Ichneumon, a 3C necanthrope of the Ministry of War, has created a bioweapon code-named UB0-5A7HLA. This beastie is still experimental, an anti-population weapon that hunts out all living things in a region and and kills them, before dying of starvation itself. Unfortunately the current version of the creature is far too capable and uncontrollable, and has managed to escape from the Min War/Karma laboratory. Ichneumon would rather like it back, but is resigned to its death and messy destruction if necessary. Ichneumon issued a Yellow BPN for the creature’s destruction or capture, and this was reissued by irritating Dept Sanitation middle-manager Rufus Caspire as a pitiful Blue to the PCs.

In the time before the game begins, the PCs were captured by UB0-5A7HLA which implanted its eggs into their torsos. Maggots hatched from the eggs in minutes and began to eat the PCs’ bodies out from the inside, over the course of the story. During this time the maggots also mind-control their hosts to procure more hosts for infection, keeping the unfortunate PCs in their own little dream-world so they don’t realise what their bodies are actually doing...

The PCs are effectively dead already, and this story is not about them freeing themselves from their fates but realising that they are in fact already doomed.

You know your own players best. You know how to play to them, tease them with the flashbacks so they stay disoriented but tantalised without getting annoyed or upset. Subtlety counts: start slowly with the special effects and build up to a nauseating climax.

Although an absolute PC killer, this story works best where the players have developed PCs with strong ties to sympathetic NPCs. These NPCs are the people the parasites will be hunting and collecting through the PCs, and the horror of betrayal is most poignant when the players realise the PCs are actually betraying those they feel for. This is easiest to set up when the PCs have been played over a course of games and have a rich network of NPCs that they’ve amassed through play. Of course, killing them off ‘no saving throw’ is also a bit harsh…

If I were presenting this as a Con or public game, I would pregenerate the characters myself as if they have had a career together and give each notes on their relationship with the other PCs. Each character would also contain a list of NPCs they interact with regularly—I would be relying on my players to roleplay things like affection or trust. I might consider using flashbacks to happy times to develop the relationships a bit, but this is time-consuming and tricky. All in all this would be a bit of work to write and a bit of work for the players to read and get familiar with, but it’s worth it.

Scene 1 begins with the PCs fleeing in maggot-induced terror down a sewer.

In Scene 2 they emerge back into Mort City, which is strangely empty of people. Like, completely. They can wander about and angst about it for a bit, then decide either to chase up the NPCs important to them, or go after Rufus Caspire the BPN contact officer, or straight to the top—Mr Slayer or something equally stupid.

Scene 3 allows the PCs to think they’re rescuing their loved ones from whatever it is that has depopulated the city, but this is mere fantasy. What they’re actually doing (or the maggots are drving them to do) is beating the NPCs unconscious and securing them to be dragged back down to the sewers where the mother creature lurks.

The PCs might get some bitter revenge against Rufus in Scene 4. They might also get some vaguely tangential background info. They might even meet Ichneumon, who will happily kill them all.

In Scene 5 the PCs are stupid enough to assault SLA Industries and they get killed for it.

Scene 6 provides some momentum to get the PCs to drag their NPCs back down into the sewers, and builds atmosphere.

Scene 7 shows the PCs how they have been used by the maggots, reuniting them with the mother creature, their abused NPCs, and a bunch of pupating maggots.

Scene 8 is a little gift from Mr Slayer.

Flashback 1 shows the PCs how they got to be in this mess.

Other Flashbacks provide some suggestions for building PC–NPC sentiments.

Incidents gives a list of little things to toss into the brew to bewilder and frighten the players.

There is a bonus page of GM notes on Ichneumon’s original BPN file, mother and the maggots, and Ichneumon.

Do something different. Rather than starting with the Squad getting together and grabbing the BPN from the Crib or their financier, begin the game with the group fleeing in terror from something unseen in the sewers.

Something like this (keep it fast, don’t let them think—treat the characters as having already failed COOL rolls):

Get some reactions going, be vague about the threat, and perhaps even get a marching order. Be especially horrible to the PC coming up last. If the PCs stop, turn and shoot, that’s OK too. There’s nothing there for them to hit (but describe it as ‘Your bullets don’t seem to have any effect…"). Describe the glare of automatic fire, the stink of cordite (or whatever propellant it is), and the way their ears ring deafeningly afterwards.

