require some
research into the Choicer Megacorp that created them). Second, give the Takers
the Lifechained subtype- alien genetic material was used in their creation, and
explains their strange biology. Finally, the experiments that lead to the birth
of the Takers had their origin in Sanger-Tech that the Choicer Megacorp bought
on the open market, so there’s a kind of bad history there.
Complications
The Lifer
Eco-Terrorists
These guys
are teenagers or early college age, minimally equipped first level characters,
actually a little less durable and combat ready than the PCs. They are the
children of Lifer elites in the Enclave, and they formed an eco-terrorist cell
pretty much under their parents noses, for their own reasons. They’re an
ongoing complication because they pull other raids throughout the adventure,
acting as a rival adventuring party to the PCs.
The biggest
complication though is that during the raid that freed the Takers, the leader
of the cell used some kind of prototype Lifer
Tech or Power. This gadget was recently developed by the AOG and entrusted to the Lifer kid’s parents for
safe keeping. Obviously this gadget is super secret, intended to be used when
the Abortion War next goes hot. Once the cops get done with forensics on the
destroyed Megacorp Van, they’re
going to realize that this tech or power
exists, and very soon after that, APEX and the rest of the Fed-Gov are going to
get involved. Now, Lifer Mommy &
Daddy are scrambling to cover up their eco-terrorist kid’s mess, and
destroy or recover the forensic examinations of the forbidden tech. If they
don’t get to this tech in time, the Lifer AOG
is going to send in some badass, high level Cleaners who will probably end up killing their kid, and the other
kids in the eco-terrorist cell, in the name of tactical secrecy.
I figure Lifer Mommy & Daddy make good
patrons for a Lifer mercenary group- they can hire on Lifer PCs to destroy
evidence and muddy the waters so their kids’ involvement isn’t suspected.
Higher level Lifer characters, or ones based on Kodiak
Island, will be the Cleaner team themselves, sent in to kill
everybody and sterilize the scene.
The Victims
As soon as
the Takers find a roost, they are driven by their biological urges to absorb
pregnancies and transfer them. If the characters are Choicer heroes, connected
to a Clinic in any way, this makes a
great way to get them involved. If a clinic’s patient, midway through a very
much wanted pregnant, wakes up suddenly non-pregnant in a way that makes zero biological sense, any Choicer medic
in town is going to be VERY interested. If random women around town find
themselves in the same boat, multiply this interest by ten or twty; and if
human fetuses are found grafted to unwilling random women, random men, or even
animals, like dogs or livestock, everybody is going to want to know what’s up.
The medical
(and emotional) crisis presented by a Taker infestation makes a great hook for
Midwife player characters, and might also get APEX or unaligned characters
involved- if the players are funded by Patriot Medical or the CDC, they will
definitely be sent in for a look.
More
personally, if a friend or loved one of the PCs suddenly finds herself
un-pregnant, intimately violated by these freaky animals, it gives the PCs a
visceral reason to go Taker-hunting.
Especially if the PCs realize that they might be able to get the
pregnancy back, and re-implant it in the correct mother to be, within a short
window of the Taker’s attack. This makes Taker-hunting a very time sensitive
mission, which is a kick ass hook for an early campaign.
The Sanger Connection
Because the
Takers were built using Sanger-Tech who knows what will happen if they mess
with another Sanger creation, like a Fluxminx or Softling PC? In the actual
adventure, I’ll probably have some kind of weird events chart- if a Fluxminx or
Softling is affected by a Taker anything can happen, from minor illness to
major risk of death to lasting mutation to the addition of a badass power-up
template in rare cases.
The Machine
Intelligences
At this
point I don’t know if either Nuremberg or
the badly damaged Astarte-773 AI had
any direct hand in the creation of the Takers, they are both certainly
interested in the species. Nuremberg
is fascinated, and wonders if the Takers have anything to offer its pet
species, the Neverborn. Would a Taker symbiosis allow Neverborn to breed true?
Because if the answer is yes, than capturing some Takers alive for study is
vital to Nuremberg’s
long term plans.
