I'm contributing to a homebrew Science Fiction setting and had the idea of biotechnology gear and weapons that uses local lifeforms and changes them into weird, gross, awesome stuff.
Cronenberg-like stuff.
Like grenades that are actually insect cocoons harboring an aggressive flying bug that splats against anything that moves.
There's a gland on the bio-grenade through which you can inject your choice of liquid into a resistant sac inside the dormant bug.
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My basic unit for making the stuff is a portable biotechnology kit that analyzes lifeforms and has a set of "recipes" so it mixes a formula to change the critter into something useful.
First you mutate a critter into a gestation sac into which you put other critters so they can change much quicker and in higher quantities.
The idea behind that is that you save a lot of space for stuff during space travel and you can still exploit mineral poor worlds that have lots of lifeforms on it.
Also basically the style of a culture that uses a crab claw instead of a metal wrench to do the same job.
Conch Hammers
Essentially shellfish modified to be used as powerful bludgeoning weapons. Their "foot" acts as the handle and they keep their shell closed to protect their internals being able to withstand powerful impacts and even able to deploy spikes from their shells.
On top of their regular feeding by leaving them in water enriched with plankton they require blood from their user to maintain their imprinting.
If they sense they are being used by someone they were not imprinted on they will attempt to attack the user crushing their arms with their armored foot and smashing into them with their shells and often attempt to eat them afterwards.
Mod your arm so it can spit open and reveal hidden weapons.
I don't know if it's what you're looking for but I once had an idea about a plasma gun that was made of meat and fired using bioluminescence to produce a laser that heated up internal gases and then threw the superheated gas at people.
I don't actually know how any of this works.
OP here.
Also added "the claw".
A crablike claw appendage that can be used as tool or weapon.
While the chitin exterior is ripening you can mold the grip to your hand.
If you apply pressure on a nerve cluster close to the grip the claw snaps shut with a powerful muscle.
Penis will always be the first and ultimate bio-weapon, want to slowly replace those other guys with your guys? rape them, want to scare them from fighting you? rape them, want to kill them? rape them to death.
T. Slaneesh
Bumping because I'm in a similar situation as OP and want to get some cool ideas for some bio-droid and bio weapon type stuff.
Bump
So you want to throw exploding laserfarts on people?
No problem here.
I always liked the DolMantle from the Prophet comics.
I just got the idea for a sea cucumber like thing that produces various liquids that can be squirted out by squeezing it.
Like an adhesive that melds biostuff on a cellular level so you can combine your bio-gadgets or make larger things.
Or just the usual grease/poison/anesthetic/acid/bioluminescence shenanigans.
Advanced design has two chambers and squirting glands that combine to a highly combustible mix so you have a hand flamethrower/blowtorch
Reminds me, I've wanted to make a shape shifter character like Kars from jojo's bizarre adventure, but I don't know exactly how I'd balance it for a game. I was thinking maybe make transform a level 1 spell, roll a d100 and choose for a list of effects? That's the best I can think for a character that could apart to anything, and still have a balanced player character. what do you guys think?
Pistol Shrimp claws for guns and rifles. Or mutated flesh that 'sneezes' the projectile.
Mantis Shrimp trinocular eyeball binoculars. See all the spectrums, ever.
Dung Beetle compus.
Mantis claw folding sword.
Jellyfish stinger whip.
Talking about bio-weapons, I can't help but think about Kars surviving lava with a double-layer bubble based carapace.
Maybe have a grenade (or something similar) filled with wasps, that nest and lay eggs in people and rapidly reproduce thereby allowing them to wipe out entire bases or planets, depending upon a pre-specified lifespan and infertility rate of the wasps.
Don't open image if you have trypophobia like I do.
Is that photoshopped or is that an actual condition, parasitic infestation or whatever?
The description gave me an idea: egg grenades.
Literally eggs as explosives, with different eggs for variety like ostrich eggs for large explosions.
Photoshop.
You just want a Dragon Dildo thread.
Mind controlling rats?
Rats that work as microphones and can infiltrate places?
Rats that are part cyborg and swarm and nibble enemies to death?
Suicide bomb rats?
I know none of this is Cronenberg stuff. But rats could be replaced with any planets natural pest-like lifeform to give them a new utility/weapon purpose.
Fart gun
well, it is fantasy related
Troll gods are few and far between since the titans failed against the usurping of the new gods.
Still, they serve a purpose to these rebels yet - their legendary fecundity often springs forth huge swamplands that teem with new life for the gods to control and distort.
>magical creature/biofactory, spawning a twisted swamp ecosystem around itself.
OP here.
