About SLA Industries
IT ISN'T ABOUT BIG GUNS!!!
SLA Industries is about horror, paranoia and oppression. The guns just up the stakes. I do not want to promote SLA as a gun-fest, and material which focuses heavily on combat, the war worlds or plain violence will, in all likelihood, be rejected.
Don't refer to Mr. Slayer by name unless it is directly appropriate; refer to the company instead. Mr. Slayer (only his enemies call him just 'Slayer') makes 4 or 5 public appearances a year. These are usually on the Vid. The reason, someone is always listening and 'Mr Slayer' is a known (at least to ops) as a filter word picked up by most media devices.
Submissions are often informal and personalized. This is OK in small doses, but the feel of the material should be dark and oppressive as a whole. One further thing to bear in mind is to avoid sounding judgmental about any aspects of life - quotes about 'scummy unemployed', 'how sad, he still lives with his parents' or other things of that nature are highly offensive to many people.
Remember that the Operatives (Ops, Slops) aren't perceived by the general public to have much in the way of authority. OK, they can kill you with good reason, but if an Op told a civilian (Civvies, Civs) (or a Shiver!) to clean his shoes, he'd be told to "piss off". If he then got violent, it is likely that Cloak Division would take an unhealthy interest in this budding new Serial Killer. You are not the police, you are company troubleshooters. That is unless you are currently working a BPN, in which case you have as much authority you can command based on the BPN type. For as much a some civilians might not care about you as an individual, the company is not an entity they want to get on the wrong side of.
Humor
Often, there is a strong element of comedy in text. In many cases this would be fine. However, in SLA, any humor has a dark, unfunny side to it. The World of Progress is a dark place of no hope. Joy and happiness come in short supply - a cigarette after sex, a too-short orgasm, a cold beer, that double chocolate cookie, these are the only real forms of happiness to be found; five seconds here and there before the oppressive world of progress comes crashing back in. As Player Characters you are obviously allowed to bring the laughs but they key is to remember that those around you might not feel the same way as you do and not to get upset personally if NPC's don't laugh at your jokes or join in.
Corporate wheeling and dealing
Corporates do not get involved with the Black Market or with Soft Companies, except in *very* unusual circumstances. Yes, in general, they're treacherous, supercilious and think that Ops are cattle. Yes, in general, they'll stab the Ops in the back if they think it is appropriate. Some are honorable. A few are actually pleasant. Very, very few are stupid.
Ops
Not all Ops are callous, cynical and greedy. You should not encourage this attitude in the form of general statements; specific statements (or moans from Civs/Shivers) are fine, but don't give the reader the impression that s/he has to play a cold, greedy, species-ist psychopath. Ops are not mercenaries; they are elite agents trying their best to do a very hard job in a basically hostile environment.
Ops and Civilians
Operatives do not have total control over the civilian population of Mort. The only reason the civvies do as they are told is because the Op is carrying a gun - wouldn't you?. In the World of Progress, the population has the illusion of free will & choice, including any interest in or loyalty to SLA. Civilians have little (if any) respect for the Ops and show this in their treatment of them. This comes from the hatred of the Shivers that maltreat and abuse civilians for a number of reasons. Shivers work for SLA. Operatives also work for SLA, therefore Operatives and Shivers are the same and should be treated the same, right?
Operative attitudes - particularly human ones - vary considerably. Do not say that all Ops are "greedy, cold, bigoted bastards", because that is giving the players strict - and unwanted - instructions. As a rather contradictory statement, please also note that all non- human NPC characters should fit their general racial stereotypes. In particular, remember that Ebons are ALIENS. They are NOT human, and they do not always see the world with anything even faintly resembling a human mindset. Wraith Raiders prefer to hunt live food and are trained to see the city as a kind of jungle. The Shakhtar's system of honor might seems counterproductive or even stupid at times but again, they are aliens and for the majority it is a way of life. They will die and most certainly kill for that way of life. Even Frothers, though they were human once, are no longer, not really. Insult a Frother's Clan at your own peril, gun carrying Op or not.
