From 2c53c8488eb14a01b5d3340d16b49636e4a6ffcc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: timevans666 Date: Thu, 14 May 2026 19:42:46 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] =?UTF-8?q?Event=20159:=20BRP=20Day=20One=20=E2=80=94=20fu?= =?UTF-8?q?ll=20scenario=20expansion?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit - Complete three-act structure following master template - Overriding story: Meridian Biosciences / MX-9 / COBR containment decision - Plot summary (GM's truth), player experience arc - Introduction with individual character read-alouds and alert delivery - Act One: Something Is Wrong — bus crash, first infected, market breaks - Act Two: The Long Walk South — Blue Anchor, pharmacy, reanimation, cordon - Act Three: Bridge or River — Tower Bridge negotiation or RIB at Bankside Pier - Epilogue with four outcome states and closing read-aloud - 5 major NPCs with full stat blocks (Fatima, Callum, Sharif, Marcus, Helen, Pete) - 6 pre-generated characters with stats, hooks, and motivation - 12-clue trail with essential/optional split and fallbacks - 11 handouts listed with format specifications - Zombie quick reference table - 9 artwork assets with reportage ink sketch style and generation prompts - The Tangent: Day Two / Meridian investigation follow-up - Full GM notes on lethality, pacing, Helen, Marcus, and the cordon moment --- scenarios/event-159-brp-day-one.md | 646 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 615 insertions(+), 31 deletions(-) diff --git a/scenarios/event-159-brp-day-one.md b/scenarios/event-159-brp-day-one.md index 1615e31..2ba52b7 100644 --- a/scenarios/event-159-brp-day-one.md +++ b/scenarios/event-159-brp-day-one.md @@ -1,37 +1,621 @@ -# Event 159 – BRP: Day One - -## Event Details -- **Event Number:** 159 -- **Event Type:** RPG -- **Age Range:** Adult (18+) -- **Maximum Tickets:** 6 -- **Cost:** $0.00 -- **Time Zone:** Europe/London (UTC +01:00) -- **When:** Day 4 – Sunday, 2:00 pm to 5:50 pm -- **Location:** Table in 14D – Game Room -- **Host:** timevans666 - -## Players -1. Damian Maher -2. Lorna Joyce -3. Elena Giordano -4. Valentin Fuchs -5. Adrian Hall -6. Alan Rowe - -## Premise -It begins with confusion. Then sirens. Then screams. In this fast-moving survival horror set in London, players experience the first terrifying hours of a sudden zombie outbreak. Resources are scarce, information is unreliable, and every decision could mean life or death. +# Event 159 – BRP: Day One — "London Falls" --- -## Scenario Notes - +## MASTER RULES (this scenario) -## Characters - +- **Structure:** Introduction → Act One → Act Two → Act Three → Epilogue +- **Maximum runtime:** 3 hours 30 minutes (210 minutes) +- **Act weighting:** Act One ~30%, Act Two ~45%, Act Three ~15%, Intro/Epilogue ~10% +- **BRP lethality note:** Remind players at the table opening that BRP is deadly. A single unprotected gunshot wound can end a character. This is not a horror game about winning. It is about cost. +- **Tone note:** This is not a zombie combat scenario. The zombies are the weather. The people are the story. -## Handouts - +--- + +## Event Details + +- **Event Number:** 159 +- **System:** Basic Role-Playing (BRP) — Chaosium +- **Setting:** London, England — Sunday, 17 May 2026, 10:47 AM onwards +- **Tone:** Social thriller → survival horror → earned tragedy +- **Maximum Runtime:** 3 hours 30 minutes +- **Players:** 5–6 (pre-generated characters provided) +- **Art Style:** Reportage ink sketch — rough, urgent, journalistic. Like a war correspondent's sketchbook. Crosshatched shadows, incomplete lines suggesting motion. Nothing clean. + +--- + +## Session Timing Guide + +| Section | Duration | Cumulative | GM Checkpoint | +|---------|----------|------------|---------------| +| Introduction | ~15 min | 0:15 | All six characters placed, alert delivered, players converging | +| Act One — Something Is Wrong | ~60 min | 1:15 | First infected encountered, Market breaks, group formed | +| Act Two — The Long Walk South | ~90 min | 2:45 | Pub decision made, reanimation witnessed, cordon heard | +| Act Three — The Bridge or the River | ~30 min | 3:15 | Escape route taken, cost paid | +| Epilogue — What It Cost | ~15 min | 3:30 | Table debrief, tangent seeded | + +**Hard rule:** At 2:45, move to Act Three regardless. At 3:05, force the cost. The epilogue must happen. + +--- + +## Plot Summary *(GM's Truth — do not share with players)* + +On Thursday, 14 May 2026 — three days before the events of this scenario — a biosafety Level 3 breach occurred in a sub-basement laboratory beneath Meridian Biosciences' London research annex, located in a converted Victorian railway arch beneath the Elephant & Castle shopping development. Meridian's London operation is nominally pharmaceutical R&D; in practice, it has for four years been quietly contracted to the Ministry of Defence to research neurological disruption agents. The specific compound in development — internally designated MX-9 — targets the autonomic nervous system, inducing a cascade failure that mimics brain death, followed within hours by aggressive reanimation of motor function without higher cognition. + +The breach on Thursday was contained to four laboratory workers. By Friday afternoon, three of them were dead. By Saturday evening, two had reanimated in a sealed section of the facility. By 7:14 AM on Sunday, a third had reached a service corridor that connected to the public drainage network. Within forty minutes, three members of the public in the Elephant & Castle area were showing early symptoms. Metropolitan Police officers responding to "confused and aggressive persons" had no PPE and no information. Two officers were bitten. + +The government has known since approximately 8:30 AM. COBR convened at 9:00 AM. The NHS Emergency Alert was not issued until 10:47 AM — a delay of nearly two hours — because a containment-first assessment concluded that alerting the public would cause a stampede that would spread the infected across London faster than controlled evacuation could manage. That assessment was wrong, or at least too slow. By the time the alert fires, the infection is