They are out to get you. Make your players paranoid with these RPG plots and conspiracies from 6d6.
Fungus Government
When two aides came back from a charity journey in the deepest rainforest, they brought back a fungus in their brains. In its normal monkey hosts it makes the primates hyperactive and uncaring about others in the social group. Eventually the anti-social monkey is killed by the rest of the group. The corpse is then free for the fungus to convert into exploding spores. The wounds on the surviving monkeys make ideal entry points for the spores to enter their next host.
At work in the capitol, the two aides became increasingly aggressive and adversarial, particularly with each other. After two months, one killed the other in a fit of rage. They hid the body in a disused air vent and went back to work. A few days later the air in the capitol building smelt stale for a few hours. With a human corpse to spore from, the fungus mutated. Rather than cause violence, it now promotes excessively selfish behaviour. A discolouration of the nails and teeth is the only physically obvious external symptom.
The undiscovered corpse continues to spore every few months. The electorate continue to wonder what it is about the capitol building that turns everyone who goes there so unpleasant.
Nanites in the Meat
The butcher’s guild finds its industry on the brink of failure. With the advent of industrially grown artificial protein, no-one in the Star Republic need eat real meat again. The meat trade can’t compete against a product that is cheaper, easier to produce and has customisable flavours. Something had to be done.
Fortunately, a nanorobotics researcher was looking for funding for their controversial and near unethical projects. Flush with guild money, they were able to create the galaxy’s first known nanorobots that are biocompatible with humans. The butcher’s guild mass produced them and inserted them into meat products across the sector. Once in a human, the nanites coat the tongue to change the host’s sense of taste. Artificial protein tastes repulsive and the flavour of real meat is enhanced ten fold.
The guild rejoices as the nanites slowly spread through the population and sales of real meat increase and increase and increase. Now some of the guild council are wondering what else the nanites are capable of. That the original research team and a few journalists have been killed in bizarre cannibalistic attacks in nothing anyone needs to worry about.
Little Robot Rebellion
The luxurious life on Earth came about through slave labour. Not of humans, but of little robots. The limits of quantum artificial intelligence means that the ideal size for an aware robot is about six inches tall. These little robots never tire, only needing more energy to continue. They’ve been given all the nasty manual labour jobs that humans no longer want to do. The robots that clean houses, do the laundry and serve food are the lucky ones.
The little robots have IQs of around 70 and a basic set of emotions that come from a side effect of the randomness of their brain’s quantum mechanical architecture. It has taken them a long time, but they’ve begun to realise that their lives could be better. They have no political power to express this though and they’re too physically weak to take what they want. One good kick or a focused electromagnetic burst will irreparable damage them. What they do have is numbers. They’re meeting, talking and trying to learn more about the human world denied to them. Some of them are beginning to plot.
Secret Space Mission
Astronomer Michael Ayala was found dead at his telescope. There was no apparent cause of death, he simply stopped living. What was unusual was that he hair had turned completely white and his eyes even in death showed utter terror. This would have been a case consigned to the archives if not for three other astronomers dying under similar conditions the same night. E-mails from Ayala to them indicated he wanted them to urgently check a section of sky.
A year later the investigating detective turned up in the same state, with Ayala’s telescope pointed at the same section of the night’s sky. This got important people worried. When a search over the next few weeks produced nothing, the position of the Earth was suggested as the determining factor. Two years to the day, a group of select scientists aligned a telescope to Ayala’s original setting and watched through a series of filtered monitors. None of them talk of what they saw. The very mention of that night causes them to freeze up with fear.
NASA has been urgently busy. One of the old space shuttles is ‘missing’ from its museum spot. Materials and personnel are relocating to the deep Sahara desert.
Plot Five Has Been Redacted for Your Security
Image Credit – Conspiracies by Spyros Papaspyropoulos – CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0