Lazarus Development - 004

I think I've been getting too a head of myself so I want to start to develop the story a bit better. I created a treatment but was really struggling on how to structure it better and where to transition each act. Here is the original treatment I created. its a very rough draft.

Treatment 001

"A mercenary is currently doing a contract for the ASD weapons manufacturers when the Hackrow Agency who tried to intercept whatever cargo the mercenary was carrying. He was able to get away from them, but they had snuck a bounty hunter into the mercenary ship at the last facility he was at. After fighting the bounty hunter off and dropping his body off in space, the mercenary travelled to the planet Terminus in the pyro system to meet up with the ASD scientist that gave him the contract. After getting a new contract from a sketchy higher up in ASD that he’d never met before, he ventured to a research facility in daymar, a moon that orbits crusader to collect more cargo for the secretive ASD facility.

After reaching the facility and finding out it is an abandoned ASD facility the mercenary sneaks through finding hordes of unknown enemies. Making too much noise alerts some of them to the mercenary which starts a fire fight. After getting knocked back through a window because of a perfectly placed grenade, the mercenary finds a body that seems a bit too familiar. After checking the body’s mobi-glass, he is suddenly filled with a feeling of enlightenment which is slowly followed by dread as he realises that the body is one of his body’s.  He doesn’t remember even being here before, let alone dying here.

He grows suspicious of ASD but keeps it to himself for now as he needs the money to upgrade and repair his ship but also doesn’t know how he ties into everything so will slowly try to find out more information as he goes. Once he gets back to his ship instead of loading the cargo professionally and respecting the privacy of the people that sent out the contract, he decided to take a quick peek at the cargo. This time it was just a small-ish cylinder that seemed to look like some sort of organic matter inside. He decided before he went to hand in the contract that he would visit an off the grid space station located inside an asteroid that is orbiting Yela called grim hex to get it tested by an old friend. The lab sample turned out to be blood from an unknown humanoid species and was highly toxic.

After delivering the lab samples back he was given a new contract but this time there was limited information, he was only told a location and that he needed to find 3 modules that could be printed out at this location."

I started to give the story more structure by giving the opening scene more information so it feels more impactful.

The Ling family hauling (sc-tools, n.d. A) is a company in the game that gives out hauling contracts but I thought it would be cool to make them a secret syndicate that also gives out some investigation/mercenary contracts if you have a high rep with them.

My first treatment I was going to have the main character go to do an executive hangar (sc-tools, n.d. B) which is a kind of event you can do in the game to get a free ship. I was going to have the character find one of his previous bodies there and would probably need a big fight at the end to conclude the third act. I'm thinking it would be better to avoid this completely and choose another event you can do in the game which has you fighting a giant worm (sc-tools, n.d. C).

It would make a lot more sense to have the main character go to a data centre (sc-tools, n.d. D) for the second act and then to another facility called Lazarus Tithonus (Cloud Imperium Games, 2021) in the third act to fight the worm as that's what you have to do in the game as the first treatment didn't really make sense for things you need to do in-game.

Treatment 002

ACT 1

A mercenary is currently doing a contract for a courier company named the Ling dynasty, which is just a front for a small shady organisation. After grabbing the cargo some bounty hunters tried intercepting his ship. He was able to get away from them, one of the bounty hunters managed to sneak aboard into the mercenary ship at the last facility he was at and has been biding his time waiting for the perfect time to strike. The bounty hunter would sabotage his jump drives, bringing the mercenary out of quantum jump and making him get up to investigate. A small fight would break out with the mercenary winning the fight. After fighting the bounty hunter off and dropping his body off in deep space, the mercenary travelled to checkmate space station in pyro to meet the contractor to deliver the cargo and hopefully get a new contract.

The mercenary meets up in the sketchy bar at the back of the pirate space station; this time it was different though. The contractor is normally alone but was sat with someone else this time, surrounded by a heavily armed security detail. They had a new contract for the mercenary with a much bigger payout but would be a lot more dangerous than anything he had done before.

He was tasked at stealing a data drive from an ASD data centre based in Pyro IV. The facility is heavily guarded and would need help from some friends. He met up with an old friend at Gaslight space station and started preparing for their assault, loading up trucks and bikes into the back of their ship as they would need to park far away to avoid any turrets the facility might have.

