So, after a comment thread in one of the updates a while back I have been thinking about trying to write a content submission for Myrellion but there are a couple of decisions I'm not sure on. Basically I'd like opinions on existing ideas, but I am also open to suggestions for new ones. The basic idea is recruiting Anzhela as a ship's doctor. She's hot, she's a doctor, she's good people, she likes you, and so she makes sense as a valued crewmember. She's also at the peak of her career, her medical knowledge is (relatively speaking) primitive, she isn't the type to abandon people in need, and so she's pretty hard to logically get from where she is to pulling up stakes and skipping off on silly adventures with a troublemaking alien. I think I can get from point A to point B though.
First we get the carrot, which is Steele scoring brownie points by helping her with an issue. The thing is I'm not sure WHICH issue because they all have possible fallout. There are 3 that I like which I have come up with, and they all start with her having "just gotten back from inspecting the health and status of a POW camp." It's awful and she wants to do something, but the government can't.
The one I like best is also the weirdest, and it could have the strangest fallout. Widespread shortages of medical supplies and the relatively primitive state of Myrellion medical tech has people dying. She has an idea, she managed to borrow a spacer's codex and access the Extranet while he was being treated for Venom overdose and came across something about "grey goo." She wants to try and get a sample so that she can feed it on organic material (easy enough to get) and use it to heal people. One multi-step quest later to get a vat-full of goo rendered relatively safe and she has a miracle medical cure that can treat injuries and problems without straining tightly rationed resources. One rather-predictable accident later and she is merged with a grey goo. She looks mostly the same except her chitin has silver trimming, her eyes are shiny silver instead of shiny black, and she appears to be wearing grey "gloves" that she can extrude and literally heal with a touch. Since her mind is merged with the medical database you put into the grey goo she has updated and more modern (by Steele's standards) medical and anatomy knowledge.
This might be going way too far, it makes assumptions or outright changes existing grey goo lore (only implicit lore though, I think) and radically alters the character. It does, however, neatly explain how an atomic-era military doctor is suddenly not welcome in her home AND can keep up with nanotech-era medicine without 8 years of re-learning medicine.
Second-best (to me, but I'm polling for opinions here) are developing a cheap venom-immunity or venom-addiction treatment (we'll call it "greenlight" for the moment) which makes it harder for individual reds to manipulate golds. Insert quest where you get venom samples, inflict venom on several subjects to get bioscans of how it affects different lifeforms, do some tit-for-tat work to get a medical expert to fabricate the greenlight, and a distributor. Poll questions: Is Greenlight an IMMUNITY gene-treatment or an "addiction fix" chemical cocktail? Should greenlight be available to Steele even though it alters the current addiction paradigm? What is the best way to set up distribution? Do you get a milk-slave from Iced Teats Frozen Treats constantly producing it after a gene-treatment? Con Juro or someone else into paying with UGC funding? Some other option? What should it be called since "greenlight" is a stupid name?
The third option that springs to mind is just getting regular supplies out of people. There are a LOT of different options, from blackmailing the Red government to lobbying UGC to conning some fool named Shep Darnock into setting up a regular charity run as part of his religious missionary-ing. It's simple, kind of boring (to me), and the hardest part is coming up with an explanation for why it is so easy Steele can make it happen without a boatload of credits but so hard that it hasn't already happened.
There are doubtless other ideas, please post them.
Now, carrot's in motion, let's talk stick. Giving Anzhela a magic solution to her problem may cause her panties to catch fire but you're ALREADY in her pants, and it doesn't give a woman with a career, drive, and a niche reason to suddenly abandon the life she loves and the people who need her. Something has to come along both to break your magical fix (so that cold-war Myrellion still has pathos and challenges) and hurt her bad enough she wants to leave. Ulimately you end up with someone playing villain and you have to decide how Anzhela gets hurt (actual physical wounds? loses her job? Just watches all her efforts and dreams crushed before her eyes and loses hope?)
I am resistant to making the villain a red because it feels like they've been the bad guys enough already, I was under the impression that they're supposed to be more than just "formian space nazis". I think the SIMPLEST way is having a gold queen (Marsail seems appropriately bitchy) be the bad guy, using UGC politics to shut down whatever miracle cure you gave Anzhela. Sure it means gold myr suffer, but it means that the Scarlet Federation has to divert more resources to POW camps or look like monsters to the UGC by continuing to mistreat/murder POWs. Either way the Gilden Republic scores points.
