Cerebus

There’s enough material on Cerebus to publish a thick sourcebook full of juicy information. A clandestine conspiracy group that infiltrates all part of the Alliance and any interests pertaining to Earth, able to steal the technology for a cutting edge military frigate without being discovered, and bringing the dead to live. Maybe they are the Delta Green of the future.

Experiments: One of the side quests in Mass Effect touches on the horrible experiments which Cerebus was running. Jack can’t be the only one, so what else were Cerebus fooling with? One of the famous meme is that Cerebus was looking at grafting Reaper technology with human beings.

Expeditions: They were examining a dead Reaper in the game. Other key locations for Cerebus to stick their foot in definitely include Protean ruins, anti-Reaper weapons and definitely anything which would give human an edge over the aliens.

Conspiracy. The information given by Miranda (and EDI, after you release her locks) seems to imply that Cerebus operatives are everywhere. The question is “where else?” Giving the task to hunt down those operatives could make a good campaign (or what if the PCs are Cerebus Operatives infiltrating an Alliance experiment or research base?)

Gang Wars

For something darker, gritter and dirtier, just head down to Omega 4 and perhaps other seedier space-ports in Mass Effect world. (If you read the descriptions for some of the planets, they are ripe for such ideas). There you have various mercenary gangs involve in smuggling, human trafficking (perhaps not just for the Collectors) and involved in other illicit trade.

Power Struggle: Mass Effect 2 players come across this when Shephard discovered a ploy by the other mercenary gangs to supplant Aria together. That can’t be the only place where such incidents are going on. The players may be involved in the efforts of removing a crime lord or preserving the status quo. Perhaps they even have aspirations to take over the entire place for themselves.

Setting up Shop: Garrus did it, so why not the players. Players could form a mercenary gang or “righteous troubleshooters” and attempt to keep organized crime in check. Or give the Eclipse or Blue Sun a run for their money. They may be some powerful that they attract the attention of other parties which may need their help.

1. There are legends of a pool, located in a grove, bordered by forests of the faerie, where one could see visions and images of the times to come. A seeress once dwell there, and she was responsible for prophecies and advice that aid many in averting ruins to the kingdom. However, the seeress had died, and someone else has taken over her guise and now control the pool. She can command the pool to show whatever she wishes, and she is now using it to sow discord throughout the kingdom. Whatever her aims are, it is unknown, but strife and chaos is just one on her list.
2. The Tablets of Destiny, an ancient religious writing which was used by a group of priests to foretell the future, have disappeared from their temple. Badly copied versions of those writings have appeared, and someone is circulating them. Merchant houses, noblemen, bandit lords and group of adventurers have been getting fragments of ‘prophecies’ which when interpreted, points to them as Messiahs of the world, glorious emperor, the harbinger of a new age. Those who follow the advice and heed the portends of those fragments of prophecies will have great initial success – and soon the doubting ones follow too. But the catch is that they are just following the fragments of an entire prophecy. The true prophecy can only be known if the adventurers manage to recover the Tablets of Destiny, or piece all the fragments together, and they would realise just how many are contributing to the ruin of the world.
3. A seer has been visiting those factions, and force compelling visions onto the leader of each of them. To one, they would say another is an obstacle to their goal. Then to the other, they would say the former is an obstacle as well, sowing discord and chaos in this manner. Who is this seer, and what is his real motive? And why are those given a vision are so fanatical in pursuing them? The seer has given them more than just a vision; an astral parasite has leeched into their mind as well, compelling them to believe in the visions and subtly controlling them.

1. A Different Sort of Delivery: A rebellion is under way, and the various merchant houses are conspiring with the outlaws, giving them supplies and the weapons they would need. A fake raid is their mean of transferring supplies and intelligence. The experienced adventurers may have been attached to the convoy to give a veneer of credibility or they are given orders by rightful authority to guard the convoy. Needless to say, any actions the adventurers may take to interfere with the brigands would be met with a surprise.
2. The Bait: The foodstuff and grains carried by the convoy are poisoned. This is the new method which the various merchant houses have agreed on to deal with the brigands. That those brigands are intended on re-distributing those food to the nearby poverty stricken villages are none of their concern. Perhaps it would be of the adventurers.
3. A Lesson In Humility: The leader of the convoy is a brash, inexperienced scion of a powerful merchant house, and he thinks too much of himself and disregard the adventurers’ concerns. The brigands, however, are the men belonging to his father, and this raid is to teach the youngster a lesson. The adventurers are attached to ensure that the young man don’t do anything rash. Unfortunately, some enemies of his father have infiltrated the false raiding brigands, and what supposed to be a lesson about carelessness turned out be a real nightmare when the reinforcements the father has prepared never arrived.

