Need Plotting Help with early Dogboy experiments

[Rifter_GM]

Greetings Rifters,

I've managed to plot myself into a corner by having my players discover frozen dogboy embryos in a pre-RIFTS research facility that they were exploring. It was just a throwaway moment that I thought would be cool and also reveal the fact that there were early dogboy experiments that pre-dated the coming of the RIFTS.

Everything was fine until my players decided they wanted to know more about it. Now, I have to come up with some sort of payoff.

In short, I am looking for ideas to help me come up with something for them that won't feel like a total rip-off.

My initial plan is to have them find clues that link the embryos to a second hidden installation, this one being on the edge of the Dinosaur Swamp (not far from the TX border to keep it somewhat close) where these experiments were taking place. Once they travel there they might find a group of dogboys that evolved from those pre-RIFTS experiments and have been isolated here ever since.

Feel free to throw out any resource books that might help or just offer some plain old ideas on how this clan of isolated dogboys might have evolved since the pre-RIFTS times.

Thanks for reading.

Into the RIFTS!!!!!!!!!!!!

[guardiandashi]

as I remember the general lore, while the US was doing some experiments on genetic engineering it was really the south american countries that took the tech and ran with it. (more bang for the buck for them)

as far as dogboy pack/clan enclaves I would toss out the idea that they "escaped" from the labs, and had a movie library that included: planet of the apes (collection) Project X, K9, and K9000, The island of Dr Moreau, The Secret of NIMH, etc. so they while having some instinctive desires to have humans as part of their "pack" as leaders also have lots of stories of humans treating "animals" like them as lesser beings/slaves. so as a compromise they are in hiding and have been for a long time, but they still patrol and defend their "areas" chasing off and or killing "monsters"

I would likely limit their internal manufacturing to something mostly 20th centuryish and mostly person scale.
sure they can build houses and the like, but i'm thinking mostly modern firearms, and possibly high SDC low MDC body armor as an approximate limit.
mostly because they don't have access to a lot of the stuff to make MDC materials, and their "fabbers" are limited to say ~1ft by 6ft? IE they CAN fab up MDC swords but otherwise armor is mostly produced in pieces not whole suits.
sure they can make whole suits of armor by producing the individual pieces IF they can gather the materials.
I would reference the smith in the Mandalorian (if you have seen it)
I would also suggest that they COULD make more and better gear IF they could get their hands on the patterns (recipes) much like almost no one has the plans needed to produce chromium armor (AKA Glitterboy Chrome) which I believe is limited in NA to Archie-3OZ and Free Quebec?

[Orin J.]

if i remember, the pre-war project was cancelled due to human rights concerns, so they might have put them aside until they knew what legally to do with them and....well, forgot. it's possible any number of people would have found the facility, raised the tube babies and ended up founding anything from a worker's commune to a paramilitary group. or the machines started running on their own during the cataclysm and there's a micronation of savage dog people living in the ruins along the coastline.

[Rifter_GM]

as I remember the general lore, while the US was doing some experiments on genetic engineering it was really the south american countries that took the tech and ran with it. (more bang for the buck for them)

as far as dogboy pack/clan enclaves I would toss out the idea that they "escaped" from the labs, and had a movie library that included: planet of the apes (collection) Project X, K9, and K9000, The island of Dr Moreau, The Secret of NIMH, etc. so they while having some instinctive desires to have humans as part of their "pack" as leaders also have lots of stories of humans treating "animals" like them as lesser beings/slaves. so as a compromise they are in hiding and have been for a long time, but they still patrol and defend their "areas" chasing off and or killing "monsters"

I would likely limit their internal manufacturing to something mostly 20th centuryish and mostly person scale.
sure they can build houses and the like, but i'm thinking mostly modern firearms, and possibly high SDC low MDC body armor as an approximate limit.
mostly because they don't have access to a lot of the stuff to make MDC materials, and their "fabbers" are limited to say ~1ft by 6ft? IE they CAN fab up MDC swords but otherwise armor is mostly produced in pieces not whole suits.
sure they can make whole suits of armor by producing the individual pieces IF they can gather the materials.
I would reference the smith in the Mandalorian (if you have seen it)
I would also suggest that they COULD make more and better gear IF they could get their hands on the patterns (recipes) much like almost no one has the plans needed to produce chromium armor (AKA Glitterboy Chrome) which I believe is limited in NA to Archie-3OZ and Free Quebec?