I'm still pondering a consistent framework for that bio-gadgets flavor niche so it's a viable option for players to choose.
I think a limiting factor will be a proprietary, highly concentrated serum that changes lifeforms that has to be bought from the source.
That way you still have some running costs.
If you need some more inspiration OP, I would try playing some of the geneforge series, it's a pretty good isometric RPG with bio tools and gene manipulating wizards as staples of the plot.
Critter Crossbows, of course.
It's actually an effect created by applying a thick layer of peanut butter onto a hand and poking holes in it with a pen/brush/whatever. You can see unbroken, normal skin in the holes where there aren't shadows. The redness might be photoshopped, though
what about having homing missiles?
maybe something like a mutated blowfish that contains acid and fills itself with helium so it can 'swim' though the air in order to hit it's objective.
you could use shark and dolphin heads as biological radars.
also look up the effects of the pistol shrimp's "snap" it supposedly can produce a temperature similar to the one of the surface of the sun.
you could have shape-shifting camouflage like octopuses have.
and also there's a kind of fungus that infects insects while it is still a spore and control their muscles to keep their mouths shut, then forces them to walk to a nice windy place where the insect then dies of hunger while the actual mushroom grows inside it and then let the wind transport it's spores so it can keep on reproducing.
apply that to humans and you have a nice horrific bioweapon
That last one is pretty cool.
I always this idea about a modified bug.
it would be based around orthoptera, but instead of having a reproductive system(srly, that thing serves no purpose to the indvidual and gets a lot of energy from your body) which instead has been redesigned as a reservoir to acumulate wathever you feel like, just put it in the DNA.
The thing would be really small, but instead of hiding it somewhere, the bug is designed to burrow itself in wathever his mandibles until it hits something hard which will then keep eating and substituting, so you it becomes one with your bone. Then the bug can either explode inside your bone or throw his content out by emiting some chanels from a modified ovopositor to the skin. either process can be triggered as written in the animal DNA(it would use chem-specific-receptors and shit but I'm not going to go that technical), so mechanical damage of a certain magnitude, electricity, hormones or any kind of chemical substance will trigger the buug action.
To make it more ideal, lets take out more chitin and add more conjunctive tissue between joints so the bug is more flexible and is capable to adapt to almost any bone anywhere, then you give the external caparace a higher ammount of Ca ion precipitation and similar bone proteins and even in a X-ray scan would be difficult to see the little thing or things.
Also, add some classical bone functions, lets say... the bug, once inside, develops a way to absorb blood and continue the bloodstream, this would also allow you to create a way to inject chemicals in your body under any reaction you tell the little thing to do. So if instead of throwing out toxic/flamable/confusing things, it throws out combat drugs you get an infinte supply of those while the bug is fed.
There is nothing stoping you to apply as many as you want, bone is strong, but so is chitin and you made it similar to bone which means that you can also let it fuse(if you want) with other bones.
Depending on to which point you want your world biopunk you can get from simple sheep that excretes some usefull proteins to biocars and biohauses, but idk how much biopunk you want it so...
There was also this idea, to combat the clasical use of robots to destroy organic life since people asume that they're inmune or something.
The idea the use of a modified fungus equiped with especial enzimes that degrades metal, specially silicon and copper, and feed upon the plastics that are usually put in parts that you want to be isolated from these kind of things. The idea for the fungus is that it would create a rizome that is constantly looking for two things: magnetic fields and heat. The last one is easy, some protein sensible to temperature in the apex of the tubes will promote the fungus into getting close to the signature while the magnetic fields would require some ferromagnetic materials that should be usually extracted from the machine the fungus is invading.
Now, to make the thing stronger to the classical cleaning procedures, you need it to get inside as fast as possible where it should be protected. This can be achieved through the insertion method(which could include a superspecially corrosive material that can't be produced by the fungus without destroying it) or by rapid expansion(although I don't see how they could be incompatible), and rapid expansion allows you to find the moving parts and small weakpoints to get inside.
Once inside, the fungus would find an energy source, although you could say its metal, metal is too stable to create the needed energy gradient(hence the idea of electricity and heat to complement), the important part once inside is to break havoc and this can be achieved easily when it gets to a sensible circuit where the degradation of cupper disconnects something important. To make it more usefull add an air/light trigger, so when they open the machine to investigate the fungus will throw its spores several meters.
Monster Hunter style carapace armors made of living polymorphic space beetles sound kinda neat
For weapons, you can create the equivalent of a grenade if you join a bunch of lungs and a resonant chamber which both are surrounded in fast energetic reserves(which means they have to be fed if you want to keep them effective for long) and once you stimulate any part of both organs in a certain way, you have until the lungs "feel" they have enough energy to scream it with all their force for a few seconds, incapacitating the enemy as long as the lungs can keep a good rythm or in high efficiency biological system, kill the enemy or debilitate some structures.