Anyways, I read Magic Ted's post so I know I shouldn't expect much, but the idea is in my head and keeps poking the back of my imagination.
First we get the carrot, which is Steele scoring brownie points by helping her with an issue. The thing is I'm not sure WHICH issue because they all have possible fallout. There are 3 that I like which I have come up with, and they all start with her having "just gotten back from inspecting the health and status of a POW camp." It's awful and she wants to do something, but the government can't.
The one I like best is also the weirdest, and it could have the strangest fallout. Widespread shortages of medical supplies and the relatively primitive state of Myrellion medical tech has people dying. She has an idea, she managed to borrow a spacer's codex and access the Extranet while he was being treated for Venom overdose and came across something about "grey goo." She wants to try and get a sample so that she can feed it on organic material (easy enough to get) and use it to heal people. One multi-step quest later to get a vat-full of goo rendered relatively safe and she has a miracle medical cure that can treat injuries and problems without straining tightly rationed resources. One rather-predictable accident later and she is merged with a grey goo. She looks mostly the same except her chitin has silver trimming, her eyes are shiny silver instead of shiny black, and she appears to be wearing grey "gloves" that she can extrude and literally heal with a touch. Since her mind is merged with the medical database you put into the grey goo she has updated and more modern (by Steele's standards) medical and anatomy knowledge.
This might be going way too far, it makes assumptions or outright changes existing grey goo lore (only implicit lore though, I think) and radically alters the character. It does, however, neatly explain how an atomic-era military doctor is suddenly not welcome in her home AND can keep up with nanotech-era medicine without 8 years of re-learning medicine.
Second-best (to me, but I'm polling for opinions here) are developing a cheap venom-immunity or venom-addiction treatment (we'll call it "greenlight" for the moment) which makes it harder for individual reds to manipulate golds. Insert quest where you get venom samples, inflict venom on several subjects to get bioscans of how it affects different lifeforms, do some tit-for-tat work to get a medical expert to fabricate the greenlight, and a distributor. Poll questions: Is Greenlight an IMMUNITY gene-treatment or an "addiction fix" chemical cocktail? Should greenlight be available to Steele even though it alters the current addiction paradigm? What is the best way to set up distribution? Do you get a milk-slave from Iced Teats Frozen Treats constantly producing it after a gene-treatment? Con Juro or someone else into paying with UGC funding? Some other option? What should it be called since "greenlight" is a stupid name?
The third option that springs to mind is just getting regular supplies out of people. There are a LOT of different options, from blackmailing the Red government to lobbying UGC to conning some fool named Shep Darnock into setting up a regular charity run as part of his religious missionary-ing. It's simple, kind of boring (to me), and the hardest part is coming up with an explanation for why it is so easy Steele can make it happen without a boatload of credits but so hard that it hasn't already happened.
There are doubtless other ideas, please post them.
Now, carrot's in motion, let's talk stick. Giving Anzhela a magic solution to her problem may cause her panties to catch fire but you're ALREADY in her pants, and it doesn't give a woman with a career, drive, and a niche reason to suddenly abandon the life she loves and the people who need her. Something has to come along both to break your magical fix (so that cold-war Myrellion still has pathos and challenges) and hurt her bad enough she wants to leave. Ulimately you end up with someone playing villain and you have to decide how Anzhela gets hurt (actual physical wounds? loses her job? Just watches all her efforts and dreams crushed before her eyes and loses hope?)
I am resistant to making the villain a red because it feels like they've been the bad guys enough already, I was under the impression that they're supposed to be more than just "formian space nazis". I think the SIMPLEST way is having a gold queen (Marsail seems appropriately bitchy) be the bad guy, using UGC politics to shut down whatever miracle cure you gave Anzhela. Sure it means gold myr suffer, but it means that the Scarlet Federation has to divert more resources to POW camps or look like monsters to the UGC by continuing to mistreat/murder POWs. Either way the Gilden Republic scores points.
Anyways, I read Magic Ted's post so I know I shouldn't expect much, but the idea is in my head and keeps poking the back of my imagination.
