Biotechnica: The Megacorp That Made Wheat Into Fuel and Feeds Night City

One fuel, a lot of leverage#

In 1991 the world is in a fuel crisis, and Biotechnica is a small company in Rome with one office. Its answer is CHOOH2, a synthetic grain alcohol made by genetically engineered yeasts from a custom wheat called Triticum vulgaris megasuavis.

It cannot make enough of it. So Biotechnica sells licenses instead, first to Petrochem, then to fourteen other makers including SovOil. Petrochem ends up producing about 60 percent of the world's supply. CHOOH2 becomes the standard fuel, and Biotechnica collects fees forever for a product it barely manufactures. It is the best business model in the setting, and not a great sign for the setting.

From fuel to farms#

Fees fund expansion. Biotechnica breeds crops that grow in the new climate, including FrostCorn, adaptable to any condition, which it licenses to governments, Alaska among them, and to small farms. Annual license fees slowly drain the little operations, and many sell their land to Biotechnica itself.

Some of those farmers form Crimson Harvest, an anti-corporate group demanding an end to the squeeze. Biotechnica responds by raising prices and, per rumor, releasing a virus that hurts crops grown from unlicensed grain. After a bloody incident at a Biotechnica facility in Paris, Crimson Harvest is declared a terrorist organization, and the conflict only gets worse.

The company has weapons of its own. It has viruses that can destroy every known variety of its wheat and make seeds unviable. What it created it can kill, which is why Petrochem stays polite.

Biotechnica in 2077#

In the 2070s Biotechnica owns protein farms worldwide, producing synthetic protein derivatives on a massive scale. One, the Biotechnica Flats in the Badlands outside Night City, is the base source of much of the city's food. It also owns All Foods, which sells synthetic food and drink, and has a building in Corporate Plaza.

The slogan is "⁠Adapting You to the Future,⁠" which is a slightly unsettling thing to hear from the company that makes your breakfast.

In 2076 Crimson Harvest attacks Biotechnica's research facility in Paris. The next year a Biotechnica operative, Linda Sherman, is tracking the likely culprit, Nele Springer, through Dogtown. See Dogtown for the district.

The skeletons#

In the early 2070s a netrunner, Sasha Yakovleva, breaks into the Biotechnica building and finds the undisclosed side effects of Securicine, a painkiller the company makes. She gets the data to Network 54 before Biotechnica security kills her.

Then there is Project Nightingale. A team of Biotechnica scientists used the nomad town of the Red Ocher clan as a test subject for research said to be about antibiotics, and at least 70 nomads died. When the information leaked, the company blamed one scientist, Dr. Cuno, who tried to run. A journalist, Manuel Mendoza, and a netrunner he hired were both found and killed.

The pattern is consistent: when the product hurts people, the company shifts the blame.

The Aldecaldos offer#

In 2077 Aldecaldos leader Saul Bright is in talks with Biotechnica. His family would work for the company in exchange for reverse-transpiration xerophytes, equipment to grow crops in the Badlands. It would give his people steady income and some independence.

It is also the fight that sent Panam Palmer out of the clan. A deal with a company that tests on nomads is a hard sell to the nomads. Our nomads page covers the clan dynamics..

Fixer's notes#

Opinion: Biotechnica is the most plausible corporation in the setting. It does not need soldiers when it can own the supply of food and fuel. Arasaka has an army. Biotechnica has your dinner.

For a campaign hook, take any of the three scandals above and have the players find the evidence. The question is not whether the company is guilty, it is who in the building wants it to come out. Compare the other fuel giant in the megacorporations overview.