User:Bill/Symbiosis

Background

You march among these pure men and women. Paragons of the human race, hand picked to do the good work. Your elite team fights on the frontier of the Coalition bringing death to the impure and alien.

One day on patrol with your squad you are overwhelmed by a strange weapon. It is not designed to kill, but rather to incapacitate. Your squad is gathered up by the filthy alien hands of unspeakable monsters. Stripped of your armor and clothing you are examined, then the monstrous beings bring forth a small creature about the size of a football. You want to recoil in horror as they place it on your chest and you want to scream as it sprouts tentacles that burrow into your flesh, but you can neither move to make a sound. Mercifully you lose consciousness.

You awaken in a cell with several other members of your squad. Each has been horribly disfigured, alien parts grafted to their flesh. Without warning there is a tremendous explosion that rocks the cell, throwing you violently to the floor. The door has been torn free and a gaping hole has been blown in the side of the vehicle. Without hesitation your squad members take the opportunity and flee. Only fleeting glimpses behind you reveal the three spider walkers that have assaulted the strange floating ship that your captors fight back from.

A day later your squad finally comes to a stop. Resting next to a small stream you must decide what to do next.

This scenario has a lot of potential as a story of moral growth. A group of deeply indoctrinated racists suddenly finds themselves on the wrong side of their own beliefs. The player characters have had several alien symbionts grafted to them, granting them an array of supernatural abilities. How will they react? Will the players return home? They are no longer strictly human and in most cases not able to pass for human. They know better than most that the Coalition is not friendly towards nonhumans. Rumors regarding dissection and vivisection will come up. They will find themselves unable to remove the symbionts without risking death. Will they attempt to seek help?

Characters

All characters should be humans using the Coalition Military OCCs list. Additionally, each character will gain two symbiotic organisms from the Atlantis source book; one chosen randomly the other selected by the player.

Rules

I do not normally use the Palladium Role Playing System if I can avoid it. While it can be made serviceable, I just don't like it. I would be willing to use it though; if only to point out how bad it is. Alternatively, I would be happy to use any point-based generic game in my collection or use my own Rifts-inspired homebrew.

This particular game would greatly benefit from being run under a point-based game in that the symbionts could be custom generated to do specifically what the players want them to. Since it is also likely to be a combat heavy game, I suggest using Wild Talents. WT has a very fast and exciting combat engine as well as one of the most flexible power creation systems on the market.