Frozen Thoughts

Welcome to The Graveyard. In addition to a new article each week, the Plot of the Week section is dedicated to providing a new plot line or idea that you can utilize in your campaign. These plots will be a brief overview, allowing you to customize them to your individual campaign and the players involved.

If you have any suggestions for Plot of the Week, email them to me at digger-@home.com. If your plot is chosen, you will be given full credit for its submission. And now, without further adieu, The Plot of the Week:

Setting the Stage

The players will be wandering about the streets of their current sprawl when they hear a loud crashing noise from a nearby alley. Investigating the noise, the players discover a dead man lying in the alley carrying a smashed cyberdeck with several bullet holes in the casing. The man has died from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, and apparently was using the last of his strength to escape his as of yet unknown assailants. When the players search the body, they will find a briefcase with a lot of nuyen in, all in script (you can use any megacorp for the script other than Fuchi). The amount of nuyen should be the same as the party makes for an average run, thus if your average run is about 10,000 nuyen per person and there are 5 members, the briefcase will contain 50,000 nuyen in corp script. The players will also find what appears to be a data chip of some sort clutched in the man’s dead hand. The man has no identification.

Give the players some time to find all of this, as well as theorize on what it all means. Make sure that at least one of them has the chip in their possession before springing the ambush. After they have all of this information and have been given time to examine the body, a group of security guards come running down the alley from the opposite direction. They do not give the players any opportunity to surrender, and they say nothing. They simply open fire. The group of guards should present a challenge to the characters, but not a very tough one. The players should be able to handle them. This encounter is merely to set the group in motion.

The guards will also not be carrying any identification, but they will have Fuchi emblems on their armor or clothes. Once the players have dealt with the guards and left the scene, the adventure begins.

The Plot

The dead man’s name was Miles Yuka, a researcher for Fuchi Industrial. Miles had discovered a brand new data storage algorithm that allowed an unbelievable amount of data to be stored on a standard data chip. Unfortunately for Miles, he was a bit greedy and tried to sell to a rival corp. Fuchi internal security found out about it, and killed him as they were making the exchange. Miles managed to leave the scene with his new datachip prototype and the money; his contact from the rival corp was killed. Miles died in the alley just a few moments later, trying to escape.

The chip in his hand stores far more than just Miles’s new algorithm—it stores Miles himself. The increased storage capacity allowed Miles to transfer his consciousness to the chip before he died. All of his memories and personality are now embedded within the chip the players now possess. If they attempt to access the chip with a standard data reader or pocket secretary, it will look like a huge amount of meaningless data. Lead the players to believe these may be some sort of new skillsoft or something similar. The idea is for one of them to try to slot this chip.

Once the chip has been slotted, Miles will attempt to possess his new host. The character will not be able to remove the chip, and will resist any attempts by others to remove the chip as well. Miles is a smart cookie; he will allow the character to act as he normally would to learn as much as he can about his new host before trying to take control. Even if Miles cannot possess his host completely, the character will be at least partially under his influence, and will not want to remove the chip or have it removed.

Fuchi is desperately seeking to regain this new algorithm, as is the rival corporation that paid Miles all that nuyen for it. Both are now hunting for it, and Fuchi has a head start. One of the guards that the players dealt with in that alleyway was equipped with a camera in his eye package, and the runners’ images have been transmitted to Fuchi security. Fuchi is now aggressively hunting the characters to regain the lost technology.

Fuchi will be putting the pressure on in a major way, putting the word out on the streets that the party is wanted and placing a price on their heads. Contacts will not want to deal with the characters overmuch—they are very hot property right now. You can set up a variety of situations or ambushes, allow the players to escape from Fuchi pursuit a few times. Give them the feeling that they are hunted.

The character possessed by Miles will want to stay out of Fuchi’s hands, and will stay with the party for protection. Unfortunately, what Fuchi, the rival corporation, and even Miles don’t know is that his new algorithm is also very unstable. The algorithm will destroy itself in a matter of days (or weeks, depending on how long you wish to play this scenario), taking Miles’s consciousness with it.

Successful Resolutions

There are several successful resolutions to this adventure. The party will have to convince Fuchi that their new algorithm is useless or that the rival corporation already has possession of it. Either way, Fuchi will not be pleased. The players should discover at some point that Miles has taken control of one of their party members. If the chip is removed from the party member, the algorithm is destroyed and Miles dies.

Alternatives

Any number of alternative scenarios can be used for this, such as using a persona chip for a cyberdeck rather than a datachip. Use your imagination and have fun.

Frozen Thoughts submitted by: Digger digger-@home.com