If the players wonder how they got here, go to Flashback 1.

If they just try to make it out of the sewer, make them miserable with sewer stuff like bottomless pools and flash floods of filth until they reach Downtown and Scene 2—about 15 minutes’ worth at most, to maintain some momentum.

If they insist on going back to finish off whatever it was they were running from, go with the latter option again. There’s nothing for them to find down here.

Explanation: The PCs’ memories of the few minutes before this scene have been mercifully deleted by the now-hatched maggots in their guts. See Flashback 2 for more details. Already the maggots have taken control of the host bodies and are sending their minds into a group-hallucination.

When the squad get back to street level, everybody else has gone. They are alone in their own little dreamworld, courtesy of the maggots in their guts. They cannot see, hear, speak to or perceive anyone around them who is not also carrying a gutful of maggots. It’s the Marie Celeste, but with the whole of Mort City.

Play the isolation/abandonment line. No matter where they go in this scene, no matter how/where they try to find people, they are all alone in the world except for each other. Describe the empty streets and tenements, the filthy flats with coffee still warm in the cups, single bites taken out of sandwiches-in-a-can, ciggies still smoking on ashtrays. Contrast the loud silence in their heads with the urban chaos of just hours ago. Let them hear conversations, only to discover they are programs blaring out of TVs like the sightless eyes of blind idiots.

Let this scene drag out. It gives you a matrix to begin the Incidents.

Eventually the PCs will go in search of answers. they can return home or go looking for loved ones (Scene 3).

They can go back to Rufus Caspire, the BPN contact officer (Flashback 1, Scene 4).

Or they can go ‘morons-r-us’ and typically try to break into the SLA Industries Building (Scene 5).

Explanation: The maggots begin by actually putting the PCs’ bodies somewhere safe (a basement, warehouse, or something like that) while they rifle through their minds to build knowledge of local geography and prey. This may give the scene an oddly dreamlike quality. They will be hurt by stuff (psychosomatic shock), but the maggots will try to keep their host alive even despite its own belief that it just took a fatal injury. You can make this look like GM fudging on the game-mechanical level if you like.

Towards the end of the scene, when the PCs have goals and places to go, the maggots will use this info to guide the physical bodies towards the places they want to go. Locked in the dreamworld the PCs will travel without seeing anyone, but in reality the maggots are managing all the dodging crowds, hiring taxis, buying gauss train tickets stuff. Their bodies still look relatively OK at this stage too and don’t draw any attention.

By now the maggots have consumed about 5-10% of their hosts’ bodies. Organs not essential for minute-to-minute survival have gone first (e.g. digestive system, pancreas, spleen, gonads), and some muscle wasting has set in. Give the PCs minuses of –1 to –3 on appropriate rolls (PHYS, melee, dodge etc) to reflect this. If the players notice, they’ll start to freak about poisoning or radiation sickness.

PCs go home, to their local pub, or somewhere where they have roots. They may split up, each to their own sanctum, or they may stick together ‘for security’. A couple of Incidents should keep them jumpy enough to consider this.

What the maggots want is more host-bodies for their mother to implant their siblings in. They will use the PCs’ skills and abilities to subdue their loved ones methodically and quickly, cooperating if necessary, all the time feeding their hallucinating hosts happy censored versions of the actual events. Once the loved ones are secured or incapacitated, the maggot-driven PCs will then take them back down into the sewers where the queen-nasty awaits.

This is how it might work:

Wait for reaction—typically guns come out and the door is either opened stealthily or just burst down.

Hope they don’t just unload about now, or PC’s SO is in serious trouble…

Explanation: It’s about now that the maggot-world version and the PC’s reality diverge. It would be really cool to maintain an intimate conversation with the PC on the surface, but while you’re doing this, mentally play through the maggot-PC’s assault/subdual of the NPC. This will run differently of course if the NPC is another Op her/himself, an Ebon or a Shaktar, or just a Department of Transport clerk. Tailor to suit.