Ops and Shivers
If you carry the mentality of "Shivers just seem to be there for target practice" Try and follow through with it, and you may find yourself in serious problems. If you screw around with Shivers, then remember that there are several million more of them than there are of you. Some of them - particularly Enforcer Shivers - are also going to be considerably more dangerous with their support in mind. OK, they resent the higher rank & status of Ops and the requests that Ops can make of them, and they can be extremely obstructive and irritating. They are still SLA employees, and are ordered to report maltreatment to their superiors. Bully them, and you'll get stonewalled. Harm them, and you'll be up in front of Cloak Division before you can say "Eat HESH, you Shiver Scum". Treat them with a sliver of respect and you might just find paperwork getting done quickly or even backup actually turning up when you need it.
3rd Eye and Blue Print News Files (BPNS)
Third Eye (3ird Eye) news teams are not at the "disposal of the Ops". The news teams make the news. If they don't like what the operatives are doing then the cameras go off. If the operatives try to complain, then "Freedom of the press" is the battle cry for all Third Eye news teams and they are right - 3rd Eye teams normally hold good SCLs to make sure that they have the complete freedom to report what they want. If a squad is trying to hunt down a serial killer then there is all the more reason for 3ird Eye to be with them all the time. Serial killer hunts make good TV.
Nearly everyone hates a particular type of BPN. Personally, I dislike Yellow operations. However, you should never refer to any BPN type in a scornful or offensive manner in the presence of 3rd Eye teams, it will get out and you might find yourself only getting those types of BPN's.
Slayers Crib and acquiring BPN's
"...stare at vid screens mindlessly until you see a BPN you like."
The whole process is nowhere near that easy. Forms have to be filled in and much waiting is done. The halls are really dark, depressing places that demoralize.
I see it like this:
The queue of Operatives seems to stretch out forever, the shifting mass of bodies slowly shuffling forward to the reception area, to be met by the smiling faces of the corporate clowns that operate the authorization system for the BPN circus.
To get a BPN, you must have the correct paperwork which consists of a number of forms that must be completed in triplicate. These forms all have the same questions, just set out in different formats to fool people into thinking they are all different and all necessary. These crucial forms can only be obtained by the Operatives at the front desk, which is currently a long way away at the front of that very long queue.
The air in the long, tunnel-like hall is damp and musty, filled with the stale smell of cigarette smoke and the overly sweet odor of Slosh. Operatives move to and fro, impatient in the bureaucratic limbo of the BPN office. Fast food couriers filter in and out of the waiting room with deliveries for those long suffering Ops who have made it past the red tape of the front desk. The more artistic pessimists adorn the floor and walls of the hall with personal messages of dissatisfaction at the administrative arrogance of the corporate management.
Having eventually reached the front desk, obtained the right forms and an eternity of form-filling later, you are allowed through into the waiting room, where - if past experience is any guide - they will spend the rest of the afternoon.
Ah, the waiting room.
This is the last bastion of bureaucratic irritation before Operatives are free to leave with the rewards of their ordeal - a BPN. Scattered across the hall like unwanted toys, the Operatives huddle round tables - some two to a chair in the crush of this demoralizing delay. The smoke of a thousand cigarettes hangs above them like a pall, a visible expression of the aura of depression that fills this gallery of gloom. And alongside it all, the smell of cold food, stale smoke and muddy, oily rain. The litter bins are overflowing with cans, cigarette stubs and food cartons.
Stormers lumber back and forth, impatient at this enforced inactivity. Brain Wasters look from side to side, hoping to meet the gaze of an unsuspecting Operative and relieve their boredom with a diverting interval of violence. Wraiths scan the hall, trying to look as though they are above the boredom and frustration suffered by the other races. Frothers sit, stand or stagger in the drugged state of delirium that helps them survive the waiting. Ebons gather in huddles, preferring the company of their own kind to that of the unenlightened. Soft chants and mutterings emanate from the Shaktars who sit here and there, deep in meditation and beyond the reach of time, boredom and frustration. Humans mingle and merge into every corner of the hall, taking on all of the aspects of the other races in the blind confusion known as mankind.
