So, what should they find, and what sort of more detailed life story should she have? My ideas include:

-> The only reason she does such fucked up things is she's partially deaf and could not hear the instructions she was being given while she was training as a surgeon, so she blindly carries on despite the cries of OH GOD STOP WHAT THE FUCK?

As to what she's actually doing? I'm thinking it's better the PCs see the results more than the acts - one of the more chilling parts of Bioshock was the log that was "OK, so we're just finishing up. Doctor? What are you doing? You're not supposed to be doing that! OH GOD!" I'm thinking rooms with either mutilated corpses or mutants in - none of which are hostile. The PCs may flame the first one they see and then read the notes on the door to find it's a child (I'm not trying for a LOL PALADIN FALL, just things that will freak them out)

I've read Franken Fran, and a lot of the more unique "surgeries" in that would make good set pieces, as would experiments along the lines of Amigara Fault (so testing the extent to which the body can be modified while the patient is conscious).

Obviously, common tropes like MY PARENTS ARE DEAAAD should be avoided.

In return, delicious Fred.

Rather than leaving just evidence that hints at her madness and crimes, have the players stumble across some documents referencing her earlier medical achievements, the lives she saved, the people she helped, etc. Make sure they have clues as to who she is/was, rather than where she is and why she needs a good torching.

What level?
If it's epic or approaching epic, 10 maybe 15+, then include a Husk of Infinite Worlds from the Magic of Eberron sourcebook. She has mastered the use of it and has thrown countless creatures possessing a certain incurable trait into the Husk, perhaps victims of a magical disease. They come out, mutated and changed, some of them dying and unable to live in the environment in their new form.
What is she trying to do? She's trying to synthesize a cure. Where clerics can do nothing, she is getting closer and closer to curing this massive epidemic that is sweeping over both countries - now you've killed her and you're going to torch the only hope of a cure that there ever was, her lab filled with horrible experiments.

>>2764900

Now that's a good idea. When they finally meet her, she's going to be more exasperated at how nothing goes right despite the fact it should work rather than "lol I cuttan your face off" - but the trouble is her theories are way out in Herbert West country, having left their roots in sensible biology years ago.

Delusion, OCD and violent tendencies would come together into a particularly nasty character, I think.

>>2764911

It's actually a sci-fi (dystopic low-tech near future) campaign, but that's a good idea. I'll look into this Eberron thing and see if it can be adapted.

You should make clear, that the information obtained through her experiments could further medicine and biology a great deal, and actually be very beneficial for mankind. Also try to let your players know that she actually has good intentions and decided to accept the things she has to do as necessary evils that have to be committed in the name of SCIENCE.

Her daughter has some currently incurable disease.

She'll stop at nothing to find the cure.

Many of her 'victims' are volunteers who knew the risks, but that their ailments would surely kill them soon. The good doctor was just so close to finding a miracle cure.

She is the father of all the PCs.

>>2764879

Franken Fran

>>2764917
D'oh - sorry. I always presume 3.x D&D.

Anyway, let me copy and paste it - you could easily make a strange technological thing that does that same thing.

>>2764940
>>2764886

It was that that got me inspired to make this character actually.

The idea that every "victim" was a volunteer/terminally ill and signed a waiver would be a great way to lead into a "perhaps this government that's sending us to glass everything they don't like isn't quite acting in our best interests" plotline, too. At the moment, the Higher Powers (the suspiciously named Necessary Services Rendered) seem to be pretty legit, if heavy-handed (other missions included sabotaging a passenger airport's control tower which had been used to co-ordinate bomber flights, and launching a false secret police raid on a weapon test to find out if the company were profiteering) so finding out this "monster of humanity" is actually still a great scientist who's been framed and slandered would be cool.

>>2764943
The Husk of Infinite Worlds creates multiple (as in, thousands) miniature realities in which a duplicate of the subject exists and is subjected to random mutation. The Husk then chooses the best outcome, with highest chance of survivability. Even then, there is only 1% chance it will survive for even a minute in reality, it is so twisted and horrible.

Sci-fi it up a bit, and you could come up with a pretty fancy machine that could come in handy.

>>2764997
Now that I think about it, this isn't too suitable for a low-tech universe.

Just stick with conventional surgery.

>>2764879

Give them (more) reasons to not trust their government and to believe they are lying to the PCs. If they become unsympathetic to the gov, they'll become more sympathetic to its enemies i.e. crazy scientist.

