Cypher System - Predation - No Safe Place (Compressed) [PDF]

Zitiervorschau

No Safe Place A Predation Scenario

By Aser Tolentino

Compatible with the Predation campaign setting

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NO SAFE PLACE CREDITS Lead Writer/Designer: Aser Tolentino

Additional Writing, Design, & Editing: Megan Tolentino

Map Made in: Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus Art by: Unsplash.com

Copyright: ©2018 by The Redacted Files. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contact: [email protected]

Website: www.theredactedfiles.com

This product was created under license. CYPHER SYSTEM and its logo, and CYPHER SYSTEM CREATOR and its logo, are trademarks of Monte Cook Games, LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. All Monte Cook Games characters and character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are trademarks of Monte Cook Games, LLC. www.montecookgames.com This work contains material that is copyright Monte Cook Games, LLC and/or other authors. Such material is used with permission under the Community Content Agreement for Cypher System Creator. All other original material in this work is Copyright © 2018 by The Redacted Files and published under the Community Content Agreement for Cypher System Creator.

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The Problem Erika Graves, a SATI computer engineer, took her family to a new resort on Eddis Island. The small resort was built for SATI employees to take some time to relax and recover. The tickets are handed out through a lottery system within the company and Erika was lucky enough to win. The family enjoyed the resort and activities that were available to them, until Hailee started getting sick. The family decided to cut the vacation short and head back home, since their week was almost up anyway. Once they got home Hailee got progressively worse, with a fever and small lesions appearing on her body. Erica became more concerned when Yolanda started getting sick as well. The Graves took their daughters to the hospital where they are getting the best possible treatment, but Erika is concerned about what on the island caused the illness. She contacted an old friend who puts her in touch with your group to see if you can learn more about what made her daughters sick.

The Reward Erica is responsible for maintaining a pod of sophisticated quantum computers that were brought from the future before the last commute. These computers are extremely powerful and time on them is an extremely valuable resource that can either be used to further one’s own research or traded for some other commodity. If the group is able to provide her with answers to what caused her daughters’ illness and help in their treatment, Erica is willing to arrange for one of the computing cores to go down for maintenance and allow each member a share of off the books processor cycles for whatever they want.

The Nature of the Illness With a difficulty 3 persuasion roll to help her remember, Erika will tell you she’s not sure, but some of the lesions that appeared on Hailee’s legs looked a little bit like bite marks. It appears she was experiencing an infection, but that the symptoms were somewhat delayed from initial contact with whatever could have bitten her.

Security Precautions Erica will tell the group that half the island was off limits to visitors, presumably because it was still under construction. She found out about the restriction because some SATI security officers brought Haley back from the perimeter with a warning that there could be dangerous animals on the other side. Haley told her that there were furry dinosaurs near the lake, which she attributed to the child’s overactive imagination. The children are both being held in a quarantine ward at a SATI medical facility, so she can’t be sure if they will be given access.

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The Problem The facility’s security precautions are

all of difficulty 4, so talking their way past guards, sneaking past cameras or hacking records and the like will all require level 4 successes. A failure increases the difficulty of a consecutive roll by one step and two consecutive failures triggers an armed response. Three consecutive successes after a failure reduces the difficulty back down to 4. Getting into the ward with the children requires either two stealth checks or two persuasion checks to avoid undue suspicion from medical staff in the area. Upon reaching them, characters must make a difficulty 3 persuasion check to earn Haley and Yolanda’s trust. The children appear to be in good health. Both will describe seeing the furry dinosaurs while they were playing along the lake. They will describe a funny, hump-backed SATI boat that had men on top doing something with a net near where they found the strange dinosaurs, which appeared to be doing something funny. A difficulty 5 persuasion check will prompt that the furry dinosaurs appear to have been sorting rocks.

GM Intrusion: The ID used by the hacker is flagged for having accessed these files and is blacklisted by the system. A difficulty 5 intellect test is required. Failure means that a SATI kill order is logged for the holder of the credentials used.

