It doesn't really introduce the fresh Operatives to any secrets behind SLA, but it is a HUGE wake-up call that shows them that Operative life and life in Mort is nothing like they've been taught in Meny and Orange Crush. This is reasonably long so I'll send it in several parts.

Leath.

----------------------------------------------------------
One Week of Hell.
By Leath Sheales.
----------------------------------------------------------

Colour: Blue, Training: Any, Third Eye, SCL Increase: +0.1,
Payment: 200 credits per squad per day, Department: Housing.
Description: Patrol Centre Walk, Downtown. Disperse civilian
uprisings and promote SLA Industries. Minimum 1 week for successful
completion. Bonuses and Media coverage available for originality.

----------------------------------------------------------

This is the standard Blue BPN. Patrol an area. The characters (frsh out of University) are stuck in this area for at least one week. By the end of the week they will be begging to be allowed back into Uptown.

Background: Centre Walk is one of the worst areas of Downtown. Located only a couple of blocks from the wall of Cannibal Sector 3, Centre Walk experiences cannibal attacks, carnivorous pig rampages, manchine murders and serial killers. The residents living here have succumbed to the pressures and at least 90% of them have joined Dark Night for protection. These people as well as the remainder are rioting sporadically against SLA. In addition to these problems, the residents are also persecuted routinely by Shivers cracking under the pressure of Wall Duty and Sleepers who come through the area. At least one nest of Carriens is breeding in the lower areas beneath the Walk, rising at night in search of food. As for media attention, forget it. No news crew will be persuaded to come down to these depths. This BPN has been deliberately given to new recruits who don't know any better. The only bonus available to the characters is the 10 credit bounty per Carrien head (but the characters will probably have a hard time collecting the reward after this week). With all these problems under the GM's belt the BPN begins.

Day 1.

The characters arrive. How they do this is up to them. No taxi company will come near the place. Shivers are far too busy to shuttle the characters around (unless at least one of them has some Major Shiver Friends). Their alternatives are gauss trains or their own transport. It will take four change-overs to get to the station nearest Centre Walk, and even then the characters will have to walk for over 2 hours through hostile territory to reach the Walk (I hope they brought a navi-map!). If they take their own cars (whatever) these will end up vandalised over the week (the extent of this is up to you). Make note of when the characters arrive. If during the day, a couple of civilians will be sittiing around. They all have concealed DN pistols on them. They will not talk to the Ops or listen to them. If possible, all civilians will avoid the Ops. For all intents and purposes, they have walked into a ghost town. That night, or if the characters arrive at night the Walk will be deserted. The only noises to be heard are the buzzing of fluorescent lights and the chitterring and whoopong of Carriens as they hunt through the Walk. The dismal fluorescent lighting is next to useless. If thhe characters want to see they will either need their own lights (giving their locations away) or light amplifying/ IR equipment. Play up the stalking nature of the Carriens. Have shadows dart to and fro. Whoops and chitters will appear to be directly behind the Ops, but when they turn nothing will be there. Hopefully the Ops will even get to the stage where they are firing at shadows in panic. The Carriens of this nest are not stupid. They will not attack the Ops if easier prey is around (and it is), but will distract and intimidate them.

This game of cat and mouse will continue for hours or until you grow tired of it. Then a blood-curdling scream will sound out near the characters location and the night will turn silent. This is even more unnerving than the Carrien calls. It shouldn't take the characters long to to find the victims. A family of father, mother and baby have been dragged from their apartment. Blood drips from the walls, flesh has been torn from the victims and dropped. The scene has a Fear rating of 12 (it's not that scary, but it has been a long and harrowing night). The Carriens have gone for the night, having captured their prey. They also took the family's DN pistols (2) that the family tried to use against the vermin. Nothing much more will happen tonight. Throw in the occassional howl to keep the characters alert. They won't be getting much sleep tonight.

Don't forget as the BPN continues to impose penalties for each day that the characters can't get any sleep.

Day 2.

