night’'s black agents Bang-and-Burner 14 “Bang and burn” jobs involve sabotage, usually through demolitions or arson. This skill set translates with unnerving ease to EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) and arson investigation. Bang- and-burners set and disarm everything from booby traps to car bombs to ship- scuttling charges. Specific Examples: IRA or ETA bomb- builder, Albanian mafia arsonist, Polish Army combat engineer, Special Branch bomb disposal expert. INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: Architecture 2, Chemistry 2, Criminology 1, Intimidation 1 GENERAL ABILITIES: Conceal 4, Explosive Devices 8, Infiltration 2, Mechanics 4 Black Bagger A “black bag job” is FBI slang for a breaking-and-entry intrusion, usually intended to copy (or steal) documents or plant bugs or wiretaps. British spies often call break-in artists “box men,” a term originating in Victorian criminal slang. By any name, it’s burglary. Specific Examples: Cat burglar in Naples, Bulgarian NIS officer INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: on the Riviera, Bundespolizei handling “renditions” for the CIA. Bureaucracy 1, Forgery 4, museum security specialist, INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: Bureaucracy Photography 1 DGSE or Mossad covert entry 2, Cop Talk 1, Criminology Alternates: Cryptography specialist, NSA contractor. 2, Urban Survival 1 GENERAL ABILITIES: Cover 6, INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: Data Alternates: Chemistry, Data Digital Intrusion 4, Disguise 2, Recovery 1, Electronic Surveillance 2, Recovery, Electronic Surveillance, Infiltration 4, Mechanics 2 Photography 2, Streetwise 1 Notice, Streetwise Alternates: Architecture, Notice GENERAL ABILITIES: Conceal 6, Cuckoo GENERAL ABILITIES: Conceal 2, Digital Disguise 2, Driving 4, Explosive The cuckoo lays its eggs in another bird’s Intrusion 2, Filch 6, Infiltration 8 Devices 2, Infiltration 2, Stability 2 nest, convincing the stranger to raise its Alternates: Preparedness Alternates: Digital Intrusion chicks. Agents with this Background specialize in social infiltration; they Cleaner Cobbler may be “face men,” long-con grifters, or The cleaner removes evidence of covert In British spy lingo, the cobbler makes former moles or sleepers planted in an activity from the scene. Sometimes “shoes” — false passports, visas, enemy agency or society by their patron. that evidence is just fingerprints or identity documents, and so forth. In This Background blends very well with surveillance tapes; sometimes, it’s an increasingly digital age, it’s good to Asset Handler. bloodstains or corpses.This Background, see solid hand-craftsmanship rewarded. Specific Examples: CIA deep cover agent especially, combines well with others; These abilities also point toward of influence, SVR “swallow” trained it’s a good, useful skill set for any covert counterfeiting, or any sort of image to lure Western men into “honey operative. A cleaner’s abilities also or document manipulation, as well as traps,” BND-sponsored journalist, come in handy when removing a living toward stopping such behaviors. Iranian VEVAK agent monitoring person from the scene, either willingly Specific Examples: MI6 or SVR dissident expats, scoundrel preying or involuntarily in “hostile extractions.” documentation expert, Nigerian on lonely hearts in the Greek SPECIFIC EXAMPLES: FSB mole in the facilitator for human traffickers, islands, MI6 “talent spotter” looking Interior Ministry, Special Branch Interpol document-security for foreign targets vulnerable security operative, Camorra- officer, Italian Guardia di to blackmail or recruitment. connected trucking supervisor Finanza customs inspector. characters n backgrounds INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: Bureaucracy 15 Flattery or Flirting 2, High 1, Cop Talk 1, Interrogation Making Your Own Society 2, Reassurance 2 1, Law 1, Notice 2 Background Alternates: Human Terrain, Streetwise Alternates: Criminology, GENERAL ABILITIES: Cover 3, Disguise 8, Intimidation, Streetwise The Backgrounds provided are Filch 2, Gambling 3, Sense Trouble 2 GENERAL ABILITIES: Disguise 2, intended to be inspirational, not Hand-to-Hand 6, Infiltration 2, comprehensive. If they inspire you to Hacker Sense Trouble 2, Surveillance 6 make your own Background, more The 21st-century box man does his Alternates: Athletics, Driving, Shooting power to you! Since Backgrounds have breaking and entering over fiberoptic no in-game mechanical effect, go ahead cable and wireless networks. A Medic and make up any Background you like clandestine-ops hacker alters data as It’s not just about the healing, although as long as the Director approves the well as steals it, suborning systems it’s mostly about that. It’s also about the concept. Each Background comprises rather than crashing them. Real-world truth serum administering, or the talking 6 points in Investigative