Accessing the children’s medical records requires two successful hacking rolls, first two enter the hospital data system and another to view sealed patient files. A difficulty 4 intellect roll is required to interpret the medical records. Regardless of the result, it is clear that the medical staff are baffled by the nature and cause of the infection. It does appear to be responding well to standard antiviral and antibiotic regimens however. A success determines that a blood test performed by the medical team has flagged a special result, creating two reports, one with a false diagnosis that will provide enough information to treat the patient and one with a more complete workup that is highly encrypted, classified SATI A and transmitted to a research group codenamed Prometheus for the attention of a Dr. Dennis Grant. It also cross-references a similar blood result, drawn from a crew member on a SATI submersible in the seaway fleet. The sailor has since been treated, released and assigned to a floating platform far away from civilization. A difficulty 3 intellect roll will conclude that the SATI vessel described by the Graves children matches the characteristics of a submersible.

History of Eddis Island Characters can investigate the history of Eddis Island through social interactions, searches of data archives or tapping a personal contact. A difficulty 3 success will yield that the island was used as a research facility dating back to the days before the last commute but was shut down several decades ago when the project it was working on hit a dead end and it proved too difficult to maintain a SATI presence there. Some time ago, a higher up in the SATI leadership recommended it be reactivated as a rest and recovery facility since this would require minimal outlay due to the island’s pristine condition and near total absence of predators. A difficulty 4 success will learn that half the island was claimed by another faction within SATI on the grounds that it provided an excellent staging area for operations to secure the inland seaway should the need arise. A difficulty 5 success will unearth rumors that experiments are still being conducted somewhere on the island and that the senior researcher on the project Dr. Dennis Grant never returned to SATI after the order to shut down the facility was transmitted.

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Who is Dr. Grant? Any investigation into the man behind Eddis Island will involve access to very sensitive SATI records. A contact within SATI can provide an asset to this inquiry. A level 5 success will reveal that Dr. Grant was a well-known, even famous geneticist prior to his volunteering to join the expedition to Grevakc. His contributions to the storage of information in DNA that underly the functioning of modern SATI technologies are now poorly understood and almost certainly under appreciated. After the last commute, he retreated to a self-imposed exile on Eddis Island to unlock the next leap forward in genetic engineering that could enable the survival of humanity beyond the coming of the asteroid. How this would happen remains unclear.

Accessing Eddis Island Characters can gain entry to the island through a few approaches or can try to come up with something on their own. They should keep in mind that the degree of risk should be weighed against the fact that some of them may still need to live within SATI territory after this job is completed. They can rig the next raffle, which is scheduled to occur in a few days. This can be achieved electronically, through stealth, or by raw force or intimidation. The difficulty of each approach is progressively lower but will invariably lead to more immediate discovery and serious consequences. Hacking the raffle is a difficulty 6 task, while replacing the envelope with the results is a difficulty 4 and taking a more direct approach is a difficulty 2. Hacking will almost certainly never be discovered. Replacing the envelope will suffer a 50/50 chance of being discovered in a week and the more direct approach will be reported within a day.

The group can volunteer for duty on the island. While it is considered light work, time on Eddis is made less pleasant by the fact that you will be expected to treat visitors with the utmost courtesy while enduring relatively primitive conditions. A difficulty 3 intellect success will see any candidates safely through the employment screening. On the other hand, employees will be more closely monitored and will be subject to regular obligations while on the island. The team may attempt a covert infiltration. This will require a difficulty 5 navigation roll and a difficulty 5 stealth roll as the seas are actively patrolled by SATI vessels. Infiltrators will not be required to be at any given location, because they aren’t supposed to be there, but any detection will result in immediate and extremely hostile reactions.

Investigating Eddis Island An hour of looking in SATI public archives can find this information. Most of it is contained in superlative language encouraging employees to sign up for the raffle. Eddis island is a roughly diamond-shaped land mass that is half again as long as it is wide, approximately 30 kilometers from the farthest points north to south and 20 kilometers from east to west. The southern half of the island has been almost entirely cleared of prominent vegetation except where groves of large trees serve as boundaries for sections of the resort and privacy barriers for the small bungalows that dot the picturesque hills overlooking the beach. Further inland are a community center that used to house labs and other administrative functions, a lake for boating and fishing, and a small track where families can race a fleet of solar-powered carts. Running from the small dock on the beach, through the visitor areas and past the community center is a paved road that is capable of supporting any vehicle or dinosaur under SATI control. Resort workers live 3

in barracks buildings near the dock and adjoining the community center. No information can be found about the northern half of the island. See the sections on the perimeter, and complex below for those details. A difficulty 4 social roll at any time when asking about the upper half of the island will learn that several trucks and vehicles went up the road a month or so ago and did not come back out.

