EXPLANATION:

It has always been my opinion that a squads first mission, or in fact any mission in which a new player character is added, should deviate somewhat from the norm. Assuming that generally BPNs are the result of situations beyond SLA's control, and are not all part of one grand mind fuck, I hold that a squads first BPN should be a mind fuck. That is, SLA will set up a confusing stream of events within the context of a BPN, which will test the squad's loyalty and ability to make those "hard decisions". This is such a BPN, which can be used as a stand alone or as part of an ongoing chronicle. Within the paragraphs that follow I will give you an outline of the BPN, along with a description of the 'players' involved. More verbose descriptions of the important NPC will follow at the end of the document.

THE BPN:

SCL required : 10
Color: Blue/White
Contact Dpt of Investigation
Training Pakage: any
coverage provided by station analysis
payment is probably by squad.

Investigate murder in downtown sector 1Ka. Additionally supress civil unrest and preform standard street maintenance while in the sector.

When I ran this BPN I had a squad of 4 operatives, they received 1400 credits and a .5 SCL increase. Note also that this is both a BLUE and a WHITE. While its mostly a WHITE, the BLUE being a generic sort of catch all will allow you to spring all sorts of things on the group, without fear of them saying, "Hmm, nope that's not part of our assignment." The BPN will also have elements of SILVER and RED, and depending on your style may include much, much more. Note that although there are several murders in this BPN, horror was not the focus of my story, if you wish to make horror the focus of YOUR story go ahead.

THE BODY:

The first body is found on the 5th floor of an eight-story tenement building in upper downtown. The building is one of the oldest in the neighborhood but is still fairly "nice". The Super of this building is named Maxwell Carter, he is slightly balding, fat and human, he stands under 5ft and is clothed in sweat stained T-shirt and grungy blue jeans. Max is somewhere around 35 years old and life on Mort has NOT done wonders for his attitude.

Another inhabitant of the building is Billy a 10 year old boy who will be playing with his slinky on the stairs. He will ask inane questions and make a nuisance of himself while the operatives are in the building. Threats will NOT deter him, even if they come from an eight-foot drooling 313 with muscles from here till Thursday. This is because Billy is not in control of his body; he is being controlled by a demon that will appear from time to time encouraging the players, through no direct means, to play Mornington Crescent. Never can the demon actually say the words "Mornington Crescent" because he is engaged in a multidimensional game of Taboo.

The last inhabitant that I had to come up with for this building is Martha, an 89-year-old woman who is senile as hell. Martha has no Idea that there is a murder investigation going on but will try and feed the operatives cookies and chocolates from 857 SD. Continue to make up NPCs until your players run out of patience.

The Body is a young girl, probably between 15 and 17; she is lying in the bathtub in one of the 3 room apartments (bed/living, kitchen, and bathroom). The girl has a large bruise on her head near the left temple, and both her writs are slashed. The tub is full of a red liquid (assumedly blood) to the rim. If asked the super (or any of the tenement's inhabitants, excluding Martha) will reveal that the apartment was open and awaiting assignment. Also if asked about the "spotless" nature of the rooms, the super will reveal that he hadn't cleaned up after the last occupants left (assumedly the killer cleaned up).

If the operatives examine the body they will turn up a SLA barcode on the underside of her foot, otherwise they will have to wait for the shivers to give them a report. The barcode will read out to a nonsense series of characters, when I ran this BPN they were ZPVWFCFFOGPPMFE2 which is a one letter shift from YouveBeenFooled1. Depending on the complexity/attention span of your players you may wish to use a code that is more complex, or have the letters make no sense at all. The last digit is however important as we will later see it is part of a sector/level address.

THE SECOND:

The second victim is found the next day in yet another uninhabited room, in a tenement building 3 blocks to the north, by a 60 year old woman named Margret. The super of this building, Bill, had in turn found Margret lying just outside the door to the apartment containing the bloodbath. Margret's current mental state could only be described as insane, and she was taken to Bethlehem almost immediately.

Within the single room apartment there is as I said a "blood bath". The walls, floors and ceilings are completely covered in gore, compare this to what would happen if you put a tomato in a blender and forgot to put the lid on. This should probably require cool checks (If you believe in them, personally I use the "Eeww System" where if a player says "Eeww" or "yuck" or something similar THEN I force a cool check). There is however a 1 meter radius circle in the center of the floor that is completely clean and there is a hook set into the ceiling just above this "clean" spot. The apartment has one window and it is open. If a character bolts to the window to look out it (for a suspect) then remind them that they forgot their galoshes with another cool check and a ruined pair of Sigersons.

While the ops are in the hallway looking at the mess one of the inhabitants, Todd will come up to them to see if he can be any help. Todd will inform the op.'s that he heard some noises from the room around 9 in the morning, but "just figed it was Hollow'een Jack or something and went back to sleep, after all I gotta be well rested for Real Stories of The Dark Finders." Todd is about 19 and exceptionally cool, he will banter with the operatives as long as they like and theorize on any topic they throw at him.

The building super bill is also one groovy chap and will invite the ops in for coffee when they come knocking. The other apartment on the ground floor has been converted by him into a garage of sorts and he will store anything the operatives ask him to (and probably give it a tune up). Bill doesn't know anything about the murders but has heard that the skin trade is involved, and that some people have been implicating SLA as well.

Sometime while the ops are in/around the building they should be called to the back alley, either by an NPC squad member, a shiver, or something more drastic (if they were doing their jobs they should have checked the alley on their own). In the alley is a large poster that has a picture of the first girl, and a close-up of the "tattoo". Also in the picture is an image of another girl, crawling on her back away from the camera, she is naked and has a SLA barcode "tattooed" (this one, in my game, said, "ThisIsNotAConclusionk" in the same manor as the first girls bar code) on her forehead. The Poster is black and white and is stuck to the wall just under the open window. If the ops decide to tear down the poster to "protect SLA's image" allow them, but this is futile, as there is one on every block for miles.

Oh, also on the poster it says in big bold letters: Get all the details The Downtowner's Survival Guide, Issue ONE

THE GUIDE:

The guide is really just a paper pamphlet, stable bound, about 10 pages. It has several low quality pictures of the victims, the bar codes, as well as some poorly written text explaining how these girls disappeared from their families about a month ago, kidnapped by SLA. SLA then branded them and sold them to the highest bidder. That bidder happened to be a SLA employee with a mind for murder whom is now taking out his passions on these poor innocents. It further implicates SLA as controlling and in fact masterminding the Skin Trade as a moneymaking scheme. Scads and scads of the pamphlets have been delivered to newsstands all over the sector and they are selling like crazy.

Try as they might to suppress the guide, the operatives will soon have at least one small riot on their hands. Whenever you get bored with the rioting move on to the next murder.

MURDER THREE:

The third murder will occur again a day or so after the previous. This time however the only thing found is a hand, with of course a barcode on the palm that reads 'UareBeingMissPBk' after deciphering (so far we have 1Kk). An aging mother and her 6 or 12 children found it when they returned to their apartment after a hard day of dumpster diving for clothing and other useful goods. Currently one of the visiting Wraith Raider pups is chewing on the hand despite the better efforts of the mother. The mother will not aid the operatives at all as she believes them to be the cause of the recent murders. If pressed she may draw her CAF pistol and use it on the ops; she has not committed any crime, but honestly believes that the ops are simply covering up, not investigating. However the protection of the "kids" is her first priority.

A few fliers will litter the streets with pictures of the hand and the girl that it was once attached to and the message "Details, Issue 2, The Downtowner's Survival Guide, read it or=85"

THE SPEECH:

The operatives will be advised by Station Analysis that a media team is being assigned to give a speech to the local community in SLA's defense. The Operatives will provide protection for the team (this is also a good time to add more operatives, if you "grew" more players). During the speech a "subversive" will come onto the scene, he is Jhon Hoffman (see desc. at end of text). He will be spotted by one of the squad's snipers or if they don't have a sniper settle for someone else J. He is dressed in normal street clothing except for a black backpack holding a block of plastique (no detonator). The backpack also has a Dark Night insignia on it, which will probably be why he is noticed.

At this point the squad will have to make a hard decision on what to do. Will they kill, wound, or simply attempt to capture this obvious Dark Night bomber? Any will work, if they end up interrogating him he will claim to be a SLA operative SCL 9a, if the operatives check this with AI they will see he is telling them the truth. He doesn't know how he got to the speech or why. No matter what the ops do, they will find his SLA Badge and the rest of the equipment on him, if they killed him this should get them really paranoid. Also they should find a barcode on the back of his neck (my PC's brain waster chopped off his head (enhancement 2, rolled 30+) while the ebon distracted him (the Ebon was a SCL 8 NPC) by yelling, "Hey Jhon!") it reads after being deciphered "level4".

If the ops don't put together your cleverly lain clues you will probably need to prompt them with a shiver report or something that will tell them what the codes say. Or optionally just assign them a RED BPN to take over the printing facility in downtown Sector 1Kk Level 4.

THE PRINTERS:

Inside the facility are two large printing presses and a generator, as well as a small office block. The printing team consists of 3 "Dark Night" journalists and 2 hired Props. The Props are Berry and Violet; both are dead and somewhat armed. Two of the journalists are also dead killed in the offices, the last of them is in the adjoining warehouse, his name is Nick Salash and he while alive is barley sane. Nick will be mostly in the fetal position but will beg to be arrested; he will also sputter something about "he looked sorda like intruder" and/or "he moved so fast" and other things about the killer.

Jhon Hoffman, Human, SCL 9a, Death Squad
Str: 10 | | Unarmed: 10
Dex: 10 | | Rifle: 6 Pistol: 6 Drive (cycle): 3
Phys: 10 | | Auto/Support: 8 Running: 4 Climb: 3 Swim: 2 Throw: 4
Conc: 7 | | Detect: 4 Marksman: 4 Weapon Maint: 3
Diag: 8 | | Tactics: 8 Demolitions: 6
Know: 8 | | Literacy: 3 SLA Info: 5 Rival Info: 1 Streetwise: 4 Eval opp:
6 Demolitions Disp: 3 Shaktar: 6
Cha: 8 | | Disguise: 1 Interview: 4
Cool: 10 | |

Looks good: 2 Speech Good: 1 Arrogant: 2 Luck (bad): 5

Equipment: Finance Chip, Shaktar Braids, DN backpack full of explosives, CAF pistol, Street clothing