Thanks for the great suggestions. There's a lot there to work with. My initial thoughts were something akin to the Underdwellers from Beneath the Planet of the Apes where they became more advanced telepathically.

I haven't really dug into the South America books, so this gives me a good excuse to at least read through some of it.

Thanks.

[Rifter_GM]

if i remember, the pre-war project was cancelled due to human rights concerns, so they might have put them aside until they knew what legally to do with them and....well, forgot. it's possible any number of people would have found the facility, raised the tube babies and ended up founding anything from a worker's commune to a paramilitary group. or the machines started running on their own during the cataclysm and there's a micronation of savage dog people living in the ruins along the coastline.

Good stuff. Thanks for the suggestions!

[drewkitty ~..~]

Greetings Rifters,

I've managed to plot myself into a corner by having my players discover frozen dogboy embryos in a pre-RIFTS research facility that they were exploring. It was just a throwaway moment that I thought would be cool and also reveal the fact that there were early dogboy experiments that pre-dated the coming of the RIFTS.

Everything was fine until my players decided they wanted to know more about it. Now, I have to come up with some sort of payoff.

In short, I am looking for ideas to help me come up with something for them that won't feel like a total rip-off.

My initial plan is to have them find clues that link the embryos to a second hidden installation, this one being on the edge of the Dinosaur Swamp (not far from the TX border to keep it somewhat close) where these experiments were taking place. Once they travel there they might find a group of dogboys that evolved from those pre-RIFTS experiments and have been isolated here ever since.

Feel free to throw out any resource books that might help or just offer some plain old ideas on how this clan of isolated dogboys might have evolved since the pre-RIFTS times.

Thanks for reading.

Into the RIFTS!!!!!!!!!!!!

You might look into the HU2 or ATB2 Core Books for their take on mutant animals. You could build the aspects of the 'found DB precursor embryos' would grow into from these texts.

[Curbludgeon]

I like the idea, Rifter_GM, of a telepathically focused group of experimental mutants. If you decide to take a look at the South America books you'll see that many of the mutant animals engineered there are more overt with their psionics than types found in Lone Star, or the Amphibs of Tritonia.

If I were going to write up an isolated subspecies of subterranean telepaths, one idea I'd consider is playing with their being a nascent hive mind. Their approach to maintaining a pack is less based on notions of asserting internal dominance than in integrating from both within and without.

In comparison to the standard Dog Boy, a Panhandle Cave Hound might trade away their innate sensitivity to magic, psionics, and the supernatural, as well as some olfactory acuity and sheer physicality. In exchange, they're effectively variant Mind Melters with excellent hearing, some access to Mind Bleeder powers, and some abilities being innate, but with a smaller, sharply limited ability list. Here's a quick first stab at it:

Spoiler:

ISP:2d6x10+ME, +10/level. They save as a Master Psionic and probably get bonuses against possession and Horror Factor.

At 1st level the PCH gains the powers Meditation, Mind Block, Empathy, Telepathy, Total Recall, Death Trance, and Nightvision, as well as the Super Psionics Mind Bond, Psychic Body Field, and Group Trance. The Group Trance ability can be entered without ISP cost when among packmates, and has no limit to duration. Nightvision is innate and without ISP cost, and can be canceled at any time without any risk of being dazzled by a light source.

At 2nd and subsequent levels the PCH selects 1 power from each of the following two lists. Physical and Sensitive abilities can be used without ISP cost if manifested during a Group Trance or while Meditating.

Any Healing, Levitation, Resist Fatigue, Resist Hunger, Resist Thirst, Astral Projection, Clairvoyance, Commune With Spirits, or Remote Viewing

Empathic Transmission, Hypnotic Suggestion, Mentally Possess Others, Mind Wipe, Psionic Invisibility, Psionic Omni-Sight, Psychosomatic Disease, Telekinetic Force Field, and the Mind Bleeder abilities Bleed Memory, Bleed Skills, Bleed Truth, or Day Dream

The Panhandle Cave Hound is a subspecies of sapient canine mutant, the vast majority of which are located within the Florida Caverns near what ruins remain of Marianna. If not encountered there, the PCH seeks to establish a secure location from which they can remain in trance for increasing periods of time, all the while exchanging thoughts and memories with those within the would be gestalt. Notions of a division between self and other become necessarily muddled, which is exacerbated by the Hounds' tendency towards epistemological experiments. As an example, a group may transfer every member's memories of an event to one person to see if it might induce some sort of Rashomon Fugue.

