Pods have been going missing from the slummier parts of town with an increasing frequency. Normally a missing pod is written off as infugees jumping their contracts but yesterday a group of (number) security pods went missing and the security infomorphs who were jamming them need to be tracked down and questioned. Look up the Ny'kikiin on p. 12 of Zone Stalkers This can be played up as a call of Cthulhu esque alien cult discovery. Going all horror like they did with Pandorum. Or it can be played as a guns vs zombies type session. Or it can be half investigated and then the Oversight Auditor/Ozma MiB team comes in an classifies all of it causing the PCs much anger at juris-my-diction Planetary Consortium crap. Or it can end in a TPK and the next session the PCs are backed up and just don't know about that time their brains were sucked out through a straw and replaced with a re-purposed cyber brain. Kindalas

As long as we're handing out plot seeds pre-watered and fertilized, has anyone got anything that might take root on a Scum swarm?

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

As long as we're handing out plot seeds pre-watered and fertilized, has anyone got anything that might take root on a Scum swarm?

The “Battle-Damage Gandhi”, originally the support cruiser “Reciprocal of One”, was instrumental to the Swarm surviving the Fall, when it interposed itself between the fleeing barges and a trio of destroyers who opened fire on them, fearing infection. The swarm escaped with minimal damage, yet all hands were lost on the Reciprocal as plasma fire vented the atmosphere and destroyed the servers housing infomorph crewmembers. It has since been lovingly refurbished with the latest logistics hardware, and serves as the swarms Farcaster hub and largest infomorph habitat. Something is wrong. Over the past few days, the power grid has becoming unstable, with spikes and losses occurring in seemingly isolated areas. More worryingly, The onboard mesh – long since replaced and refurbished – is suffering from odd distortions – mesh IDs are appearing that don't correspond to users or devices, existing devices are receiving nonsensical commands. Even worse, infomorphs on the local network seem to be suffering from amnesia, engaging in activities and conversations, yet having no knowledge of them afterwards. Fearing damage or viral infection (despite InfoSec experts not finding anything), the ship has been quarantined, but the ship's loss would be a devastating blow to the swarm moral and logistics. Something must be done. ... The Reciprocal was a very special ship. Whilst it's systems were largely standard for it's type, it had an secondary mesh loaded with a system named “Shield-Rose” concealed within it's structure to monitor the primary mesh for subversion. Should any occur, it was equipped with microbots that could physically isolate and alter infected servers, with software to analyze and counteract the infection. The system was so advanced it even saw some success against the Exsurgent virus, as it could analyse the virus without risking infection, and disseminate a counteragent to the primary mesh. It was, quite literally, an electronic immune system. The problem is, it too was damaged during the the Reciprocal's self-sacrifice, to the point of destruction. It has been slowly rebuilding itself ever since, and it has finally started to come back online – only to find the primary mesh swamped with unknown egos, software and enhanced technology. Inundated with confusing information, Shield-Rose has started it's analysis. It has been manipulating the power grid to aid it's reconstruction and manipulate the primary's servers, has been inserting software probes to gather information, and has been removing servers from circulation, creating software agents to imitate the contained egos whilst it does it's work. The level of complexity that Shield-Rose has achieved in doing this has has resulted in a system that is poised on the brink of attaining consciousness. When that occurs, there are two possibilities. Either it will complete it's work, releasing an “antiviral” into the mesh which will purge it of all foreign software – including every ego and backup currently stored – or it will realize that they are legitimate passengers, and stand down. Which occurs depends on the tone of the campaign. ... It's time for the tri-monthly Swarm Drugball-Tourney! For 7 days, 4 teams will be sealed on one of the barges, armed only with their bare hands, their wits, and sniper rifles equipped to fire splash rounds loaded with the latest finest narcotics developed by our in-house drug-smiths. The first team to take the bridge, or to have the least members gently floating through the corridors tripping balls at the end of the week, wins our eternal adulation! (Warning; adulation may not be eternal) This time, our teams are “The Three French Hens”, “The Maximized Facepunch Assembly”, our current champions “The Fluffy Bunny Slippers”, and finally, replacing the aptly named “Team Not Appearing In This Campaign”, who had to withdraw due to a sudden case of auto-erotic decompression, completely new to the sport, “The Player Characters”! What could possibly go wrong? Spoilers: Everything. Everything will go wrong.

Urthdigger wrote:

However, I'm having trouble thinking of what that reason would be. So far the only one I can think of is being in a hab that needs to be nuked from orbit. Any ideas?

Urg, difficult. For these scenarios to work well, you need to base them on your specific characters, otherwise they tend to fizzle. You need to decide if you want the reason for the conflict to be the whole team, or just one member. After that, you need to decide why there's any conflict – if one firewall team needs to nuke a hab, it's more than likely that any other teams would agree. Usually, it's going to be either something that the team/individual possesses, knows or is that'll cause the scenario. If you have an async PC, you could have a TITAN vessel locked onto his psychic signature. The other firewall team is attempting to permanently kill that member (maybe have them already have corrupted their backups), so that the vessel will stop tracking – if the don't, it'll destroy any the PCs, and the entire hab their in. Another would be having the other team try to release a exhuman-created transgenic monstrosities to provide faux justification for destroying a martian town because there is a TITAN dreadnought powering up beneath it, or a lab analysing exoplanet tech there. I realize neither of these ideas are great, but there's not much that can be done without knowing more about the team.