Generating a story

[Unorthodox]

8 characters.

one medical dude required by the story.  Straight laced, by the book, boring. 
One natural goofball first victim that starts taking his gags too far.  His job would be menial labor type stuff, didn't get along too well with the others. 
1-2 militant types.  I like the idea of 2.  One will die with the medical examiner, making a noble sacrifice to prevent the worms from escaping to the rest of the compound:  first death we CARE about.  The second will go into depression and become the second infected - thus further imperiling the rest of the team now with 'no security'. 
That leaves 3...
Let's go with a mechanic/macgyver type that becomes the hero, killing the zombie, a botanist/biologist to figure it out, and a comic relief - the guy you're SURE is going to die but somehow keeps escaping - maybe the zombie gets this guy to give the audience a FINALLY moment. 

This is a fairly by the numbers ensemble in Horror.   

[Unorthodox]

The background concept I had in making my first faction was always "lab experiment run amok". 

You know what?  There's a really creepy horror story in that.  Anyone think they'd like to write some horror?  I'll be glad to help, but I'm not a horror guy, so someone else needs to take point.

I've also done a Planet Cult version of same, with the worm taking Cha's place entirely, and there are two worm factions in the NN stuff. Definitely GotM possibilities there.  Deirdreworm could even be a controlled clone, so the Gaians and Cult could still be in there - or not...

Alright, I don't really KNOW Cha Dawn that well, I've played SMAX maybe a handful and always as the pirates. 

However, I think you're mistaken in making Diedre/worm. 

There is one - the fungus is a (sleeping) planet-wide vegetable intelligence, the mindworms serving as something like antibodies...

...One part of the Mindworms with Minds idea I realize I never mentioned out loud is that the experiment that made it happen caused a separation from the PlanetMind - it need not necessarily come into the story, but what the worm boogerman is after is --- it feels something missing and doesn't know what.  It's crudely trying to instinctively (re)create the PlanetMind by making a group mind with its victims/symbiotes...

Diedre would want to work WITH the fungusmind. 

No, you are looking for either a University or Santiago experiment.  I like Santiago because morale boosted worms are FUN.  (not saying you couldn't mod that into wherever)

Santiago/University wants to break the bond between the fungus and the worms, not realizing the worms require the psychic link, they naturally start latching on to the closest things they can when the separation is successful.  Human psyche proving to be too fragile to control the worms, they start taking over, and resent the fungus mind for years of enslavement.  They now have a NEW host, and THEY are in control.  Yet, they NEED more human hosts, as the human body soon rots without it's proper mind.  THEY NEED to conquer.  NEED new meat bags.  NEED to kill the fungus!  Very primal/basic thought process.  Breed, eat, survive. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I can think of plenty of ways around Deirdre's green empathy - and it would have an ironic touch, to have the green faction hoist by their own petard.

I need to wake up while I process this...

[Buster's Uncle]

...Eight people strikes me as -obviously- a movie cast, not necessarily what's needed for a short story.  I think for that, not a novel, I need two, maybe three, fleshed-out characters...

[Buster's Uncle]

I feel like we're well on our way - but there's not enough yet that anything makes me want to write, yet, except I said I would.  We can do better than that...

[Unorthodox]

...Eight people strikes me as -obviously- a movie cast, not necessarily what's needed for a short story.  I think for that, not a novel, I need two, maybe three, fleshed-out characters...

Naturally, I think in movie script...

Lesseee, 2 people, you'd want to do more of a Lovecraftian style slow decent into madness type thing.  Probably first person, the growing distrust between the two with occasional glimpses of clarity to let the reader know it's the worms. 

[Buster's Uncle]

-To revisit this very close to two years later, see what I said in my previous post - and throughout; I'm not a horror guy.  I'm not even the natural audience, though decades ago I had read nearly the entire Stephen King corpus at the time, including some of the Bachman books, not because I like having the Monster Under The Bed in my head for fun and relaxation, but he's just that good.

Point being, we've got enough for someone else to take on writing - it does need to be a SMACX fanfic -maybe- or it's just another rewrite of John W. Campbell's Who goes there?, made into the archetypical isolated-group paranoid infection horror movie The Thing, also rewritten as Alien and many episodes of modern Dr. Who, and quite a few old ones.  It's been used so much as to be an entire genre of horror, but it's hardly used up yet.  Have at it, please.

Somebody not-me take up this cross.  I think it's the makings of a fine story in some form, much promise to be good, and I'd still love to see the related/inspired GotM.  -And do note that one ought to copyright published fanfic, not for the legal ownership of hopelessly derivative work, but because filing off the serial numbers and substituting bondage for vampirism made E. L. James very rich from an altered Twilight fanfic - Stephanie Myers (and associated lawyers) seem in no way offended...

---

Meanwhile, we can totally start over and see if we come up with anything else anyone, including me, wants to write...

Post!

[Buster's Uncle]

-Mind you, it harms nothing if you take it and run with a not-SMACX story, all the stuff we came up with being genre conventions, and you'll have yourself a wholly-owed story in its own right there up front.  Posting it here (w/ copyright notice to keep ownership) would only be fair and right, though, using or riffing on these ideas.  Have at it even if you're not a SMACer.

Ideas are more precious than gold, but also free, and it's all in what you do with it...