Highlight particularly stressful parts of the combat with odd stresses in the NPC’s speech or gestures/spasms. Done properly, this will freak the player into thinking there is something wrong with the NPC (to the point of assuming they’re the ones under alien mind-control…).

Tailor this scene for each of the PCs who want to participate and for the varying natures of the NPCs. Spouses, relatives, children. Old buddies, mentors, creditors. The publican. The shrewish mother. Whatever is available.

The maggots now need to find an excuse to get the PCs to move again. Go to Scene 6.

This is a counterpoint to Flashback 1—if you haven’t already inflicted that on the PCs, run that first. I’ll wait…

Unlike the rest of the city and against all odds Rufus Caspire is in his office and is the same sarcastic chain-smoking prick he was in Flashback 1. He’s considerably more edgy, however, as he’s empathic enough to see true horror in the eyes of the walking corpses who traipse back into his office. He’ll try very hard to do the following things:

1. Not get hurt. He won’t make any fancy moves, not even to the CAF pistol in his desk drawer.
2. Escape. If he can baffle the zombie PCs with bullshit ("I just need to pop down to the file compactus. Make yourselves at home.") or cautiously edge around to the door and out, he’ll flee in terror. Alarms will be raised, and PCs go to either Scene 3 or Scene 5 (this ends in Scene 8).
3. Conceal his partial knowledge of the thing in the sewers. Unfortunately for him the file (PSW10030BJ387-1) was open on his desk when the PCs entered. He’ll have to find some way to distract attention from it. Of course, from inside the dreamscape the file probably isn’t going to make a lot of sense to the PCs…

Odds on Caspire is going to end up either dead or another offering to the mother creature.

If the PCs are very smart they’ll read the contents of the file, get Caspire’s original Yellow BPN and get in touch with Ichneumon. Ichneumon will gladly meet with them, kill them stone dead where they stand and get on with Scene 8.

This is the ‘One move and the idiot gets it’ ending. Typically, if the players don’t like where the game is going they will start to do things that test both the solidity of the plot and your courage as a GM. Pity them—they obviously don’t realise they’re playing SLA, neh?

With the absence of everybody from Mort City, the PCs decide to go right to the top and travel to the SLA Industries Building in Mort Central with the intention of giving lip to Mr Slayer. There’s no reason to make this easy for them, but no reason to just let them do it either.

Firstly, the maggots have an instinctive vague idea to fear Mr Slayer. Although they will not interfere with their hosts’ intentions to go to SLA Industries (there might be more yummy bodies there, after all), their fear will leak through into the PCs’ dream-world.

Describe the approach to Mort Central and SLA Industries as you would a daytrip to Kadath or R’Lyeh. Or in other words, slow down the pace and take the time to mention how the gaunt glass spires of Central claw at the sullen ashen sky like the fingernails of corpses, and how the narrow streets that pass between them seem to be perpetually in danger of being crushed shut if one of these bulks were to move on its haunches. Describe the cold and the silence, the hostile hard surfaces and the glaring lights, and get the players to make Detect rolls every so often.

When the PCs penetrate further, the maggots will interpret Shiver patrols and more heavily-armed peacekeeping types in Central into the dreamscapes as parodic humanoid shapes of menacing mien. Suddenly the city is repopulated, and by inhuman killers. Go wild on describing these shapes, and don’t forget to use words like lurching, slobbering, twitching, stinking and brutish. If the PCs decide to gun their way through the shapes, don’t forget to mention how many there are of them in the immediate area, and how loud noises are likely to attract more of them. If the PCs persist, gun them down like the dogs they are and go to Scene 8.

If the PCs evade the shambling horrors in Mort Central and get into the SLA Industries building, they’ll get gunned down in the lobby, no negotiations, no saving throw. There is just too much security here for mere Slops to get through. The maggots lose. Go to Scene 8.

If by some amazing quirk of fate or the players out-think you (that ebb teleport thingie, for instance—gotta hate the EBWs…), the PCs arrive at Mr Slayer’s suite at the top of the pyramid, Mr Slayer greets them personally (his psychic presence overwrites whatever the maggots had in mind) and has them killed deader than dead. Go to Scene 8.

