Orphan

By Gavin Clough

Colour Designation: Jade
Minimum SCL: 10
Training Package Recommended: Any
Consolidated Pay: 300c per Operative
Contact: Ms.Beckett on Mort 09166 3344-7864
Coverage: Station Analysis
Summary: Investigate disturbances reported in Clemence Childrens Orphanage.

Details :

Ms Beckett informs the squad that there have been several reports from the children under her care that the Orphanage is 'haunted'. She will emphasise this point as nonsense and state the only reason this made a jade is that one of the nurses went missing and hasn't been found. He was definitely on site and hasn't left.

They are to spend one night minimum as a whole squad in the Orphanage and investigate the occurrences. The children are available as witnesses. The site contact is a Mr. David Townson who will be made aware of the squad to attend. It is a secure site and will require 6 hours notice before attending. Search and Seizure Warrants are unavailable for this location.

The Orphanage:

Clemence Orphanage is located within it's own grounds just inside the Suburban border. It is a huge grey building with a perimeter wall of it's own and must hold somewhere in the region of 3 - 4000k occupants. It was erected in 540SD as the number of homeless children on the street was proving to be an embarrassment. It currently houses 3278 occupants in it's 12 wings.

Mr. David Townson is a 38 year old retired SLOP who acquired an SCL of 5e.1 before choosing to retire for personal reasons. He had a doctorate in Clinical Psychology and was an expert in the field.

The Ops should arrive at the gates and realise that to get out of this place would be like busting into Head Office. There are watch towers at each of the corners of the perimeter wall. The gate itself is 5m tall and a Stormer couldn't knock it down. The windows are bullet proof and barred. They will be met at the gate by a pair of Shivers who both appear (on an active Psychology roll) to be glad SLOPS are on the scene. They help them in and get them sorted out vehicle wise. They don't have access to the main Orphanage and only have the access codes to the Main gate and support towers. One of them (Epherson) will escort them to the door and will insist that if they need any help then he's the man to ask. If they start asking what's wrong with him he'll change the subject by discussing forms and procedure.

Mr. Townson will personally meet them at the doors to the Orphanage and is dressed in surgeons gown with Clip Board in hand. He will examine each Op before permitting them entrance and will indicate that this is a no weapons zone once they enter the orphanage proper. He comes across as a very odd looking man. He is quite tall, skinny with a roundish face.

The interior decor of the Orphanage is like the interior of a church (don't tell the players this just describe it to them), arches, buttresses, icons etc'.

The Children:

The children in question are in the Psychiatric wing and are all classed as dependants. He does not know any by name and constantly refers to the clip board. Dependants usually experienced shock in their early years leading to a fixation, bordering on obsession with an object. He gives a few examples.

• Daniel fixated with a blanket.
• Trudy fixated with a picture of a family.
• Josephine fixated with a knitted Glove puppet.
• Stan fixated with a toy SLA Operative given to him by an Op after they pulled him out of a burning building.

None of the children are responding well to treatment and absolutely no pharmaceuticals are to be shown or given to the children as it will upset them.

There are 9 children in this wing that have had 'problems' : Daniel, Trudy, Josephine, Stan, Michael, Johanna, Barry, Charles & Carolyn. They all report that at night someone comes to them and promises to take them away from their rooms but never does.

An interview with the children will no doubt commence. The children must be played as naïve and clearly disturbed. Any attempt to move the object they are fixated with will lead to violent outbreaks. The kids are scared and any tale of ghosts can be inserted. Just make it similar enough to be far from made up but not so close as to be concrete.

The children can be fixated with anything that ties in with a family. They are obsessed with it and each one of these kids likes the other. Josephine looks everywhere with her glove puppet. She won't round any corners till he's had a look. Daniel won't stop wrapping himself in his blanket, Stan wont stop talking to the SLA op through his headset communicator etc...

They are all told that they can stay in a room each or share the same room. It makes no difference to Dr. Townson.