Physical needs are met by the group using their abilities to seek out nearby useful beings and coax them near enough that they may have their minds forcibly rewritten into being subsidiary members of the pack. Whether the PCH see this as amoral or in service to the public good is a matter of which the reader considers more horrifying.

I still need to poke through non-Rifts sources for possible powers. Perhaps the PCH could come in two varieties, with one lifting some of the basic abilities of the Illusionists in PFRPG and Nightbane.

[Warshield73]

For me I would have research and even shipping logs at the facility they are in showing the dogboy embryos being moved to a second facility.

It gives a location but that would not match current maps so they have to find a scholar with the appropriate knowledge. Insert adventure of choice here, I would say bandits get interested in why you want pre-Rifts maps as that is usually about treasure.

The location is likely to not be exact so you could have encounters in the dinosaur swamp while searching for it.

When you get in the facility I see 3 good options"
1. The fast grown dogboys are in cryo. If dead the players have found an historical curiosity and information that would be of interest to places like Lazlo. If the frozen pups are alive maybe they are automatically released by something your players do, they are bloodthirsty and defective and wackiness ensues. I would use an slightly less intelligent version of kill hounds for this.

2. The base is already occupied by someone who does NOT like visitors. The Black-market is great for this as is Archie. Not only doo the players have to escape but they will be hunted for what they know.

If you have used or plan to use the Juicer uprising you can also put Vallax aliens in here. Either working on juicer tech or experimenting on a replacement for juicers in their plans.

3. The dogs have created an underground city based around the original lab. I would model it on some of the South America stuff. You can introduce other mutant animals if you want even make a mosre diverse society.

This group could be hiding from the real world I personally like the idea that they are at war with something invading the earth from below.

No matter what things like this are great ways for your PCs to get information that brings them into conflict with the CS, Black-market, Archie or can even lead them to places in South America or Tritonia.

Just a few thoughts, hope it goes well.

[glitterboy2098]

one thing i'd love to see in relation to pre-rifts dogboy research would be earlier generation efforts.. ones that were still mostly doglike (perhaps more neotenous) quadrapeds, but having higher intelligence and perhaps the ability to do limited speech. sort of a prototype with less human genetics, the kind of thing that might have been used as a proof of concept or early effort. also something that could be shown to the public that isn't as obviously human-rights violations like the creation of a whole species of sentient humanoid slave-soldiers, but which would still trigger a lot of debates about social, medical, and genetic ethics.

[ShadowLogan]

I've managed to plot myself into a corner by having my players discover frozen dogboy embryos in a pre-RIFTS research facility that they were exploring. It was just a throwaway moment that I thought would be cool and also reveal the fact that there were early dogboy experiments that pre-dated the coming of the RIFTS.

How do they know they are dogboys embryos? Is there room for it to be misunderstanding (as a twist down the line).

Could they have been embryos slated for a Pre-Rifts Dogboy program that haven't been edited yet? Or put another way, where in the Dogboy timeline are these embryos from and what stage of development. Would the players even realize this?

I thought Lone-Star was the only location of Pre-Rifts USA genetic research concerning Dogboys (I could be wrong). If there are other facilities (in your game world) do these other facilities have to be duplicating the effort or could they put their own spin on it (perhaps less or more "advanced" GMOs) and what where their goals. Plus who was funding the effort, the CIA (or other intelligence agency) might have different goals and requirements than one for the military in terms of what forms the mutations take (a 6ft dogman probably isn't as useful to the CIA as a mentally enhanced dog with psychic powers).

What if the facility they acquired the embryos from is not native to Rifts-Earth but is from a parallel Earth where events unfolded differently? The Facility could have been D-Shifted/Rifted in (Atlantis, Rocky Mountains IIRC), or it could be the result of unknown portal (Psyscape, City of Brass as a few examples, we know the US was experimenting with it as the result of the Time Holes in Florida), or even Time Travel (4-Japanese cities, The Tundra Rangers do travel forward in time).

