| APAGear II Archives | Volume 3, Number 10 | November, 2001 |
(Designer's Note: With the Halloween approaching and most of the readership actually knowing what the fuss is all about, it is quite prudent to come up with a horror story. The following Badlands situated adventure seed is an example of a quick, one-off adventure set on horror theme yet being light hearted enough to offer action and adventure.)
Oasis Towers are particular feature of life in the Badlands. They are large, individual buildings that are completely separate from the surroundings offering practically everything to their inhabitants. At times these towers are surrounded by a group of smaller, more ordinary sized, buildings that grow around the Tower when its number of inhabitants grows beyond capacity. However, hostility of terrain and lack of developed infrastructure still makes these extended arcologies independent entities.
Oasis Towers are very resilient to threats and problems away from them due their independent structure. However, things get entirely different when someone decides to target vital infrastructure within arcology. A chemical or biological agent will quickly spread through the ventilation system despite precautions if attack is well planned. Since decontamination of entire facility is very difficult (and very much unpractical) endeavor, its survivors would most probably quickly abandon such a place. Fear of biological agent spreading would force neighbors to establish an isolation zone around attacked Oasis Tower. This kind of zone would exist for years, possibly decades.
However, totally isolated area that has no witnesses to see what is happening, offer almost unlimited possibilities to ruthless looting. For example, one could explode a hole in a bank vault in the middle of a day and no one would notice. Ruthless looters could simply take off all valuables and items worth grabbing and take their time to check that the items they'd get are most valuable. Items would then be sold out to pawnshops or simply in dark. Furthermore, most of these items are not marked in police records as stolen. Thus risk of resale is fairly low. Treasure Hunting is thus a worthy endeavor to any Rover gang looking for easy cash.
Authorities do not certainly condone such action but there is another side of coin too. It is not so much a matter of black market business and thievery in general but also fear that some spores of disease might actually survive in long isolation time. Thieves are seldom experts in decontamination and thus it can be feared that disease laced items could spread to new areas. Thus authorities try to patrol forbidden zones (although sheer size makes it impossible to do so effectively). Chances of disease spreading depend very much of actual agent involved. Some types of diseases can disappear very quickly but some may lay dormant for decades to come. Similarly there might be isolated pockets of large concentrations amidst generally low concentrations. Same thing happens with various chemical compounds that could remain in Oasis Tower. Thus throughout decontamination is essential to avoid spreading disease whenever one goes to forbidden zone.
As far as treasure hunters themselves are concerned, they know risks involved but lure of easy money is difficult, almost impossible, to resist. Thus new groups of looters will eventually get back to Oasis Towers in search for action and adventure. Sometimes they get rich. Sometimes they die on place. At times they bring more than they bargained for. It is all in a day's work...
A giant Oasis tower is breached and insides of this tomb like facility with no power to turn on lies in eternal darkness. Actual cause of demise of tower, a biological strike that caused madness amongst its inhabitants, has left ruins in most macabre scene. There are mummified bodies everywhere. Many show signs of struggle. Some have holed up in their rooms. Women, children, anything. This is a horrible place no one with even a shred of decency will enter. Whole place is kept off limits by assigning it as a biohazard. However...
No one has explored the facility for ages and people will avoid it like a plague. However, this offers a group of particularly ruthless explorers opportunity they have decided to grasp. Towers remain in state they were when they were closed. All the money, valuables and technology is still there. They can all get rich, very rich. A treasure is just waiting to be taken. In uttermost secret a band of special thieves slip into dark monolith of Oasis Tower in the cover of darkness...
| APAGear II Archives | Volume 3, Number 10 | November, 2001 |
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