One Shot: "A Pound of Cure"

Background: My table wanted to run as a Trauma Team group. For now, I'm playing it off as 'part time contractors' for Night City's Trauma Team ( I don't know how much this makes sense in-lore, but the players love it ).

Below is my personal notes for a one-shot that the team has completed now. This can be self-contained, but there are hooks for longer run scenarios in here for both player and GM to utilize.

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"The Time of The Red" points to a time after the nuclear explosion in Night City. For years after the fact ( and even sometimes now ), the clouds and fog would have a red tinge to them; from fresh blood to old rust, this tinged smog and smoke defines the era.

Following this, it should be of no surprise that there have been a variety of aftermath-related illnesses: Rises in cancer rates, respiratory diseases, birth defects, chronic neurological conditions, you name it.

As such, there's always money to be made in clinics and pharm.

That makes this an interesting offer. Internal job boards at Trauma Team show an 'endorsed external activity' ( or maybe a fixer brings it to them, whatever ): A clinic has been selling stolen pharm, shut it down and recover any company gear, tools, or pharma.

The clinic in question is seemingly unnamed, at least on any official documentations. It used to be a small dentist's office, back when that was a thing. If the party digs around locally, they'll jokingly call it the Dentist from time to time, but more frequently, simply "Oh yeah, Steve's place."

Steven Hood is the owner of the clinic. He has several assistant medtechs and techs alike.

Steve's place does indeed have stolen gear and pharma, even some TT labelled shit still. In the storage area, large quantities of several common place medicinal pharma can be found, clearly marked. Behind some locked doors, however, the real deal is shown: They are using these pharmas and equipment to create a production line of a new drug.

You see, Trauma Team and BIOTECHNICA and all those corps: They know exactly how to cure one of the many respiratory chronic conditions out there. But that's not terribly profitable is it? The clinic produces an actual cure, they do so by stealing shit, running a process, and then selling it to their clients.

If interviewed / hung out around long enough, clients will talk to each other and share stores of people no longer needing to treat 'Gravel Cough' ( a chronic condition that makes people sound gravely-voiced, coughs a lot; this is not a in-lore thing, just a minor condition created by me for the purposes of framing the drama of this arc ). MedTech with medicine DV15 would know that's not supposed to be possible.

Dr. Hood is dodgy if confronted, either about stolen goods or his feat of curing Gravel Cough. He's clearly nervous and trying to simply get the Party to leave to make room for patients. Why is he dodgy? There's a Media in the back right now, recording footage of the process, making a mini-documentary on the process so that they can go public and shame BIOTECHNICA about not curing this, and spread word about the available cure.