This scene should be easy to rewrite as necessary for Karma HQ, Dark Lament, the Preceptor’s Temple, or whatever other lame-brained destination your players cook up.

Whatever is going on, it’s obviously not safe to stay home any more. So long as the PCs tarry in their apartments, arguing about where to go or whatever, start building the tension again.

Start off with a barely perceptible noise, a bass rumble that is slowly getting louder (this is to freak the fans of Cthulhu, Revelations, or King’s Langoliers). A breeze starts to blow from the same direction, scattering rubbish in the street outside and making trees writhe in the city lights. The sky gets appreciably lower and darker, the way it does before a winter storm. Do the Detect roll thing. Ask players where they are standing. Ask them where they’re looking.

Use the NPCs to help the players decide where to go next. Agree with their suggestions. Even have NPCs suggest stuff—the starport, the Ebb temple, Orienta; a hospital to have the NPCs examined for alien mind-control. This is again a bit meta-gamey—your players will take this as a ‘GM hint’ and either wander off in search of the next scene, or do exactly the opposite. Either way, a win for the maggots.

Explanation: Wherever the PCs think they’re going with their ‘rescued’ NPCs, their bodies are actually dragging the incapacitated NPCs straight back down to the sewers for implantation. Describe the journey as reasonably as possible. Keep the tension up—describe the desolation, add to the impending doom feeling, try to get the players feeling like there is something really big and bad about to happen. Use up all the Incidents you haven’t used yet.

What I would do is start the journey in slow, measured description in a slightly dreamy voice. Get player responses to the environment and make especial note of any tactical gibberish they throw at you. Get them to think about where they’re looking, what they can see, and where they’re putting their feet. It keeps them on their toes…

If they go for SLA Central now, it’s a complete anticlimax—no security, no shambling horrors. There is a Mr Slayer, however—the Scene 7 version, that is…

By this time the maggots have consumed up to 10–20% of their hosts’ body mass and it’s starting to affect the hosts badly. The PCs are going to be feeling weak, falling down, and failing more physical rolls than they should (give them mods of –3 to –8 on their rolls). Despite this, they will feel no pain as the maggots don’t let them.

Go to Scene 7.

The maggots have grown fat on their hosts’ flesh and are close to pupation. They have returned to the sanctity of mother’s lair with fresh prey for her to implant more eggs. However, there is a final short period of danger for them and for mother. In order to burst forth from the host shells—I mean, bodies—the maggots must disengage from the hosts’ minds, which means that even as the hosts are dying from massive haemorrhages they might be able to hurt the maggots or shoot mother. Not good.

It’s lucky then that mother’s powers of sensory control are much more powerful than her children. It’s unlucky that she must attempt to seize control of each PC’s mind at the same time as the maggots in his/her/its stomach release control, allowing the PCs a chance to see some more reality before the mother’s dreamworld catches them and sends them off to the long sleep. System? I’d use the following sorts of descriptions, implying that each PC had resisted a little, and take it further based on the players’ responses.

In mother’s dreamworld the PCs and their NPCs are rescued personally by Mr Slayer, who apologises for ‘leaving them behind’ and offers them whatever they desire in compensation. The very falseness of this should ring warning bells… ‘Mr Slayer’ then offers to teleport the PCs one by one to the ‘waiting mothership’, and reaches out a hand to each PC who accepts. The PC vanishes in a soft shower of pale violet light. ‘Mr Slayer’ will explain that Mort has been attacked by an extra-dimensional entity (make up whatever details are likely to sound plausible to your players) and the city evacuated ahead of its imminent destruction/consumption/translation. The PCs were accidentally left behind as they were in the sewers at the time of the ‘general recall’.

What’s actually happening is described below. Give your players disjointed images of these horrible things as you run the ‘Mr Slayer’ scene until they grok and start ‘disbelieving illusions’ or whatever. Then give them the rest of the description.

