Just had an Evil GM Thought thanks to the bugs and DNA thread, thought it needed it's own posting. What do you guys think about using the M&M Docwagon Clone Facilities as an infestation site by Bug Spirits?

Does anyone have any thoughts on whether a merge with uneducated clones would be viable, and whether the bugs could infect important clone researchers who can run the equipment necessary to keep popping out clones?

any comments welcome

Worse yet, they could start creating clones that merge easily with the insect spirits.

And this is just one of the many reasons none of my characters ever have DocWagon contracts...

Of course, they don't survive long, but at least they die honestly...without the requirement for my evil GM to become imaginative! LOL!

I think the possibilities are endless, then of course, a SR team would have to go into the hive and clear it, just like all hives before it, just hopefully this time it won't take a nuke

Slight hitch there. You're talking one of the most guarded facilities outside of an arcology. Of course 80% of the shadow community would be behind you as would basically the majority of the corporate world, since EVERYONE with a doc-wagon contract has something to lose.

Point is, everyone who does business with which-ever version or doc-wagon will still have a great deal to lose. so while teh run would be tough, there would likely be no shortage of resources during and favors for the characters to call on after should it all go well.

or even better, and with corporate ramifications. Ares CrashCart Services

Docwagon is an international corp. Aside from that I think a particularily stealthy, high grade initiate, insect shaman could do it...

The old "apply for a cleaning job" idea would probably work... Mind-control a select few employees into setting-aside an area of the compound for the hive and start replacing the lab-workers in the rest of the facility with good merges. Soon the whole place is under your control.

Still say infesting a dog pound is more likely to succeed.

Then move on to docwagon! FLY MY MINIONS! FLY!!!!

I can see it all now, Ares bug research gone awry, bugs get into their crashcart cloning facilities, and suddenly, what was supposed to be a "research experiment" now becomes the 2nd nastiest bug infestation. Ares then needs to hire some Shadowrunners to enter the CZ and eliminate the problem before the media gets word.

Better yet, they hire all the runners they can get their grubby mits on, then detonate another nuke, blame it on the runners, contact the insurance company and call it a night.

sounds like fun, especially as the runners effectively fight amongst each other until they find the nuke, and then attempt to stop it before it goes off and permanently retires them. I'll have to decide how nasty I want to make this

And, after the nuke goes off, Ares collects fees from various corps that had grudges agains teh various runner teams, etc. using fottage stored offsite as proof of demise.

sounds awesome to me

yeah, that sounds far more likely, wouldn't want to screw up their own facilities, but here we have our competitors, lets smear them and drive their stocks to the floor. and make Ares look like heros, raising stock in Ares services and increasing customer base over Doc Wagon. Brilliant!

Maybe Ares bug research does get a little out of hand and a shaman finds his or her way into a CrashCart cloning plant, such that Ares has to hire some shadowrunners to deal with it. Perhaps an Ares exec is *inspired* by this turn of events to use this against their rivals. Ares does have a history of being rather good at turning problems of this sort into an advantage, afterall.

makes sense. I think it'll be a plotline I'll have to put in the fridge until my players Ganger characters build up into real Shadowrunners.

Nitpicking: Crashcart is a wholly owned subsidiary of Yamatetsu, not Ares. I'm unaware of an Ares equivalent, though it could easily exist.

And I believe it was infiltrated by bugs in either an old novel or adventure module...

But I do like the idea of the bugs taking over a cloning facility, esp. the one where my PC's have contracts, nothing like a set of evil clones to ruin your rep

If they do, they are not talking. And it is not in any of the sourcebooks, certainly not Corp Download.

I mean if they did, don't you think their Biotech division would be rated higher than a puny 3?

Actually, I doubt Ares has a DocWagon service. They seem more like they have their own medics and that's about it. No doubt those medics are experienced and *ahem* well practiced, but I doubt they run one for everyone else.

Most likely, Ares has a subsidary of some sort that specializes in military contracts for medical services.

A scarier thought would be if a hive took over a military cloning facility. But that would obviously be even much more unlikely. If I was to GM such a plotline, I would have a remote island set as the cloning location where the hive is. Submarines are used to carry new "shipments" from the facility to various ports around the world for deployment. The shadowrunners would have to first discover that certain military personel are showing signs of bug involvement. Eventually sneak onboard an infected sub, manage to make it alive to the island, and finally patch in the coordinates to call in the nukes. However the facility is blast proof, so it is up to them to take out key defensive systems to make way for a "desert war" invasion. The invasion would finally crack open a way into the facilities where the runners finally plant a nuke to finish the job.

Not giving the nunners enough time to excape would be a great way to end the campaign with a blast.

Of course if you want to get away from the traditional "hive nuke", you might be able to hint to the characters about a tanker full of pesticide.

There's a canon reference about Ares CyberMed, but I can't remember where...

Dude... I love this idea. What if a Shadowrun team was hired to take a package into one of the compounds, only to find out afterwards that they were taking in a hermeticly sealed bug spirit or something.

This is evil.
The closest we came to this was the school from "Ivy and Chrome" got infested-we had a call back there by a teacher a while after the run. Infest a few powerful people admin and such and you've got the students, sent by their parents to be out of sight, security to keep them in, and dormatories full of potential hosts.