What to smuggle into an Imperial Prison?

[Stingray_tm]

The situation is like this:

A Zhodani spy was cought and members of the Ine Givar try to get him out. In order to do that, they capture the Travellers (who have a bounty on their heads) and use them to smuggle something into the prison, that would help the spy to escape. The player characters should not be aware, what they are used for, because one interrogator is a psion.

I was thinking of injecting/implanting them with something, that could be assembled in prison. Is there anything canonical that could help in such a situation without reverting to some Ancient Space Magic? Or at least something that is plausable with the tech level of the Imperium and the Zhodani Consulate.

 

[Tea Rex]

I was thinking of injecting/implanting them with something, that could be assembled in prison. Is there anything canonical that could help in such a situation without reverting to some Ancient Space Magic? Or at least something that is plausable with the tech level of the Imperium and the Zhodani Consulate.

Nothing comes to my mind in regard of options covered by the canon. But here is an idea that does not seem too far fetched considering the available TL and the Zhodani Consulate's expertise in psi-tech: What about implanting every Traveller a different kind of bioengineered cells able to produce one component of a highly potent psionic drug. These artifical cells act as tiny biochemical factories that are almost impossible to detect, as they are distributed throughout the body. They release their biochemicals into the bloodstream. All by themselves these compounds are harmless and without any effect. But if they are mixed they self assemble into the drug. Perhaps this drug would allow the Zhodani spy to circumvent any drugs administered to him to suppress his psionic powers. Or it enhances and amplifies his psionic powers. For example, if he was a latent teleporter the drug could boost this talent and help him escape.

To get the drug the Travellers could extract the compounds from their blood before mixing them, but as they most likely will lack the equipment for doing this, just pooling their blood and letting the spy drink it should be sufficient (and might be quite disturbing for any observers )

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Well, there’s always the smuggling container mentioned in CSC on p.89…

 

[Stingray_tm]

I like the idea of the Travellers being psionic repeaters or something like that. And yes, I would like to make it inconvenient for them to extract the stuff. They have an expert medic among them who needs a challenge...

An idea I am having here is, that maybe they could work as psionic conduits, so the spy will instruct them to do certain things, where he can use his powers through THEM. (Like getting to the prison ward and read his mind to get to know the combination for the cell door or teleporting into the armory to get weapons)

It's a bit far fetched and probably stretches canon, but hey, if it's cool, then it's cool.

But I also like the idea of a psionic Zhodani vampire as suggested... I need to think about it

 

[NOLATrav]

An idea I am having here is, that maybe they could work as psionic conduits, so the spy will instruct them to do certain things, where he can use his powers through THEM. (Like getting to the prison ward and read his mind to get to know the combination for the cell door or teleporting into the armory to get weapons)

Great idea!

And once the Travellers help the Zho escape, they’ll have been tainted by psionics. Cue blue-handed death squads forever their tails :lol:

 

[PsiTraveller]

A Psi Drug, broken down into 2 or more compounds, a single compound per person. This gets the drug into the prison undetected.
The Zho has to do the vampire thing to drink the blood of multiple travellers to get the effect of the psi drug.

The psi drug is a boosting drug to overcome the null drug the prison feeds the zho to prevent psionics. This gives the Zho prisoner enough psi points to begin his escape.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Stingray_tm]

I am going with the blood suggestion here.

I will also try to arrange a prison fight, where the Zhodani spy suddenly starts liking up his victims blood. This should freak out the players sufficiently