The doors that line the back of the hall are lavishly adorned with the angry graffiti of aggravated Operatives. The lights above them flip constantly from "Enter" to "Busy" and back again. The high-pitched squawk of the PA cuts through the general drone of conversation regularly, tinnily announcing the office numbers allotted to those lucky squads whose wait has ended. Its voice seems to have been tuned to the precise pitch of fingernails on a blackboard. It all just adds to the happy, friendly atmosphere.
Tempers fray easily here, and fights are common. The long wait, the endless red tape, the air and the overcrowding can work on an Op's nerves after hour upon hour of enforced idleness. Most disputes begin with small things, like taking someone else seat, jumping the queue, or simply having a face or an attitude that someone doesn't like.
Fighting in a BPN office is discouraged, and can lead to the Operatives involved acquiring a no-good BPN, or none at all. If things get serious, the guards (provided by Cloak Division) will step in, and some serious hurting will be done by all participants. All Ops know this, and they also know that at least some of the corporates who work in the BPN halls get their kicks out of pushing Ops to the limit to see if they'll crack. Sometimes, however, you just don't care.
When you finally get to chat to an official, he'll be contemptuous, sneering and offensive. If you do anything other than grovel, he'll generally give you a sewer BPN. Be pleasant, polite, and grateful for small mercies.
When you're finally out, you can get to work. At last.
War Worlds
These worlds are not like Vietnam. You sign up for a 6- month tour (or are built by Karma to fight until dead), unless a particularly evil Green/Black/Platinum BPN takes you to one of them. Troops have an average survival time of 28 hours on a war world; very, very few make the whole tour. Those who do are left insane, usually crazed psychopaths (on what they see as a holy mission for SLA) who are dropped in the Cannibal Sectors with all their armor and weapons. People on special missions may survive longer, but will pick up several ranks of psychoses. Not even NPCs flit in and out of War Worlds. Do not use them much, unless it is absolutely appropriate - a bit like Mr. Slayer.
Why War Worlds at all? Well, there are several things to bear in mind.
A few planets have unique resources, such as: Ores that can't be found elsewhere; special biomystical/ebb fields; a certain chemical, polymer or gene pattern in the biosphere; special environmental conditions; or some other such unrepeatable bonuses. Other planets are intrinsically ordinary, but one of the three powers builds a key base deep underground, or in some otherwise super-safe location. Finally, some planets manage to just piss off the three major powers, like Cross.
Any one of these planets can become a war world.
A war world occurs when a planet holds some element so vitally useful to one major power that one or both of the others cannot tolerate allowing that element to fall into the current occupier's hands. When that element is important enough to defend -- huge labs the size of a planet's core developing a new super-weapon; a unique ore of key importance; &c -- and the planet is not already defended with heavy-duty defences (to keep it low profile), a war world can result.
In some cases, the element in question will be destroyed and rendered obsolete. At this point, the war on that world will cease. In others, it does not lose its value, and the war will continue. Some war-worlds, like Dante, have been going on long enough to see continual intensification of the fighting to the point where it is simply not possible to cram any more ordnance on to it, and the average survival time is measured in minutes; in others, like Charlie's Point, the war is much lighter, and takes the form of continual skirmish and ambush. Occasionally, sometimes, one of the powers even manages to dislodge its enemies for long enough to seize the resource they were after; more often, it is simply obliterated or fought over so long it's no longer important.
You can guarantee, though, that for every war world that is finally abandoned, another will suddenly fall into the spotlight.
The spooks: Cloak Division, Internal Affairs, Dark Finders & Stigmartyr
Cloak Division are the 'only' public face of the entire wing of spooks. Dark Finders are their elite trouble-shooters, Internal Affairs are a rumor, and Stigmartyr are a barely-whispered source of terror. No IA agents will identify themselves as such - they'll normally say 'Cloak Division' if they have to say anything. Internal Affairs are called in by Cloak Division when things get really serious - not just naughty or mistaken, but actively corrupt.
