Ghostly, very nice. I have a major Trill NPC who will tie nicely into the plot you've put out here. Definately an excelent episode.
"Big Tribble in Little China"
Type: Exploration, Shipbased.
The small independant colony of New Shanghai has a problem. Over the last few days Tribbles have been appearing all over the colony and have begun eating their crops. In an era of replicators this is hardly a problem for the people, since food is a button's push away. Except these crops are for sale to a neihbouring species who has come to depend on the supply put out by New Shanghai. The money from the sale of these crops will in turn help the New Shanghai colonists pay the Ferengi Alliance for the planet.
Enter Starfleet. The colonist facing that with harvest close at hand and the tribbles eating the crops at an alarming rate. That they will miss a payment to their landlords and be forced to relocate under the strict rules of their contract with the Ferengi. Have called in Starfleet's assistance. Their call is very unspecific, due calling their problem a 'Biological catastrophe' and such (local pulsar activity garbles much of the message'. So the players ship should arrive with thoughts of plagues or bioweapons, instead they find a colony covered in tribbles. At this point the players should get working on away to remove the tribbles. They should be succesful for a short time in sucessfuly removing the tribbles from the grain at least, before more appear in the feilds and the problems start all over again. The reason for this is Liquidator Molg is in orbit in a cargo shuttle (stats on the Trek RPG page) along with a pair of his flunkies, Dr. Ahrena, an Argellian bioscietist who has been forced by the Ferengi to increase the tribbles rate of reproduction,and a few of these super tribbles in statis. He has hidden his ship in the magnetic feild at the northern pole of the planet and has been quietly beaming the tribbles in from the start. The reason being is that on a recent voyage to New Shanghai his people discovered a high latinum concentration in the planet's crust that had gone unnoticed. But the Ferengi's contract with the colonists was valid for another fifty years and not wanting to wait, he concocted this scheme to force miss a payment to the Alliance and which would allow him to force them from the planet.
Very shortly especially if one studies the tribbles and finds Dr. Ahrena's enhancemnts to them, it will be obvious there is something going on. But before the Ferengi are revealed a Klingon ship decloaks. It too had recieved the transmission from New Shanghai, but upon seeing the tribbles on the colony are in a less than helpful mood. They prepare to fire on the planet and it's up to the players to stop them from destroying the colony. The Klingons will wait for up to 24 hours for Starfleet to remove the Tribbles, (they've called for reinforcments to bomb the planet flat) at which point the investigation should kick into overdrive.
Any inventive plans by the players should work to find the Ferengi and remove the tribbles. GMs discretion of course, it should be suitable to the humours nature of tribble episodes. If the Ferengi are found, they will reveal that they are responsible for the tribbles and one of the Liquidators flunkies will even spill the beans on the latinum. The Klingons will be satisfied if all the tribbles are removed and the destruction of the Ferengi shuttle and the geneticaly modified samples aboard. In the end if the players are able to save the grain or not, they should be able to tap the latinum in the planet with the ship's phasers giving the people of New Shanghai more than enough to pay their Ferengi landlords.