Production of antivenom requires an animal - to inject diluted venom into in order to invoke an immune response. But screw that, you're going to invent a new way. After a fair bit of research and theorizing, you conclude that using a heat source, some relatively cheap laboratory equipment, and a sample of blood from a human or animal, you could artificially create antivenom with venom from your scorpions.
The laboratory equipment required costs $70, but you don't purchase it today. A heat source would also be required, as previously concluded, but you could probably buy a bunsen burner (which would need fuel) for $20, an electric heat source for $60, or you could always just make your own.
You head out to some commercial areas of the city and buy a roach trap as well as some tweezers for a combined total of
$10. You set it up in the garage and already get a decent amount of roaches within the following hour. You make sure to routinely feed the scorpions, ensuring that they're fed as long as all the roaches don't mysteriously disappear. You also considered making your own moth trap, but in the end you concluded that this was probably a better idea.
But the biggest priority today is finding a microwave. For some reason. You head to the dump and rather easily
find a microwave within a fair bit of time. It's pretty old and dirty, but it works. You have great plans for this microwave?
On the way to the dump, you also took a bit of time to look for any notable flora. You didn't find anything - it turns out that the cracks between pavement are not a great place for valuable and useful plant life to grow in. Oh well.
You also spend some of the day experimenting with a grenade launcher. For someone of your
amazing intellect, it's actually not that difficult to pull off. Some tubing of a sturdy enough material, a basic trigger mechanism, some adjustments to the barrel, and a firing mechanism. You spend
$10 on enough small components and
$6 on some sturdy piping to use as the barrel. You also spend
$10 on a very small amount of butane for fuel.
After a while of experimentation, you haven't had much luck with it. The contraption just isn't sturdy enough to survive long enough to even fire one shot. Any projectile loaded just gets dropped at the end of the tubing while the rest of the pressure bursts out the back. At least you still have a small amount of leftover butane.
Weapon created: Broken Makeshift Gas-Powered Projectile LauncherItem bought: 400 ml Butane GasYou think about building a flamethrower with the remaining gas, if that's even a possible thing. It's legal, afterall--
Wait, it's not? Local laws?
Damn.
You would also try experimenting with venom darts, but you're not comfortable with spending any more money. Other than on a
$10 shovel, that is. But the basement digging will have to wait, since it turns out that buildings have foundations, and foundations are hard to dig through. If you want an underground storage room, you're going to need to find somewhere else to dig it, or find a way to create it under the garage while keeping it structurally sound.
You spend the afternoon investigating methods of keeping venom "fresh". Really, you can't do much right now to experiment. If you had an array of chemicals to actually be able to use, you could get a lot more progress in this front, but alas, you are in fact living in a trashy garage. You think that either refrigeration or (maybe) vacuum sealing could work as preservation techniques, but without money or supplies you can't test out anything.
Finally, in the evening, you organize another meeting with your contact. You ask about the kids of those in the gang, and if you could teach them anything. You consider the possibility of mentioning the ability to teach kids "out" of the gang, but the second-in-command obviously doesn't want that. He tells you that there are four children around the age of 10 that he thinks have something to gain from your tutoring. He gives you the information to contact their parent gang members and tells you that he'll let them know as well.
You extracted 1 ml of venom today, and sold it for
$20.
Cash: $22
Housing: Trashy Garage
Holdings:
Tools- Cheap Welder
- Handheld Drill
- Shovel
Structures- Makeshift Data Terminal
- Makeshift Terrarium [2 Deadly Scorpions]
- Roach Trap [Feeding 2/3 scorpions]
Creatures- [Makeshift Terrarium] 2 Deadly Scorpions - Nineteen, Eighty-Four (Fed by Roach Trap)
Items and Materials- 4x 5 ml Glass Vials
- 6x Small Scrap Metal Pieces
- 4x Broken Circuit Boards
- 1x Butane Can [400 ml]
- 1x Old Microwave
Weapons- 1x Glock 20
- 1x Broken Makeshift Gas-Powered Projectile Launcher
Ammunition- 1x 10mm Magazine - 17/17
- 1x 10mm Magazine - 11/17
- 1x 10mm Venom Bullet (Expires in: 2 days)
Alright, starting now, I'm not going to do "auto-scavenge". If the character needs some material to make an item, but the method of getting the material wasn't specified, they'll either buy it, find a way around it, or abort the project. This is mostly to make it less "magic" - you have to work or pay for your resources, damnit!
Also, regarding trying failed inventions/experiments/whatever again. The game is mostly chance-based, which means that occasionally you'll just fail to get any meaningful results. You can try again, but there will be a penalty applied to the roll unless you suggest a way around the stated problem/a different method.
e.g. I say "You try making the death ray, but the spacetime-manipulator just doesn't properly activate." If the supported action is "Try again"/"Work harder", I'll roll it again, but with a penalty applied. If the supported action is "Try using the quantum applicator to beamerize the raychamber instead", I'll roll again with no penalties.
And as always, I don't have any particular personal experience with butane-fueled grenade launchers. Ingame data probably won't correspond to real life.
Poll
2 (22.2%)
Author
Topic: You are an Independent Scientist! (Nov 12, 2016) (Read 37359 times)