ACT 2

Getting to the facility the mercenary and his friend were shocked at the amount of ground troops the facility was holding, there was enough to be a small army but that wouldn’t stop them. They fought hard slowly advancing towards the facility doors bit by bit. They got in and cleared out all the floors even killing scientists that got in their way. After searching around and gaining the correct credentials to enter the data room they printed off a data card from the terminal which was labelled specimen access card. They didn’t ask questions, but you could tell the mercenary was confused on what he was stealing. They printed it out but were then rushed by a load of backup from ASD soldiers, they fought them off as hard as they could and were running low on med pen refills. Luckily the card had printed out, and they can run back to their truck and got out of there. On the way out the mercenary spotted a destroyed wing of a ship like his, he ignored it and made his way back to the ship as fast as possible but had left him feeling a weird sense of déjà vu.

Before making it back the mercenary contacted the Ling dynasty representative to let them know he is on his way when the contractor said he would triple the contract pay out if he went to another ASD facility and retrieve and place an egg on a special device and harvest the worm that grew from it. He hesitated but accepted the contract as he desperately needed the money but knew him and his friend could easily take down the facility in just a couple of hours.

ACT 3

After battling through swarms of enemies and reaching the main site, they made their way into the incubation room which was full of scientists begging them not to continue which were met with the friend executing any of the scientists that spoke up which clearly agitated the mercenary. After retrieving the egg and making their way to the device, they were met with big worms breaking through the ground and spitting a toxic substance at them, they had never seen anything like it, but they knew what they had to do and made their way to the device slowly taking down anything that got in their way. The ASD employees weren’t even trying to stop them at this point and were rushing for the shuttle back.

The egg gets placed into the large antenna like device that is struck with lightning, lighting up the strange device which seems to swallow the egg down into it. The mercenaries both look at each other confused when the ground starts to shake bring them to their knees as they look up and see a giant worm rise from the ground. It was like something from myth. It screeched in pain so load the ground beneath them started to vibrate. The mercenary and his friend both took cover and opened fire on the beast. They fought valiantly even dying once or twice and being printed out in a nearby med bed but after some time they finally killed the monster worm, ready to be farmed for its pearls and fangs. They get ready to harvest when the mercenary finds a body wearing an armour he hadn’t worn in years. He was intrigued and reached down to see if his patch was there. As soon as he touched the body, he felt a great amount of dread and was flashed images of a past in his head that he doesn’t remember. He wakes up on his back with the rain splashing on his face, when he spots a load of black dots falling from the sky. About 20 IKTI’s landed on the ground with their guns pointed at them, he looks up at one of them and notices the guy that set the contract.

I want it to be something like a company has an imprint [6] of him set that only gets used whenever the main character dies and doesn't have an imprint set/working.

maybe something like his character only gets sent back to that med-bed whenever somebody cancels his imprint from his mobi-glass before killing him and then whenever he gets sent back to their med-bed he forgets everything kind of like a Jason Bourne kind of situation or maybe he just forgets everything in the past couple of years. I think the organization that has control over this med-bed should also be one of the organizations the main character owes a lot of money to (maybe Ling Dynasty/Ling Family Hauling) which is why they have him and can keep him coming back to work for them as the debt he owes never disappears as they always kill him before he can finish the contract, leaving them to come and clean up what's left of the mission.

References:

sc-tools (no date A) Ling Family Hauling. Available at: https://starcitizen.tools/Ling_Family_Hauling (Accessed: 28 November 2025).

sc-tools (no date B) Guide: Executive Hangars. Available at: https://starcitizen.tools/Guide:Executive_Hangars (Accessed: 28 November 2025).

sc-tools (no date C) Valakkar. Available at: https://starcitizen.tools/Valakkar (28 November 2025).

sc-tools (no date D) Lazarus Tithonus Research Lab. Available at: https://starcitizen.tools/Lazarus_Tithonus_Research_Lab (Accessed: 28 November 2025).

Cloud Imperium Games (2021) Loremakers’ Guide to Regeneration, Roberts Space Industries Comm-Link, 22 September. Available at: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/18327-Loremakers-Guide-To-Regeneration (Accessed: 28 November 2025).