[Killer Cyborg]

as I remember the general lore, while the US was doing some experiments on genetic engineering it was really the south american countries that took the tech and ran with it. (more bang for the buck for them)

Yeah, that sounds right with what I remember of the SA books.
There's a whole city of super-powered psychic mutant animals in Argentina or somewhere, and the embryos could be used as an adventure hook to send the PCs there, OR that material could be ripped off for some similar stuff in the Dino swamps.

I've used Disney World as a setting for Rifts stuff before, putting it on a nexus point, with Epcot Center being magically indestructible the same way the Gateway Arch in St. Louis has become.
Maybe in this there could be a bunch of super-psionic mutant dogs there, or something else.

[ShadowLogan]

as I remember the general lore, while the US was doing some experiments on genetic engineering it was really the south american countries that took the tech and ran with it. (more bang for the buck for them)

Yeah, that sounds right with what I remember of the SA books.
There's a whole city of super-powered psychic mutant animals in Argentina or somewhere, and the embryos could be used as an adventure hook to send the PCs there, OR that material could be ripped off for some similar stuff in the Dino swamps.

I've used Disney World as a setting for Rifts stuff before, putting it on a nexus point, with Epcot Center being magically indestructible the same way the Gateway Arch in St. Louis has become.
Maybe in this there could be a bunch of super-psionic mutant dogs there, or something else.

Actually South America has two City-States that are dominated by psychic mutant animals:
-Omagua (City of Jaguars) in WB6:SA#1 (pg105-7) of the population of 1.5million cat-people (1.16million are Mutant Cats from Rifts Earth if I did my math correct)
-Achilles Republic (of the Silver Republics, this one is made up of 3 main cities) in WB9:SA2 (pg138-41) of 1.8million (45% are said to be mutant animals, which are more varied than Omagua), these guys are (per WB30 pg125) ahead of the CS in terms of Genetic Engineering.

Aside from the CS entries in various books (and obvious Gene Splicers in SB3) mutant that come to mind are:
-Tritonia in WB7 (pg93-6) that his home to the Amphibs mutants (12% of the population) of 0.9million (another 10% includes mutant animals, dolphins, D-Bees).
-Kittani (WB2 pg35) have "Recently they embarked on a new level of genetic research and manipulation and have successfully cloned dog boys and are on the verge of figuring out the genetic manipulation process to create dog boys from animals, just like the Coalition." This tid bit might be of use in terms of plot as someone interested in the technology who isn't the CS to interact with (and can be used a number of ways)
-WB30 DBoNA also has a few mutants (Loronoids pg124-7 are from SA who have migrated to NA, Darkhounds are mutant Dogboys though in universe no one seems able to confirm it but the table of contents classifies them as a mutant, Psi-X Aliens are rejects from Lonestar).

[RockJock]

I've used HU/AtB mutant rules to build dog shaped, quad, "dogboys" with dog powers that make sense(heightened sense of smell etc.), and human intelligence. I think the first time was a Chaos Earth period Mystic or maybe it was a Druid, anyway they were rifted to the 107PA or so, along with a pair of dogs as "familiars" who were really more partners, and not magic familiars.

[Fenris2020]

Well, there was a geneticist named Moreau...

[glitterboy2098]

Actually South America has two City-States that are dominated by psychic mutant animals:
-Omagua (City of Jaguars) in WB6:SA#1 (pg105-7) of the population of 1.5million cat-people (1.16million are Mutant Cats from Rifts Earth if I did my math correct)
-Achilles Republic (of the Silver Republics, this one is made up of 3 main cities) in WB9:SA2 (pg138-41) of 1.8million (45% are said to be mutant animals, which are more varied than Omagua), these guys are (per WB30 pg125) ahead of the CS in terms of Genetic Engineering.

Aside from the CS entries in various books (and obvious Gene Splicers in SB3) mutant that come to mind are:
-Tritonia in WB7 (pg93-6) that his home to the Amphibs mutants (12% of the population) of 0.9million (another 10% includes mutant animals, dolphins, D-Bees).

interesting bit is that these three are all related the to the same source. the Amphibs were an early experiment which due to human rights violations saw the company shut down and the test subjects relocated to Tritonia, but a SA nation recruited the staff for their own military projects, which created a whole range of humanoid animals with various abilities. all of which escaped when the cataclysm hit, with the felines heading off north and eventually founding Omagua, the rest staying put and building the Achilles Republic on the ruins of the country that created them. (which also means that the country in question was likely Argentina, given the geographic location.)