Th PCs are born from a secret government program to create the perfect soldiers/assassins/mimes. They have the potential to be enhanced beyond normal human abilities but this procedure can only be performed after puberty. The scientist they are looking for oversaw the program and was developing the enhancements but she took all her research and ran for their sakes. Their government wants to complete the program by retrieving the research and dispatches the PCs...

>>2764886

I'd run with a few elements of Bioshock, actually, like finding recordings that play as soon as someone touches them. The scientist in question looking on a few of the experiments and talking about how some of the patients are starting to tug at her heart, "sometimes they look at me, sometimes they *smile* at me, oh god, look at what I've done to these people," sorts of recordings.

SHE WAS JUST ABOUT TO CURE CANCER AND ALL HER TEST SUBJECTS WERE COMATOSE DEATH ROW INMATE VOLUNTEERS

BET YOU FEEL LIKE SHIT NOW, HUH

>>2765069

That would be a classic example of this being done wrong. It's less about them finding out afterwards and more about them finding out as they're looking for the scientist. A choice made with the burden of knowledge, so that they might use their judgment.

In short, "Well, hero? What are you going to do about it?"

Looking for the cure for cancer in places normal scientists don't dare to look? So-so.

Looking for the cure for cancer in places normal scientists don't dare to look, assisted by her many cancerous lab assistants, all working together to save one another as well as all the cancerous people staying gratis in her homeless shelter in the safest place she has access to, her evil nation military outpost? Better!

>>2765468

This. I want the players to have to think about whether the means (really sick, beyond anything they could imagine) really justify the end (a potential cure for a disease that kills millions.)

The problem comes that if they keep her alive and let her carry on working then there's a chance the enemy will never make her research available to the people who need it. Equally, there's a good chance if they don't kill her someone else will.

This is a real fine example here of /tg/ getting shit done. An idea was suggested and built upon, and with it an idea for developing a campaign.

And >>2765069 is right. If the information was "dumped" after the mission by a snarky moralistic third party it would be a shitty Shyamalan-esque twist. The real shock in things like the Medical Pavilion in Bioshock and to an extent stuff like Franken Fran (although it's played for lulz there to an extent too) is revealing the big picture in the buildup to actually meeting those involved.

I've already decided what her lab is going to look like, though. The Casshern movie may be overlong and confusing, but goddamn the steampunk architecture fucking owns. The PCs will be exploring a base with knife switches, valves and conduits as the order of the day.

What I am sure as hell going to avoid is making the enemy nation out as too sympathetic. They're basically a future North Korea with advanced technology, ruled by a junta of rather nasty people. The whole "LOL LOOKS LIKE THE ENEMY ARE NICE AFTER ALL" is too overdone in future military stuff.

>>2765468
>
Looking for the cure for cancer in places normal scientists don't dare to look, assisted by her many cancerous lab assistants, all working together to save one another as well as all the cancerous people staying gratis in her homeless shelter in the safest place she has access to, her evil nation military outpost? Better!


I can imagine when the PCs get there. It will be glorious when the cancer-afflicted patients feebly try to hold them back while screaming at the scientist to run.

Shame. I had thought a nice twist for this would be having the scientist hooked on some kind of drug that only the evil government could provide.

>>2765515

>too sympathetic.

Then again, you don't want to play them out to be too evil. It's going to heavily depend on delivery. "Pshaw, they're peasants" is too evil, but "They volunteered" is too sympathetic. "These people's lives mean NOTHING. I'm working to ensure the lives of people that haven't even been born yet. The present's consequences bedamned, this cure needs to happen." If you can act out a belief in your own words, then that could be callous enough to make them hate her, but true enough to make them consider defending her from anyone else that gets sent.

Op's picture looks really familiar. I'm pretty certain it's from something that was rather cringe worthy, but what was it?

>>2765553

These ideas are getting so good and I'm so worried I won't be able to implement them without hella railroadin' I'll probably writefag something on the topic outside of the campaign so I don't force some kind of moronic "vision" onto my PCs. Let them call the shots, and rest easy knowing I've written out the idea as I envision it playing out elsewhere.

In fact, I offer that as a protip for DMs who become attached to their settings.

WRITEFAGGERY GOES OUTSIDE GAMING. WRITE YOUR IDEAS DOWN SO IF YOUR PCS FUCK THE PLOT UP YOU DON'T NEED TO RAILROAD TO LET THEM LISTEN TO YOUR SONG.

