Archive: The Writhing Jungle

As a Pyramid 2 article, only bootlegs and personally-archived files of these articles exist—their Warehouse counterparts are long gone. As such, for the purpose of preservation, these articles will be posted in their entirety, for posterity.
= The Writhing Jungle =
by Paul Drye 
Brasilia-1 is one of White Star Trading's most lucrative timelines. A snap to reach on Quantum-5, it's doubly interesting for being slightly ahead of Homeline in several fields of endeavor. The patents and techniques Brasilians use are easily understandable, and can be licensed cheaply when they're not stolen outright. Outtime investment runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and any number of fortunes are based on Brasilian businesses that are shells diverting items to Homeline. 
Unfortunately for outtimers, the timeline is under a growing threat coming from the Amazon jungle. As Brazil is the industrial superpower here, the river of cash flowing between the two worlds may be cut off. 
== History ==
This world's history is the same as Homeline's until the 1600s, when the French Wars of Religion were settled by encouraging dissidents to move to the French colony in New France and, later, Louisiana. From there events gradually diverged. The British failed to break the French grip on the interior of North America and their own holdings broke into two pieces, one north of a successful Dutch colony and the other to the south. All European colonies were then lost to their overlords in the aftermath of the Russian Coalition War. In the modern-day, 1987, North America is subdivided much like Homeline's Central and South America. 
Brazil (or, to use this timeline's spelling, Brasil) became the destination of choice for many European emigrants. Its frontier opportunities were available longer than any other's and its cities grew large to support the vast hinterland. While the greater distance from Europe slowed things down as compared to the Homeline USA, Brasil has just exceeded a population of 160 million, and is the most populous and advanced developed nation in this timeline. 
Apart from the political differences, the most important change to history is technological. Brasilia-1 is a solid TL9 in biotechnology and medical science. Having the Amazon Jungle to the north of the world's most advanced nation for centuries has sparked all the timeline's biology-related techniques. Most other sciences and technology are roughly comparable to Homeline's; the exceptions are "big iron" nuclear and space science. For example, the first nuclear weapons on Brasilia-1 weren't set off until 1961. 
== The Trouble ==
It's been two years since the first reports of odd animal behavior came out of the western Amazon jungle. Individual animals would engage in an orgy of pointless violence against others, and would attack people if given the opportunity. The problem spread very quickly, both geographically and in the numbers of animals involved. In the last few months the entire western half of the jungle, up to the site of Homeline Manaus, has seen constant ecological bloodshed, culminating in "frenzies" (to use the local parlance) over areas of several square miles. In them, every vertebrate animal attacks every other until nothing of them is left. Left behind are comparative deserts of only plants and insects, and a collapsing ecology in the sudden absence of many species. Outside the main area of trouble, sporadic outbursts have been seen as far downstream as the Atlantic coast. 
The one exception to the phenomenon is humans, which have been unaffected directly even if no-one knows why. Unfortunately, they're certainly targets of opportunity for the suddenly voracious jungle and over a million refugees have flocked to the large cities in the affected zone, or to points east. Millions of other people are at risk. The resulting humanitarian crisis and economic disruptions have been immense. The latter of these consequences has particularly affected Homeline and drawn Infinity's notice. 
Meanwhile, the Brasilians have been forced to mobilize their army for peace-keeping, and their entire medical and wildlife management communities have turned their attention to the issue. The events seem to be related to some infectious agent, probably carried by an insect vector — maps of the outbreaks certainly suggest it — but there's been no success in figuring out what that agent is. Part of the trouble is that it's not like any disease anyone's heard of before: broadly affecting so many species and having such an unusual effect on their behavior. One of the strongest rumors is that it's a biological attack, and some worry that the country may panic itself into war.
== White Star Trading in Brasilia-1 ==
Homeline has tens of thousands of outtime traders, and it still isn't enough to cover all the known potentially profitable timelines. White Star itself is already too large and too dispersed for much control, and under those circumstances keeping employees from pursuing far more lucrative goals than mere salaries is difficult. One strategy they use is to give outtime agents the latitude to invest and trade on their own behalf as well as for White Star, which at least has the advantage of keeping conflicts of interest out in the open where they can be regulated. Brasilia-1 is one of the timelines where White Star has adopted this tack; as a politically stable, moderately advanced world, it's safe to leave the traders here to their own devices and concentrate scarce human resources on more problematic situations. 