"The maggots are bursting forth from the emaciated, rotting corpses of their hosts. The maggots are huge and sleek, like persian cats full of stinking pus. One by one they slide into the thin mud shin-deep in the chamber, where they curl up and harden into chrysalises.

Any PC who chose to be teleported was eaten at that point (better hope there’s been one, or just assume it’s flotsam NPC from some other group. Natch.). Mother is toying with the rest. It’s really up to you what happens in this scene. If players give you good play you might allow them to rescue NPCs from mother. Or just let them wallow in the feelings of betrayal as their lovers, children, parents, whatever, are turned into more maggot-food—thanks to them.

By the way, what the maggots have done to their hosts has made Stormer regeneration and doses of Quick Start or UV completely useless by now. All these things require far more energy in the flesh than the maggots have left. Rather than an outright denial, however, have these things work but fall far short—the regenerated flesh is paper-thin; the UV makes muscles tear themselves off the bones underneath.

Stomping maggots is dead easy, but very hard on what’s left of the PC’s bodies. They kill a couple of maggots and then die, falling into wreckage.

Guns are good for either shooting the mother-creature or committing suicide/NPC-cide. They may even have enough bullets to finish her off before they die, and before all the NPCs get implanted. Recoil’s a bitch, however.

Explosives? I always did like the duct scene from Aliens with Gorman and Vasquez ("You always were an asshole, Gorman."). Everything goes boom.

Does last-minute heroism detract from the horror? Should the PCs be able to do in mother, and what of all the maggots? Or should all the NPCs get implanted before the PCs’ helpless dying eyes, their last images of their loved ones being these loved ones stiffening into feral poses with agonised grimaces (as the maggots hatch and take them over) and stalking off into the tunnels to find more meat for mother?

It’s up to you and your players.

This is a good place to say "The End". Still, if it’s only taken your players 45 minutes to get to this point you might like to think about how to stretch things out for the rest of the evening…

The PCs have just become LAD-powered SLA stoolies. A bit rough on the EBWs, but their powers will still appear to work within the maggots’ dreamworld so that’s OK, right?

The maggots have been extracted from the PCs’ corpses and interrogated by a Necanthrope (Ichneumon) before being returned intact. Ichneumon has been keen to gain data from this ‘field test’ of his creation, although this does not interfere with his desire to see the creature recaptured or terminated. While the PCs are rebuilt Ichneumon will interrogate the maggots and then ebb-brainwashed them into desiring very strongly to return home (they don’t care about hosts any more). The maggots will reassume control of the PCs’ bodies and put their minds back into the dreamscape to take them back to mother.

Encourage the PCs to get moving. Have them wake up in a Karma prison-hospital and run them through a slightly surreal prison breakout (stage-managed by both the maggots and Ichneumon…). Have some more shambling horrors turn up. Chase them into the sewers. Run through a fast-forwarded version of Scene 6, and then go to Scene 7. This time, however, the PCs will be followed up by Ichneumon and a really heavy-hitting team of MinWar reserve War Criminals, who will deal with mother (either capture her or just execute her). They will then plant inferno-charges in the cavern to sterilise it, killing all the maggots, chrysalises and the remains of the PCs.

Alternatively, you can use this scene as a final wrap-up or ‘reward’ after Scene 7. Assume the PC’s corpses (all the ones who didn’t chose to ‘teleport’) were rescued by LAD and resurrected, sans maggots this time. If you’re really cruel, tell the players their first mission as SLA LAD zombies is to terminate their surviving connected NPCs, as ‘loose ends’.

This is what the mission looked like to the PCs to begin with.

Rufus Caspire, 8B, is your very best arrogant jumped-up junior bureaucrat who takes out his frustrations on his employees. He’s sarcastic. He chain smokes, and stubs the butts out in coffee cups or the carpet (or on PCs’ armour, if they let him). He suggests he has ‘powerful friends’ if the PCs give him lip or talk back to him. He certainly won’t tell them all he knows about the BPN.

He issues the BPN to the PCs after teasing them with it for a bit, lies about the source of the corpses ("It’s probably just a crappy little cognate of corpse-fuckers…") and gets them out of his office so he can go back to the important business of conspiring to assassinate his supervisor.

