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Black Bag JoBs

Black Bag Jobs

By Gareth Hanrahan

Based on the Laundry Files novels by Charles Stross.

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Credits

Line Developer: Gareth HanrahanWriter: Gareth HanrahanArt Direction: Gareth Hanrahan, Jon Hodgson and Dominic McDowall-ThomasDirector of RPG Development, Production & Studio: Dominic McDowall-ThomasCover Art: Malcolm McClintonInterior Artists: Kim Feigenbaum, Nate Furman, Andy Hepworth, Veronica Jones, Pat Loboyko, Rich Longmore, Scott Neil, Lee SmithCartography: Aaron AcevedoGraphic Design: Simon Lucas, Mark Quire and Dominic McDowall-ThomasLayout: Simon LucasEditor: James KnevittProofreaders: Simon Lucas and Nick Robinson

Playtesters: Chris Crofts, Sarah Hallinan, Neil Kelly, Fiachra Kelly, Denis RyanPublishers: Angus Abranson and Dominic McDowall-Thomas

The Laundry Files © 2001-2010 Charles Stross, used under license by Cubicle 7 Entertainment Limited. All rights reserved.The Laundry RPG © 2010 Cubicle 7 Entertainment Limited. Black Bag Jobs © 2011 Cubicle 7 Entertainment Limited.The Basic Roleplaying System © Chaosium Inc, used under license by Cubicle 7 Entertainment Limited. Published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd, Riverside House, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.www.cubicle7.co.uk Printed in the USA

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Black Bag JoBs

Contents

Introduction ................................... 1

Black Bag Jobs ........................................1How to use this book ............................2

Case: Lambent Witch .................... 3

1. Thirty Minute Warning .....................52. Hot Landing .......................................63. Securing Witch Bravo ........................74. Investigations on the Rig ................135. Submarine Diplomacy .....................156. Aberdeen ...........................................167. Join Me, and Together... ..................188. Return to Witch Bravo ....................20Confronting Gordon ...........................20Repairing the Stele ...............................20Aftermath ..............................................21Player Handouts ...................................21

Lost and Found ............................ 27

Mission Overview ................................271. Just Another Day .............................282. Angleton’s Assignment ....................303. Mysteries in a Black Cab .................324. The Double Cross House ...............335. Blue Light Special ............................346. The RASIP Offices..........................357. Lost and Found ................................40

Player Handouts ...................................41

The Shadow Over Kafiristan ......... 43

1. Where The Magic Happens ...........442. Foreign Junket ..................................453. Katala Village ....................................484. The Raid ............................................525. The Marvellous City ........................536. The Mountain Temple ....................557. Back to England ...............................57Player Handouts ...................................57

The Wild Hunt ............................. 59

1. Compassion and Firearms ..............612. The Village ........................................623. The Satori Centre .............................644. The House and The Wood .............665. Further Enquiries .............................696. The Hunt Rides Out .......................717. Dead by Dusk ...................................728. Into Wistman’s Wood ......................739. The Herla ..........................................74Player Handouts ...................................78

Secret Agendas ............................. 79

1. Wilderness of Mirrors ....................822. Running the Investigation ..............84

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2. Subject A—Annabel Gladstone ....854. Subject B—Paul Brown ..................874. Subject C - Auditor Curtis ..............905. Subject D - Aleksandra Danovna ..926. Subject E—Ed Baler .......................937. Subject F—Filip Sopov ...................948. Aftermath ..........................................95Player Handouts ...................................96

The Signal ................................... 101

1. Bright College Days .......................1022. The Gate .........................................1043. Through the Gate ..........................1074. The Ruined City .............................1085. Survivors .........................................1117. The Ministry of Dead Names .....1148. Ending The Book of Dead Names .117Player Handouts .................................119Sa

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IntroductIon

In the vernacular of the spy, a black bag job involves breaking and entering to acquire illicit information. Watergate, for example: that was a classic black bag job. It is the domain of the locksmith, the safecracker, the second-storey man. You get in, you get out, and no-one knows that you were ever there... assuming no-one sees you. If a black bag job goes wrong, then you might have to shoot your way out and that involves a very different sort of black bag.

The Laundry runs its own black bag operations from time-to-time but that is not what this book is about.

It is about the other side’s black bag jobs. It is about what happens when they try to break in to our reality, when they covertly sneak through the windows of the world and spy on us... and what happens when they try to fight their way out.