If the characters have managed to get any sleep (unlikely) over the night, they will be woken very early in the morning by a lot of shouting and chanting. Day time here isn't much different to night time. It is brighter because SLA turns a few more fluorescent lights on, but it's still dim and depressing. The shouting is coming from a mob of angry residents. They are sick of being victims and are taking the opportunity to voice their frustrations with the SLA Ops there. There are approximately 100 civilians rioting. Most are packing hidden DN guns, the rest have CAF. A rare few have managed to pick up SLA weapons on the black market. They are chanting "SLA? No Way!" over and over while some of the more charasmatic individuals are trying to incite a frenzied riot. If the Ops try to talk to them they will accuse them of oppression, incompetance, apathy and basically anything else they can think of. The Ops may try to calm things down, but this will prove difficult. Violence is a VERY bad idea because the Ops are heavily outnumbered and the sheer number of civilians will quickly strip their armour down with a hail of bullets, also resulting in many civilian casualties. Even if thhe Ops are succeeding in calming the situation down, someone in the crowd will grow agitated and fire at the Ops, inciting a panicked riot amongst the crowd. The best bet for the Ops at this point is to flee and call in Shiver support. Three over-tired and ciolent Sleeper squads can respond in within twenty minutes. Two squads can arrive from the CS 3 Wall to disrupt the riot, and five APCs worth of Dispersal Shivers can arrive within an hour. A SCAF or two may even turn up. These Shivers will use non-lethal methods (gauss rifles, pacifier batons) to disperse the crowd except the Sleepers who will attempt to kill as many civilians as they think they can get away with (a pay-back of sorts). Within half an hour of the Shivers arriving the crowd will begin to break up as civilians flee the onslaught. About 20 dead civilian corpses will litter the groud. The Shivers will leave them there for vermin to pick at, as a reminder to the other rioters. The Ops can do with them what they like. Three Shivers also lay dead. Their squad mates will recover their bodies for proper burial.

The rest of the day can be spent pacifying any remaing civilians and being shot at by disgruntled (and beaten) residents. The shots will not be very accurate and should serve to unnerve the characters more than injure them.

As night approaches and most of the fluorescent lights start to go out the characters will receive a call from the Shivers over their headsets. They are told that while responding to the riot there was an assault at the wall. Several.. things... broke through before the Shivers could fix the breach. The Ops are advised to find somewhere safe for the night and to stay alert. Use your imagination, but it's going to be a long night....

Day 3.

After yet another exhausting and largely sleepless night the charatcers will again be woken at dawn by another call from Shivers. They are told that since the Wall breach occurred while the Shivers were responding to their distress call they have the responsibility to 'mop up' anything that escaped in their area. This is largely a cop-out by the Shivers, and several Operative Squads have been given Red (well paid) BPNs to come down and kill the escapees, but if the Ops will do more work for no extra money, SLA is happy. Of course the Ops know none of this. Over half a dozen cannibals, one ex-war criminal and a manchine are loose in the region of Centre Walk. The GM can run this according to personal taste, but some ideas are presented below:

Cannibals: These cannibals are all part of the same family unit. Recently their hearth-fire was extinguished by a raid from a rival family and most of their tribe slaughtered (and eaten). They saw the Wall breach as an opportunity and some were lucky enough to make it through. They will try to take over an apartment block near the characters in oredr to build the new hearth-fire. The residents of the block will become their victims. They will attempt to stun their 'food' rather than killing it immediately. They are all very excellent kinfe fighters (Rank 8) and carry the equivalent of a SLA blade. They are also familiar with pack tactics and effectively have Tactics at level 5. Although they don't have much experience with firearms they have at least Rank 1. Don't forget that most civilians around here have a gun. The cannibals are not stupid, they are very cunning and use a pack mentality to capture their food and kill intruders (the PCs). The speak in their own language of grunts and mumbles and will be impossible to reason with. The cannibals will spend Day 3 trying to create their nest. By the end of the day they will have captured most of the block's residents. If not stopped by Day 4 they will fortify their nest against other predators. Note that they will have at least a sleeping room, a hearth-fire room, a storage room (for 'food') and a breeding room. In the breeding room they will keep several (about 10) of the healthier females for the purposes of mating. When these women get unhealthy or old they are disposed of (eaten or simply killed if diseased). If not eradicated by the end of Day 4 the will be almost impossible to get rid of on Day 5, and will have boobytrapped the apartment block (with crude but very effective and deadly traps).

Ex-war Criminal: Corporal William Simmons has been fighting this fucking war as long as he can fucking remember. He has survived through a combination of paranoia and instinct. He knows the value of ambush and will try to take the characters (subversives, all of 'em) this way. He also realises that he is more valuable to SLA alive than dead, and if the Ops are able to mount an effective counter attack he will flee, preferring to live and fight another day. It seems that luck is running with the Ops of this one, although he will remember them and will return some day...

Manchine: Unless extremely unlucky the Ops will not meet the manchine. Vincent will spend the days quietly selecting victims for their body parts. He will keep a low profile until the Ops go away or until they accidentally stumble upon him killing a victim. Then he will respond to the full limit of his abilities. He is basically a sad soul who wishes to end his existence, but has powerful hide and survive instincts programmed into his mind. If he survives, he may be the focus of a later BPN.

Day 4.

Lull the Operatives into a false sense of security today. Except for if they are still hunting the cannibals, nothing will attack them today. The Walk seems quiet. Too quiet.

