Notes for a possible mod or game. This is an idea that popped into my head a week or so back, and I'm writing it down to try and exorcise it. Consequently, there is a very good chance that this will never progress beyond these notes. No pictures as yet, though I may add some later.

With that out of the way...

Cattle Drive!

Fifty bound and naked human females need to be herded across 250 miles of hostile wilderness The women are genetically engineered and lab grown with no more than animal intelligence. However each of them carries in her womb a BioPharmaceutical package containing badly needed vaccine. Adverse atmospheric conditions have grounded any sort of flyer, and no ground vehicles exist capable of moving so many passengers over such terrain.

And so the shipping company resorts to a technique from Old Earth. The Cattle Drive!

Genre: S/F

Setting: Takes place on a mixed tech planet. Overall tech is similar to Earth in the 1880s, but with some high tech gadgets imported from offworld, and the occasional high tech installation. Think "Firefly" and you won't be too far wrong.

Pharmgirls:

In this setting Big Pharma has invested heavily in bioengineering. Organisms are created which can be efficiently harvested for a high yield of tailored pharmaceutical. However, such organisms have incredibly precise physiologies, and this makes them vulnerable even to small variations in environment. Mechanical support environments were used initially, but these proved bulky and expensive, especially when shipping offworld.

Then someone realised that the mammalian womb presided a near perfect controlled and stable environment for the organisms. Experiment were performed with various species, but only one could easily go wherever humans might be - humans! These days the women used in this role are almost always vat grown clones, gene-engineered to make their wombs more suited to nurturing a such pharmacological passengers. These women, "pharmgirls" in common parlance, are engineered to have animal level intelligence with no capacity for speech, and adjustment deemed necessary after an early non-engineered pharmgirl developed maternal love for her inhuman "baby" and launched a much publicized lawsuit against her employers.

The Player Role:

This varies, depending on how the game is implemented. For a full game, the obvious role is that of the trail boss, allowing the player to manage his drovers and plan out the journey. For a mod, that might work out as too much micromanagement, so I'd probably let the player sign on as one of the drovers.

There is a third option suited to those who prefer a submissive role. I'll get to that in a bit.

Operational Considerations:

• Pregnancy: The pharmgirls preganacy is not very far advanced. With a human fetus, they would be at about week 12, just approaching the second trimester. However, the pregancies will advance as the creatures in their wombs mature.
• The pharmgirls are herded in restraints. These include
  • A combination harness and backpack that also serves to restrain the hands behind the back in a "box tie" configuration
  • A panel gag and plug, with feeding port.
  • A "chastity belt". This is in actuality a pice of high tech equipment that monitors the health of the biopharm organism in the worm while simultaneously excluding  lifeforms that might want access to the vagina and womb.
  • A pair of leg cuffs, useful for hobbling cattle or restraining them at night
  • Otherwise, pharmgirls are usually kept naked since, animalistic as they are, they do not react well to clothing. Fortunately the local conditions are temperate enough that no special protections will be required.
• The pharmgirl digestive system has been engineered to make very efficient use of a particular high-protein gel. The girls' packs contain a sufficient quantity of gel to feed them through the expected journey. It should also be noted that as a side-effect, the pharmgirls can also metabolize human sperm with similar efficiency. This means that in the event of a pack being damaged or the food supplies being lost, it will be possible for the male drovers to feed the girls via oral sex. it should be noted however that this is an emergency response and one that will not scale will, given  that the girls outnumber the drovers ten to one.
• Arousal: the pharmgirls' biochemistry can be adjusted to better accommodate their implants. The usual method of doing so is to maintain them at a given level of arousal, and this can be easily regulated by circuitry in the "chastity belts". Ideally, the pharmgirls would be kept at that maximum arousal possible without inducing orgasm. However such arousal levels can cause unruly behavior as the pharmgirls seek means of relief and this in turn can reduce the distance each day. The trail boss will have to determine the optimum arousal levels for the herd and adjust it with changing conditions.
• Morale: It is expected that the team of drovers that drive the herd will be largely male. As such, it is to be expected that being surrounded at all times by naked, horny females is going to test the self control of the best of them.
  • It is therefore recommended that, in order to maintain team morale, the drovers be encouraged to use the pharmgirls for oral relief as the need arises. This should result in a happier, more motivated team, and also help save feeding supplies against possible shortages down the line.
  • It is not recommended that the drovers be allowed to tamper with the pharmgirl's chastity fittings. The pharmorgs are in a peculiarly reactive state, and incoming genetic material may have unpredictable effects ranging from destroying the value of the organism to the pharmgirl birthing mutant offspring. It is strongly recommended that the chastity belt remain in place at all times.
  • It is also not recommended that the drovers be allowed to suckle on the pharmgirls. This will be harmless initially, but when the pharmgirls start to lactate, their milk will likely have unexpected chemical properties as a reaction to the needs of their passengers. In other words, the milk may prove toxic, or addictive, or induce hallucinations. It may also be perfectly normal but it would be foolish to rely on this being the case.
• Payment: Payment is upon delivery and is contingent on the quantity of pharmaceutical that can be recovered. Maximum payment results if the all girls are delivered on time, having been maintained at maximum arousal throughout the drive. Any pharmgirl lost in the course of the drive will obviously reduce the payment, and low arousal or too longa time in the womb will degrade the quality of the pharma harvested.

But are they all pharmgirls?

One possible subplot is that, on the world where the shipment originated, an investigative reporter was getting uncomfortably close to uncovering the secrets of the rich and powerful. As such, the easiest way to make her disappear was to restrain her as a pharmgirl, implant her with an organism and include her in the shipment off-world, secure in the knowledge that by the time she arrives at her destination, the combination of sustained arousal and psychoactive chemicals from the organism will likely have destroyed her sanity.

From the trail boss' perspective this presents an interesting quandary. Suppose you come across one of the cattle drawing out "HELP ME" in the dust with her foot? Do you investigate, find out the story, and try and help her, knowing this may incur the wrath of the organization that will be paying out at the end of the drive? Or do you shuffle her back into the herd and pretend not to have seen it? What happens if one of the drovers decides to take up her cause?

This is also the the potential player role for someone who wants a submissive character, although this needs a bit more development

Hazards on the trail

The main problem with the drive is keeping the pharmgirls together. There will be a tendency for girls to become separated from the main herd and recovering them will cost distance travelled and remove drovers from their main duties.

Other possible problems may arise from settlers looking to recruit some womenfolk, low grade bandits looking for some tail, high grade outlaws who know the black market value of the pharms, and a variety of local wildlife some of whom are strongly attracted by the hyper hormonal pheromones given off by the pharmgirls.

Conclusion

That's a brain dump of the ideas involved. As I say, probably I'll never do anything with this, but its been fun getting it written down.