If either division decides that a hit is necessary, or if a situation is going to be particularly dangerous, then the Dark Finders are sent out. Specially enhanced by Karma, Dark Finders have little in the way of feelings, and feel only an intense loyalty to SLA. They are extremely dangerous, and outrank all Shivers and most Ops.
Stigmartyr deal with the suppression of the Truth and related subjects, powers and entities. To see them, in general, is considered fair warning that your life expectancy is down to about 2 seconds. Many Ops wonder what they look like - those that do find out are unable to spread rumors. When they want to look obvious, Stigmartyr Agents wear (clean) white Dogeybone with a red Templar cross stenciled over the breast. The armor is pretty pointless compared to their abilities. When they want to look subtle, you wouldn't be able to pick them out of a crowd they wanted to blend into.
Who outranks whom?
Like any Machiavellian governmental system, SLA has several fairly discrete tiers of power, each tier having its own cabals and jihads (to use a couple of funky words with little provocation). At the top is Slayer, assisted and advised as appropriate by his little coterie of thugs, Teeth, Taarnish, Intruder and Senti - but particularly the good Preceptor. These are the only people who don't need an appointment, who hold SCL1 and know the Truth.
The first real tier of power lies beneath these legends, with the important departmental heads, planetary and system-wide governors and region coordinators, and other movers and shakers; Matt Cradle, Jacob Vayde, Alexander Xavier, Ernest Strand, Max Hagen and others. These are people who get to talk to Slayer in person, if it's been a very bad week. Like any circle of councilors, they are not friendly with each other, and spend a lot of time trying to undermine each other while they jockey for position. I classify these people as Illuminati - the people behind the scenes, making the day-to- day decisions. Only when stuff gets ****ed up does Slayer take much notice. This tier includes aides of each of the major players; even if the aides have no actual influence per se, everyone needs advisers. Illuminati have mighty SCLs, but they don't actually know the truth.
Beneath them are the influential - lesser department heads, important subordinates, the Deans of the universities, governors of cities, Lord Shahantian, major media figures, brilliant scientists, and so on. These are the great and the good, the highest tier to which any PC could ever aspire. They would not ever have contact with Head Office, unless Slayer summoned them.
The last rank of corporate influence is made up of everyone else with any faint sniff of power; middle managers, foremen, minor celebs, news editors, professors & head researchers, &c &c &c. These are the insignificant. They are the tier with which the vast majority of game-to-game plotting will take place.
So, in order of decreasing influence, we have legends, illuminati, influential, and insignificant.
What do the various security forces do?
The different security forces have similar roles, but with different mandates, and they tend to work at cross-purposes. I'll start from the bottom and work up, trying to compare the different forces to real equivalents. If you haven't read the section above, "Who outranks whom?", then please do so first.
Monarchs are store guards and mall security; little people with nothing to say who are nevertheless determined to say it as loudly as possible. They're controlled by anyone and everyone.
Shiver units & SCAFs are county police. They deal with the community, keep it doing more or less what it is supposed to, and make sure that the good citizens feel that they are being protected on a day to day basis. Like most fictional local police, they are at the beck and call of the insignificant power tier.
Ops are the FBI, but gone freelance. They're there to take care of the big things that we all know and love, like riots, subversives, killers and the like. They're the meat and bones of society's defense structure, not SLA's. They too are at the beck and call of the Insignificant power tier, even if they don't much like the fact.
Cloak Division is the CIA. They're there to take on the jobs that require a degree of central coordination, need sensitive handling, or are supposed to be kept secret. Also, like the CIA, they are in charge of operations which the "unenlightened" man on the street might consider detrimental to the public at large - the SLA equivalent of running drugs to the Contras, for example. Everyone knows they're sneaky and nasty, and they exceed their mandate. Although they are represented in the Illuminati, they work with the Influential. Their mandate is very broad indeed.
