“It’s gathering intelligence and providing analysis… and using people. Exploiting them, somehow or another, that’s what we have to do. We find out whatever weakness they have and we manipulate them into helping us. That’s it, really. If they’re honest people, we exploit their decency, and if they’re dishonest, we exploit their guilt. You see, everyone has something. We lie to them and twist them, so they come to trust us, and depend on us when they really shouldn’t. Tell us things they’re not supposed to, often at great risk to themselves. And if it’s going well, maybe we allow them to think that they’re the ones twisting us, whilst always being aware that they might be playing the exact same game.”
- Jean Courtney, The IPCRESS File
I suppose this is my Christmas present to the fans of this blog.
BFM Security & Intelligence is a company or guild of magicians providing surveillance, information gathering, social engineering, undercover agents, and area security. The firm recruits magicians with a talent and passion for spying or being productively paranoid. Once employed and trained in the company’s magic style, they take jobs for nations, wealthy people, crime syndicates and so on. Plenty of them are self-employed, though – to satisfy their voyeurism kink if nothing else.
Magical Style: Rough Shadow Tradecraft
10 points
This magical style is taught to employees of the firm, and revolves around HUMINT information gathering, general sneaking, disabling the minds of enemies, and area secrecy. It suits the needs of both spies and counterspies, selling their services on the not-quite-open market.
The style training begins with learning to pry into someone else’s mind and tricks for protecting your own. More advanced training (optional Skills and Techniques) helps the stylist with infiltration, security and information gathering as they require. The magic spells that form the base of the style are basic mentalist manipulations and detectors. As the stylist moves up in mastery, they learn mental defences, mental offences, protections, social lubricants, and deceptions.
The style’s tricks (Perks) include social operations, defensive precautions, select tools, smoother and more potent spellcasting, and secrecy.
Required Skills: Detect Lies; Interrogation; Mind Block; Psychology.
Required Spells: Sense Emotion; Sense Foes; Truthsayer. Any two of Dull Hearing, Dull Sight, Keen Hearing and Keen Sight.
Perks: Area Spell Mastery; Avatar; Better Magic Items; Controlled Mental Disadvantage; Elixir Resistance (Drunkenness, Friendship, Foolishness, Gullibility, Love, Truth); Far-Casting; Guild Rank; License; Limited Energy Reserve; Magical Analysis; Magical Style Adaptation; No Gestures; No Incantations; Obscure True Name; Permit (Mind Control, Privacy Invasion, Invisibility); Reduced Footprint; Rote Alchemy (Alchemical Antidote, Drunkenness, Friendship, Gullibility, Hardheartedness, Hearing, Invisibility, Keen Sight, Memory, Sleep, Stealth, True Sight); Rule of 17; Sanctum; Secret Mage; Shortcut to Power (Insignificance, Remove Aura, Telepathy); Spell Bond; Spell Duelist; Spell Resistance; Super-Sympathy; Willful Casting; Wizardly Garb.
OPTIONAL TRAITS
Attributes: Improved IQ, Will and Per.
Advantages: Alternate Identity; Contact/Contact Group; Craftiness; Eidetic Memory or Photographic Memory; Empathy or Sensitive; Languages; Security Clearance.
Disadvantages: Curious; Duty; Enemy; Fanaticism; Paranoia; Secret.
Skills: Acting; Brainwashing; Body Language; Camouflage; Criminology; Cryptography; Disguise; Electronics Operation (Communications, Security, Surveillance); Electronics Repair (Communications, Security, Surveillance); Fast-Talk; Filch; Holdout; Hypnotism; Intelligence Analysis; Lockpicking; Lip Reading; Mental Strength; Observation; Photography; Propaganda; Search; Shadowing; Smuggling; Stealth; Streetwise; Traps.
Techniques: Camouflaged Mind Block (see Supers page 38); Coded Thoughts (see Supers page 38).
Spell List
Each level of the style requires learning a certain number of spells before the stylist can graduate to the next level’s spells.
The Bare Minimum
The first level of the style (named “The Bare Minimum” by the firm) covers 16 basic spells, including the required spells. Once the stylist has learnt the 5 required spells plus another 3 (for 8 total), they may be promoted to the next level.
Counterspell, Detect Magic, Dull Hearing, Dull Sight, Foolishness, Keen Hearing, Keen Sight, Magelock, Scryguard, Sense Danger, Sense Emotion, Sense Foes, Sense Life, Simple Illusion, Truthsayer, Ward.
Sentry
The second level of the magic style (“Sentry”) contains 15 spells. Notably, the Sentry spells cover illusions, fogging the minds of men, thwarting scrying, deeper awareness of the world around you, and warnings. The company demands learning 7 spells before the stylist may advance to the third level.
