Stormborn
Explorer
OK, how about this for the virus:
Stage 1: Intended to simply make the population docile, it instead kills large sections of the population by shutting down all higher order brain functions. This happens to say 90% of those infected.
Stage 2: Some have their reasoning centers altered, so they are driven by unrelenting ID a la Reavers - or these could be your zombie types slowly decaying while their brains cause them to wander about and attack randomly. Say abot 9% of the infected.
Stage 3: In a very rare group, less than 1% of the infected, it triggers psionic abilities - and in those so affect 99% go mad. These peopel start manifesting powerful psychic phenomenon - rogue tulpas as described int he Psi minisetting in the d20 Modern hand book.
If you want the PCs to have psionic abilites let them take the Wild Talent feat - but only that.
As far as secondary disasters go -
1. Cheap nuclear reactors in the 3rd world that are just barely safe to begin with crack when infected workers set off a meltdown.
2. Doomsday cults and terrorists all over the world see this as a sign of the Judgement and accelerate the destruction in all the usual ways.
3. Fires from all the plane crashes, car crashes, and unfought house and wild fires.
And if you want to go really scifi:
4. In the west experimental bio-tech reactors - a kind of organic solar collector perhaps - also succumb to the mutated virus and transform into ooze like monsters - and perhaps starting infecting peopel with their own spores and creating sentient hive minds.
5. Nanotech cures gone wrong. Released as the counter to the organic virus, this tech is unstable and untested. Its basic programing is protect and strengthen the host - which it starts to do in unusual ways.
As for mechs - exploratory craft that aren't supposed to have any millitary application are upgraded to work in the hostile world of the Infected. These guard the corporate enclaves, and perhaps are sent to raid cities for supplies.
Stage 1: Intended to simply make the population docile, it instead kills large sections of the population by shutting down all higher order brain functions. This happens to say 90% of those infected.
Stage 2: Some have their reasoning centers altered, so they are driven by unrelenting ID a la Reavers - or these could be your zombie types slowly decaying while their brains cause them to wander about and attack randomly. Say abot 9% of the infected.
Stage 3: In a very rare group, less than 1% of the infected, it triggers psionic abilities - and in those so affect 99% go mad. These peopel start manifesting powerful psychic phenomenon - rogue tulpas as described int he Psi minisetting in the d20 Modern hand book.
If you want the PCs to have psionic abilites let them take the Wild Talent feat - but only that.
As far as secondary disasters go -
1. Cheap nuclear reactors in the 3rd world that are just barely safe to begin with crack when infected workers set off a meltdown.
2. Doomsday cults and terrorists all over the world see this as a sign of the Judgement and accelerate the destruction in all the usual ways.
3. Fires from all the plane crashes, car crashes, and unfought house and wild fires.
And if you want to go really scifi:
4. In the west experimental bio-tech reactors - a kind of organic solar collector perhaps - also succumb to the mutated virus and transform into ooze like monsters - and perhaps starting infecting peopel with their own spores and creating sentient hive minds.
5. Nanotech cures gone wrong. Released as the counter to the organic virus, this tech is unstable and untested. Its basic programing is protect and strengthen the host - which it starts to do in unusual ways.
As for mechs - exploratory craft that aren't supposed to have any millitary application are upgraded to work in the hostile world of the Infected. These guard the corporate enclaves, and perhaps are sent to raid cities for supplies.