Black Bag JobsCASE LAMBENT WITCH: The Witch Bravo oil platform is not responding to radio signals from the shore. Something very strange is going on out there—and according to the Laundry archives, the platform is drilling right where the Deep Ones told us to not to go. It is off to the North Sea for zombies, shoggoths and your best impression of the marines from Aliens.

Lost and Found: This one is a black cab job—some clueless muppet left a Laundry laptop behind on the back seat of a taxi. The screensaver eats brains and Angleton was supposed to be briefing the new Home Secretary from that very laptop 10 minutes ago. The very large bolus of faecal matter is approaching the wind tunnel at high speed!

The Shadow Over Kafiristan: Welcome to sunny Nuristan—possibly the most isolated and inaccessible bit of Afghanistan, high in the Hindu Kush. It is home to lots of people who want to kill us all. It is also home to Alga Akhan, an Afghan warlord who might be a vital ally... or a worshipper of an alien god. Or both. It is up to the characters to make that call.

The Wild Hunt: The characters are sent to a retreat in a little village in Dartmoor. Population—a few dozen people, one Californian hippy shaman, four undead horrors and one alien parasite. When the Wild Hunt takes to the night sky, the characters are the prey.

Secret Agendas: Someone within the Laundry leaked a top secret document to the Black Chamber. There are three possible suspects—an untrustworthy field agent, an unstable researcher and an Auditor. The characters have to find the leak by any means necessary.

Introduction

‘I love these bastard colostomy-fucking reconnaissance jobs, I really do.’—The Atrocity Archives

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BlaCk Bag JoBs

The Signal: A dead world, billions of light-years away, inhabited only by gargantuan worms. Someone on this husk of a planet has opened a gate back to Earth and sent a signal through. The signal is the names of the characters, repeated over and over.

How to use this bookPrewritten missions are not a strait-jacket. Nothing in this book is holy writ, from which thou shalt not deviate on pain of being stoned to death with dice. Take the missions in this book and do with them as you wish. There are four basic ways to use them.

Running the Missions As Is

You can just jump straight in using your players’ existing characters. All of the missions can be run with minimal preparation on the part of the GM. Just skim the Mission Overview section of each scenario before starting. The six missions should each take one to three sessions to play out and each of them can be started ‘cold’—they all start with the characters in the Laundry offices in London, going about their everyday duties.

Running the Missions As One-Shots

If you are not already running a Laundry game, or just want a change of pace, you can use the pregenerated characters from the core rulebook and one of these missions to fill a night or two of gaming. One-shots mean you can run the game with the gloves off and run a really horrific game. Several of these missions, like CASE LAMBENT WITCH and Secret Agendas, can potentially end in apocalyptic disasters and the one-shot format is perfect for ending the world.

Breaking Them Down For Parts

If you do not like running prewritten games, you can still mine these missions for parts. Strip the concept of vetting allies from The Shadow Over Kafiristan and put it together with Group K and run a game where the characters have to assess the security of a clandestine attempt to circumvent the Benthic Treaty. Turn the Sanru cult loose in modern-day England, make the characters part of the RACIP unit from Lost and Found, reuse monsters and Non-Player Characters or just use these scenarios as examples and make your own from scratch.

As Part of Your Game

While you can just drop any of these missions into your game, you can make them even better by tailoring them to your Player Characters. If you have got the time, read through the scenarios and alter them to be personally resonant to your group. For example, The Wild Hunt’s opening hook is that the characters are sent to investigate a spiritual retreat centre, and while there they find out about several recent disappearances. You could just use the retreat as a cover and replace one of the generic kidnapping

victims with someone important to the Player Characters, like a relative or friend. Similarly, if the characters are having doubts about the morality of the Laundry, you can play up that theme in Secret Agendas. You could remove the unfortunate Geoffrey Piper from Lost and Found entirely and put a Player Character in his place. Make these scenarios your own.

Some of the scenarios use Angleton as a stand-in for the Player Characters’ superior but his sinister presence is not strictly required (except for in Lost and Found).

As A Campaign

There are not any explicit links between these scenarios but if you run them in the order that they appear in this book, you can treat them as a six-episode mini-campaign. The characters start off as nobodies in the Laundry bureaucracy but prove themselves useful in two very different unexpected crises (CASE LAMBENT WITCH and Lost and Found). They are given a baptism of fire as field officers in The Shadow Over Kafiristan. After an overseas mission like that, they deserve a break, so it is off to visit The Wild Hunt.

By now, they are trusted enough to be given the delicate investigation in Secret Agendas. Finally, the characters’ future importance—and the threat of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN—is shown in the glimpse of what is to come in The Signal.

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