1. Immunity: The plague is deliberately released by a former cultist who worshipped a depraved demon of diseases and illness. The reason? Powerful though the demon might be, his unnatural plague has one ‘escape clause’ – a victim can only be suffering from one of his plagues at a time. The ‘minor plague’ released by the former cultist is actually preventing the cult from unleashing a stronger one that could actually kill millions. The cult must be taken down, perhaps with the help for the former cultist, before the current one could be cured.
2. Cure in Progress: The land was blighted, long ago, by depraved cultists (perhaps from the ones in Immunity) and for a long time those who lived and were born there were sickly and crippled. A group of druids have studied and located the vile source of the disease and is attempting to remove it. The cure however, provokes a series of fever, rashes and coughing among those already afflicted. Only when the cure is gone through, then the people would recover. However, would the adventurers believe the druid that matters must take a turn for the worse before it would get better?
3. Unmasking the Hidden: Over time, shapeshifters and other loathsome demons have assumed the forms of mortals and lived within the communities, perhaps just randomly preying on innocent passer-bys or harbouring some master-plan. The plague is the means to detect those who have hidden within society. Anyone who is not down with the symptoms of the plague is very likely to be a magical or demonical creature. The GM can feel free to decide how accurate this method is.

1. The young lady is a shapeshifter who has assumed the form of the real young healer but have forgotten about it and thought that she is the real, original personage. To take on the form of another, the shapeshifter must consume the corpse of its victim, and it would gain all of his or her memories and knowledge. But how the shapeshifter forgot that she is a shapeshifter in the first place is a mystery. What if the victim was willing to be killed in the first place?
2. There is a shapeshifter in town all right, but he’s not a werewolf or a weretiger. Rather, he belongs to a tribe of nomads which wandering about in the region. The hunters have came not specifically for them and has wrongly accused the young lady (their methods are very far from perfect). She happens to have a friend within the nomads and at the time of her peril, he casts a spell on her to help her to escape. Of course, this seals her fate, for the hunters are even more more than convinced that she is a shapeshifter. The adventurers could try to persuade them to think otherwise, or help the young lovers (isn’t that obvious?) to escape. Or they could rig one of the hunters’ method of proving that one’s a shapeshifter so that the young lady would come up as clean…but how would the adventurers know what sort of cockeyed trials the hunters are going to use?
3. The group of hunters are the shapeshifters. Some of their members would create incidents to convince the townfolks that werewolves and the sort are in the region to seek their coperation. Then one by one they will consume the likeness of important people in the town to get valuable information, access to resources, to sign false letters and so on. The young lady? A plant sent by the ‘hunters’ to convince the townsfolk The adventurers must be cunning enough to unmask their deception!

1. Paradise on High? Settlements being to spring up about the foot of the volcano, where verdant fields and forests have grown because of the fertile volcanic ashes. Some has risked the climb to the top of the mountains, and returned with exciting finds – gigantic fishes, crabs and fruits larger than those found on the ground. There begins an eager expedition to the top, but at least one person is more cautious than most.  He wishes the adventurers to investigate the crater and see if it is indeed aparadise at the top of the volcano. If there are such good hunting there, who (or what) else may be a predator up there?
2. What Dwells in the Deep on High: Settlers on the foot of the volcano and nearby islands have reported sightings of a strange group of creatures. They look serpentine, but humanoid, and are as adept in land and water. Trackers have located webbed footprints leading up to the volcano, and some suspect those new creatures came from the peak. The volcano has cause the ancient tunnels of a serpent-like people to connect to the natural underground caverns in the region, and they have found a way to the peaks of the volcano, where game and food is plentiful. But are they necessary hostile? Can the human settlers and the serpentine race shares the volcano in peace?
3. A Metal of Fire and Ice: An alchemist has predicted that due the extraordinary means which the icy cold lake is formed at the peak of the volcano, there would exist a type of metal alloy which would be stronger than steel and far more flexible at the same time. He managed to convince a rich patron to sponsor an expedition and he was proven right. From the metal found within the lake, he managed to produce weapons of excellent quality. Now the crater at the top has became a slave labor forge and mine, where the rich patron and the alchemist produce weapons, armor and other impediments of war and selling them. A competitor, or someone who stand to gain from their loss, has decided on an extreme way to end this whole affair – to make the volcano erupts again.

