Novagen Labs

A bioengineering secondary that runs on the fable of the scorpion and the frog — and has decided the scorpion is the intelligent one.

Overview

Novagen builds with cells. Genetics, pharmaceuticals, agricultural biotech, and the engineered organisms that make marginal worlds pay — the unlovely middle of the biotech sector, where the money is steady and the scrutiny is thin. Outsiders see an innovative firm with an unusually rigid chain of command.

Inside, there is a doctrine. The scorpion and the frog is the company parable, and it is not taught as a warning. Novagen takes the scorpion to be highly intelligent — an animal that acts according to its nature, accurately, without pretending to be something else. Whether that is a sincere misreading of the fable or a very good joke at the company's own expense has never been settled, possibly not even internally.

Character

• Bioengineering — genetics, pharmaceuticals, agricultural biotech, engineered organisms
• A reputation for innovation, entirely earned
• A strong sense of hierarchy. One voice decides, and the structure exists to carry that decision downward intact
• Deep water on Europa Deep, out in Jovia — sub-ice labs, and something in the black ocean

Goals

• Open a forbidden door. The company's standing agenda, and it does not say which one
• Stay out of Concord hearings by building out of tissue rather than catena — nobody wrote a law about artificial bodies
• Keep Sebastian Oduya speaking, and keep the relationship deniable

Relationships

• Sebastian Oduya — the Luminary. Not an employee. He is the company's argument, walking around
• Helios Dominion — the other biotech power, larger and more subscription-minded. Rivals who need the same laws
• The Harbingers of the Guide — doctrinally unable to object to biological work, and increasingly aware of it
• The Chrome Vultures — have been subcontracted before, possibly by Novagen itself

Status

Growing, and publicly a mid-tier biotech firm; privately a hierarchy with a philosophy.