The children in question each have a camera in their rooms and they all can be monitored on a TV that acts as a master to the network. All will proceed as normal until about 02:00 when they will have a fault with one of the Cameras. The camera system can only scroll one way and must cycle through the rooms in a pre-set order. Camera number 2 shows a static screen. If they flick to the next channel it's ok but on the next cycle it too cuts out. Engineers in the Squad will find no-problem at this end.

Each time they cycle through, one more camera goes dead. They can of course investigate.

What's going on

Josephine is the child causing the problem. She was admitted to the ward 2 months ago as an abandoned child with mental problems. Dr. Townson took a special interest in her unusual case and they developed a bond. Josephine is a Necanthrope abandoned by her kind and in desperate need of a family of her own. The exposure to the white was not kind to her and her intelligence was reduced to that of a child . Her Gore Cannon however, absorbed it and became the 'primary' intelligence of the pair. The Gore cannon manifested as a knitted glove puppet as Josephine wanted something a child would love that looked nice. The glove puppet looks like a brown Teddy with a hand hole in the back to operate the mouth. Were an Op to look inside, this is how she connects to it. The bond she formed with Dr.Townson was one of Slavery, he is effectively her Vassal (she believes she's human) and brings her (more importantly the gore cannon) victims. Enter the Ops. Josephine will have left the confines of her room and gone to fetch the rest of her 'Union' the 8 other children. The children are all completely obedient to her and will try and lure the SLOPS into traps.

This is where the GM can really have some fun tormenting the Players. They should now have no-weapons and will probably insisted on taking their armour. This is OK. Any armour bar Death suits clanks as it moves unless sneak rolls are made and even then it's not perfect. The old Orphanage is riddled with secret passages, wide enough for a small human and far too small for the other races. Not so the kids.

All the other children in the wards will be targeted by Josephine and her Union and will be butchered one by one for the Ops to find. If any of the Ops split up then They will be mobbed by the Children at the earliest convenience to the GM. Josephine will use terror tactics to scare them and will be aware of Phobias and Psychoses thanks to Dr.Townson accessing their medical files. The end of the BPN is up to the GM in question but it should be very disturbing for the Ops involved. Leave no Phobia untouched and no psychoses un-dabbled with.

Josephine wants to be re-accepted by Necanthrope society so much that she is forming her own group in the Asylum.

Additional:

Should the Ops manage to KO Josephine then the Puppet will drag her away. All her powers operate on an instinctive level and she will target those who threaten her family.

If an Op threatened any of the kids then Josephine will push Communicate into their minds to torment them. Give them the feeling they are being followed, watched , people calling their names, station analysis giving them direct orders to go places etc.

The doors to the rest of the Asylum are built to hold a rioting crowd and the players are gonna have to get inventive to get out of the wing. The rooms looking outside the complex are all Glyph shielded and the doors are shielded too preventing flux use inside these cells but not outside them. Dr. Townson has had the entire building scrambled so headsets and mobile phones wont work either.

Should the Ops manage to raise the awareness of the SHIVERS outside they will attempt to bust their way in and wont go off grounds to get help. Their communicators have also been fried and they can't call out (courtesy of DR. Townson). As to whether or not they make it through to help is entirely up to the GM.

The various wings of the Asylum are :

• Minimal security ('low risk' categories)
• Standard security (schizophrenics, delusionals, compulsives, manic depressives etc..)
• Maximum Security (psychotics, compulsives, sociopaths, severely delusional, violent schizophrenics etc)
• Childrens Wing (where the characters are housed)
• Staff Quarters (6 staff members work the entire asylum at night)
• Medical Center (1 doctor on site other than Dr. Townson. All drugs are kept here.)
• Standard Administration Wing.

Designs:

This BPN is a tool for the GM to test what fears you can push onto your players and what taboos they have also. Most people don't care what their enemy is but if its a mental patient child then it brings home certain pre-set ideas about what they can and cannot do. The key to success in this BPN can be anything the GM wants it to be and is pretty flexible in that respect.