Explanation: Rufus isn’t lying about the ‘powerful’ bit, but he’s mistaken that they’re his friends. He has accepted the following Yellow BPN from Ichneumon (who is pretty powerful) and subcontracted it to the PCs with a few alterations—he feels he was coerced into becoming responsible for the BPN by his supervisor and regards it as more properly somebody else’s problem. Somebody expendable.

Despite the temptation of the big reward money, Rufus is happy to burn this off (as a gesture of contempt, more than anything), pay the PCs pittance to blow crap out of the creature and so earn him 5000c (minus the cost of hiring them…). If the creature does get returned dead or alive, it’s just a bonus.

If you have the time and don’t mind slowing down the pacing a little, do some flashbacks to help illustrate the relationships between the PCs and their important NPCs, and even between the PCs. It helps to establish a set rhythm for the flashbacks, like introducing each with "Do you remember when…". Keep them short, five minutes at the absolute maximum. If your players want to help be NPCs in the flashbacks let them, but don’t lose control of events in the flashbacks. They’re past, everybody knows how they ended, and they’re significant somehow.

Here are some suggestions:

1. (lover/partner) Do you remember when… you both went to that posh restaurant and you ordered the Wraithen Pfishtruch, without realising it would not only be raw, but still squeaking…?
2. (lover/partner) Do you remember when… you met her parents, realising only then that she was the daughter of ‘Automatic’ Stetson?
3. (lover/partner/friend) Do you remember when…you both turned up with your squads to do the same BPN?
4. (child) Do you remember when…he handed you the picture he’d drawn of you in your armour, with ‘I lUv You from JosH, age 6’ on it?

These are in a rough (but flexible) order of use.

Symptom 1. Dizziness. A PC is suddenly subject to waves of vertigo which last a few minutes and may lead to nausea and vomiting.

Vision 1. The maggots’ dreamworld parts for a split second and my, doesn’t everybody look gaunt…

Symptom 2. Itch. A PC is suddenly afflicted by an unbearable itch in their torso or scalp, so intense (temporary Psychosis 7) it will drive them to removing armour or helmet to scratch it. The itch goes away again in a few minutes.

Interaction 1. A PC is bumped into by a person they can’t actually see or interact with, too fast for the maggots to compensate for. Describe this as an invisible attack if you like, and watch the bullets fly.

Symptom 3. Hunger. A PC is struck with incredible hunger. This can only occur in the first few scenes, as after that their bodies are full of maggots and they probably don’t have digestive organs left anyway. Thirst is another story—feel free to confiscate the players’ bottles of Coke™ at any time and describe how thirsty they all are.

Symptom 4. Vomiting. A PC is struck with sudden nausea and starts to hurl chunks. Do this a number of times to various PCs, and have the later episodes as dry, stomach-tearing heaves, and then finally clotted blood/maggot shit (i.e partially digested shredded organs).

Interaction 2. The group gets mistaken for a bunch of easy marks and attacked by a small gang with melee weapons and CAFs. Again, invisible foes attack but by the second combat round the maggots have worked out what’s going on. They interpret the gangers into the dreamscape, as shambling horrors or ghouls or something—these seem to the PCs to just fade into existence as if they have lurched out from behind an invisible wall in the air.

Symptom 5. Bone itch. Remember that unbearable itch? Now imagine its source being a bone or internal organ—a deep-sited unendurable irritation (temporary Psychosis 5, perhaps) that might drive the PC to cutting himself open to get at the agony…

Vision 2. For a split second a PC sees another PC’s skin pulsate and ripple as if there is something moving through their flesh just under the skin.

Symptom 6. Coughing up blood. A PC’s maggots have cut into a lung. This is temporarily fixable with QuickStart or ebb healing, but still disconcerting.

Interaction 3. While a PC is interacting with the maggot-dreamscape version of their NPC, they get a sudden image of how things really are. E.g… "She’s conscious again. Her tear-stained eyes meet yours and wordlessly beg you, beg you to untie her. The bruises on her body are accusations. The gaff tape on her mouth an abomination. you want to kill the bastard who did this to her. Your fist comes up and knocks her out again." And then back to the dreamscape version. It’s much nicer.