This has had two unfortunate effects, one general to any place where this strategy is used and one specific to the new situation on Brasilia-1. First, the assignment to some timelines is so lucrative that there's a great deal of politicking to get them. In many cases, White Star ends up with people who are brilliant at infighting and less-than-ideal otherwise, particularly since an annoyingly large percentage of them have borderline sociopathic personalities. 
The specific problem is that the tactic depends on the timeline being stable. If the situation goes pear-shaped, the agents certainly have the autonomy to react, but they usually don't have the resources to do it well. Since Brasilia-1's situation started deteriorating, Infinity's interaction with White Star's Brasilian operations has oscillated uncomfortably between the civilians screaming for help, then screaming again when Infinity upsets some of their apple carts in the course of trying to fix the problem. As White Star's people on the timeline are often rich and are invariably politically connected back home, it makes interventions simultaneously impossible to avoid and difficult to pull off cleanly. 
In total, there are only a few dozen of White Star's people in Brasil (and more elsewhere on Brasilia-1). Despite their low numbers, they are in charge of running several small or medium-sized concerns that are integrated into the Brasilian economy, producing about 90% of their output as sales to the locals as a cover for the 10% they ship back to Homeline. All appear middlingly well-off, but possess considerable hidden wealth. They are interested in getting a solution to their new problems, and specifically not interested in losing their usual leeway — it's the foundation of their current and future wealth. Several are profoundly interested in avoiding too much attention from White Star back home too, because their criminal sidelines will be revealed by on-the-spot scrutiny. 
== The Base of Operations ==
Most of White Star's infrastructure in Brasil is to the south and east in the large cities of the coast, particularly the capital of São Paulo, which is to Brasilia-1 what New York City is to Homeline. Since Infinity piggybacks on their work, this has made it hard to get to the heart of the trouble. 
In Amazonia, about all they've got is a few regional offices and small factories in Alto Solimões, the Brasilian town where Homeline has Manaus; these are entirely run and managed by locals who have no idea that they're working for anything other than a normal business. The last few months has seen a flurry of activity as White Star and Infinity have tried to put more Homeliners into the trouble areas. 
Like its Homeline doppelgänger, Alto Solimões was built on the rubber trade during the late 19th century, but unlike Manaus it managed to dodge the following bust. It diversified into the chemical trade based on oil sands shipped down the Rio Negro, and has gradually become a high-tech industrial city that's a marked contrast to the jungle around it. Anyone familiar with Homeline Houston, Dubai, or Edmonton will find much familiar. 
== The Boto River Scouts ==
One tool the Brasilians have at their disposal is a group of genetically engineered Boto, otherwise known as Amazon River Dolphins. A freshwater species, they've been used for years in Brasil, and in recent times have been made more intelligent and better at communicating with humans. They're not legally recognized as persons under Brasilian law, which has been a bit of an issue with animal rights groups on Homeline, but so far White Star Trading has managed to fend off even the least bit of oversight in their interaction with them. 
The Boto look much like other dolphins, through their skin shows rolls of fat when they bend, and their beaks are considerably longer than those of ocean-bound species. Their most notable characteristic is their color, which is typically gray only when they are young. As they age, a reddish flush spreads from their heads, and eventually turns the animal a remarkable light coral pink. Brasilia-1's animals are also notable for commonly wearing harnesses to carry equipment.
The Brasilian army uses the dolphins to scout the river, drawing attention to anything out of the ordinary that might not be noticed by humans. Similarly, they're used for security purposes, stopping or stalling interlopers and squawking back to base as needed. 
The whole Boto project is a bit of a boondoggle. The money poured into it could have been used more effectively on traditional approaches to the problems the dolphins address. Still, they exist, and they've been thrown into the breach (along with every other resource the Brasilians can muster) ever since the frenzies began. 
== The Source of the Problem ==
Far up in the Andes, a Peruvian biotech lab molders away, a victim of a civil war almost two decades ago. In the chaos that engulfed its final days, it was abandoned without the usual clean-up. One of its experiments, a study of prion diseases, is ultimately responsible for the changes in the Amazon. A few particles from it were swept by rain into the nearby Marañón River, which winds its way down through the mountains before reaching Amazonia and forming part of the river system there. 
After escaping into the wild, the disease infected monkeys in the Peruvian section of the jungle, and was of no consequence until recently. Then one of the various strains of the prion managed to jump to lice on the monkeys and from there into the vast number of insects in the area. The infection causes no symptoms in non-vertebrates, but with a huge reservoir of disease to play with, natural selection has been spitting out further variations that are gradually conquering every other living thing in the jungle.