The Beach The southwestern coast of Eddis island is almost entirely made up of an unbroken strand of soft, flowing sand. Two small rocky points near the western and southern corners of the island make excellent breakwaters that protect beachgoers from excessively energetic waves. They also make it a relatively trivial matter to bring a watercraft of practically any size up to the cargo dock that most people use as a place for picnics or fishing. The other coastlines are all significantly more hazardous, characterized by rocky shores and hidden coral outcroppings that can rip; the bottom out of any boat with GM Intrusion: Arriving characan incautious pilot. Infiltrating the island by boat on any coast other than ters disturb a platypode the beach will require a difficulty 6 speed roll. Failure results in 5 points of (Predation pg 143) that reacts bashing damage and the loss of any gear not worn by a character as their craft swiftly fills with water and sinks and they are tossed ashore by an un- aggressively when they encroach on its personal space by caring sea. landing on top of it. The resort staff can usually be convinced to take one of the island’s two cutters out for a pleasure cruise around the island, though they’ll try to keep a few kilometers clear of the northern coast. Questioning them about this will result in canned warnings about incomplete renovations and potentially dangerous wildlife. Success at a difficulty 4 social roll will reveal that the facility on the other side of the island is part of an entirely different department and that the people who work over there are none too nice with either the resort guests or their staff.

The Resort Each family or group of four single guests is assigned a bungalow overlooking the ocean. There are currently ten bungalows in operation, each capable of sleeping four to eight guests. The facility is staffed by contract workers who are typically rotated out each season. The community center is home to game rooms, lounges, a library, and two dining areas that each serve guests as required. Both dining areas are supplied by the same kitchen but serve different menus to provide the illusion of variety. Resort staff take pride in the level of service offered, because the work is generally low stress and good ratings mean they’ll have a better shot at another easy hitch in the future.

The resort staff stock a small lake with non-invasive fish species for guests to catch for dinner. There are also a selection of rowboats, paddle boats and rafts for the guests’ floating enjoyment. In the back of the boat house, a SATI liveried research submersible sits with its engine compartment open. Staff will claim that it’s been down for maintenance for some time, though no one can remember for how long. There is a level 4 temporal anomaly inside the submersible. It matches the description of the vessel described by the children. The technically-minded staff have scavenged four four-seater utility vehicles complete with solar cells to race through an improvised go cart track. These vehicles are capable of traveling 20 KPH with a range of 100 KPH on a full battery. Perception or social rolls at level 4 will determine that there are multiple batteries for each cart stored in a GM Intrusion: Naturally, takshed behind the community center. Changing a battery takes five minutes, ing this option invites the carts or can be done in a single action with a difficulty 3 intellect roll. Failure running out of power at the results in 3 points of damage that ignores armor from an electrical shock. worst possible moment. 4

Ic

J K H

L

Ia

Ib G E

F

D C

A

BB

A. Dock for Eddis Resort

G. Gatehouse for SATI research area

B. Each of these is a guest bungalow

H. SATI Research Compound

C. Community Center and restaurants

I. SATI security guard posts

D. Go-Cart Track

J. Dr. Grant’s underwater laboratory

E. Eddis Lake

K. Guard House and Drone Base

F. Boathouse and beach where girls attacked L. Guard house for Submersible Hanger 5

Fifteen minutes and a difficulty 4 repair roll will provide a 100% increase in speed with a 75% decrease in range. Characters who decide to take the carts out on the course will discover a level 5 temporal anomaly on the far side of the track, hidden from the community center by a low hill. Also behind that hill however is a lost pygmysaur (Predation pg 144) that is none too happy to be disturbed in its wanderings.