>>2765575

It was from a horribly twisted comic about dragons essentially doing the facehugger thing from Aliens in order to use the life force of people to give their young life. That one panel was quite touching, though, so I saved it.

>>2765562

This is it. I don't really want the whole Little Sister/Tenenbaum dynamic, more a kind of selfish desire on the part of the scientist to finish what she started, even though at some point it once appalled her.

It may be revealed she "flipped" and started her decline when government targets to make headway into the cure got too much and she was faced with an ultimatum - do whatever it takes or disappear and lose everything.

>>2765575
> Op's picture looks really familiar. I'm pretty certain it's from something that was rather cringe worthy, but what was it?

Yes. The guy who draws like that has a fetish for BAD ENDs and trans-gendering.

That particular panel is from a comic in which he explains why he thinks dragons always ask for the sacrifice of virgins. According to him, it was because the women sent, virgins or not, were fairly healthy. The dragon proceeds to tentacle-rape them, sort of, which through some incredibly strange and non-sensical bullshit method made them transform into the heart of a new dragon. The older the dragon grows, the less human being remains.

And of course, the woman suffers an undescribable agony for the rest of her days.

Isn´t it cute?

>>2765628
I fapped.

>>2765628

That's horrifying, and yet I want to add it to my campaign to make it grimndark.

I postulate a different potential solution:

Let us presume the PCs benefactor had in a previous conflict employed some less than moral biological, radiological, Pathogenic weapon against enemy soldiers. Unfortunately, shit got out of hand and civilians were infected.

Now let's say your creepy doctor villain is the leading researcher in treating and potentially curing all those poor orphans and single moms that the PC's bosses inadvertently fucked up. It would be significantly harder for them to just mow down the only person fixing THEIR mistakes.

Would something like this work, OP?

If "they volunteered" is too sympathetic, one might consider "they volunteered because doing so would get their oppressive government to care for their families a bit better". That would make the scientist less evil without actually hitting nice.

>>2765672

>It would be significantly harder for them to just mow down the only person fixing THEIR mistakes.

Bonus points if it was only one PC that was in an army, and had done this horrible thing. Especially if you work it out with the player beforehand and have it turn something memorable.

>>2765672

OP HERE!

This is getting better and better. Seriously, you guys are coming up with some amazing concepts which would on their own make good novellas but can be worked into campaigns with ease.

The setting of the campaign has the players working as black ops soldiers in a state where the army are also the secret police. However, it's quite a big multi-world empire they're in so it's safe to assume there are a lot of secrets they're not cleared to access (at times the whole situation is more like Paranoia than anything else) and that could really work.

Now posting: More pictures that may or may not be inspirational.

>>2765628
Hmm, now I remember that. I was actually planning to put it in my campaigns to shut up one player of mine who always rambles about how the party should respect dragons.

>>2765651
Something tells me you might enjoy his flash adventure "Free Will"...

>>2765718
Hey OP, since you've got good stuff about the motivation and fleshing out of plot, do you still need help with the descriptions and random NPCs, or are you good for that?

She is a Woman.

This is justification enough for her execution.

Descriptions would be pretty cool, drawing triply so.

My "look" I envisaged was someone like Ritsuko or Fred from Angel (so "geek cute" and formal), but older and an absolute mess physically from working non-stop in a terribly maintained lab. Pitiable yet manic.

Her "victims" would look like the end results of a run-in with Fran Madakari or the Saw killer. My original, terribly uninventive idea for the PCs finally meeting her was something like the end of the Medical Pavilion, with her in the middle of "surgery" on an unsedated patient (the sedatives ran out months ago but the work must continue.)

In terms of mannerisms, I was thinking a mixture of nervous, OCD and insane - Lady Macbeth meets Howard Hughes a la "The Aviator" ("what have I done? I've... done my job. The work must continue work must continue work must continue can't stop work must continue I'm saving their future SHUT UP STOP SCREAMING PLEASE I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU GODDAMNIT JUST SHUT UP"

>>2765869

Wild-crazy is overdone and boring. Have her talk to them like a calm, slightly overbearing mother giving them necessary medicine. It's more likely you can roleplay that creepily than a manic obsessive (no offense meant, of course).

Creep in games comes from things that are out of place but not explicitly said to be so, and a mother performing a vivisection is creepy.

>>2765950

In retrospect, this is dead right. While the Howard Hughes "wave of the future wave of the future wave of the future wave of the future wave of the future" can work, it's overdone.

