NationStates Jolt Archive

Verdant Archipelago Inc's subsiduary, Verdant Enterprises focuses on the life sciences, primarely biotechnology and drugs. This storefront focuses on medical tools and drugs useful in treating a variety of conditions. These are near futuretech goods, or technology that could appear in the next hundred years.

Medical Technology

Blood Synthesizer Mk VIII

Appearance: Ivory colored soft edged box about the size of a microwave.

Blood transfusions are always difficult because there is never enough blood to go around, especially of rare blood types and there is always the chance that the donor had a blood born disease. Worry no more, with the Blood Synthesizer Mk VIII. Given a small vial of blood and a fresh plasma and filter pack, the Blood Synthesizer can produce up to 2 litres of fresh blood in 15 minutes.

Blood Synthesizer: $100 000
Plasma and Filter pack: $100


Organ Growth Chamber

Appearance: An ivory coloured 1m x 1m x 1m composite box with a thumb, voice, and retinally locked hatch and a flat screen diagnostic touchpad.

One of the precursors to the Uterine Replicator, the Organ Growth Chamber is an invaluable medical tool. In only a few months, any replacement organ can be grown, from skin to a heart. There is really no limit to what can be grown, except bone and brain tissue… all attempts to grow bone or brain tissue have not gone terribly well. Bone can be grown, but it physically needs to be molded into the proper shape. All brain tissue grown so far has been entire inert.

While still quite difficult and expensive, the benefits of cloning your own body parts rather than using other people’s outweigh the risks. The real difficulty is still the actual transplant process.

The actual cost of growing an organ really depends on the organ, but average costs run to about $30 000 for an organ, with guaranteed success. The machine itself runs for $300 000

The sale of all these technologies to foreigners is tightly controlled. While exceptions are made, in general VA will force a customer to make signifigant consessions. With regards to peices of equipment, while the sale of the equipment is restricted, almost anyone may rent the equipment and hire technicians to run it.

Domestic Medical Equipment

Uterine Replicator Mk IV

Appearance: A soft white 1m x 1m x 2m composite box with a thumb, voice, and retinally locked hatch and a flat screen diagnostic touchpad.

While the idea is quite simple, the technology is very complicated. A fertilized egg is implanted into the replicator, which acts in every way like a mother’s womb. The egg implants itself in the fleshy wall of the replicator, which is cloned from the mother. Sensitive equipment monitors conditions inside the replicator, including temperature, nutrient levels, and toxicity. They need to be serviced every few days, and have their pharmacopia of fairly expensive chemicals to work properly. They tend to be run by a central computer, but each has a failsafe backup system. Even with all of these advancements, overall the overall success rate is less than 1%. Of course, most of these failures occur during the placental cloning, and it is standard procedure for doctors to start even 100 placental cultures. After the placenta is installed, the success rate jumps up to 20%, or there is a four in five chance that the child will be stillborn, even at that point. After the first three months of the fetus’s growth, the failure rate drops dramatically, to 1%. Note, that this is being improved, and later versions will be far safer for the child. Note too that children that do come to term are in general healthier and larger than womb births, because the mother’s physical condition has no effect on the health of the child. The entire process, including the placental cloning, drug tailoring, and fertilization takes about 1 year.

While VA is willing to sell replicators, we must state that the process is very involved, and that the success rate will be halved at least if not performed by obstetricians trained by us. Any VA employee receives a voucher worth half the cost of a guaranteed child grown in a replicator as a benefit, assuming the stillborn children are donated to science.

Cost to parents of growing one child: $20 000
Cost to parents of one child, guaranteed $140 000
Cost to parents of one child, guaranteed, assuming stillborn children are donated to science $70 000

All prices here are at cost, assuming bulk domestic purchases. Any exports will have a significantly increased price tag. We are open to negotiations.

Uterine Replicator: $250 000
Drugs and chemicals good for growing a single child: $5000

All of the substances on this list are tightly controlled under Singaporean law. Punishment for unlawful possession is extremely harsh, and in some situations can be considered a capital crime on the same level as treason. Any foreign nationals discovered with any of these substances will have a lengthy and uncomfortable interrogation session. Any group that attempts to reverse engineer or steal any of these substances will have earned Verdant Archipelago’s unremitting enmity.

Combat Drugs and Performence Enhancers

Athena - Classified

Apparent Effects:
Going on Athena is one of the most glorious experiences a person can undergo. As soon as Athena flows through the your brain, the world seems to slow down. All sensations are drawn out, and you have a century to move your arm to pick up that glass of water next to you. You might think that this is infuriating, but it is beautiful. Every action you make is precisely calculated. No reflexes are needed, you have forever to dodge. You see the people around you, their minds stuck in the standard flow of time and you pity them, at the same time as exulting that you are not one of them. You are a god. You can outrun bullets. Nothing can touch you. You are invincible.

