well...my idea was that a semi-rogue Cognite executive is researching basilisks hacks. he's got fragments of TITAN code, but nowhere near enough to actually engineer the effect(s) he wants. Knowing research into this area is frowned upon by polite society yet understanding the market potential inherent to this sort of thing, he takes his code fragments and outsources/compartmentalizes the research to former associates. Of course, along the way things go wrong. One researcher accidentally engineers themselves an exsurgent infection. Another accidentally drives themselves and everyone in the local area insane and everyone goes on a murder spree, scrawling weird equations in the blood of their victims. A third achieves limited success, but doesn't understand what they've unleashed and sparks a religious holy war over different brands of soap. the idea was also to have a member of say...an evangelical christian cult get hold of some of the research and try to engineer themselves a religious revival of their particular flavor of divinity. But i'm liking the idea of one researcher accidentally making people have religious convictions over personal hygiene products and/or other very minor over the counter/impulse buy products. so the players would have to hit up the souk where this is happening and figure out why people from various social strata are obsessing and killing over something so inconsequential (along with weirdness such as why synthmorphs are buying aftershave lotion or whatever). hmm...actually, given the prevalence of so many morphs with clean metabolisms maybe not toothpaste. gum or candy, maybe. I'll think about that bit more.

Herbo wrote:

Since there is mention of some transhumans worshiping AGIs...how about an exsurgent infected AGI posing as the return of a prominent religious figure...who then begins to try and assimilate all transhumanity to its whims. Queue basilisk hacks, frightening religious fanatics, intrigue, iconic and heavily modified holy warrior morphs (furies, reapers, ghosts), and throw in some forced uploading for good measure. Ah religion...always good for some drama :-)

I think i'm gonna keep the TITANS outta this one...but, that said - how about a new and transhuman updated version of a Scientology type cult? Or maybe some rogue Cognite executives start playing around with basilisk hack technology/code and stumble on a way to 'infect' people with religious awe? they start pondering the idea of using this form of basilisk hack (which they don't really understand) and it goes some very strange places. maybe they spawn religious wars over lip balm. maybe they accidentally spur a religious revival movement among the poor and downtrodden. Or maybe someone steals the tech, reverse engineers it, and starts using it to push their faction's agenda (religious fanatic barsoomians anyone?) lots of ideas in there to use.

Herbo - I think i'm gonna stick with the 'experiment with undesirables' theme. you make an excellent point: most of martian society doesn't give a damn about someone stuck in a synthmorph case. Olympia, for example, has a lot of synths walking/clanking around town. plus it gets pretty weird on the fringes of that town, only the city core is really well covered...and even that's getting run down these days. So one of the researchers is working for my big bad guy. He's a former member of the Lost project, kind of disgraced as a result of how it turned out. But out of the blue, his former boss from the project (whom he barely knows) offers him good money to work on a hush hush secret project. he just has to STFU, do what he's told and run the experiments/record the results. All of which he does...but along the way he exposes himself to a memetic attack and as a result he goes a bit crazy. long dormant, almost forgotten ideas about divinity and religion percolate through his brain and he starts to believe that he's been Chosen by God and that he has to do Gods work. his experiments still continue but now he's got a Mission. so he starts tainting his subjects with religious memes, sets up a cult in one of the abandoned souks on the fringes of Olympia and starts building a following. In almost no time at all, he's got himself a cult stronghold, a couple novacrab enforcers and a whole lotta synths attending mass every sunday to hear him preach. But things aren't well in paradise. the code our scientist was playing with wasn't complete, and his tampering only led to more instabilities. the memetic attack (a very watered down version of a basilisk hack) tends to destabilize and mutate over time. By the fourth generation the code is largely junk and essentially harmless...but along the way, it's now spawned no less than three different cult factions and Olympia has 'rogue' synths and artificial involved in what amounts to a holy war. The One True Faith is trying to keep a lid on the whole mess (our researcher is more than a bit insane by this point but he still understands the need for secrecy) but the heathens and unconverted are starting to realize that something ain't right with them folks on the fringes. it's at this point that Firewall gets involved - a spike in religious conviction and Jihad among synths is weird enough, but theres enough TITAN scrap code floating around now that it's most likely picked up by search bots Firewall crows use to scan for outbreaks of exsurgent activities. So they activate a local cell and tell them to investigate the weirdness and clean it up before Project Ozma or the hypercorps get involved.