Meanwhile,
what’s Astarte-773’s role in all this? Did she manipulate the Taker Project in
as a means of doing something to ‘her children’ the Softlings and Fluxminx? Are
the Takers an apology (if the Sanger Connection interaction mentioned above
results in something positive?) or are the Takers a weapon, designed to spread
a deadly disease among Softlings & Fluxminx (if the interaction results in
disease or something otherwise negative). Or are the Takers just some kind of
biological SOS, sent out by
Astarte-773 to say “Help! I’m still alive somewhere on the Mesh, and Nuremberg is torturing
the fuck outta me!”
Of course,
you’re running the “Biological SOS”
option, unraveling the mysteries of Taker biology might result in the PCs
figuring out that Nuremberg
itself is sentient and the depths of its manipulation of the Lifer nation. At
that point, expect Susan Glauchester and her McDuffs to become unlikely allies
for the PCs, and the Nuremberg
and his Neverborn pawns to become long-term antagonists.
The Propaganda War
The Lifer
rumor mill starts buzzing with talk about the Takers within a few days of their
escape. The Lifer civilian population is convinced these creatures are an
intentional Choicer monster, designed to steal Christian babies away for
sacrifice to Moloch or whatever fucked up things these assholes truly believe.
Block Mothers with UZIs patrol the streets, demonstrations in Choicer
neighborhoods turn nasty and violent, and tensions increase.
Religious
leaders start citing obscure passages from Scripture claiming that the Takers
are some monster from Revelations about to start the end times. In the
background of the campaign, you’ve got tragic family suicides, riots, brawls
and propaganda played on Mesh. You’ve got that same sense of impending doom
that Watchmen had.
A few days
into the campaign, the Coalition for
Life realizes that the Takers are more than just deckplate rumor. If the
CFL can capture a Taker alive and release video of it ‘feeding’ on a test
animal, they can launch a major propaganda offensive against the Choicers, recruiting
hundreds of new ‘direct action rescuers’- read: terrorists, earning millions of
dollars in micro-contributions and scoring some political points. So all of a
sudden, the private army of the
public face of the Lifer nation descends on the city.
Choice Has Her Hand
In
Sooner or
later, in any espionage oriented campaign, the PCs will run across Choice
Merideth, either as an ally or an enemy. She’s like the Choicer Nick Fury, only
even more manipulative. It’s perfectly in character for her, through a series
of catspaws, to manipulate a gang of Lifer teenagers into forming an eco-terror
cell and hitting a Choicer Megacorp. What’s
her ultimate objective? Does she believe the release of Takers into the
eco-system, and allowing them to become a true breeding species, will some how
benefit the Choicers long term? Does she have some grudge with the Megacorp? Is
this a roundabout way of revealing or capturing whatever tech or power that Lifer
Mommy & Daddy are keeping in reserve? Is the whole thing an especially
nasty misdirection, while Choice and her loyalists are performing some mission
of their own in the city?
Whatever
the case, things will quickly spiral out of control, as the players have to
contend with the Choicer intelligence apparatus and Choice’s operatives as well
as all the rest of the factions in this adventure.
The Endgame
There’s no
shortage of potential end-bosses for this mission, and depending on the PCs
actions, they might end up battling more than one final boss. I would probably
write these up as modular encounters, so the GM can choose where the adventure
takes the PCs, and allows some or all of these encounters to be used as random
encounters along the way. Some potential end-bosses:
- A low
level Lifer Closer, sent from Kodiak Island to clean the situation, recover or
destroy all evidence of the tech or
power, and kill the leader of the Lifer eco-terror cell.
- The
head of the Lifer eco-terror cell,
mutated into some kind of powerful Lifechained superhuman by something he
or she uncovered in another badly planned raid on the Megacorp, and rampaging out of fear or ego.
- A
mid-level Bastian superspy,
answering only to Choice and willing to fight dirty to ensure Choices’
objectives, whatever they really are, are carried out.
- An APEX containment squad, declaring
martial law over the city and rounding up Taker victims for future study.
- A Choicer superheroine who fell
victim to a Taker and is determined to get her revenge, no matter who gets
caught in the crossfire.
- Some Neverborn fanatics, answering to Nuremberg,
displaying eerie powers as they try to capture a Taker or victim alive and
intact.
- Some enigmatic Sanger-Tech mutant,
created secretly by Astarte-773, and carrying out the mysterious AI’s
orders in regards to the Takers.
- A Nemesis Lifespawn alien, drawn to
Earth by the Takers, acting on instinct and killing (or infecting) anybody
that gets in its way.