abilities, and hacking depends at least as much on agents out of (or into) collapsing, or the 18 points in General abilities. social engineering — working on spotting viral-biological threats before The listed Backgrounds are human weaknesses — as it does on they hit the headlines, or the figuring occupational: they narrowly track an cybernetic savvy and l337 coding skillz. out just what killed all those Triad thugs. agent’s role in a team of operatives, This Background combines particularly SPECIFIC EXAMPLES: Scotland Yard forensic or on a crew of “deniable assets.” You well with the Analyst, the Black Bagger, pathologist, CIA “shrinker” or MI6 could just as easily build Backgrounds or the Wire Rat. “inquisitor”, GSG 9 trauma medic, intended to recall literary or cinematic Specific Examples: Ukrainian industrial- Paris or Naples EMT, US Navy models of thriller fiction, although the espionage contractor, GCHQ corpsman, WHO or Médecins Sans ones given here should take Athletics codes-and-signals “wrangler,” Swiss Frontières hematologist, Russian ratings of 8+ in addition: bank financial security specialist, Army biological warfare specialist. Brainwashed Black Program IDF Unit 8200 cyberwarfare INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: programmer, freelance American Bullshit Detector 2*, Chemistry 1, Badass computer security specialist. Diagnosis 2**, Forensic Pathology 1, INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: Electronic Surveillance 1, INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: Interrogation 1, Pharmacy 1 Cryptography 1*, Data Recovery 2, Alternates: Human Terrain, Languages, Notice 1, Tradecraft 1, Traffic Electronic Surveillance 2, Traffic Reassurance Analysis 1, Urban Survival 2 GENERAL ABILITIES: Analysis 1, Urban Survival 1 GENERAL ABILITIES: Medic 10, Shrink 8 Alternates: Accounting, Bureaucracy, Alternates: Driving, Health, Stability Hand-to-Hand 8, Shooting 6, Forgery, Human Terrain, Reassurance * includes the free 1 point Surveillance 4 GENERAL ABILITIES: Digital Intrusion 10, from 8+ in Shrink. Hot Vampire Slayer Disguise 2, Infiltration 2, Mechanics 4 **includes the free 1 point INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: Alternates: Network from 8+ in Medic. Bullshit Detector 1, Flirting 1, *free from 8+ in Digital Intrusion. Mule Occult Studies 1, Reassurance 1, Investigator Vampirology 2 A mule specializes in taking things GENERAL ABILITIES: This is the straightforward, meat-and- from one side of a border to another: Hand-to-Hand 8, Weapons 10 potatoes sort of agent: given a problem, drugs, girls, fellow agents, antiquities, he tries to solve it. Sometimes that defectors, stolen cars, a mysterious silver MI6 Agent With License to Kill involves calling in the law or backup; briefcase, you name it. Many mules are INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: sometimes it involves calling in a wet part of a long family line of smugglers, Flirting 2, High Society 2, worker to “resolve” it; sometimes it especially in the clan-riven Balkans and Intimidation 1, Tradecraft 1 involves calling in a Predator drone Middle East; others are part of a wide GENERAL ABILITIES: Driving 4, to really, really “resolve” it. Many network of criminals organized along Gambling 3, Hand-to-Hand 4, investigators are reactive rather than vaguely ethnic lines. Still others work Infiltration 2, Shooting 5 proactive: counter-terror, counter- for specific agencies at specific border intelligence, counter-organized crime. crossings; a few have good enough cover Off-Duty Cop on the Coast Specific Examples: MI5 or FSB field to get them across multiple borders INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES: agent, French National Police multiple times. This Background Architecture 1, Bullshit Detector 2, inspector, Italian special anti-Mafia combines well with Watcher to create Cop Talk 2, Intimidation 1 magistrate’s officer, Triad fixer. a “tourist” or “lamplighter,” a long-term GENERAL ABILITIES: surveillance artist assigned to a highly Hand-to-Hand 5, Sense Trouble 3, mobile, high-value target. Shooting 5, Surveillance 5 night’'s black agents Tasers and Stun guns Both tasers and stun guns use high- voltage, low-amperage electrical currents to disrupt a target’s electro- motor system, functionally paralyzing them for several seconds. A taser is a pistol-grip or flashlight- 62 grip weapon that fires two metal darts on 7-yard wires, using compressed air. Firing a taser is a Shooting test; it can only be used at Close range (at Point-Blank range, the darts haven’t separated enough for the charge to propagate). It is a single-shot weapon that takes two rounds to reload. A stun gun isn’t a gun at all, but a simple battery grip with two exposed electrical contacts. Touching the target and squeezing the handgrip releases the charge. Using a stun gun is a Weapons attack; it can only be used at Point-Blank range. (A cattle prod or stun rod