already moving along the South Bank. + +The military cordon being established "north of the river" that Callum's radio will pick up fragments of is not a rescue cordon. It is a containment cordon. The working assumption inside COBR, based on the rate of spread from Elephant & Castle, is that South London below the Thames cannot be held. The cordon is along the north bank. The government is not coming south of the river. They are closing the door. + +The players do not need to know this. But every government decision, every police response, and every NPC reaction makes more sense once the GM understands it. The truth is available to be pieced together — Priya is the character most likely to find it — but the scenario does not require it to be found. The players only need to survive until nightfall. Whether they do so knowing why this happened is up to them. + + +--- + +## Player Experience + +The players experience this scenario from the ground up: they know nothing. They are six strangers on the South Bank on a quiet Sunday morning, each with their own reason for being there and one person they want to reach before the world fully comes apart. + +The arc is deliberately structured as a series of expanding realisations. First something is wrong, but it might be anything — a gas leak, a crowd panic, a medical episode. Then it is definitely worse than that. Then it is something that has no name yet and no precedent. Then it is the end of the world as they know it, at least until nightfall, and the question becomes not "what is happening" but "what are we willing to do to survive until morning." + +The best sessions will not be defined by the zombie encounters. They will be defined by the pub — the decision about whether to stay in the Blue Anchor knowing one person inside is infected. By whether Priya tells the group what she is starting to piece together about Meridian. By whether Maggie uses her old police authority to take charge of the armed looters at the pharmacy, or shoots first. By whether anyone tries to bring Helen — a 60-year-old woman in denial — to the bridge. + +The scenario ends when the players reach Tower Bridge or the moored RIB at Bankside Pier, or when night falls without them reaching either. The cost is baked in: someone does not make it, or makes it at a price they will feel. + +--- + +## Pre-Game Handouts + +| ID | Description | Format | When Given | +|----|-------------|--------|------------| +| 159-H00-A | Character sheets — six pre-gens with personal hooks and contact names | Printed cards, one per player | Before play begins | +| 159-H00-B | South Bank area map — Waterloo to Borough, key locations marked | Printed A5, ink-sketch style | Before play begins | +| 159-H00-C | NHS Emergency Alert screengrab — red screen, government text | Phone-sized printed card or displayed on GM device | Introduction beat — alert fires | + +--- + +## Introduction *(~15 minutes)* + +### Opening Read-Aloud + +*Read or paraphrase to each player in turn, 30 seconds each, before the alert fires. Establish where they are and what is ordinary.* + +> **KIRA** — You're at a corner table in a coffee shop on the South Bank, ten minutes from Tate Modern, waiting for a friend who is running late. Your phone has three NHS group chat messages you haven't opened. Outside, a cyclist clips a pedestrian and swears. Normal Sunday. You order a second flat white. + +> **DEV** — You have your laptop open in a Borough Market café, headphones half-on, pretending to work. The Wi-Fi is slow. You've been here since nine. Your flatmate sent a voice note an hour ago asking where the spare keys are. You haven't replied. Normal Sunday. + +> **MAGGIE** — You are walking along the Jubilee Walkway, river on your left, the way you walk it every Sunday morning regardless of weather. You retired six years ago. You know this stretch of South Bank better than most people know their own sitting rooms. Everything is exactly as it should be. + +> **OLU** — You're clocking in at the Shard's lobby security desk. Sunday overtime. The morning shift supervisor hands you a radio that isn't working properly and says the building is at fifteen percent occupancy today. You drink the last of a coffee you brought from home. Normal Sunday. + +> **PRIYA** — You are in the media centre at the Southbank Centre, covering a weekend exhibition for a science supplement piece due Tuesday. Your editor sent a message last night that you read and decided to think about later: *"Something came in. Might be relevant. Can we talk Monday?"* You filed that away. You have a notebook and a press lanyard and a very good instinct that you are choosing not to use right now. + +> **TOM** — You're in your van, parked on a side street off Waterloo Road, doing a final check of your equipment before starting a Sunday overtime scaffolding job. Radio on. Phone in the cupholder. You called your mum this morning. She didn't answer. You left a voicemail that was mostly road noise. + +*Pause.* + +> Every phone at the table buzzes simultaneously. + +*Display or read Handout 159-H00-C:* + +> The screen fills red. A two-tone alarm — the one everyone has heard in tests but never for real. Text: **EMERGENCY ALERT — UK Government — STAY INDOORS. AVOID ALL CONTACT WITH PERSONS WHO APPEAR CONFUSED OR AGGRESSIVE. EMERGENCY SERVICES ARE RESPONDING. THIS IS NOT A TEST.