Evil Corporations

[Psybolt]

Hey, I have an evil corporation in a campaign and I'm looking for creative ideas for what the corporation is involved in. I can come up with the old standbys, but I'm looking for some real creative evil... and I thought where better to turn.

[Psybolt]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

Just to specify, the campaign is a super heroic campaign (4 color) in a world where the super heroes are common. They are already involved in the immoral research of the supers. What else can they do?

 

Are there any good sources that I can rip off ...errrrr... borrow from?

[Hermit]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

If you have watched the 90s cartoon "Batman: The Animated Series" it has some good ones thanks to Rolan Dagget (sp) including one where the corporation creates a virus and tries to spread it through stray cats and other animals they've injected, with the plan to 'miraculously' produce the cure and sell it to the public later on (naturally, the cure is already in existence and in their warehouses)

[Cancer]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

Minor comment: you are being redundant. Evil is inherent in corporations.

 

Something I cooked up but never used:

 

Initial assumption: Someone develops an efficient interface between electronics and the brain. Lots of good stuff (cyberwear) follows from this. Add the complication that compatibility with cyberwear is an iffy thing ... most people tend to reject the implant. But the same tech is used for "reconnecting" the spinal nerves in quadriplegics, and from this field a test is developed which is fairly reliable for telling whether a person will reject the cyberware.

 

But it also opens up a dark possibility. Human brains, being multiply-connected inherently parallel associative memory engines, can perform certain computational tasks much faster than standard computers ... if you can dedicate them to the task.

 

So what happens is an Evil Corp starts marketing massive computational capacity. They're getting it, of course, by kidnapping people, giving them the cyberwear rejection test, and if the person is a non-rejector, they get cored: central nervous system is removed from them and put permanently in a life tank with a cyberinterface, and set to work 24/7/52+ on computing.

 

Add color [painful pun noted only on subsequent editing] if you want. Add some correlation between some other physical characteristic and probability of cyber-rejection. Now there's another trait which causes people to disappear. Choose that one as you will, but you can make it appear really evil if, e.g., it turns out a particular ethnic group has a very low probability of rejection ... so kidnapping those people is more cash-efficient when making new computer farms. This will, of course, appeal to any Evil Corp.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

For more creative evil, I suggest Enforcer84's Magewerks.

[Tonio]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

They can be slipping chemicals (or biological agents, or whatever) into some city's (cities', maybe?) water works (or spraying them into the air, or tainting the food supplies, etc.) in an attempt to generate mutations into superhumans. They'd monitor the population closely and kidnap any that appear to be going super, to brainwash them and turn them into supervillains under their control. Lots of normals might be developing weird (or known) diseases from these chemicals, even dying. Hell, the corp. might even develop a cure for these, and make money from selling it.

[Flames]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

They could be using those inner-city payday loan shacks and check-cashing stands as recruiting stations for agents.

 

A guy comes in who looks able-bodied, the clerk slaps an extra hundred down on the counter and says, "Plenty more where that came from. I got your attention? Good. How'd you like to make more money than you ever made in your life, and crack a few well-deserving heads in the process?"

 

But the PCs find out about it through some street source and the investigation is on.

[Guest Major Tom]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

If you have watched the 90s cartoon "Batman: The Animated Series" it has some good ones thanks to Rolan Dagget (sp) including one where the corporation creates a virus and tries to spread it through stray cats and other animals they've injected' date=' with the plan to 'miraculously' produce the cure and sell it to the public later on (naturally, the cure is already in existence and in their warehouses)[/quote']

 

 

Another "evil corporation" idea that's along these general lines can be found

in Tom Clancy's book Rainbow Six. The evil corporation in this story is

made up of extremist environmentalists and vegans who, in order to prevent

the further destruction of Earth's ecosystem, decide to accomplish this task

by destroying the major cause of that destruction -- namely, mankind. They

plan to accomplish this by means of infecting a huge number of people with

a modified strain of the Ebola virus (which, in the story, was called Shiva) at

the closing ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. Once

infected, the victims would go home and eventually infect others with the

virus, thereby starting a major pandemic.

 

To ensure that the pandemic spreads even further, the corporation plans to

distribute vaccines that are supposedly to immunize their recipients against

the virus, but which actually contain the Shiva virus. The idea was that, once

the vast majority of the human race had died from the virus, and the virus

itself had died out, that the enviro-extremists and their families (who had al-

ready been inoculated with the real vaccine) would be left to inherit the

world and -- hopefully -- to repair what ecological damage they could.