After being used, you can leave them to rot, or in case you need energy for other parts of your bioequipment, throw them into a decomposition bath were specially modify bacteria will eat the pair of organs an precipitate into a usefull nutritive paste that you can either eat or put it in another water bath to feed your equipment(and thats asuming that you bioequipment doesn't have a mouth in itself, although it would mean a full digestive and circulatory system which brings problems in design).
But sooner or later you get kicked in the dick and suddenly it doesn't feel like such a good idea anymore.
The Precursors had the best knife in any vidya.
Trying to create a biorifle is a hard task, a biorifle needs to put a lot pressure and energy into a little projectile to reach the normal 200-400 meters where engagements happen so you need to cheat.
The more brute way to do this is not by creating a biorifle but rather an organ integrated inside the body of the soldier that can absorv energy and matter from a much more complex system(again, such soldiers wouln'd have reproductive system and all that energy would go into the weapon), in this case the system can only be based around pneumatic mechanisms that use either gas or liquid to build up pressure and throw the projectile, but either way I'm not seeing how it can become automatic unless you have more than one thrower.
Another way is somewat the half-life way, instead of just throwing a small projectile, make the projectile be alive and triggered under high speed conditions, so it can correct its course and "feel" the need to keep its speed and trajectory while in the air(if it falls it should also feel sad for being a little useless faggot), so it would have wings that can be adjusted mid flight and should increase the efficiency, but since they would undoubtfully lose speed they should have a certain way to deliver a payload in conditions were they can't deliver as much energy as they could.
If you want the bug to follow a target, pre-program in their chemreceptors a certain scent(gasoline, human sweat, CO2 from engines...) or make the photopositive so they would first go for the lights(or avoid them if you somehow need it).
Another trick, is avoiding projectiles and make the biorifle based around generating smoke/liquid(a liquid that transforms into gas when it touches a surface or a gas that transforms into liquid are not incompatible) but either way are going to be short ranged(maybe 20 meters), but a snake modified to hause a smoke/liquid biotechnological industry, can give you a lot of play.
Modify the brain. Make it elastic like a child's, learn any skill you need.
For example, smoke that turns into a sticky fluid once it touches certain surfaces that don't have a certain substance that only your soldiers/friends do, so they would block lens like cameras, make movement more difficult and if left to solidify, might end up blocking things like exhaust pipes or breathing holes of humans or other bioweapons. The smoke can be formed by bacteria filled with gasses, that they slowly throw out in a inefficient chemical reaction that creates smoke, heat, and energy for other bacterias that when they touch the floor disperse and forma biofilm that after some minutes will turn into a hard surface blocking both light and air from getting in or out.
Letting bacterias play should be your handwavium for almost anything you like. If you have control over their DNA and know how to fold proteins(discovering how proteins fold is like findiing out how to exploit electricity, but in biotech).
If you want to create a like that turns into smoke, it can be again through bacteria living in a water enviroment, that once they're thrown out, by some supermuscules, they start generating heat by some stimuli at the end of the mouth of our modified snake, and start undergoing a process of taking oxygen from the enviroment and combining it in special organeles filled with enzyems that quickly trigger a reaction of forming gas or flamable gas. Now, this brings you a choice of wether you want this gas just do some sparks and do a lot of smoke or instead make it more explosive oriented and go out in a big bang, either way its possible since your can modify the ammount of enzymes and their composition making sure that the chemical proportions of either compound are perfectly under your control.
>child
>learn
Is that why they grow up to be shits?
Op here.
I wasn't looking for self replicating biowarfare population killers. Yet.
Kinda like with nanites that when rogue turn everything into grey goo but for the purpose of our crunch sessions we are more interested in cool smart munitions or rapid reconstruction of bones in the field.
Cool contributions guys.
check out the splicers RPG, it's chock full of this stuff
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Pic related and also the last one on scorn-game.com
scp-wiki.net
>The largest room contains an altar composed of bone, a component of the SCP-2095 organism. Forensic evidence suggest that it was used in a sacrificial manner. It is believed possible that living sacrifices provided SCP-2095 with the nutrients necessary for its survival and the floor itself shows signs of acidic corrosion. The base of the altar has been carved into an Ouroboros, believed to be a symbol of religious importance to the creators of SCP-2095.
Funky bio-weapons, you say?
Look at the Tyranids for crazy bio-weapons as that's their whole schtick.
A classic.