Dispersal Shivers are the national-guard - they are there to maintain peace and order in the face of severe public disturbance. The Influential have a degree of control over them - that is the tier they are responsible to, in effect - but their mandate is narrow: keep the public in their place.
Enforcer Shivers are more like a Black Ops hit squad. When someone or something everyday needs to be destroyed in the interests of the greater good, they get the job. They answer to the Illuminati, and don't really possess personalities. Think of them as drones.
Internal Affairs are the NSA. In theory, they're supposed to make sure everyone is a good, loyal little citizen. In practice, they take care of Black projects, internal surveillance operations, monitoring and control of destabilizing groups, and jobs which are not so much detrimental to the man on the street as fatal to him. They are more or less controlled by the Illuminati. They're secret in the same sort of way as MI6 is - It doesn’t exist, but everyone knows where their offices are anyway.
Dark Finders are field agents; they are, in effect, to Cloak and IA investigators as the Ops are to the Shivers - the ones who get it done. They're the being in the field who gets to do what the planners and intelligence agents have decided is necessary. They are also responsible for sensitive assassinations; the Enforcers are not used where secrecy is required. Some Dark-Finders are recruited and bio-enhanced from other services, while others are vatgrown. For real emergencies, there are rumors of a Darkfinder vatgrown variant that stands some 15-20 feet tall. Either way, part of the conditioning involves psychological manipulation to ensure loyalty and obedience. They do not know the Truth.
The Ebon Guard are little-mentioned, but they're the special Ebb-using forces. Their death-suit helmets are modified to ensure SLA loyalty and obedience, and they are highly enhanced beings. This makes them the Ebb equivalent of Darkfinders. In theory, they too are field agents for Cloak and Internal Affairs, but the nature of modifications made tends to divide the two forces into the Karma - Dark Lament rivalry. They are not Necanthropes - Necanthropes in the Intelligence community work for Cloak, IA, Stigmartyr or the Black Chapter only - but their powers, augmented by their training and special kit, are Necanthrope grade. They report to Teeth, but are at the disposal of the Illuminati. They do not know the Truth.
Stigmartyr are more like the British military's special intelligence task-force code-named SI-8. They're so secret that almost no-one has even heard of them, and those that have don't know what it's all about. Even within the Illuminati, information about them is very scarce indeed. They report directly to Teeth, and hold a James Bond style '00' rating - they can kill, destroy or seize anything they want to at any time without any shred of proof whatsoever, and don't even have to give a reason. All Stigmartyr agents know the Truth; all SLA-loyal individuals who know the Truth - apart from the Legends - are Stigmartyr agents, or dead. There is no middle ground. Stigmartyr's sole concern is to keep even the slightest hint of the Truth suppressed.
Finally, the Black Chapter are Slayer's private force. Their mandate is to do whatever Slayer wants them to do. They are all fanatically loyal and ludicrously dangerous, but whether they actually have minds or not is open to question. They won't talk to anyone else who isn't Slayer, let alone take orders from them.
Overview of the workings of the Ebb
What is flux? - Instability in the fabric of reality.
Where does flux come from? - The potential caused by probabilities that didn't happen, or by uncertainties in the universe that are not resolved (ala Schrödinger’s Cat). Collectively, they contribute to a vast universal sea of flux that sits just behind and outside of reality.
How does the Ebb user draw / regenerate his/her own flux? - The Ebon mind is able to subconsciously perceive the uncertainties and probabilities of the universe and tap into that quantum uncertainty for its own ends. The mind can handle certain amounts of that uncertainty before collapsing, and rest allows it to recharge that capacity. Drawing too much flux (i.e. beyond your limit) would destroy the mind completely, which is why the subconscious only allows the Ebon to draw as much as she can handle. Devices help by providing a reservoir of certainty to counterbalance the flux. Non-Ebons successfully opening their mind to such quantum uncertainty would have their brains turned into protein broth as cell atoms became non-determinate.