Vision 3. For a split second a PC sees their own flesh writhing and pulsating as if it is owned by something else…

Symptom 6. Spasms. Damage to a PC’s nervous system causes painful tetanic spasms which might (at your discretion) cause further damage from muscles tearing.

Interaction 4. An NPC manages somehow to get conscious and free of their bonds. Depending on their nature they might try to fight free, to kill the PC, to question them as to what’s really going on, to play dead. Interpret this into the dreamscape in the worst possible way for the NPC—to the PCs they look possessed by hysteria or demons, hallucinating, or just suddenly bitchy. They won’t want to go to the ‘place of safety’ the PCs think they’re heading for.

Vision 4. For a split second, the PC sees the other PCs as gaunt zombies, parodies of their former selves, rendered skeletal and unsteady on emaciated limbs, but their guts are bulging masses of pulsating flesh…

Interaction 5. This is for sadistic GMs only (I guess this means all of you…). The PC group is attacked by a pack of emaciated-looking carriens with bloated, spasming stomachs. These carriens have also been infested with maggots and are in the hungry/irritable stage of being consumed. They are very keen to eat the PCs and their incapacitated NPCs, but like the PCs, are surprisingly weak and easily damaged.

Symptom 7. Collapse. Systemic damage is now so widespread that the PC is falling to bits. Whatever they are doing, they fall down. Again QuickStart or UV will get them up again, but not forever.

Vision 5. This will only occur if a PC finds some way to escape Scene 7. The maggots are grown to bursting and need to pupate immediately. The PC weakens and collapses in agony as the maggots chew their way out, falling away from the dying body, curling up and hardening into chrysalises. All is revealed for the dream it has been—describe just how wrecked the PC’s body is as they lie dying, drawing their last few ragged breaths through ruptured lungs to feed a brain that is also half-eaten away. The PC’s last vision is of the chrysalises slowly moulding into the forms of the exoskeletal horrors they will birth, in hours or days to come.

The original BPN that Rufus signed for is in the file on his desk:

Explanation: The creature, UB0-5A7HLA, is an experimental anti-population bioweapon being worked on as a pet project by Ichneumon, a 3C necanthrope of the Ministry of War. Ichneumon’s idea was to produce a creature that hunts out all living things and kills them, before dying of starvation itself. The current version of the creature is far too capable, and managed to escape from the MinWar/Karma laboratory. Ichneumon would rather like it back, but is resigned to its death and messy destruction if necessary. If the PCs get killed early on then Ichneumon gets a chance to salvage some data from the story in Scene 8, otherwise he’s probably as screwed as the PCs.

Mother really needs no description, for to describe her denies the detail of the horror the players will have already constructed in their minds’ eyes. She’s as big as a van, stronger than a stormer (especially ones that have been wasted by her children), and mentally very powerful—perhaps as powerful as Ichneumon. She has little armour and moves slowly, so she is quite vulnerable to high-velocity lead poisoning or explosions, but she can take a lot of damage.

Her children, the maggots, are ludicrously easy to kill and have no effective attacks—outside a body. Inside one, they can psycho-biochemically dominate it, turn it into a robot food vehicle, and access its memories to find potential prey. The maggots keep their hosts acquiescent by completely controlling their sensory input, in effect sealing them into dreams. These happy landscapes tend to fracture if the host gets damaged or is forced to do something really abhorrent to it, but it takes a rare kind of host to then stay free of the maggots’ malign mental coercion. Not even EBWs are immune to the maggots’ powers, although they might have more tools, and a greater familiarity with their inner landscapes to deal with the problem—if they realise there is one…

Once the maggots have left their hosts they will pupate across a few days and then metamorphose into smaller versions of mother. These will then spread out into the sewers to perpetuate the infestation.

Ichneumon is a personally powerful and very influential necanthrope of the Ministry of War. He is at least powerful enough to personally kill the entire PC squad (Scene 4…), and has command over MinWar reserve War Criminals and all the other good stuff besides. Lucky he’s not the enemy in this one, neh?