When infected, any animal with a midbrain (essentially mammals, birds, lizards, amphibians, and fish) has the prion settle in that region and start affecting the animal's response/reward system. Violence becomes enjoyable, as much as eating and reproducing. This is counter to the long-term survival of the animal, but the prion can circumvent Darwin's inevitable displeasure by infecting other animals before its host dies. The result is a cycle of boom-and-bust violence depending on how many animals have massacred themselves in any area.
The Brasilians haven't managed to discover the prion infection because of one safeguard the Peruvian scientists built into their work: the protein that forms its "body" unfolds below 78°F and resumes its identity as a normal chemical in the brain. The warm tropics are ideal for it, and it can exist in colder climates in warm-blooded animals, but if it is in a corpse and brought to an air-conditioned lab it ceases to exist. 
One further safeguard makes the prion less dangerous, and explains why humans are never co-opted by the jungle. When it was engineered, the researchers added a sequence to it that prevents human infection while being simultaneously critical to its reproduction. If a strain of infection develops that can enter H. sapiens, it will be unable to spread from its host. 
Even on the off-chance that the adventurers discover or trigger the discovery of the prion, Brasil's troubles are not over. Their biotech can cure the infection in any individual, but there are roughly a billion animals infected, give or take an order of magnitude. It's a little like the difference between knowing tsunamis are caused by earthquakes and actually being able to do something about it once one is on its way.
== Characters ==
D.F. Ramos: Ramos, as everyone but his mother calls him, is a first-generation immigrant to northern Brasil from Spain. He has lived in the region ever since he was 19, when he came here on a student visa and fell in love with the jungle. After dropping out, he kept a series of odd jobs and used the money he earned to explore up and down the river. Starting about 10 years ago he started becoming more known as an advocate for environmental conservation. He's good at this in a wooly-headed sort of way: his passion for nature outshines his scattershot approach to things. 
Now that this crisis has hit, his failure to think through what he wants is coming back to bite him. He thinks the Amazon would be better in many ways if it didn't have any people in it, so in some ways he's happy to see it "fighting back," as he puts it. On the other hand, he's profoundly pained by the suffering of refugees, being a kind soul at heart, and is very distressed that the jungle treats him with as much hate as the worst environmental offender. 
Ramos is a latter-day granola type, immersed in the loose, new-age spiritualism of Brasilia-1. He generally acts for the best, and will even display remarkable personal bravery while he does it, though he often gets a wild hair in his head about what is the proper way to move forward with his goals. 
He cuts an outlandish figure, in Andean-style ponchos and leggings with a black Elvis pompadour and scraggly moustache. He talks loudly and is intensely friendly with everyone who hasn't offended his sensibilities. For all his cartoony aspects, though, he has very good knowledge of the forest, and good instincts for when things aren't right. 
Lúcio Eliseo: He is a general de brigada in the Brazilian Army, and the man in charge of relief activities for Alto Solimões. He is also, quite frankly, over his head and is over-compensating for this with aggressiveness. He'll have nothing to do with "science fiction," as he calls it; his tendency is to solve most problems by shooting a few rapid rounds at it. Unfortunately, if Infinity agents try to approach problems on Brasilia-1 through official channels, they'll run into the general's desperate enthusiasm. On the other hand, if they tell him what he wants to hear, he can be very useful.
Lúcio's personality is quite brittle, and he likes to feel in control. If the situation turns sour in Alto Solimões and he faces violence personally, he's likely to crack up completely. Until then, though, he goes out of his way to keep a perfect façade up. 
The general is a big, beefy man with watery blue eyes and a thick unibrow. 
Morella: One of the Brasilian river dolphins, Morella is notable for her astonishing acquisitiveness. She's got a conservative streak, and resents not being a regular dolphin (and to heck with the mental consequences if she hadn't been engineered). She takes this out by sequestering every interesting object she finds, sticking each in some underwater location where it won't be discovered by land-dwellers.
Her name means, loosely, "Brownie" and comes from her distinguishing feature: a discolored brown spot of skin on the left side of her head. Otherwise she looks much like any other dolphin. 
Morella has become one of Infinity's best moles in the Brasilian relief attempts. Her avariciousness makes her a great target for bribery, and she enjoys knowing that she's messing with her supposed employers. She doesn't know what White Star really is, but doesn't care. If it comes down to it, she might even want to come over to Infinity's side as a local agent if the opportunity arises. 