The Perimeter About halfway across the island, the road is cut by a gate that is the only safe passage through a triple-tier electrified fence topped by razor wire. This fence is patrolled at all times by two pairs of guards (Predation pg 149) on six-wheeled ATVs. The gate house is manned by three guards, one of whom always stays at the control console with a ready line to the research facility up the road. There is a similar guard post at each end of the fence line, and another three that complete an equilateral triangle that forms the perimeter of the complex. The outer gap between fences is mined. The inner gap is home to packs of argoraptors (Predation pg 134), penned between each guard post. The guard house at the center of the northeastern line overlooks a water gate that leads to an underground cavern. The cavern is home to two research submersibles that are Grant’s link to the outside world. Only by taking one of the submersibles down and heading for a rock wall would a crew discover the truth described later in the adventure. The guardhouse in the middle of the northwestern coast serves as a control tower for a small fleet of scout drones. Each drone is level 3 and carries a weapon equivalent to a laser pistol in a ball turret. Taking control of the drone control system requires a difficulty 5 computer roll. The guard houses at the corners of the triangle are the bases of watch towers where pairs of guards use electrooptics to watch for signs of unauthorized movement near the complex. If the characters ever encounter more than three of these emplacements, they may make an intellect roll on the basis of tactics, logistics, culture, planning, or any similar skill. A difficulty 3 success will extrapolate that the manning for a facility this size implies an investment in manpower and resources that goes beyond a simple research effort.

The Complex Breaching the defenses leads to a relatively straightforward walk to the research campus at the center of the secure area. Most of the buildings appear to be barracks for the guard force, garages for their vehicles and warehouses for supplies and building materials. One of these GM Intrusion: if the characters fail to structures is also the base armory, where examples of all standarddetermine the purpose of the control issue SATI weaponry and armor is easily available to anyone who room, a companion will accidentally can pick a level 3 lock. When entered, the buildings that should be trip a lever that destabilizes the coolresearch labs are actually just administrative offices, all save one ing system for the turbines hundreds nondescript control room behind a door secured by a level 4 lock of feet below. This will, among other and manned by two level 4 elite guards. A difficulty 4 perception roll will reveal that the room is actually the control center for a very things, trigger an earthquake. If charsophisticated geothermal tap, that is powering an immense comput- acters succeeded on the prior roll, then a difficulty 3 perception roll can stop er complex. Once the nature of the facility is understood, it’s a the twitchy companion from triggersmall matter to track the power flows to the facility’s actual locaing the catastrophe. tion, under the lake.

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The Truth Beneath With a difficulty 5 intellect roll, the characters can interpret the flow diagrams well enough to realize something startling. Under the northeastern coast, there is an underground submersible dock. Behind a holographic wall in that cavern is an entrance to the cooling tunnels that pump water from the sea over the turbines. They also provide a route under the perimeter and into a tributary that runs into the lake. The SATI ship the Graves girls saw wasn’t the one down for maintenance in the boat house, it was one of these vessels withdrawing from an attempt to clandestinely infiltrate the research facility. It just so happens that they had to get rid of something before they could go home, and their search of the shore missed the children playing when they scanned the shore for possible witnesses before they surfaced. With the realization of just what is at stake here, characters will know that they will need a major bargaining chip to avoid being summarily fed to the rexes the next time SATI catches up to them. If characters have any connection to a group other than SATI, the things in that research facility could literally be game changing.

Reaching the Facility Characters can either sneak or fight their way into the submersible hangar or attempt to swim down into the lake to reach the facility. Gaining entry into the hangar requires sneaking past two guards and their companions. Getting into the submersible will require a difficulty 5 might roll to break the locks, though creativity should be rewarded as those locks might come in handy later. Once clear of the dock, it will take two level 5 piloting and two level 5 navigation rolls to successfully reach the lake through the underground tunnels. Once into the lake, it will take a level 5 perception roll to locate the concealed docking hatch and one last piloting roll to reach the lock. If characters elect to simply attempt to swim down to the facility from the lake’s surface, they will need to make progressively more difficult swim rolls starting at level 3 and increasing one step per round until hey succeed at level 6 to reach the lock. Failure on one of these rolls results in 2 points of speed damage, or may follow the rules for drowning if preferred. Once the lock is entered, characters face a new threat, the facility appears to be overrun by furry dinosaurs. These strange hybrids of mammalian and reptilian features move with a swarm-like fluidity that evokes nothing quite like a hive of insects. Success on a difficulty 3 perception roll alerts characters to the fact that the creatures are all watching them. Anyone with electronic communications will hear the voice of Dr. Grant cut across any channel they happen to be using. “I must thank you for coming. When the children’s infection was discovered prematurely, I was quite afraid I’d been found out. The cowards in charge of SATI simply didn’t understand what they were dealing with. All I needed to do was have them open the door, and now here you are. Thank you for returning me to a place in the sun.” With that, the swarm of creatures descends. This colonial organism made up of a multitude of creatures is simply beyond the senses’ ability to internalize all at once. As creatures are killed, one might see newborn offspring emerge to continue the attack. The upper level of the facility is crawling with what must be hundreds if not thousands of small, furry dinosaurs, none larger than a meter in size. They very somewhat in shape, size and posture, but all are covered in thick fur and have prominent teeth. The top floor of the facility was originally a hangar for submersibles and a wet storage facility. The swarm effectively prevents any attempt to penetrate further into the facility through sheer weight of wriggling bodies. 7