Aura, Conceal Magic, Daze, Detect Poison, Forgetfulness, Illusion Disguise, Illusion Shell, Nightingale, Perfect Illusion, Scrywall, Sense Observation, Silence, Spell Shield, Watchdog, Weaken Will.
Inquisitor
The style’s third level (“Inquisitor”) teaches 27 spells. To reach level 4, the stylist must learn 8 of them. Magicians with a good grasp of Inquisitor spells are veteran secret agents and guardians.
Alertness, Compel Truth, Delayed Message, Emotion Control, Encrypt, False Aura, Fascinate, Hide, Hide Emotion, Hide Thoughts, Hush, Imitate Voice, Lend Language, Mage Light, Mage-Stealth, Mass Daze, Mental Stun, Mind-Reading, Mystic Mark, Permanent Forgetfulness, Persuasion, Rear Vision, Scryfool, See Invisible, Sleep, Spell Wall, Wall of Silence.
Senior Inquisitor
At the fourth level (“Senior Inquisitor”) of the style, the stylist can learn 20 new spells. To reach the last level of the style, they must learn 8 of the new spells. Senior Inquisitors are fearsome bogeymen, capable of truly amazing infiltrations and masters of mind-taking.
Avoid, Borrow Language, Compel Lies, Converse, Ecstasy, False Memory, Far-Hearing, Gift of Letters, Gift of Tongues, Glib Tongue, Invisibility, Mass Sleep, Memorise, Message, Mind-Search, Mind-Sending, See Secrets, Silver Tongue, Soul Rider, Teleport Shield.
True Unknown
The fifth and final level of the style is named “True Unknown” and covers 7 spells. No-one has ever apparently met a magician of this mastery and power.
Alter Voice, Communication, Continual Mage Light, Insignificance, Recall, Remove Aura, Telepathy.
Stylists
What kind of people work for BFM Security & Intelligence, and know the magical style? The assorted personalities described below, for a start.
None of these NPCs have full character sheets – they’re not combatants. Instead, they are colourful secondary cast members or shadowy instigators of plots, either helping the players or being a passive obstacle to them. Assume they have fitting skills and spells mostly on the same level as the player-characters, except in special cases.
Fry Lake makes his living as a blackmailer. He uses Rough Shadow Tradecraft magic to snoop in restricted areas and stalk VIPs. When he finds proof of secrets that people in high places would pay to keep buried, he shakes them down in anonymous e-mails. He lives a surprisingly quiet and frugal life otherwise, he’s single and has few friends with no living family, and he rarely goes out in public. His clothes and personal belongings are drab but very durable. His usual address is a remote cabin in the wilderness, he could be mistaken for a modern day monk. His one vice is wrath; he just can’t stop himself from sadistically lashing out at those who cross him. He’s a bit harried and twitchy in person, grinding his teeth whenever he has to carry on a conversation for long.
Colby Steiner is a veteran instructor for the firm, publicly retired but actually teaching recruits the house style on an irregular basis. As far as anyone knows, he’s enjoying his post-work years in a nice comfortable house with his similarly retired wife, his adult children having moved out. An avuncular, gregarious and witty middle-aged hobbyist, Steiner easily wins the unthinking trust of everyone, including his clueless wife. His casual and sporadic assignment has left him very bored. In his boredom, he has taken to aimlessly snooping on his neighbors. He has discovered some…interesting details that he keeps to himself. If a player-character wants to learn the magical style, Colby can instruct them in it. (As a master, he has much higher base skill and spells levels than the PCs have.)
Leila Qudsi is law enforcement’s deep cover agent in the local black market (drugs, mostly). The cops and criminals do not know she is a mage, nor do they know she has murdered an innocent man to maintain her cover. She has lately gotten more and more frustrated and disgruntled about her current job, and is considering just abandoning her post. Face-to-face, Qudsi is all (fake) smiles and seemingly open to helping in whatever way she can – right up until she stabs you in the back. She’ll play the enabler and egg on both cops and criminals to take risks, break rules, ignore critics, throw caution to the wind and escalate the situation. When it all inevitably blows up, she’ll walk away with clean hands.
Dagmar Vang is an investigative journalist on the trail of a demon summoner. She’s been shaking trees to see what falls out in four different countries, but the conspiracy at work is canny and dangerous. She’s not sure what the plot is yet, but she thinks it has something to do with a big city hospital. Vang is vain, arrogant, smug, and even a bit sleazy. Her family, friends and husband are all worried about her but she is not going to rethink her approach until she actually gets targeted by an assassin or something suitably dramatic. Then she’ll recruit the players to help.
Barry Easterwood is a professional thief and very paranoid. He should be, his favourite target is other mages and he’s stolen priceless enchanted artefacts. As you can imagine, Barry is very good at his job and very ruthless. He is currently battling his older brother and younger sister in court over a matter of the family inheritance, his hated parents having died in a car accident last year.
Three Hundred and Thirty-Three 