== Adventures in the Writhing Jungle ==
A Thousand Furlongs of Sea: A strange series of events on a pre-industrial timeline has uncovered a strange plot to, presumably, destabilize it. The Habsburg emperor's wife was attacked by a lion tamarin she had been given as a pet by a White Star trader. When examined closely, the chain of transactions that got the monkey there leads back to Brasilia1 — the attack was not deliberate, but rather a coincidental infection of the animal. However, the creature had been bio-engineered to give off powerful abortifacent drugs in its shed fur and skin, the best guess being that someone was playing a long-term game to prevent an heir to the Habsburg Empire. Investigators need to go to Brasilia-1 and track down what is going on. 
NIMBY: Feelings are understandably high in Amazonia, and while hospitality can be obtained, it generally must be arranged in advanced. Most people understand that humans are immune to the jungle's influence, but no-one knows why this is so and everyone worries that it won't last. Surprises are accordingly viewed with suspicion. 
In this environment, the adventurers are resting in a small village well into the wilderness when a straggling group of refugees arrives. They're not locals, and appear to be from somewhere rich and developed, probably a science mission of whatnot from the coast. The villagers turn against them and are about to drive them out when it becomes apparent to the adventurers that these are White Star's people. Apart from the moral obligation to help their compatriots, things might go badly for them at home if word gets back that they didn't help the refugees. 
Red Sky In Morning: A socialist revolutionary group has had its back pressed against the wall by the Colombian government they oppose, and chosen the Amazon as apparently the lesser of two evils. While it's likely they won't live long, until they are killed by the wildlife they present an extra threat to workers in the region. After some of Infinity or White Star's people are kidnapped (or killed), enough pressure has been put on the Brasilian government to offer the rebels an amnesty. The carrot is an airlift back to civilization; the stick is the fury of the jungle. White Star has had the PCs assigned to make the offer, and it is hoped the insurgents have been sufficiently disillusioned by their experience in the forest to accept it. 
Take Me To The River: White Star has sprung for a clandestine expedition to a frenzy. The group are transported (with associated scientific or military people as needed) on short notice to a site 60 miles west of the town of Tefé; this is deep in the jungle between the Amazon and its tributary, the Juruá. In other words, it's the back of beyond even by Brasilian standards. 
It's hairy enough getting there by air and retrieving biological specimens for transport back to civilization. Additional complications come from the Caliph-tech stasis boxes the group has been provided in an attempt to keep the specimens as pristine as possible. As far as the PCs are concerned they're powered by unknowable magic, and are correspondingly balky in primitive, TL8+ hands. Everything starts to go really wrong when, not long after the return journey starts, a huge flock of birds deliberately flies into their transport and they crash land in the middle of the jungle. 
== Using the Writhing Jungle in Other Settings ==
Fantasy campaigns often use jungles (and associated quasi-Mesoamerican peoples and pyramids) as adventure settings. This is usually an attempt to mine 19th- and early 20th-century adventure literature for ideas, but what these modern takes often miss is the uneasiness the jungle provoked in the original authors. Western culture has swung back towards a nature-loving perspective after a long post-Romantic period lull, and modern readers usually fail to understand how much Burroughs, Kipling, Conrad, and others position the jungle as an adversary. Too many Discovery Channel documentaries and modern medicines have softened attitudes. 
With that in mind, the malicious Amazon of Brasilia-1 can be used to turn nature into an active enemy to counter that it's no longer perceived as one. This is equally true for pulp campaigns that are more directly based on 1920s and 30s forms. Players are likelier to play threatened pulp characters well if they lose their modern-day complacency about the wilderness. 
Sci-fi games can be a bit trickier to integrate with the Writhing Jungle. If one is playing the more-traditional type of science fiction, such as Traveller or any of the TV- or movie-license games, the jungle can be dropped onto a planet wholesale. Harder science fiction has more trouble, though. While the basic concept of "the ecology hates you" can be used (and is a fairly common sci-fi trope), the reason the jungle has gone insane will need to be re-examined. As presented here, the technobabble relies on Earth's biology. Using prions and targeting midbrains is problematic when transposed to an alien form of life. If the GM is willing to forgo the nasty surprise that solving the riddle doesn't solve the problem, this is not an issue, but otherwise it will be necessary to come up with an explanation that fits this need.
== Notes and Trivia ==
* This article uses "--" for em dashes (—).
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