[KCMI]

Just got this run thought in my mind and needed to put it on paper and get some other people's thoughts and inputs.

Background:

Some Corporation has an island research facility somewhere... (Jamacia, one of the small ones around Seattle... Florida Keys...etc)... and the place has gone dark.  They were researching (AI and AI applications, HMHVV immunizations) something bad that could go horribly wrong and well it did.  Facility lockdown happened and then something happened to the power that knocked the facility off the grid.  The company has been debating how to go about fixing the situation and decided on bringing in a team of runners. 

The Sell:
Johnson hires the team to go in and being back the back box from the server room, nothing more and nothing else.  They will provide transport to and from the location.  They tell the team that the site lost power after it was hit by another runner team and no one has responded since the incident.  They want to make sure the data is safe and a debriefing of the situation once the team gets air-born to return to where they came from.

Oh... and there is a bonus of $$$$$ if you find this woman (dossier photo and name). 


The actual:
The facility is an underground facility (add floors to increase difficulty to match runner capabilities).  The first 2 floors are ok, and the people on those floors are clean.  The facility is on lock-down and for some reason is on emergency power.  The people here are scared and are relieved to see the runners.   There are three security guards there as well that don't put up a fight or pull their guns.  The two elevator shafts are down and the stairwells are locked as well.  Once the power to the facility is restored (breaker in the maintenance shed top side).  The rest of the facility comes alive.  There are also two guards that roam the small island wondering what the hell is going on.

Below the 1st two levels are the rest of the facility researchers.  Some are good.. some are dead and some are... bad.  They attack whatever that moves spreading the infection with bites.  Would be interesting to add a few actual animals in there that actually caused the infection.  The security room is on the 3rd floor and the woman they are here for is on a few floors below that depending on how hard you want it to be.

Once the power comes on to the facility.. .well... it could be bad... it could be not so bad or it could be hell.

If things are two easy you can toss in 1 wage mage that still can use his magic...

The girl is the daughter to one of the chairmen of the board.  He is adding the incentive to get her out alive.

Someone down there knows exactly what happened and has a thought on an antidote... he just needs time and to get to the synthesizer.

The back box is an archive of all the data in the facility.  Data traffic is one way unless you physically connect to the device is why they want it.

Thoughts?  What company would be a good one for this scenario?

[Mirikon]

I'd say one of the AA corps would be best. Z-IC, Proteus, UniOmni, etc.

[Longshot23]

I'd say one of the AA corps would be best. Z-IC, Proteus, UniOmni, etc.

Or maybe . . . one of them OWNS the facility (red herring), but the goings-on have been under a completely different umbrella (see what I did there?)

Hell, maybe tie it into the Hunt the Black Lodge meta-subplot floating around, and have the guilty party be one of the mid-tier lodges.

[Mirikon]

If it was Lodge-related, then we'd be dealing with a magic cause. Closest magic cause to 'zombie outbreak' would be mass Shedim outbreak. For that, there was a mission in 4E tailored just to such things.

[Longshot23]

Not necessarily . . . what about an uncontrolled FAB-III breakout? Possibly tailored so there's something like a trapdoor magical tradition (='frequency') that can better cope with the bacterial presence . . .

[Mirikon]

That could cause magic types to burn out, and kill dual-natured creatures, but wouldn't cause a zombie apocalypse type scenario. FAB III is actually harmless to anyone and anything that isn't dual-natured.

No, best sources for zombie outbreaks would be viral research, Shedim, or Lockdown style CFD. And even the viral research would most likely do something out of 28 Days Later rather than actual zombies.

[Lysanderz]

Good old HMHVV.

Still ruining people's days.

[MijRai]

A new substrain of HMHVV III would be good for a runner zombie apocalypse.  Make it Super-Ghouls who lose all humanity going nuts in the city. 

[Reaver]

Simple, in setting enemies for a 'zombie' style game:

Insect spirits
Shedim
CFD
Shadow spirits


People assume insect spirits are stupid. They are not, they are highly intelligent! Able to stay hidden and blend in with society. Well, the trueforms anyways. And a colony of Ant spirits get discovered under some city, come bursting out and attacking. (The CZ all over again)

Shedim need uninhabited bodies to stay on this plane, and like it or not, there are plenty of corpses all over the place in forgotton graveyards all around the world. A colony of shedim suddenly springing up is not unheard of.

Shadow Spirits feed off of negative emotions, and have powers to instill and amp-up these negative emotions in others.... a few shadow spirits of Rage, infecting a handful of people with homicidal rage can be.... interesting.....

[KCMI]

Thanks guys

[Tinkerbell]

I like the idea. Here are my ideas to that:

Maybe the chairman (the father) hires the runners to get his daughter out before the companys special forces (some kind of cleaning unit / HTR team) get there. Because they would go in there with brute force and kill everyone in the building so this accident remains the companys little secret. (I guess that is what a con would do instead of hiring some runners). Maybe the chairman is the only one who knows at the moment, so the runners will have a little advance in time, before the company reacts to this incident.
After the run the chairman might owe the runners a favor. Or someone in the company finds out that he hired runners - which could be a good start for a follow up story.

Because of the imminent HTR team the runners might expericence a moral dilemma: saving all of the survivors or just the daughter.
Also the HTR team could arrive while the runners are still there...

Another moral dilemma: Maybe the daughter is allready infected and there is no cure. Saving her involves the risk of spreading the disease beyond the island.

[Horsemen]

I've run something similar a few times and one thing that seriously helps is a detailed account of the building and maps.  Especially if you are allowing more of a sandbox game.  When I ran the Arcology Shutdown as a sandbox this was proven out time and again as players went off in directions I did not expect usually charging into the worst possible and most dangerous situations.

I've had them return to the upper levels of the ACHE a few times and an Aztechnology lab that was run as a con special that was literally a RE plotline.