Born of a monstrous conglomeration of research into distributed computing, nanofabrication, genetic encoding and the cross-sections of multiple SATI initiatives, this thing of flesh and steel is what remains of Dr. Dennis Grant. Having uploaded his consciousness to the swarm, with his memories stored in almost infinitely redundant backups across this custom-engineered species’ genome and his thoughts processed through the molecular computers flooding their blood streams, he has achieved a functional if terrifyingly imperfect form of immortality. Every individual component of this creature is an almost complete backup of Grant. Only by doing massive damage to the swarm in a very short time and disrupting its network link can the zeitgeist be disrupted. Dennis Grant v2.0 Level 7 (defends as level 4 due to size) Health 50 Armor 4 Combat: Grant can perform one of the following actions each turn; in addition to inflicting 6 points of damage, each attack has the listed effects: •

Poison: Grant can send an extension of the swarm surging forward at up to four targets within long range. On a failed speed defense roll, targets must succeed at a level 5 might defense roll or suffer an additional 5 points of speed damage as the creatures’ bites deliver an enzyme that targets their immune system and causes debilitating joint pain.

•

Overwhelm: Grant can send a mass of hybrids to attempt to pull down up to four creatures within immediate range. On a failed speed defense roll, targeted characters must make a difficulty 4 might defense roll or be knocked prone. Prone characters have an inability to subsequent might defense rolls against attacks from the swarm.

•

Infect: Grant can target up to two creatures in immediate range with a concentrated series of bites that deliver a full backup payload into the target’s blood stream. On a failed speed defense roll, characters must make a level 4 might defense roll. Targets who fail move one step down the wound track as the invasive genetic code rewrites their genome to serve as an ideal host for Grant’s consciousness.

Regeneration: At the end of each round where he does not suffer more than 10 points of damage, Grant regains 5 health. Auto-cannibalize: Grant can command his hybrids to consume the weak for the betterment of the whole. At the cost of 10 health, he can increase his effective level for all tests by two until the end of the next turn. Once the thing that was Grant is killed, characters can gain entry to a lower level the contains the labs and quarters of the research staff. There is no sign of any human remains. There are personal effects and documents that can be connected to two dozen researchers, and records that suggest that members of the team fell victim to “accidents,” over the years. In his final years, Grant worked in mad isolation, until he uploaded his consciousness and commanded his progeny to consume his still living body in one last act of defiant self-destruction. He recorded the event for anyone who wants to see. For the less morbid, the facility offers a full suite of research equipment, computers, and a completely disarmed security system. The only catch is that it happens to be located under an island that is home to a resort and a SATI military base. Characters may elect to salvage anything that isn’t part of the underlying structure, bolts can be loosened, and nails pried up after all, or lock down the security system and auction off access to the highest bidder, or release word of what they found and become famous or infamous depending on who’s watching the feed. The one thing that’s certain is that there’s a safe full of SATI coin in Grant’s former office and a world of possibilities waiting above.

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Eddis Island

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Player Characters This scenario works for a party belonging to any organization in Grevakc. If you are playing as a oneshot, offer the players the chance of whether they are part of SATI or the Butterflies during play. You will need the Cypher System Rulebook and Predation to access information about the special abilities for each character.

The included pre-gens are: • • • • • •

A Charming Osteon who Infiltrates A Creative Tec who Self-Evolves A Daring Karn who Fights with Panache A Savage Karn who Fights Dirty A Swift Pteryx who Predates A Volcanic Pteryx who Needs No Weapon

Each pre-gen is accompanied by a companion.

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