** + +*Let that sit for a moment. Then:* + +> Across the street, someone screams. It doesn't sound like shock. It sounds like pain. + +### Player Briefing + +Players know: there is an alert, something is happening, they do not know what. They are scattered across 600 metres of South Bank between Waterloo Station and Borough Market. They have mobile phones, whatever their character carries, and no information beyond four words and one scream. + +They do not know each other yet. They converge on a bus crash on Southwark Street — a bus whose driver had a medical episode — which gives everyone a natural reason to approach the same point. + +### Atmosphere Notes + +- Music suggestion: ambient urban drone — distant sirens, low register +- Phones should feel real: encourage players to narrate what they're doing on their phones as if they're actually doing it +- The GM should respond to "what do I see on social media" with actual fragments, not summaries — see Story Hooks for five pre-written social media posts +- The wrongness should arrive slowly: one person standing very still in a crowd is more unsettling than an obvious monster + + +--- + +## ACT ONE — "Something Is Wrong" *(~60 minutes)* +> **Goal:** Establish confusion, make first contact with the infected, trigger the Borough Market panic. Players form a group by the end of this act. The nature of what they're dealing with should be suspected but not confirmed. + +### Summary + +The players converge on the bus crash on Southwark Street. Among the gathering crowd is the first infected NPC — a man in a high-vis vest standing very still with his head tilted. Social media is exploding but contradicting itself. Callum Fraser arrives trying to manage a scene he has no framework for. Fatima Osei is already trying to lock up her stall and get gone. The first violent infected encounter happens when someone approaches the high-vis man. Then Borough Market breaks. + +### Locations + +#### The Bus Crash — Southwark Street / Southwark Bridge Road junction +- **Description:** A double-decker bus has hit a parked delivery lorry. The front of the bus is crumpled. No fire. The driver slumped forward over the wheel, visible through the windscreen, unconscious or worse. A crowd of twenty people has gathered, all on their phones, a few trying to help. +- **Atmosphere:** Ordinary accident, unusual tension. People are filming. Nobody is moving with purpose. The NHS alert has only been live for two minutes. +- **Key Details:** Among the crowd, facing slightly away from the bus, is a man in a high-vis vest — early 40s, standing very still. His head is tilted about fifteen degrees to the left. He has not moved since anyone noticed him. He is Patient Zero for this cluster. He is not yet aggressive but will respond with sudden violence to any touch or close approach. +- **[BRP: Perception — notices the unnatural stillness of the high-vis man before approaching]** +- **[BRP: First Aid — can reach the driver; driver is dead, no visible external wound]** +- **Artwork Asset:** 159-ART-02 + +#### Borough Market — Southwark Street side +- **Description:** The market is open. Sunday trading is lighter than Saturday — fewer tourists, more locals. Stalls selling cheese, bread, meat, coffee. Fatima's stall is a Nigerian-British food stand with a mobile generator and a folding metal shutter she is now trying to close. +- **Atmosphere:** Rising noise. People have their phones out. A radio on one stall is tuned to a news channel that is saying nothing useful. Arguments starting over whether to leave. +- **Key Details:** Fatima is here. The market has improvised weapons — cleavers, crates, a gas-fired brazier — for any player who looks. There is a pharmaceutical supply lorry parked in the loading bay with its back doors open; the driver has not returned. +- **[BRP: Persuade — convincing Fatima to work with the group rather than alone]** +- **Artwork Asset:** 159-ART-03 + +#### Jubilee Walkway / Riverside Path +- **Description:** The riverside path between Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge. Exposed, fast, good sightlines to the north bank of the Thames. Benches, tourist boards, a few cyclists. +- **Atmosphere:** Quieter than the market side. Eerily so. +- **Key Details:** Two bodies of early infected will appear here within minutes of the alert — one collapsed, one standing in the river up to mid-thigh, facing the far bank. Maggie's riverside walk route takes her directly past these. The standing figure in the river is not drowning. It is not doing anything. That is the problem. +- **[BRP: Sanity 1/1d6 — first sight of infected behaviour (the figure in the river)]** +- **Artwork Asset:** 159-ART-04 + +#### The Shard Lobby (Olu's starting position) +- **Description:** The ground floor lobby of The Shard. Glass walls. A security desk with a monitor bank. Emergency radio. Keys to staff-only areas including the roof access and lower service levels. +- **Atmosphere:** Fifteen percent occupancy means near silence. The few occupants in the building have already gathered at the glass exterior, looking out. +- **Key Details:** The security desk radio is picking up fragmented police transmissions. Olu can make contact with the group outside via text or social media. The Shard is a high point — someone in the upper floors can see south and east across the city. What they see is smoke, three separate plumes, all south of where they expected. +- **[BRP: Electronics/Computer — accessing the building's CCTV to see the street outside clearly]** + +### NPCs — Act One + +#### The High-Vis Man (unnamed — early infected) +- **Role:** First infected the players encounter directly +- **Physical Description:** Male, early 40s, construction high-vis vest over a grey fleece. A half-eaten sausage roll on the pavement beside him. Head tilted. Eyes open and tracking but not focusing. Low, intermittent wet sound from his throat. +- **Motivation:** None — motor function without cognition. Will respond to stimulus with immediate violence. +- **Disposition:** Passive until touched or approached within arm's reach; then immediately hostile +- **Mechanics:** + - STR: 10 | CON: 18 | SIZ: 12 | DEX: 6 | INT: — | POW: — | APP: — + - HP: 12 | Move: 4 (slow shamble) + - Head shot only for instant kill (–20% penalty or Special Success) + - Bite: 1d4 + Infection (CON roll or symptoms begin within hours) + - Body damage reduces Move but not aggression +- **[BRP: Sanity 1/1d6 — first zombie seen]** + +#### FATIMA OSEI — Borough Market stall owner +- **Role:** First competent adult voice; de facto NPC leader if players allow her +- **Physical Description:** Nigerian-British, 50s. Broad shoulders, close-cropped grey hair. Market apron still on over a heavy coat. Moving with complete economy of motion — no wasted steps. Her expression is not frightened. It is alert. +- **Motivation:** Lock up the van (her driver has gone missing), assess what this actually is, survive and get her people out. Not sentimental. Not panicking. +- **What She Knows:** Knows the market layout intimately. Knows every exit. Has a locked supply van (driver missing, she has a spare key). Has seen riots, the 2011 disorder, a gas explosion in 2019. This is different, and she will say so directly. +- **Disposition:** Neutral → Friendly if players prove useful and not stupid; hostile if patronised +- **Mechanics:** + - STR: 13 | CON: 14 | SIZ: 11 | DEX: 12 | INT: 17 | POW: 15 | APP: 14 + - HP: 13 | MP: 15 + - Skills: Persuade 75%, Drive 60%, First Aid 55%, Spot Hidden 70%, Dodge 55% + - Attacks: Improvised weapon (cleaver) 50%, 1d6+1d4 + +#### CALLUM FRASER — Metropolitan Police constable +- **Role:** Information source; institutional voice losing its authority in real time +- **Physical Description:** Male, 28, Scottish accent. Uniform but no protective equipment beyond standard kit. Baton, PAVA spray, radio. Looking for someone to tell him what to do. +- **Motivation:** Follow protocol. When protocol stops applying, follow the person who seems most competent. +- **What He Knows:** The first reports came from Elephant & Castle at 7:14 AM — nearly two hours before the alert. He heard this on his radio before comms got patchy. He doesn't know what it means but he knows it's relevant. He has not shared it with anyone yet. +- **Disposition:** Initially neutral → friendly if players are calm and cooperative; panics if confronted with direct violence in front of him +- **Mechanics:** + - STR: 13 | CON: 12 | SIZ: 13 | DEX: 11 | INT: 13 | POW: 12 | APP: 11 + - HP: 13 | MP: 12 + - Skills: Law 45%, Persuade 55%, Spot Hidden 60%, Dodge 50%, Brawl 55% + - Attacks: Baton 55%, 1d6; PAVA spray (Resist CON or blinded 1d3 rounds, useless on zombies) + - Special: Radio — intermittently functional. Fragments only. Essential clue delivery mechanism. + +### Clue Trail — Act One + +| # | Clue | Location / Source | How Found | What It Reveals | Type | +|---|------|-------------------|-----------|-----------------|------| +| 1 | The high-vis man was eating breakfast when he stopped moving | Near the body, sausage roll evidence | Spot Hidden or close approach before attack | Onset is rapid — no warning stage | Essential | +| 2 | Callum's radio fragment: "first reports... Elephant... 07:14" | Callum himself | Talk to Callum, ask what he's heard | This started two hours before the alert — the government knew | Essential | +| 3 | Social media — a drone stream showing north bank panic | Dev or Priya on phones | Technology check, or find Marcus | The spread is already wider than the South Bank; this is not localised | Optional | +| 4 | The market's radio picks up the BBC saying "health emergency — do not approach persons showing disorientation" | Borough Market | Spot Hidden (audio) or lingering near the stall radio | Government language is already evasive — "health emergency" not "attack" | Optional | + +**Fallback (Clue 2):** If players don't speak to Callum, his radio crackles loudly as the Market breaks — he involuntarily repeats the fragment aloud while trying to restore communications. + +### Story Hooks + +- **Social media fragments** (read aloud when players check their phones): + - *@running_south_bank: "Something is very wrong on the South Bank. Someone just BIT a man near Borough Market. Filming now."* + - *@TfL_unofficial: "All Jubilee Line services suspended pending emergency. No further info from TfL."* + - *@defnotaGPT: "It's a gas leak from the new development site near Elephant. They're not telling us."* + - *@mrsevanslondon27: "I can hear screaming from my flat on Southwark Street. This has been going on for ten minutes. Where are the police."* + - *@marcus_everything_live: "LIVE — what is HAPPENING — 41,000 watching — SHARE THIS — [Southwark Bridge stream link]"* +- **If players try to call 999:** Three rings, then: *"All lines are currently experiencing extremely high demand. If you are in immediate life-threatening danger, please stay on the line."* Hold music. Then a recorded message asking callers not to ring unless in immediate danger. The line drops. +- **If players ask their AI assistant what is happening:** It returns a news story from 9:45 AM saying the NHS alert was a "precautionary measure following reports of a public disturbance near Elephant & Castle." Three minutes out of date and already wrong. +- **If players stall:** A second infected person stumbles into the market visible from the crash site — already fully turned, moving with the shamble, and moves toward the most densely populated stall area. + +### Pacing Note + +The Market breaking is the hard trigger for Act Two. This should happen no later than 1:00 cumulative time. + +> **Fast-track at 1:00:** A fully-turned infected bites a market vendor in full view of the crowd. The crowd stampede begins immediately. Force the group through the market exit and into Bermondsey Street — Act Two begins. + +### Handouts + +| ID | Description | Format | +|----|-------------|--------| +| 159-H01-A | Five social media posts — printed as screenshot strips | Printed, phone-screenshot format | +| 159-H01-B | Callum's radio fragment — partial transcript written on a police notepad page | Handwritten notepad style | + + +--- + +## ACT TWO — "The Long Walk South" *(~90 minutes)* +> **Goal:** The group moves south and east through Bermondsey. Moral choices compound. The drone stream reveals the true scale. The reanimation of someone the players have met is the act break. Callum's radio delivers the cordon fragment. + +### Summary + +After the Market breaks, the group is south of Borough Market, moving through Bermondsey Street toward the comparative quiet of the back streets. The Blue Anchor pub offers shelter, supplies, and community — and one person inside who is infected and hasn't turned yet. Dr Yasmin Sharif arrives and provides medical grounding. The pharmacy produces a human-on-human confrontation. Marcus (the livestreamer) and his drone footage show the city from above for the first time. Then someone reanimates. Then Callum's radio picks up the word "cordon." The act ends when the players make a decision: north to Tower Bridge, or south-west toward Bankside Pier and the RIB. + +### Locations + +#### Bermondsey Street — heading south from Borough +- **Description:** Narrow, primarily residential and boutique commercial. Quieter than the market area. Estate agents, coffee shops, a yoga studio. The streets here do not carry the same crowd density, which is both a relief and eerie. +- **Atmosphere:** False calm. The distant sounds of panic carry from the north. Every locked door is a question. +- **Key Details:** Several shops can be raided for useful supplies — a camping goods shop has torches, rope, a waterproof jacket. A hardware store has tools that function as weapons. A locked pharmacy is contested (see below). +- **[BRP: Spot Hidden — notices a ground-floor flat with a broken window and drag marks on the sill]** +- **Artwork Asset:** 159-ART-05 + +#### The Blue Anchor — Bermondsey Street +- **Description:** A traditional pub. Victorian interior, low ceilings, thick walls. A group of twelve survivors has barricaded inside: chairs against the door, bottles stacked. They have food behind the bar, phone chargers, a first aid kit. They are frightened but organised — loosely led by a retired schoolteacher named GORDON who is trying to keep the peace. +- **Atmosphere:** Relief mixed with dread. Too warm. Too many people in too small a space. Something smells wrong — but it could be fear, it could be the body in the corner who "fainted" an hour ago. +- **Key Details:** DANNY — 30s, quiet, sitting in the corner with a jacket pulled over his arm — was bitten forty minutes ago. He hasn't told anyone. He is deteriorating slowly, visibly, and will reanimate within the pub if the players stay longer than approximately 30 minutes. Dr Sharif will identify him within five minutes of entering if given the chance to assess the group. +- **[BRP: Medicine/First Aid (Kira, Sharif) — recognises Danny's symptoms as neurological cascade, not shock]** +- **[BRP: Persuade — convincing the group to leave before Danny turns, without causing immediate panic]** +- **[BRP: Sanity 1d2/1d8 — if Danny reanimates inside the pub with the group present]** +- **Artwork Asset:** 159-ART-06 + +#### Bermondsey Street Pharmacy +- **Description:** A corner pharmacy, shuttered but not locked — the shutters were pulled but the lock wasn't thrown. Inside: prescription medications, bandages, antibiotics, insulin (relevant if any character is diabetic), glucose tablets. Also a drug safe in the back. +- **Atmosphere:** The smell of disinfectant. Silence. Then voices — two men in the back, already looting the drug safe. +- **Key Details:** DECLAN and RYAN — opportunistic looters, not infected, not evil, just scared and making a bad choice. Declan has a craft knife. Ryan has a bicycle lock. They will not yield the pharmacy without negotiation or force. This is the scenario's first purely human conflict with potential for lethal escalation. +- **[BRP: Persuade/Fast Talk — talking them down; failure means physical confrontation]** +- **[BRP: Spot Hidden — notices that Ryan is actually injured, not just afraid; the blood on his sleeve is from a bite]** + +#### Guy's Hospital Car Park (Multi-Storey) +- **Description:** Visible from Bermondsey Street — a grey concrete tower of a car park adjacent to Guy's Hospital. +- **Atmosphere:** High ground. Defensible. Obvious. Surrounded on three sides by the hospital grounds, which are becoming overwhelmed. +- **Key Details:** A dead end if the players are surrounded. Good for a short rest and a full view of the situation — but not an exit. St Thomas' Hospital is visible across the river, clearly overwhelmed: ambulances parked on the forecourt, lights flashing, a line of people at the entrance that stretches to the bridge approach. It is not safe. The group should be able to see this clearly from height. + +### NPCs — Act Two + +#### DR. YASMIN SHARIF — NHS Emergency Medicine Consultant, off-duty +- **Role:** Medical authority; calm voice in chaos; the character who will name what this is +- **Physical Description:** Mixed British-Pakistani, mid 40s. Civilian clothes — dark trousers, walking boots, a good coat. Reading glasses pushed up on her head. She moves with the unhurried efficiency of someone who has worked resus for twenty years. +- **Motivation:** Get to St Thomas' to help. She is wrong about this. The players may need to talk her out of it — or let her go and lose the group's best medical asset. +- **What She Knows:** This is neurological. The reanimation is a motor function cascade, not supernatural. She will say, matter-of-factly: "Most of them are not survivable. If they were bitten in the first wave, the progression is too fast." She means it clinically. She will help treat the players. She will not pretend things are better than they are. +- **Disposition:** Friendly-professional; not sentimental; deeply, quietly heroic +- **Mechanics:** + - STR: 9 | CON: 13 | SIZ: 10 | DEX: 13 | INT: 18 | POW: 15 | APP: 14 + - HP: 12 | MP: 15 + - Skills: Medicine 85%, First Aid 90%, Persuade 60%, Spot Hidden 65%, Psychology 70% + - Attacks: Improvised 30% only — she is not a fighter + - Special: Medical treatment — restores 1d3 HP per successful First Aid per scene; can identify infected with Medicine roll vs. difficulty 40% + +#### MARCUS — 19, livestreamer +- **Role:** Real-time information source; the drone stream; a walking liability +- **Physical Description:** Black British, 19, hoodie (currently hood up), riding a Lime bike which he has barely let go of. Phone on a selfie stick, running live to 41,000 viewers. His face shows terror that keeps resolving into practised content-creator energy because he doesn't know how else to process this. +- **Motivation:** Keep streaming. He is terrified of what happens when the battery dies and he has to just be a scared 19-year-old on his own. +- **What He Knows:** His live chat — 41,000 people watching in real time — is feeding him information. Someone in his chat has drone footage of the city. Someone else in his chat claims there's a military presence gathering at London Bridge (north approach). His phone is at 31% battery. +- **Disposition:** Friendly but chaotic; will follow the group if they acknowledge him; will get someone killed in a stealth situation +- **Mechanics:** + - STR: 10 | CON: 11 | SIZ: 11 | DEX: 14 | INT: 14 | POW: 11 | APP: 13 + - HP: 11 | MP: 11 + - Skills: Computer/Tech 65%, Spot Hidden 45%, Persuade 40%, Fast Talk 55%, Ride (cycle) 60% + - Attacks: None — absolutely not a combatant + - Special: Drone stream — if players watch his feed, they see the aerial view of central London. It is much worse than they expected. See Clue 6. + +#### HELEN — Visitor, late 60s, denial +- **Role:** Moral gut-punch; quietly the bravest person in the scenario +- **Physical Description:** White British, late 60s. Well-dressed for a day out — good coat, sensible shoes that happen to be excellent walking shoes. A small tote bag from the National Theatre. Reading glasses on a chain. She is calm in a way that is either extraordinary grace under pressure or complete dissociation from reality. +- **Motivation:** She keeps saying "I'm sure it's a gas leak." She is trying to be reassuring. She also has the keys to a private members' club two streets away — food, wine, a functioning panic room — and has not thought to mention this yet. +- **What She Knows:** More than she's saying. She was a civil servant for thirty years. She retired from the Cabinet Office. She will not confirm this unless directly asked. If the players earn her trust, she will say, quietly: "There's a protocol for this. If they haven't activated it already, something went wrong before the alert." +- **Disposition:** Initially resistant to urgency → if properly engaged, reveals herself as the most grounded person in the scenario +- **Mechanics:** + - STR: 8 | CON: 11 | SIZ: 10 | DEX: 10 | INT: 17 | POW: 16 | APP: 14 + - HP: 11 | MP: 16 + - Skills: Persuade 65%, Psychology 70%, History/Law 55%, First Aid 40% + - Special: Keys to the Kensington Club annex — food, wine cellar, functioning panic room with emergency radio that may pick up government frequencies + - The Moment: At one point in Act Two or Three, Helen will do something remarkable — step in front of an infected person to buy someone else time, or walk calmly into a dangerous situation because no one else will. Play this straight. She does not explain it. + +### Clue Trail — Act Two + +| # | Clue | Location / Source | How Found | What It Reveals | Type | +|---|------|-------------------|-----------|-----------------|------| +| 5 | Danny's bite wound in the pub | Blue Anchor | Medicine/First Aid (Sharif auto-finds) or Spot Hidden | Infection is already inside the "safe" space | Essential | +| 6 | Marcus's drone stream — aerial view of London | Marcus or phone search | Technology check or talk to Marcus | The chaos extends far north of the river; this is city-wide, not South Bank only | Essential | +| 7 | Callum's radio fragment: "cordon... north bank... all units hold position" | Callum's radio | Unprompted — Callum hears it and looks horrified | The government has written off south of the river | Essential | +| 8 | Helen's Cabinet Office background | Helen herself | Psychology or direct conversation | She knows a "protocol" exists; she names Meridian Biosciences as a contractor she saw on a briefing | Optional | +| 9 | Priya's editor's message — "something came in — might be relevant" | Priya's phone | Priya-specific; she checks her messages | Her editor received documents from a Meridian Biosciences whistleblower 48 hours ago. He didn't run the story. | Optional | +| 10 | Ryan's bite wound in the pharmacy | Pharmacy | Spot Hidden or First Aid | The infection is spreading fast enough that people who were bitten after the alert are already symptomatic | Optional | + +**Fallback (Clue 5):** If the group enters the pub but no one checks Danny, he turns in front of them. The information becomes unavoidable. + +**Fallback (Clue 7):** If Callum's radio never clears, Marcus's live chat reports "military vehicles seen on Embankment and Victoria — going NORTH not south — wtf" — same inference available. + +### The Reanimation — Act Two Hinge + +This must happen. The choice of victim is the GM's, but the source material recommends Helen. A close second is Danny in the pub if the group delays leaving. + +**If Helen:** She is separated briefly — perhaps staying behind to help someone, perhaps going back for something. The group turns to find her twenty metres back, standing very still. Her head tilts. The moment of recognition should be held. Give it four full seconds before she moves. + +> **[BRP: Sanity 1d2/1d8 — witnessing reanimation of a known person]** + +**If Danny:** He stands up in the pub mid-conversation. The jacket falls from his arm. The wound is visible. The pub's twelve survivors panic. The door is blocked. + +> **[BRP: POW×5 — panic response for groups of 5+ infected (not applicable here, but the crowd panic counts)]** + +### Story Hooks + +- **If players want to go to St Thomas':** Sharif will push for this. The building is clearly overwhelmed — visible from the car park. Players who get within 100 metres will see infected inside the entrance hall. It is a trap they must reason their way out of. +- **If players try to help everyone:** The maths will not work. Twelve people at the Blue Anchor cannot all be kept together and safe. The GM should make this clear through logistics, not lecture. +- **If Priya finds the editor's message:** She will be quiet for a moment and then say "I think I know what this is." Whether she shares it depends on the player. Encourage her to sit with it — it is a character beat, not just an information dump. +- **If players try to shelter and wait:** Nightfall is approaching. The infected are harder to see in the dark. The streets will be more dangerous, not less, after 9 PM. + +### Pacing Note + +The cordon radio fragment is the hard trigger for Act Three. It must happen before 2:30. + +> **Fast-track at 2:30:** Callum's radio crackles loudly and clearly: *"All units — hold the north bank line — do not cross — repeat do not cross."* Everyone hears it. Callum says "that means they're not coming." Move immediately to Act Three decision. + +### Handouts + +| ID | Description | Format | +|----|-------------|--------| +| 159-H02-A | Marcus's livestream screenshot — aerial drone view of London, chaos visible | Printed image, ink-sketch style aerial | +| 159-H02-B | Priya's phone — editor's message screengrab | Phone-screenshot format | +| 159-H02-C | The Blue Anchor interior sketch — showing Danny in the corner, jacket over arm | Ink sketch, A5 | + + +--- + +## ACT THREE — "The Bridge or the River" *(~30 minutes)* +> **Goal:** Fast, urgent, physical. No new information. Only consequences. The group reaches the escape route — Tower Bridge or the RIB at Bankside Pier — and pays the cost. + +### Summary + +Night is approaching. The group has thirty minutes of viable light left. Two routes exist: Tower Bridge (on foot, controlled by an armed group of civilians who demand negotiation) or the RIB moored at Bankside Pier (discovered via Marcus's drone stream, accessible only through a heavily infected zone near Blackfriars). Both are possible. Neither is safe. Someone does not reach the destination. Whether that is a player character, an NPC, or a choice the group makes deliberately — that is where the scenario lives. + +### Locations + +#### Tooley Street → Tower Bridge Approach +- **Description:** The most direct route to Tower Bridge is also the most exposed — broad street, limited cover, infected clustering near the bridge approach where people have been trying to cross all afternoon. +- **Atmosphere:** End-of-day light. Shadows long. The bridge is visible from here — its distinctive blue-and-white stonework catching the last afternoon sun. It looks almost normal from 400 metres. +- **Key Details:** A group of six to eight civilians — BRIDGE GROUP — has taken control of the north-side gate house. They are armed (makeshift weapons, two with actual kitchen knives, one with a fire axe). They are letting people across, but only after questioning. They will not let infected through. Their leader, PETE (50s, former building site foreman, completely calm), will interrogate the group about who they are, where they've been, and whether anyone has been bitten. He is not unreasonable. He is not wrong. +- **[BRP: Persuade — convincing the Bridge Group to let the full party through]** +- **[BRP: Psychology — reading Pete: he has already turned away two infected people and had to deal with the consequences. He knows the cost. He is not cruel. He is broken.]** +- **Artwork Asset:** 159-ART-07 + +#### Bankside Pier → The RIB +- **Description:** A small commercial pier at Bankside — normally used for tourist RIB rides and private river taxis. A 6-metre rigid inflatable boat is moored at the end. It has fuel (gauge unread — players must check). The path to the pier from Bermondsey requires passing through the Blackfriars underpass, which has been dark since noon and which contains at minimum a dozen infected. +- **Atmosphere:** The sound of the river. The smell of low-tide Thames mud. And from inside the underpass: wet footsteps, that low moaning that everyone now recognises immediately. +- **Key Details:** The RIB can hold ten people. Starting it requires a key that is in a locked box in the pier office (combination or break-in). The engine starts on the third try. Once on the river, the group is out of reach of the infected. The north bank of the Thames is not clear — but from the river, they can see which points of the Embankment are least dangerous for landing. +- **[BRP: Mechanics/Drive (Boat) — starting and navigating the RIB; failure means a longer, louder startup that draws infected]** +- **[BRP: Sanity 1d4/1d8 — moving through the Blackfriars underpass; the darkness + the moaning + the known density of infected]** +- **Artwork Asset:** 159-ART-08 + +### NPCs — Act Three + +#### PETE — Bridge Group leader +- **Role:** Final human obstacle; moral mirror for the group +- **Physical Description:** Male, 50s, white British. Site-manager build — broad, competent hands, steel-toed boots. A hi-vis with "FOREMAN" on the back, worn habitually. A fire axe resting against his leg, not raised. +- **Motivation:** Keep the bridge clear. Protect the people behind him. He has made hard decisions today and will make more. He is not a villain. He is someone doing triage on a situation with no good options. +- **What He Knows:** He knows the north bank is not safe either. He knows the cordon is real — someone in his group has a radio. He hasn't told the people with him. +- **Disposition:** Neutral; becomes hostile only if pushed, lied to, or if he believes someone in the group is infected +- **Mechanics:** + - STR: 14 | CON: 13 | SIZ: 14 | DEX: 11 | INT: 14 | POW: 13 | APP: 11 + - HP: 14 | MP: 13 + - Skills: Persuade 60%, Spot Hidden 65%, Psychology 55%, Brawl 60% + - Attacks: Fire axe 60%, 1d8+1d4; Improvised 50%, 1d6+1d4 + +#### The Bridge Group (six civilians, stat as minors) +- **Role:** Background NPCs; mood and moral weight rather than individual characters +- Each is frightened and holding together because Pete is holding together. If Pete goes down or loses authority, they scatter. + +### The Cost — Required Story Beat + +This must happen before the bridge or boat is reached. Options, in descending order of emotional impact: + +**Option A — An NPC the players know:** Helen, Fatima, Callum, or Marcus. The GM should choose based on which NPC has become most significant to the group. This should not be a sacrifice — it should be an accident, a moment of bad luck, the random cruelty of the scenario's premise. They tried. It was not enough. + +**Option B — A player character:** BRP is lethal. If a character has taken wounds or is at low HP, this is the moment a bite, a fall, a wrong turn, ends them. Do not pull this punch. The character's player should be offered a final moment: a last instruction, a last look back, something given to the group before they can no longer be helped. + +**Option C — A moral choice:** The group reaches the bridge and Pete refuses to let someone through — correctly identifying that they are symptomatic or questionable. The group must choose: leave that person, or risk the bridge. There is no third option the scenario provides. The players may invent one. The GM should not save them from the weight of it. + +### Clue Trail — Act Three +*No new information needed. This act is consequence, not discovery.* + +| # | Note | Purpose | +|---|------|---------| +| 11 | Pete's radio — confirmation of north bank cordon | Confirms what Callum's fragment implied; closes the loop | +| 12 | The RIB's fuel gauge | Practical jeopardy — players must check before trusting the escape route | + +### Story Hooks + +- **If the group is fragmented:** Divide the challenge. Part of the group reaches the bridge; part heads for the boat. The GM runs both simultaneously, cutting between them. The two groups may not be able to help each other. +- **If Pete refuses someone:** Play him straight. He is not wrong. He is doing exactly what anyone responsible would do. The confrontation should feel like arguing with a mirror. +- **If the RIB won't start immediately:** The noise draws infected from the underpass. The group has approximately three minutes to get the engine running or fight their way back. + +### Pacing Note + +At 3:05, regardless of where the group is: the cost happens. Force it. Do not let the scenario arrive at the epilogue without it. + +> **Hard deadline:** At 3:10, the bridge or the boat is reached. The cost is paid. Transition to Epilogue. + +### Handouts + +| ID | Description | Format | +|----|-------------|--------| +| 159-H03-A | Tower Bridge approach sketch — evening light, figures at the gatehouse | Ink sketch, A5 | +| 159-H03-B | Bankside Pier — RIB in foreground, Blackfriars underpass behind | Ink sketch, A5 | + + +--- + +## Epilogue — "What It Cost" *(~15 minutes)* + +### Outcomes + +| Outcome | Trigger Condition | What Happens | +|---------|------------------|--------------| +| **Full Survival** | All PCs reach bridge or boat | The group is north of the river, or on the water. London is burning behind them. They are alive. They do not know where they are going. They have each other, for now. | +| **Partial Survival** | Most PCs through, one lost | The survivors reach safety and turn to look at the gap. Someone is missing. The group that remains is changed by who isn't in it. | +| **Pyrrhic** | All PCs through, all NPCs lost | Everyone who didn't start the day with a player made it to the end of the day dead. The PCs are alive. They are alone. | +| **Failure — meaningful** | One or more PCs lost | Dead characters are not erased. If anyone is taken by the infected, the others may have to make a decision about what that means. BRP's lethality is the point. | + +### Closing Scene + +*Read or paraphrase, adapted to outcome:* + +> It's twenty past nine. The light is nearly gone. The Thames is dark below you / around you, and the city behind you is lit by fires, not streetlights. + +> You don't know what the north bank looks like from inside it. You don't know about Meridian Biosciences, or the decision made in COBR at nine o'clock this morning. You don't know if there are others like your group who made it. + +> What you know is this: today began like any other Sunday. Late morning light. Brunch places filling up. Pigeons. + +> And you know the names of the people who didn't make it to the end of it. + +> That's Day One. + +*End.* + +--- + +## Zombie Rules — Quick Reference + +| Stat | Value | +|------|-------| +| STR | 10 | +| CON | 18 (effective — pain immune) | +| DEX | 6 | +| Move | 4 (shamble) | +| HP | 12 | + +**Killing:** Only head shots reduce HP to zero and kill instantly. Standard penalty –20% on attack roll, OR a Special Success on any hit. Body damage reduces Move rate only. + +**Bite Attack:** 1d4 damage + Infection (CON roll or progressive illness begins within hours — this scenario does not resolve the arc, but the threat should hang over every bite) + +**Sanity Loss:** +| Trigger | Loss | +|---------|------| +| First zombie seen | 1/1d6 | +| First zombie killed | 0/1d4 | +| Witnessing reanimation of known person | 1d2/1d8 | +| Group of 5+ infected | POW×5 or Panic (freeze / flee / attack randomly) | + +--- + +## Pre-Generated Characters — Full Reference + +### KIRA OSEI-MENSAH — NHS Junior Doctor (off duty) +- **Why she's here:** Coffee meeting near Tate Modern, friend running late +- **Who she wants to reach:** Her mother, Abena, 74, lives alone in Peckham +- **Special ability:** Medicine 55%, First Aid 75% — the group's best medical resource until Sharif arrives +- **Character hook:** She has been awake for 22 hours after a night shift. She is running on adrenaline and knows it. +- **Stats:** STR 9 | CON 12 | SIZ 10 | DEX 13 | INT 16 | POW 14 | APP 14 | HP 11 | MP 14 +- **Key Skills:** Medicine 55%, First Aid 75%, Persuade 55%, Science (Biology) 50%, Spot Hidden 50% + +### DEV KRISHNAMURTHY — Freelance software engineer +- **Why he's here:** Working remotely from a Borough Market café +- **Who he wants to reach:** His flatmate near Old Street +- **Special ability:** Electronics/Computers 75%, most likely to find the drone stream and exploit technology +- **Character hook:** He has been tracking the spread on social media since before anyone else — he had alert notifications on from a emergency services scanner app. He knows more than he's said. +- **Stats:** STR 10 | CON 11 | SIZ 11 | DEX 13 | INT 17 | POW 12 | APP 12 | HP 11 | MP 12 +- **Key Skills:** Computer 75%, Electronics 65%, Library Use/Search 60%, Science (Mathematics) 45%, Spot Hidden 45% + +### MAGGIE DONNELLY — Retired Metropolitan Police officer (22 years) +- **Why she's here:** Weekly Sunday riverside walk +- **Who she wants to reach:** Her adult daughter Cara, lives in Deptford +- **Special ability:** Authority and pattern recognition — Persuade 70%, Law 60%, and she immediately reads situations through the lens of crowd management experience +- **Character hook:** She was first on scene at the 2005 Tavistock Square bombing. She knows what mass casualty situations feel like. This one is different. +- **Stats:** STR 12 | CON 13 | SIZ 12 | DEX 11 | INT 15 | POW 14 | APP 12 | HP 13 | MP 14 +- **Key Skills:** Persuade 70%, Law 60%, Spot Hidden 65%, Psychology 65%, Brawl 55%, First Aid 50% + +### OLU ADEYEMI — Security guard, The Shard +- **Why he's here:** