This BPN cover some pretty mature themes. If you are likely to be disturbed by them, please don't read this :)
GREY BPN
SCL:
Contact: Cloak Department
Package: Investigation required. Ebon preferred.
Consolidated Bonus Scheme: 500c per OpBrief: Investigate assassinations of SLA Industries management personnel. Absolute discretion is essential. No media coverage of this investigation will be permitted.
Three reasonably senior (SCL 4) SLA managers have been found dead in unusual circumstances. The official line is that Cloak suspect a planned programme of assassinations by a Soft Company, and to throw the potential assassin off-guard they plan to use an Op squad to do the legwork on the case. The truth is a little more complicated...
Even in the World of Progress, some things are beyond the pale. And your past has a habit of coming back to haunt you - sometimes literally.
Everyone knows about the Skin Trade and their constant picking off of children. But there has to be a destination, and there have to be clients. Some years ago, a small circle of SLA employees were involved in a child pornography/prostitution ring. But things got out of hand, a couple of the children died, and the ring broke up hurriedly to avoid investigation. Since then, the ring members have advanced some way in the SLA hierarchy, thinking that their past was successfully hidden. Unfortunately for them, in the World of Progress dead spirits have a certain amount of potential, and the ghost of one of their victims has returned for vengeance. There are only two members of the ring still alive, and one of those is now with Cloak Division; it was he who placed the BPN, using the 'assassination' theory as smoke. It should be pointed out that neither of the survivors is aware of the true nature of the killer, suspecting a former living victim is back instead.
This BPN is event-driven; ie, events occur according to the progress of the team to maintain the plot motion. The atmosphere here should be somewhat creepy, slightly divorced from normal reality as the Ops know it (which should be substantially aided by them being in areas they don't normally get to see); think any of the more supernatural X-Files stories, for example.
The team will be called in for a briefing with Mortimer Stepanek, who will briefly outline the case for them without going into too many details - "so as not to present any prejudicial bias in your minds during the investigation". He will stress the need for absolute discretion, being as subtle or as direct as is necessary to get the point across to the squad.
From the briefing, the squad can either go to the morgue for details on the deaths, or to the scene of one or more of the murders.
The Morgue
All three bodies show near-identical causes of death. Something caused every bone in their bodies to be slowly crushed without inflicting any damage on the outside of the body (this bizarre death is the reason for the 'Ebon preferred' entry on the BPN). An Ebon using Detect here will find no trace of the Ebb, but will instead descend into a light trance in which they start crying and repeating "I'm sorry" over and over again.The Crime Scene
The gist of the crime scenes are the same. Each victim died at home in a private study on consecutive nights. Although they all had families, nothing was heard. There are three specific clues that need to be inserted, however. Firstly, each of them had, in a hidden subdirectory on their home computers, a collection of child pornography. Oddly, some of the older picture files are now missing the subject (the ghost). Secondly, each of the computers has a file whose creation date matches the time of death of the victim; despite there being no voice inputs to the computers, each file consists of approximately 3 minutes of screaming (voice pattern analysis will confirm that it is the victim in each case). Thirdly, hidden away amidst the screaming in each file (requires a Detect roll to discover at the GM's discretion) is a single phrase spoken in the voice of a young boy. The three phrases are: "bastard skin trader", "remember the Plaza?", and "two more. Then I can rest."
If the squad miss the hidden phrase, there is another way of finding it.. An Ebon using Detect here will again find no trace of Flux use, but instead goes into a trance during which he repeats the hidden phrase over and over in the voice of a young boy...What next?
There are a couple of avenues of investigation for the squad to take at this point:Connections: if the squad try to link the victims together, they probably come up short since none of them ever worked together. However, such activities will bring a seemingly coincidental call from Stepanek asking for a progress report (he has discovered the team poking around and is concerned at what they may have found).
Photographs: distasteful as it is, the squad may try to track down the odd photos left on the computers of the victims. This will lead them through blind links, shock-porn advertising and grubby BBS's on the SLAnet before they finally retrieve the files they need. Each of the pictures features a young human boy of about 11 years old in a variety of lewd poses. His face seems somehow blank and resigned.
The Plaza: If the squad digs deep enough into the background of the victims, they can find that one of them used to be a Media Op who owned a photographic studio on Lumley Plaza.The Studio
The building on Lumley Plaza that used to house the photo studio is now offices for one of the countless administrative bureaus that keep SLA Industries ticking over. However, records for the studio still exist, and the office manager can tell the squad that they were deposited in the Information Repository when these offices opened up two years ago.Information Repository
Nothing ever gets thrown away, at least if SLA have anything to say about it. Instead, files get stored in the IR. They spend six months in an easy access system, then are moved to deep storage. SLA Info, Bureaucracy or similar skills are valuable to the squad here (or interpersonal skills to persuade someone to do the searching for them :) ). Eventually the squad should turn up the records from the studio. Most of them are partially scrambled, but they can glean some names from them. Two of the names are of already dead victims, but the third person is still alive.For now.
Gregor Kramer
Mr. Kramer is a senior manager with the Firearms Regulatory Service, and getting to see him in the first place is going to require all the finesse the squad can come up with not to leave them smarting from any number of bureaucratic hassles from a department with a clear and present influence on their day to day activities (can you just imagine losing your Operative Firearms License for a penalty period? Go on, go hunting Carriens with CAF guns, you know you want to).
Stepanek has told Kramer that he hired the squad (citing his ability to make them disappear if they learn anything too incriminating), so Kramer has been half-expecting them. Deep down he didn't really think they'd track him down, though, so play him as unusually nervous when interviewed.
If the squad are smart and savvy, they can trap Kramer into admitting his involvement in the porn ring. Once they get that, it's a short step to getting him to admit who the ring leader was - Mortimer Stepanek.
If the squad don't roleplay well enough to get the information out of Kramer, they will be called to Kramer's house that night by a Shiver unit; Kramer has become the next victim, and the hidden phrase in the audio file is "Mortimer Stepanek". Dock them an experience point for failing here.Stepanek
The squad needs to handle Stepanek carefully - whatever he has done, he is still fairly senior in the Cloak hierarchy. Ideally, they need to be waiting with Stepanek at his house this evening for the killer to arrive.
By now the squad should have some idea that they are dealing with a ghost, but if they haven't then they are in for a surprise. Stepanek has no family, so the ghost feels no compunction to mask its presence (it refuses to endanger innocents, which is why the previous killings were so covert). Play this scene for all it's worth - doors and windows slamming or opening, unexplained poltergeist activity, weird noises or odours, perhaps catching a glimpse of a bloodstained young boy in a mirror when there's nobody there.
Unsurprisingly, the squad aren't going to win this one by combat. Even Ebb powers can't touch the ghost, so bullets and knives certainly won't. The squad are going to have to solve this one via roleplaying, trying to convince the ghost to depart. In the final analysis, it is a GM's call as to whether or not the squad can get the ghost to leave Stepanek alive. Gambits that might work include: promising that Stepanek will stand trial for his crimes (of course, the squad may well choose to lie about this, but the ghost has no way of knowing), pointing out that by committing murder the ghost is lowering himself to Stepanek's level, etc.Success
If the squad manage to persuade the ghost to go away, Stepanek is grateful and will remain so as long as the squad maintain their silence about what happened here. Stepanek will arrange their payment and SCL increase, and bear them in mind for any future discreet Cloak operations. They can probably call on him for occasional favours, and Cloak sponsorship is pretty much guaranteed once they get to the correct SCL.
If the squad keep Stepanek alive but don't keep their silence, well, Stepanek will do his utmost to have them killed, either to prevent their testimony or in revenge. It's down to the GM as to how successful he is. Also, in this case, see Failure below.Failure (sort of)
Conversely, if Stepanek dies, the squad's only hope is to turn in a complete and honest report to Cloak Division. After a few days of intensive interrogation and suspicion (play to the squad's paranoia during this time), the squad will - without explanation - be informed that the case is closed and that they are free to go. If they check, their SCL cards record a successful BPN, but with a credit payment of 750c and an SCL increase of +1.0. I repeat that NO explanation for this will EVER be forthcoming (in my campaign I anticipate the players becoming aware of the relevant portion of the Truth in about three years, at which time they may understand. Or they may not). The increased payment/SCL increase is purely and simply a bribe from Slayer hidden via Cloak to keep their mouths shut.
Obviously, if they try to lie their way out of it, they are discovered. Bad call, people.