How does flux, fed through a formulaic equation, become the Ebb effect? - With the aid of a glyph that feeds the necessary environmental factors and channels to the Ebon's mind, she calculates the probability of what she desires being actual rather than potential, and the effects that would be required to bring that probability into existence, and their probabilities, and then having calculated all that information into a path for reality to move down, channels the universal uncertainty (up to their limit) to bring that event into causality.
But the fact that the formulae are well-founded and have a long historical heritage makes them far more probable than just the calculations they involve would permit. Billions of people *know* the equations work, so the universe is prepared to let probability be warped into their paths. Trying a related calculation without that weight of knowledge -- trying to invent a new formula, in other words -- is incredibly hard. It would have to be built up painstakingly by teams of Unions from tiny first principles that were already probable in their own right, and practiced time after time at each stage to bed the formula's elements into reality before moving to the next stage.
For example (and a rather poor example too *grin*), if Dark Lament wanted to develop a formula for creating food, they would need to start off with something like the probability that, having called a pizza delivery, it would be delivered to the research lab within a tight but reasonable time limit, and group-formulate that particular calculation 4000 or 5000 times before it became acceptable to the universe. Then they could slowly bring the time limit in tighter and tighter -- when you have your pizza being delivered within 5 minutes as acceptable, having it delivered in 4 mins 30 becomes reasonable, even though the rest of the city has to wait half an hour -- until delivery was instantaneous after making the phone call to order it. Then they could start working to have it miss-delivered as a result of someone else's call so it didn't need ordering, and, finally, (because it would now be acceptable to have your correct pizza miss-delivered to you instantaneously) work on the chances that it would be able to arrive without delivery or payment. At that point, other types of food delivery could be pushed down the same process (which would be getting easier all the time), and finally you'd arrive at a situation where the universe accepted that it would be reasonable for food to appear in front of an Ebon. The whole process would take about a hundred Necanthropes about 50 years, involve hundreds of millions of take-away dinners and a billion credits in fast-food alone, and piss off all the Necs totally as they don't eat any more (can you imagine the stench of a hundred million pizzas, in their boxes, rotting in the corner over 50 years *GRIN*? Just think of the cockroaches...!) Hardly justifiable to save some poncy brain-waster the 5c for a Meat Feast, this is why it hasn’t been developed. It does also mean though that there may be all sorts of ancient, suppressed formulae that were considered too dangerous lurking around to be found, because they would already be bedded in to the universe.
Incidentally, that isn't to imply that the universe is sentient, rather than as an event happens, it leaves behind a degree of probabilistic residue that makes it slightly easier for an almost identical event to happen again, another part of the reason why formulae have to be so precise.
What happens when the equation fails and the Ebb user looses his/her flux? - Other probabilities are too strong for the Ebb-user to overcome, and the probability she has channeled flux into fizzles.
You could work it so that an unbounded miss-calculation (ie a calculation based on a glyph with open environmental variables -- a glyph card rather than a Death-Suit, which is fully bounded -- causes all sorts of probability effects and/or brain-turning-to-mush effects, which is what makes Glyph Cards so dangerous. One of the reasons Death-Suits are so big is that they contain all possible bounding variable data items padding all the various formula glyphs. A glyphless formulation would contain no variable data at all, and so immediately spin away from the Ebon creating all sorts of completely random effects and dealing incalculable (ie immediately lethal) damage to the Ebon's mind. Psych blocks to prevent this are installed during training. Untrained Ebon’s that somehow learn how to formulate either get the hint, or die immediately on their first -- foolish -- trial formulation.
Is it possible to have too much flux / too little flux? - The Ebon does not really have the flux per se. It might just be possible (theoretically) to over-ride the self-protection mechanism, channel too much flux, and be destroyed. It is not possible to draw too little flux. An Ebon in a dead zone (zero-flux area) will be in extreme pain and be disorientated, but will not deteriorate or otherwise come to lasting harm.
Is flux only present for the use of the Ebb user or does it serve some other purpose / can it have some other effect?
It is an automatic effect kicked up by the passage of time and by random events. If it has any other purpose, it is unknown.
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:16, Wed 09 May 2018.