 

Fortunately for the human race, the Law of Unintended Consequences rears

up to bite the bad guys in the a$$.

 

 

Major Tom

[Lord Fyre]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

Well, you could always get the Evil Corporation to get some of its major stock holders elected to high Political office. (Like say, President and Vice-President)

 

There, the stock holders could use the powers of their offices to "trick" Congress into approving the invasion of a Middle-Eastern country.

 

The Evil Corporation would, of course, have already negociated all the important Defense and Reconstruction contracts . . .

 

(Oh, wait . . . )

[Cold Steel]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

The evil corp. can try to "sponser" the PCs for a while so when the heroes try to break free of the corp's grip, the CEO can sue them for breach of contract.

 

Hapless Hero: "What do you mean my powers are the trademark of so and so company?"

 

Evil company's lawyer: "Just that. You can't use my client's powers without paying lincensing fees."

[Yansuf]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

They could be using those inner-city payday loan shacks and check-cashing stands as recruiting stations for agents.

 

A guy comes in who looks able-bodied, the clerk slaps an extra hundred down on the counter and says, "Plenty more where that came from. I got your attention? Good. How'd you like to make more money than you ever made in your life, and crack a few well-deserving heads in the process?"

 

But the PCs find out about it through some street source and the investigation is on.

 

I like it.

But what evil deeds do the use the agents for?

[Narratio]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

Just open up your sense of paranoia!

Ever wondered what mind controlling chemicals are being placed in MacDonalds Secret Sauce? And what they are conditioning us to accept/ believe/ desire?

 

Ever wondered why the continent of Antarctica was divided up by various nations, but the bit in the middle remains unclaimed by anybody and is infact defended by all the surrounding nations claims? (Not really a Corporation thing, but still...)

 

What are those 'Oscars' really made of? And why are the awards ceremonies transmitted around the world, even to places which don't have a film industry or even allow films to be shown?

 

Why does there have to be subsections of government called 'The Milk Marketing Board' or 'The Potato Advisory Committee' to help sell food stuffs that sell themselves? And why are these corporate backed food items being pushed in schools? Free milk programs eh?

 

Noticed how the legal advisors of every third world nation aer American or European trained? And that both sets of 'Bar Associations' have certain reciprocal rights? Is there an undercover war going on here that secretly shapes the worlds political scene?

 

Come on, you can get paranoid about anything, they all make great plot seeds.

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

Just open up your sense of paranoia!

Ever wondered what mind controlling chemicals are being placed in MacDonalds Secret Sauce? And what they are conditioning us to accept/ believe/ desire?

 

--snip--

 

 

 

Come on, you can get paranoid about anything, they all make great plot seeds.

 

 

This reminds me of the Mike Meyers movie So I Married An Axe Murderer:

 

"Dad, how can you hate The Colonel?"

"Because he puts an addictive substance in his chicken which makes you crave it fortnightly!"

[The Monster]

Re: Evil Corporations

 

Fertility research, with a phenomenal success rate at in-vitro fertilization. Only a detailed genetic scan might reveal the insertion of a foreign gene into the resulting embryos/offspring. There is no apparent difference between these children and the rest of humanity...yet. The gene could be as fantastic as causing them to mutate at a given age or signal, or as simple as triggering an extreme dependency to a particular (patented!) substance - medicine, food additive, whatever.

 

 

 

The firm provides environmental protection services - primarily air scrubbers for industrial sites. Many nasty chemicals are trapped in their collectors/filters, which they dutifully replace on a regular basis (weekly or monthly). They then haul the dirty filters to their disposal plant, where the pollutants are concentrated and then secretly re-released into the air. Thus, while the corporation collects gold stars for environmental protection, they also ensure that the problem of pollution never goes away (and may even be worse because of chemical changes to the scrubbed pollutants - oh, and this could be a fine source for superpower-creating accidents).

 

 

 

 

A major insurance firm, in order to reduce the need for illness and life payouts, is quietly replacing its clientele with androids. The androids are, of course, programmed to avoid risky behavior. (The clients themselves are harvested for organ donation, research, or, if need be, simply disposed into landfill.)

Alternatively, the insurance firm is adbucting its clientele and subjecting them to intense post-hypnotic suggestions - a la "alien abductions" - so that they do not remember the event. The clients, while not harmed per se by the treatments, show sudden change of interests (i.e., they no longer go in for hang gliding, or skiing, or police work...); also, the treated clients lose most of their interest in alcohol, drugs, or fast food. What else might be implanted in their minds is anyone's guess.