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My party has turned on Astral Extractions hard. The party is full of hard-luck Akitonians who sympathized with the Hardscrabble Collective and spat bitter hate for a corporation who assassinated Kreel. They also chose to keep these sympathies quiet for the time being, which means in the public eye they are a neutral group which is showing restraint on behalf of the Starfinders. So into Ambassador Nor's service they go.
But in the meantime, they want to start moving against Astral Extractions. The attempt on their life as they travel to the Drift Rock will likely increase this motive. At the end of the last session the party indicated they wanted to start gathering information on Astral Extractions, including board members, and figure out a long-term plan to punish the company.
I'm all about this kind of thing; I want my PCs to engage with the game world on their terms and having a Corp villain fits in well with the theme of the game. The rivalry with Astral Extractions can be a nice side piece to the rest of the plot.
That being said, anyone have any ideas or suggestions how to work this into AP? I'm not quite sure where to begin.
You'll have to place AE offices in the other planets the characters visit after the first part...
I'm still prepping to GM book one, but from the synopsis it seems the PCs don't even return to Absalom Station after the drift rock shenanigans.
Maybe the megacorp punished some executive after losing money and face on the whole scheme, and he decides to take a vacation and plot against the party, or is just transferred around, always ending up in the same place as they are. A recurring secondary villain type. He should join forces with them at the last book, if he's still around, to fulfill his trope destiny.
Perhaps drip feeding them some potential names and targets within the AE hierarchy - perhaps a base subaltern or head of a colonial mining operation to start with?
From there they can slowly build more information on AE's corruption, coverups on safety breaches etc (which ties in with Kreel's backstory of losing a cousin to AE malpractice.
Of course the deeper they dig, the more chance AE hits back with its own covert mercs or attempts to counter the group's efforts with their own "dirty tricks" campaign.
I'm also going the same route with AE - in my game Miss Joss has become Ms JÖ.55 - A Jörmungandr Class Android (cutting edge Protocol/Black Ops model) and will be a real thorn in the group's side going forward - especially if they cause AE any public embarrassment (and affect Pact World investors etc).
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The thing is that AE is a massive corporate entity, and a shady one at that. They will have shell companies for their shell companies, and will only work against the PCs in secret backhanded ways.
If I was going to flesh this out I would definitely work with the whole corporate espionage angle. The company won't go after the PCs publicly, might even put out messages of support. They will try to discredit the PCs through shell companies.
One thing you could have happen is another small mining corp, who is secretly a shell for AE, approach the PCs with information if the PCs work with them. Maybe even hire the PCs as consultants. Then later information is brought to light the that the corporation is doing some horribly immoral things, child labor, slave labor, etc. The corporation closes shop and leaves the PCs to deal with the fallout. The PCs could very quickly be on the wrong side of Absalom Station Security when holo vids pop up on Absalom Station News showing mines full of children or slaves with the PCs names plastered across the headline.
Perhaps the PCs are stranded in the Drift after a bit of AE sabotage to their drift engine.
You have to remember that AE got to where they are by being smart and rich. They aren't going to fight the PCs face to face, and its not like the PCs can just go kick down the door of AE's corporate offices and treat it like a dungeon.
The thing is that AE is a massive corporate entity, and a shady one at that. They will have shell companies for their shell companies, and will only work against the PCs in secret backhanded ways.
If I was going to flesh this out I would definitely work with the whole corporate espionage angle. The company won't go after the PCs publicly, might even put out messages of support. They will try to discredit the PCs through shell companies.
I like this a lot. As the PCs escalate things against AE, they find a lot of other things going badly for them.
What I need to do now is determine how much AE is going to do up front. I think they'll see "damage done" if the PCs come back alive from the Drift Rock and not keep trying to kill them. But if the PCs start moving against AE, I would bet the Company will do what it can to kill their reputation before killing them.
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I would read up on Shadowrun for inspiration on how to handle PCs-vs-megacorp action.
Give them a Mr. Johnson-style handler (maybe on the Level 21 Crew? There's also a hacker in The Commencement SFS adventure that might be fun to use) who can look out for opportunities to hit Astral Extractions and dole out quests to the PCs.
Make sure that you play the corporation as extremely sneaky and underhanded... like they create a shell corporation unknown to the PCs just to set them up for a murder or leave them stranded in the drift/a far-off planet.
And they should never be in an exposed position... any evidence the PCs find, at least at first, can take down individual operatives of AE, maybe collapse the shells, but there will always be plausible deniability.
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I played the corporation as extremely lawful evil.
They claimed ownership of both the Drift Rock AND the Acreon. They based themselves in some shady iterpretation of the law, which was read as "wreckage in a private property do not have salvage rights, it belongs to the owner of the property". They they claimed that, as the Acreon was tied to the Drift Rock by a wire, it was technically in their property. Sunrise Maiden was spared of this because a) testament laws superseded this and b) they wanted to bribe the PC to make them push the embassador's decission towards them.
However, I also played the Collective as a bit more greedy than in the book. They had the right motivation (raising money for the families and the collective), but they also tried to claim property of the Drift.
The corporation also offered the PC 20.000 credits, to test them. This caused a bit of tension in the group, as the least good aligned players wanted to do this.
In the end, they opted to be solomonic. They suggested the Ambassador that the Collective should get the Achreon, the mega-corp should get the minerals in the rock, and Starfinder Society should get the rights to study the kishalee station.
They don't know yet that in my version of the AP, Astral Extractions is a subsidiary of a bigger Consortium of corporations, called Aspid. Which is not as happy as they could be with this decision :)
@Gustavo: Very cool. I'm portraying the Hardscrabble Collective or "HC" as a pseudo- worker's union vibe, and while they are (currently) very much the underdogs as far as my group are concerned - there will be a "firebrand" element to them.
Love the idea of the AE claiming both the Drift Rock and the Acreon. Attempting to pay the group off will be an interesting test of their moral compass, and having AE connected to the Aspis Consortium is (evil) genius hombre.
The corporation offered 10.000 credits first, then doubled to 20.000. That shook the foundations of their first decision a bit, making them argue about it a bit (there is a mercenary drow in the party, who wanted to get the money. Lawful characters were also compelled to AE's side, because, in fact, they were the ones with legal rights to everything, even if it was because of a law loophole). The NG diplomatic Technomancer made a good job convincing the group to be fair. I thought about raising the stakes to something really tempting, like 100.000, to check how much they were able to stand by the "right choice" with a significant bribe. But I worried about WBL implications if they had fallen for the evil side.