But having her as an overly nice figure could really work. Even work in a David Tennant-esque "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." when something really nasty happens.

I'm also seriously considering having her put up no fight at all, and even calling off those who come to protect her.

No fight, that is, except the revolver with two bullets. One for the first person to hold a gun to her head and one for her. What would be interesting is a situation where the standoff turns very nasty very quickly, because all of a sudden the PCs are surrounded by exceptionally angry people who are nevertheless still civilians.

I guess I'm just fed up with the whole "DON'T MOVE OR I'LL SHOOT I'LL REALLY FUCKING SHOOT LOOK I AM POINTING A GUN AT YOU I AM GOING TO USE IT LOOK" thing you sometimes get. If the PCs approach the situation sensitively (offer to "take her outside for a while" and kill her in private) then she'll be amenable and at peace. If they go storming in then things will sure as hell get nasty because they're disturbing her peace and her patients' rest.

Is that too railroady?

>>2765718
What the shit. I could've sworn I've seen the place in that pic in a dream. Terrifying deja-vu.

For added win, the feeble cancerous lackeys call the scientist "mother."

>>2765992
Maybe she finally realizes that she can't cure them. She came so close, and then got terrible Scientist's Block. Some tenet of genetics that she just couldn't work her theories around, and she just broke down. She's been locked in her facility with these people whose only hope is her, and she's reached her limit.

When the PC's get closer to the center of the facility/wherever she is, they start finding rooms of dead people. Not violent, but not natural, either. In their beds, on couches, no sign that anything had been wrong, except maybe signs of discomfort on their faces or vomit stains on the floor. In the end, families would be huddled together, all dead. The scientist believed she owed it to them at least, to end their suffering. Or maybe just conceal her failure? Leave it to the PC's to decide which.

Maybe she wants to die, maybe not. If the PC's storm in aggressively and pop a cap in her, she won't be able to say to the barely-human mob surrounding her, "Forgive them, my children. It's I who've failed you, not them." and the PC's have got to fight their way through a bunch of lepers.

But maybe she's not ready to go. Who knows.

Oh, and heres something: Maybe some of her experiments involved huge amounts of radiation. Have one of the PC's get separated and locked in one of the chambers used for such dosing. Of course, the machinery is broken, but the door locks once they're inside and they hear loud machinery start whirring and air vents come on. Nothing averse happens, but should be terrifying. I know I'm scared as fuck of radiation.

>>2766127

This is quickly turning into the best kind of a mindfuck campaign. The idea that after everything she failed, but couldn't face that and so carried on, trying ever more insane and unlikely experiments and trying to shut out the repercussions, is great.

And using things like sensory deprivation/decompression/radiation chambers is a good way to get the PCs horribly paranoid. In fact, having a second, unknown party apparently trying to kill them while the scientist is trying frantically to reverse procedures that are operating outside her control is a good concept - perhaps have some kind of Big Daddy-esque "retainers" she created early in her career to protect the lab from widespread riots which have since become autonomous and are actively trying to kill the PCs far more brutally than she wants to.

Perhaps she just wants to atone for her perceived and actual sins, but the automata/flesh constructs she made won't let her as their conditioning is failing.

Also, as a final irony or insult, if the PCs are dead set on killing her one of the ways it could happen is for one of the constructs to do it either accidentally or by being ordered to.

have you ever read the book " island of Dr.Moreau"

something along the lines of making the human(and/or other) races grander and better trough a bath of Pain

>>2766178
>or by being ordered to.
"A man chooses, a slave obeys!" doh ho ho ho.

I like the part about the party working their way through her "treatments" to get to her. But be wary; the players may misinterpret this as the lady *actively* trying to kill them, which will definitely increase their aggression once they actually meet her.

>>2766209

Precisely. That's the drawback of mute constructs as lab assistants - they can't tell the difference between patients, test subjects and visitors unless you're watching over their every move.

While she may not mean to have put them through all that, will they believe her?

>>2766209
Fuck yeah, Andrew Ryan.
Playing Bioshock over again and reading Brave New World again makes me immensely happy to see this.

I enjoy crazy scientists as much as the next, but it would be interesting if they had no formal knowledge, but whatever was gleaned from field study (takin' deyz choppas to da boyz.)

>>2766127
>I know I'm scared as fuck of radiation.