The Truth:
Of course, it’s not true. From the outside, someone on Athena has supernatural reflexes and walks with a bizarre grace. Their speech is completely incomprehensible, and they are always moving. They are always graceful, but always adjusting their position. They are not invincible, however, and the ability to see a bullet coming is very different from the ability to get out of the way.

Dangers:
This is an extremely dangerous drug and must be finely administered by a computer. Too much of the drug can cause an instant and universally fatal heart attack, while too little can induce a coma that only two people have ever woken up from. While on Athena, the feeling of invulnerability can easily lead to over-confidence or forgetting that the world really isn’t moving that slowly. Also, since all sensations are drawn out under Athena, any pain you experience feels like it lasts for centuries, and people have gone insane from the pain of superficial wounds. Too, it is amazingly addictive and almost everyone who tries it succumbs to the addiction, so VA installed a safety mechanism. Whenever someone comes out from under Athena, they experience ridiculously bad hangover symptoms that last for five minutes, inducing vomiting and migranes in all subjects. Other symptoms include abdominal cramping, inability to focus eyes, and acid reflux.


The Wall - Classified

Apparent Effects:
Nothing can hurt you. You feel no pain from your wounds. All sensations are deadened, but pain is eliminated completely. If your leg is blown off, you feel nothing at all, just a loss of balance and movement.

The Truth:
Very much like the Apparent Effects. It shuts down pain receptors and a percentage of other nerves throughout the body. It is extremely useful in medicine, as the patient looses feeling all over without going unconscious. The duration of the effects is determined by dose size, but often a single dose will last for half an hour.

Dangers:
While not addictive as traditionally thought of, the ability to cut off pain instantly and completely IS addictive to people suffering from chronic pain. Unfortunately, it cannot be used extensively in hospitals because it causes some permanent nerve damage that can only be cured with difficult and expensive Stem Cell therapy. A further danger in the field is that a casualty may not realize how wounded he or she is and continue fighting instead of seeking medical treatment, or may even aggravate an injury. All Verdant Archipelago and Singaporean troops carry two doses… one is sufficient to put yourself out for half an hour, enough to alleviate pain until a medic can arrive. The second dose is much stronger and is only to be used in the face of certain death. This dose lasts for two hours and causes significant damage.


Fiat Lux - Classified

Apparent Effects:
For the first time in your life, you see clearly. All of the hang-ups and inhibitions that prevent you from acting in the way you know is correct disappear under the crystal clarity of Fiat Lux. All of your biases and superstitions are washed away for the duration of the drug, and you see all things as they truly are. Your emotions are walled away, and you look at everything with a perfectly analytical eye.

The Truth:
This drug strips away everything that makes us human. All emotions disappear, chased into the shadows of the mind by the blinding light of Fiat Lux. For the duration of the drug’s effect, the victim is turned into a perfect sociopath, caring only for herself and her goals. All other things are obstacles in her way, or tools to be used. It does not make her evil, simply totally amoral and uncharitable. No one under Fiat Lux performs crazed, random murders, they perform premeditated horribly precise murders for a specific purpose, so long as it serves their purposes.

The Dangers:
There are the obvious dangers of turning a normal person into a potential serial killer, but there are worse effects of this drug. When you come off it, you remember everything that you did while under it. Everything you thought. All the faults you catalogued while you were under. All of your husbands faults that love blinded you to. All your own faults. Ever comfortable self delusion is stripped away while you are under, and it is very difficult to forget. At the same time, it is an exultant feeling to be totally in control of yourself and see everything as it truly is rather than as you believe it to be. After their first taste, people separate into two groups. The first group endeavor to forget all about the experience and often require intensive therapy. The second group will do anything to get their hands on it again.

Interrogation Drugs


Bal-serum - Exclusively for Police Use, Strictly Controlled
OOC: Sorry about this, In Nomine players

Apparent Effects:
Any person who addresses you while you are under, you trust implicitly. You will naturally believe anything they tell you unless it directly contradicts what you knew before, and even then often the instruction or question can be couched in terms that throws enough doubt on the issue to cloud your mind. You wish to converse and be helpful, and so you feel strongly like speaking your mind constantly. Everyone is your friend, everyone’s jokes are funny, and you are the life of the party, even if you are tied to a chair.

The Truth:
The victim refuses to believe harm is intended to him, and honestly believes everyone is his best friend. This makes him extremely suggestible, and given proper technique, the suggestions can last past the direct effects of the drug. The victim will also constantly speak his mind about whatever he happens to be thinking about and tends to go off on wild and useless tangents. It takes a skilled interrogator to steer the victim’s thoughts to the matter at hand.

The Dangers:
Interestingly, this drug has the fewest dangers of any of the controlled and classified drugs. The only real danger is that a small percentage of the population has a bad reaction to the drug that can be fatal. Verdant Archipelago Inc has developed methods to induce this condition artificially.

Uterine Replicator, Blood Synthesizer, and Organ Growth Chamber added.

Bump.