Behind the scenes, this is what is happening. The residents of the Walk have grown tired of SLA, Shivers, Cannibals, and especially these SLOps. Some of them with connections have contacted DN about staging an attack on SLA. Towards this goal 2 Interceptors have responded. It's a perfect opportunity for Dark Night. If it works, it's a blow against SLA, if not, they don't lose anything. The day is quiet because they are planning an attack on the Ops and don't want them to learn about it. If the Ops are observant they may notice that a lot of people are going into a certain apartment block. If they are sneaky they may be able to learn about the attack and warn SLA about the plot before the attack occurs. Otherwise this day will be uneventful, but don't let the players know this, keep them on their toes.

That night the carriens emerge again, but are content to either steal people from the cannibals or take corpses still rotting in the street. Therefore although the Ops will hear them, they will probably not see more than lurking shadows and hear unnerving hoots and whistles.

Day5.

Today the Ops will notice several civilians acting suspiciously, looking nervously at the Ops, running away, talking then shutting up when the Ops get near etc. Hopefully this will arouse the player's curiosity. This is what the Interceptors want, and have planned. A group of civilians will sneak past the characters carrying an unidentified but bulky item. They will be spotted by the Ops but will not appear to notice. In fact, they intended to be seen and followed. What they are carrying is up to you, but it's nothing too important. When the Ops follow them they will disappear inside an alley. If the Ops follow into the alley more civilians will appear from behind them to cut off their escape route (coordinated by the Inteceptors). Then the attack will begin. Civilians will fire their weapons accompanied by cries of "Dark Night forever" etc.) One of the Inteceptors will take a sniping role (although it's difficult to get a clear shot with all these people, so he'll probably hit a few civilians, oh well). The only chance the characters have of surviving this onslaught is if they break through one of the boarded up windows of an apartment backing onto the alley and flee through the building, contacting Shiver reinforcements as they run. If they are to survive they will either have to go to ground or reach a Shiver base. Either way it will take a lot of skill and luck. They are going to be spending the rest of the day and night playing a game of cat and mouse for their lives while the Shivers get organised.

Day 6.

If thhe Operatives have managed to survive, well done to them! With some thought they will have alerted SLA to the presence of DN involvement. If they didn't think to do it, then they won't be receiving any support. If they did, SLA HQ will inform them that a task force of Enforcer Shivers is bbeing dispatched to purge the area. They are to wait for the reinforcements and assist the Enforcers in purifying (read: kill everyone) the area but are not to get inthe Enforcer's way. When they arrive, approximately 100 Enforcer Shivers will systematically go throught the Walk, killing all those who don't have the sense to flee or who are unable to. They will purge the cannibals from the apartment block if the characters haven't already (taking several casualties in the process) and may uncover Vincent (although he has likely already fled). The Inteceptors have already deserted the civlians. The purging will take most of the day. The characters will be required to take a Fear test at rank 14 due to the emotionless mass slaughter (and lack of sleep). The Ops will also be instructed to assist in 'clean up' duties throughout the night. This involves going through every apartment block to remove corpses and for the Ops to throw them onto SLA recycling trucks (don't ask what they're being recycled into). It should also involve several Cool tests for the charcters not to be overwhelmed by the deaths (GM's discretion). Evoke the player's horror as they witness Enforcers silently slaughtering everyone. Scenes such as the murder of children, the violent bashing to death of a defenceless pregnant woman etc. This is unpleasant, and the characters should know that this is how SLA treats those who would defy it. Once cleanup is complete, the Enforcers will wordlessly leave.

Day 7.

The Ops are informed by HQ that today they have to assist in civilian relocation. Droves of civilians (and maybe one or two Operatives with Housing rank -10) will start arriving to move into the now vacant (but still uncleaned) apartments. There shouldn't be any problems except for petty squabbles, arguments and theft for the Operatives to sort out. Remember thought hat these Ops have had practically no sleep for nearly a week, and are probably falling asleep ont heir feet, kept awake only by adrenaline and drugs (maybe). They will make errors in judgement and will be much more inclined to violence and anger over the slightest aggravation. At the end of this day they are permitted to go home to receive payment for a completed BPN. Transport is again up to them to arrange.

Conclusion.

Day 8+.

If the Ops are stupid enough to stay longer than is absolutely necessary, hit them with everything you have kept in reserve. Flash floods, the ex-war criminal's revenge, Vincent the manchine, Carrien attacks, carnivorous pigs etc. will all make their lives hell. Show them no mercy.

Aftermath.

The Ops will probably sleep for 2-3 days straight when they return to Uptown. They have completed a very crappy and dangerous BPN for not much money, a very small SCL increase and no media attention. Be genrous with experience points because if they survived they've earned them. Also, you may consider giving them a point or two of Good reputation with SLA Industries and maybe even Shivers. In the future, SLA knows that they are resourceful and may use them for 'special assignments' later in their careers. ------------------------------------------------------------------

Well there you have it. A long BPN I know, and I'm sorry that I had to split it into many small parts, but my mailer wasn't feeling well. If anyone has any comments, or if they run it, let me know. Leath.

Just a thought... Leathal Weapon.