Pff, pansy. It's just particles and/or electromagnetic waves that will do insidious damage to your DNA and perhaps cause a slight heating effect for every impact.
I mean, you can get up to 2 Sv without major long-term problems apart from increased cancer risk, and you'll only really die of the internal bleeding and infections up to 4Sv due to your immune system being fucked up.

Of course, if you get exposed to more than 10Sv, you're 100% screwed, enjoy your fatigue, instant nausea, feeling fine for a few days then BAM, massive diarrhea, intestinal bleeding and loss of water, delirium, coma and finally death.

And if you get over 100Sv, well, you'd make a great piece of ash.

Have two types of patients. Willing people who got the disease and volunteered and criminals.

The willing patients are rather straight forward. They're treated relatively well and allowed to move about the compound. They help out with the research. Mixing chems, restraining criminals, euthanizing others. They view her as a saint. "Sure she can be cold and sometimes she has us... put the others to sleep. And there's something about her voice... But she's nice! I mean, even though she didn't use anesthesia on that one subject and she... she has to do it! She.. she has to.."

The criminals are boxed up and shipped over. They're kept in small cells, with minimum food/water required for them to still be viable test subjects. About a third of them are death row patients. The rest are people who were sent because "the jail was full". So in one room you have a pedophile rapist and in the cell next to him you have a 16 year-old kid convicted of stealing something petty.

Political prisoners / enemy agents are lobotomized and then made to grow new organs so they can be "milked" for some hormone or another.

Another idea: have a rumor floating about among the personal/test-subjects that the government is purposefully infecting civilians so they'll go willingly. Have it persist for a long time before the party finds a recording of the scientist saying that the rumor is false. But not because it'd be immoral, that's clearly not on her radar. IT's not done because, "why waste productive members of society when I can call the prison warden to bring people in."

>>2764879

PCs are infected by a mutagen by a 'random' encounter, and she's going to have to stay alive to make them serum that controls it.
As for the base. Three words. Resurrection Of Evil

I imagine the good doctor as horrified by what she does, but forges along anyway. Her lab assistants and patients both cringe and agree that it's for the greater good. Have "liberated" patients turn on the PCs citing the doctor as a genius who's going to save them all. When the PCs burst in on her, make her gaunt/emaciated/looking like she hasn't slept in a month with tears running down her face saying that it's all to soon, she has to finish, shes come all too far to stop now, etc. Have her walls full of a mix of gruesome pictures, notes from her patients with their original looks stapled to them, and scribbled notes. If none of your players are against religion, have a *symbol of deity* on the wall with a worn out place on the floor where the good doctor would sit and pray for divine aid. Possibly have her protecting child patients, all hideously deformed and scarred, but all clinging on to her coat tails. For extra points, make her daughter/son one of the patients.

>>2766257
It's not so much the radiation itself, but the aura of WWII/cold-war era bunkers and technology (which I always think of first when I hear "atomic whatever"), the atmosphere of being in some underground bunker where physicists are messing with something we barely understood. The idea that there're invisible particles floating through the air makes you paranoid. Everytime the air you breathe feels chilly, or you feel a pit in your stomach, you wonder if you just got fucked over.

Of course, thats all less science and more superstition. But if you're playing in a low tech campaign, that's all the better.

Nazi Ghosts related. Couldn't find a pic of the actual SCIENCE CHAMBER from that movie.

>>2766357
/tg/ related, those nazi ghosts were totally SPESS MEHREEN-like.

>>2766357

Very much this. The whole aesthetic for the base is Casshern/STALKER/Bioshock/SAW - so sinister and unnatural machinery which is archaic in style, harkening back to the more unpleasant eras of our history. If the PCs dig into the base's archives they find it was a prison for political prisoners (read: innocent people in the wrong place) before being converted into the medical research centre.

I am going to write some prose based on this. It will probably end up in a new thread, but goddamnit this has inspired me to write in a way I didn't think I'd be after finishing my first book.

>>This thread has been requested 1 times now.

>>2766406
>>2766398
>>2766385

I don't have as many pics relevant to this idea as I thought.

This saddens me =(

>>2766479
Paranoia was one of the best HL mods ever! It was like Stalker meets Counter-Strike, and I mean that in the best way possible.

>>2766357
>>2766413

Glad I could help :)

For further creepiness, add implements to rooms that should have nothing to do with the experiments carried out there. A room for sensory deprivation has got nothing but a chair with straps and an IV needle.

Another room has a 6-foot diameter 10-foot deep cylinder cut into the floor with a drain at the bottom, and a gasmask and a long, coiled rubber hose collecting dust in the corner of the room.

Actually, needles and hoses all around. Bioshock certainly understood that.

1950's spartan architecture. Archaic machines. Dust, rubber hoses, needles, radiation. Lit by exposed bulbs in the ceiling. Silence or the low hum of a large centrifuge somewhere. The parts where it's desolate are probably scarier than when you meet it's barely-human occupants.

God, your PC's sure are in for a nightmare.

>>2766504
>>2766449

OP signing in (and out in a bit) again.

I need to sleep soon, but I've put this thread on suptg. This means any updates made between me signing out and the thread vanishing will be saved, obviously.

Thanks a ton for all the great ideas, as has been said this will hopefully be sufficiently disturbing. Extended writing on the topic is forthcoming, too.

Also, the imagery and illustrations provided are quite awesome. What's the source on the woman covered in writing?

>>2766127
>She came so close, and then got terrible Scientist's Block.
But if her employers knew that, they'd kill everyone involved. So she has to keep performing "operations", despite knowing that they won't help...

>I know I'm scared as fuck of radiation.
Speaking of which, I read a news article once on a guy who accidentally stuck his head into a particle accelerator. Puked for a few days, all his hair fell out, and after that the part of his head that got hit (about an inch behind the temple) just rotted a hole all the way from one side to the other.

He survived, though; must have a fucking incredible Constitution modifier.

>>2766556

>What's the source on the woman covered in writing?

No idea, found it on /tg/

>>2766606

>Speaking of which, I read a news article once on a guy who accidentally stuck his head into a particle accelerator.

How do you accidentally stick your head into a particle accelerator?

>>2766617

Bugorski, a 36-year-old researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, was checking a piece of accelerator equipment that had malfunctioned - as had, apparently, the several safety mechanisms.

>>2766617

THEY'RE WAITING FOR YOU GORDON...

IN THE TEST CHAMBERRRRRRR.

>>2766627
>>2766628

>safety mechanisms

shit was so cash

>>2766627
>Bugorski, a 36-year-old researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, was checking a piece of accelerator equipment that had malfunctioned - as had, apparently, the several safety mechanisms.
>Protvino
>RUSSIA
>SAFETY MECHANISMS

Well there's your problem.

>>2766627

The left half of Bugorski's face swelled up beyond recognition, and over the next several days started peeling off, showing the path that the proton beam (moving near the speed of light) had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath. As it was believed that about 5 to 6 grays is enough to kill a person, Bugorski was taken to a clinic in Moscow where the doctors could observe his expected demise. However, Bugorski survived and even completed his Ph.D.,.[3] There was virtually no damage to his intellectual capacity, but the fatigue of mental work increased markedly.[2] Bugorski completely lost hearing in the left ear and only a constant, unpleasant internal noise remained. The left half of his face was paralyzed, due to the destruction of nerves.[1] He is able to function perfectly well, save the fact that he has occasional petit mal seizures and very occasional grand mal seizures.

Bugorski continued to work in science, and held the post of Coordinator of physics experiments.[2] Because of the Soviet Union's policy of maintaining secrecy on nuclear power-related issues, Bugorski did not speak about the accident for over a decade. He continued going to the Moscow radiation clinic twice a year, for examination, and to commune with other nuclear-accident victims. For years, he remained a poster boy for Soviet and Russian radiation medicine. In 1996, he applied for disabled status, to receive his free epilepsy medication. Bugorski showed interest in making himself available for study to Western researchers, but couldn't afford to leave Protvino and go west.[1]

>>2766666

Russia has great safety measures, just look at Cherno-

... oh.

>>2766556

The source for the woman covered in writing is Unknown Armies.

>>2766674

Bugorski. Half legend. Half engineer.

ALL MAN.

Wasn't there a man who got like multiple times the "LETHAL" does at Chernobyl and lived for a decade before dying of a heart attack?

If she has retainers like the Big Daddy's that have gone haywire, for mindfuck, have her radio/call them with help so that they escape alive.

Second: if they do fight through patients, have them shouting 'They're trying to kill the doctor!' and other such things, and have men, women and even children defend the doctor and routes to her fanatically.

Have her constantly coming through the PA system and apologizing, and trying (mostly ineffectively, but sometimes actually helping) to get them out of the jams created by her monstrous servants. Make sure that while this is going on she explains she can't stop working or the government will kill everyone involved, and she doesn't want that! Besides, she's so close to the cure! Just a few more horrible mind-shattering experiments and she might have it! It's for the good of humanity, you see? Oh watch out behind you!

And so on.

>>2766678
Russian science is the real-life inspiration for the technology of 40k's Orks. True story.

Also, getting back to the OP's topic: Why not have the researcher pursuing some sort of holy grail of medicine, that if achieved would allow her to not only her to cure whatever the big disease is, but also to repair the damage she caused her patients in the course of her research? She could be driven by a growing burden of guilt--as her research progresses, she is forced to inflict worse and worse tortures upon her test subjects, but is forced onward by the hope that her research will eventually be able to reverse the damage she has done. The pressure to ensure that the suffering of her patients is not "in vain" traps her in a negative feedback where she goes to further and further extremes in her research. Perhaps she even keeps the remains of deceased test subjects in cyrogenic storage, in the hopes that they can eventually be revived.

To take some of the moral burden off her, perhaps her test subjects are political prisoners who would have otherwise been horribly tortured and killed by her evil government. If she stops her research, all her subjects (who otherwise might have a chance) would be taken away to be executed anyway.

>>2766763

This is a good idea. The retainers are less "Big Stompy Cyborg Divers with Grenade Launchers" and more Reanimator style Frankenstein's Monster creatures made from bits of dead tissue regrown with stem cells and rudimentary nanotech. Fantastically loyal - to a fault. Especially when the Mistress has disowned them and abandoned them.

I've been fleshing out the setting a bit more - the reason they're all locked up in the lowest levels is because a few years ago there were riots spurred on by the press claiming she was a monster and was profiting from the disease. Her Retainers fought the riots off, but not before they torched the upper levels of the base. To this day she regrets how it all went so horribly wrong. People still come to the base for help, but it's no longer the semi-legitimate institution it used to be - enforcing the image of her as a twisted insane murderess locked up in a dank lair.

They should find her office or personal study while she's not in it. Along every inch of the room is the report of every surgery or experiment she's done. As the dates progress they will witness her downward spiral into madness, as the procedures become more "unorthodox" and her notes on them eventually will be nearly illegible scrawl with uneven lines from her hand quivering in fury I WANT TO MAKE THEM BETTER BUT THEY JUST KEEP TURNING OUT WRONG

>>2766774
>Have her constantly coming through the PA system and apologizing

I like where this is going.

Just wanted to drop in and say that these ideas all sound amazing so far. I sort of want to hear how it all ends up panning out now.

>Have her constantly coming through the PA system and apologizing

Especially creepy if they get to the office where the PA is and find out it's just a prerecorded loop of statements designed to keep the patients feeling safe, comfortable, and acquiescent. She put the loop on because she's incapacitated or busy doing something else important.

Also, what disease is she even trying to cure? What are the symptoms? Is it infectious, genetic, degenerative?

If it's infectious (or they just think it might be) then the players will have the additional challenge of having to keep their bodies covered and their gas masks working properly. Plus, when you're wearing a gas mask nothing is scarier than having the goggles fog up at just the wrong moment...

>>2766818
Misunderstood GladOS? FUND IT

>>2766774
She could try to be reasoning with her patients, "No please, don't kill them! I don't want anyone to die! They're just here to talk with me, really! Its men from the government to discuss a budget increase, becuase of all the progress I've made! please stop..."

>>2766833

How about some necrotic kind of disease that slowly rots the body away, making people appear corpse-like and stiff and airborne?

Picture and accompanying text related.

VIRAEMIA

The civilised world lies on its knees, a sickness wracking its body. The affliction causes a necrotising of tissues so perfectly uniform in distribution that victims take on the appearance of corpses long before death occurs due to organ failure or secondary infections. The crumbling remnants of academia swing from fatalistic resignation to maddened optimism in their addressment of what could be done to fight the sickness.
The vast numbers of doctors attempting to stem the tide of infection, invariably falling victim to the malady they treat, have begun to form fanatical extermination squads whose policies are condoned by authority. A notion forms, twisting the tenets of the Hippocratic oath to say that when the oath taker is subject to the half-death of infection they are obliged to spend their lasting days attempting to destroy the source of the contagion. The paramilitary forces formed from the infected medical practicioners find themselves deigned to mete out persecution to the sufferers they were formally treating. Equipped with the leftovers of dissolved military forces, the Doctors' Militia are organised to burn all infected areas and sufferers; a campaign which stalks across blasted lands, mirroring the wave of infection in an addled attempt at backtracking all the way to some imaginary source.
Extensive bombing campaigns start firestorms that incinerate whole cities. Squads of "scorched earth" units are tasked with eradicating outlying locales. The distinctive appearance of the plague doctors, the only sight originally associated with any idea of hope, often causes the confused survivors of bombing runs to rush, open armed, towards the oncoming squads.

>>2766889

Oh, sorry, ignore the name; stuck from mocking him earlier by reminding people of how he claimed to be an art professor.

While I like the idea of "desperate but with good intentions", it would be kind of shitty for the players to get all the way through the facility and then be faced with either the conundrum of killing a misguided but defenseless doctor, or walking out empty-handed.

How about three possible scenarios:
1) The PCs agree not to stop her research, and she asks them to "bring mercy" to some horrible, aggressive, failed super-mutant that also happens to be blocking off research facilities that are key to finishing her work.
2) The PCs get her to agree to stop her research in exchange for their help in evacuating the test subjects from the evil government. Maybe she can continue her research via more humane methods elsewhere, continuing to protect her deformed patients while becoming a future plot hook NPC.
3) The PCs decide to kill her, and (imagining that they will also kill her patients) the doctor injects herself with some serum than will turn her into a super-mutant (giving the PCs a big fight without forcing them to murder a defenseless civilian).

>>2766889
FUCK YES, KEITH THOMPSON!

AND FUCK YES, PLAGUE DOCTOR MILITIA GONE FANATICAL!

Read "Dearly Devoted Dexter," observe Doctor Danco.

Use that.

"Screaming pillows" FTW!

Uh, I guess I'll be clearer so you don't actually have to read the whole Dexter book:

Dr. Danco was a US "advisor" in El Salvador. He was a medical school student who found he was a sociopath, but he had a deep patriotism and really wanted to use that. So they had him torture prisoners. He would slowly slice them apart, bit by bit, taking off fingers, toes, hands, feet, legs, etc. All in front of a mirror, all with the "patient" kept alive and awake with a crazy mix of stimulants, pain killers (the pain would kill someone without them) and hallucinogens. He would talk to them throughout the procedure, asking them about their personal life and such. He'd slowly cut away everything extraneous. Both legs, both arms, all genitals, ears, nose, lips, tongues, teeth, and eyelids. Leaving them a screaming lump in front of a mirror, unable to look away from their image.

Eventually he got a reputation and the US decided that it would be best to turn him over to the other side (who would of course kill him) to create good will, but he was taken by the Cubans who put him in a hard ass prison and then used him as a torturer. Eventually he comes back and starts going after the people who tried to have him killed. He plays a game of hangman with each one, each wrong letter means losing a body part (although the speed of dissection varies from victim to victim). No one finishes a word.

Anyway, something like that, someone clearly fucked up but with noble intentions, at first. Then they are betrayed and are seeking revenge in a REALLY awful way. That method of killing someone (leaving them a living, absolutely insane, completely hopeless lump of flesh) is about the most horrible I can think of.

>>2767100

Good lord.

>>2767100
>leaving them a living, absolutely insane, completely hopeless lump of flesh

Did someone say "To the pain?" I thought I heard someone say "To the pain."

>>2766806

This aspect resonates the best with me. So innocent, twisting to so creepy.

>>2767127
hawt

>>2767127

Where have I seen that drawing style before?

>>2767127

Oh Christ not this shit again. I'm still recovering from the nightmares.

>>2767031

im immagining having the big boss fight before the encounter, and and afterwards there is a "rapid transition" period where such as a seiries of hallways filled with rooms filled with relevant plot details, information, backshadowing of past events, ect,
and it all comes together when they meet the doctor, encounter will probably play out like described above, doctor wont resist pcs if they attack, might have her closest "children" in the room to act as a foil to the event, utilized as nessisary to deepen whatever theme you are aiming for

>>2767168

this is the artists site here, he mostly draws transformation pics and degrading materials but what ever floats your boat.

http://www.kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php

Then ICS is perfect OP

The PCs battle their way past horrible abominations against nature, through dark and twisted corridors, to encounter the plague behind it all: there before them, the cancer killing 4chan.

>>2766889
...fuck yes, Plague Corps.

She's trying to find a cure for her wife who is suffering from a terminal illness, currently cryogenicly frozen.

I think it'd make an ice twist

>>2768019

>> She's

Did you make a rule 63 Mr. Freeze?