1. This cave is the ancient observatory used by a civilisation long ago to observe the movement of the heavenly bodies. The mirror are out of sync with each other, and by arranging them correctly, one would be able to see stars and planets, some unknown to modern astrologers, reflected on the mirror of the ice. However, whoever built this tool has foretelling the future in mind too, for glyphs of all sorts surround the edge of the mirror. A sage coming with the expedition with the adventurers deduce that some disaster is able to happen. Should the adventurer trusts the sage, or do some more digging of their own? There are, after all, libraries of text hidden in acloves around the caves.
2. The Mirror of Ice is used as a form of a signaling device. When the mirrors are aligned correctly, and a flame lit on a great brazier at the top of a platform, the smaller mirrors will direct the light to the great mirror of ice, and it would be reflected out to the sea. The question is : for whom is the signal for? What if the adventurers accidentally woke up some ancient races beneath the sea? Or maybe this is what the sponsor of this trip really wants?
3. The Mirror of Ice is an abandoned project which was never completed. The goal of the project is to direct the lights of the stars of the Five Magus (see Dragon Warriors, or Bloodsword) into a an ancient artefact which would provide warmth and regulate the weather around the region. The region used to be warm and temperate, but due to the movement within the faerie realms, the climate changes and the mages of the land scrambled for a solution. The solution did work, but has such a baneful effect that they believe it is better to abort it. Now someone is attempting to direct the light of the five sorcerous stars into one beam once more…

1. Breaking the Dam: A bunch of furtive have been working together to sabotage a dam further up north. Their goal? The area where the towers are is once a lake; the main form of transport is with boats. The descenants of those settlements wish to flood the lake once more so that they may be able to return to their origins, but doing so would mean the death of many villages down-stream.
2. Rebuilding the Bridges. A sage is convinced that a bridge used to link one of the settlement to a nearby cliff. He has studied paintings and parchments recovered from expeditions to those settlements, and come to the conclusion that the dwellers of those platforms built gigantic bridges to cross from the platforms to the mountains. In times of war, the bridge would be destroyed to deny the enemies. However, there will be numerous problems facing the building of the bridge, beginning with an ancient crone who appears and warn the scholar and his team to stop what they are doing…
3. To go up, you must first go down. There are actually passageways built under the ground and they have their exit at the bottom of each tower. The adventurers must find one of those tunnels in order to access the upper platforms. These platforms were once a school of magic, and to restrict access, the builders deliberately make it difficult for anyone to access. Those tunnels were for the “mundanes” to use and for times of emergency. The proper way into the academy is destroyed – a magical portal – but if a learned sorcerer could get in, he may be able to find the ritual to reconstruct the portal. The key question is – what happened here that this place is now deserted?

1. Reassembling the pieces. A young scholar who has studied the geography of the area for five years is convinced that six ‘murals’ scattered across the land were actually of one piece, before somehow before shattered and scattered across the region. He is determined to make an accurate copying of each of the mural, and piece them together to see what they would look like (doubtless it has to be something interesting). However, the settlers have began to fight among themselves and they have increasingly become hostile to outsiders. The scholar would need an escort to ensure his safety, and there is also the  disturbing incident of an attempted assassination on one fine night.
2. The Hidden Road. The rock formations on the ground, the painted murals, the geometry drawn onto the rock faces, they are all part of an ancient road system used by the people. Magicians would be dismal to learn that those paintings seem to have influenced their magic, especially those dealing with divination. One could conclude that all the stones and paintings were part of a powerful invisibility and masking spell, and the ‘roads’ are actually pathways to those hidden areas. So what is being hidden, and is there a way to dispel what could be the grandest of all ritual magic ever – to hide an entire civilisation?
3. On the Origin of a People. Anyone learned in geology would find that the rocks that form the entire region should not exist together. It is as if the original people have pulled the rocks that form the formations from different places. While exploring the peak of some of those rock mountains, and within the core of the area, the adventurers may find smashed pillars, potteries and the sort scattered far and wide, as if an entire city has dropped from the sky. The place is far from totally explored and charted though – would the adventurers be able to find the descendants of the survivor from a city in the sky? Or perhaps the city that once sit on a mountain that now looks as though it has been cleaved into half?

1. Blocked Roads: A group of bandits have blocked one of the mountain paths leading between two of the communities, threatening to use some form of ancient blackpowder explosive to create a cascade of landslides which would defintely bring diasater to the communties further below. Their terms – to have a guide lead them to the Stairs to the Stars. They are defntely hunting for something there; the adventurers may have to break up into two party – one to prevent the bandits from making their threats true, the other to get to whatever is hidden within the mountain peak before their foes get their hands on it.
2. No News from Above: A plateau above the one which the adventurers are at have no news coming down for months. The community is worried, and wished to dispatch scouts to see what have transpired above. However, scouts that are sent through all returned frightened, claiming that they hear gruesome cries of some animals. A group of griffins have decided to nest in a crevice by the side. Depending on the setting, griffins could be just savage, large birds of prey, or honourable creatures of the sky akin to eagles. The adventurers may use diplomacy to resolve the issue, brute force to drive the birds away, or find some other interesting solutions to this problem.
3. He came from above: A young man has descended from the Stairs to the Stars, claiming to be delivering a message. The communities are doubtful, and traditions are that none of the communities below could climb up the Stairs unless on certain holy days. The adventurers, however, are exempt from this rule. The community wishes the party to accompany the youth up the stairs to verify his message, and whether to act upon it.