Terrorist diseases, huh? Cool concept.

'Uh-oh'

Here's a BPN...

Colour: Red
SCL: 10
Contact: Department of Terrorism
Training package: Death Squad
CBS: 250c per operative
Monitoring: Station

Blurb:

Suppress DarkNight terrorist action in Sector 85 Levels 3-12.

Task:

The squad are ordered to go to Sector 85 and shoot whatever bomb-wielding maniacs DarkNight have incited in the area. They get given a whole pad of blank execution vouchers by the slightly harried-looking Dept contact. The mission has been deemed Ops-only, too dangerous for Shivers, so there is only limited support available from the gals in green. Other squads will be in the sector as well.

Actual task:

A whole bunch of otherwise normal people who have contracted a bad case of the huggies as well as unstable- explosive body-fat are running around, mad with the desire to hug people (or failing that, lamp-posts), whereupon they tend to explode with devastating force.

To SLA it looks like a full-scale insurrection of some sort, since over two dozen explosions have been detected from the sector in the last 3 hours. Other details are sketchy - the local Shivers are either dead or barricaded in their stations (until they get thirsty enough to become part of the problem...), and other surveillance is erratic.

Brief investigation should link the incidents back to the consumption of adulterated Karma Cola, a popular soft drink, and thence back to the source of the problem at your discretion.

Background:

A DarkNight-sponsored biochemical Soft Company, Apotheosis, were recently working on Personal Interest. They wanted to make it more addictive so they added to it a chemical 'lock' that binds it strongly to body-fat. To test it on a live population, DarkNight infiltrators broke into the Sector 85 Karma Cola (or whatever the most popular soft-drink is in YourWOP) bottling plant and added the raw chemical to the Karma Cola secret syrup.

The mix was a potent one with two serious side-effects. Firstly, the combination of the fat-binder and whatever else was already in KC created a chemical that when ingested, would cause the drinker's body fat to turn into high-explosive, regrettably unstable. Secondly, a similar synergy between the PI and the other psychoactives already in KC exaggerated the tactophillic (causing desire for physical contact) effects of the PI, creating a powerful urge to go out and hug complete strangers.

The adulterated KC was bottled and distributed into vending machines, shops and clubs through Levels 3-12 of Sector 85. People have been drinking the stuff in the last 12 hours. They get happy, huggy and aroused, and then explode with the force of a couple of sticks of TNT when they are struck, trip over, or at orgasm. Sometimes this causes a chain-reaction. There have been many civilian casualties and some infrastructure damage as well.

This mission might turn into a bit of a meat-grinder, so make sure to mention to the players how hot and thirsty their PCs are getting, and how convenient the soft-drinks vending machines are...

There are also understandable risks from getting too friendly with extremely grateful and attractive locals.

Finally two shipments of the adulterated Karma Cola are sitting on the bottling plant's loading dock, destined for Sectors 118 (Downtown) and 32 (Inner Suburbia). They wait for the sector to be pacified so the KC corp can send down another delivery truck.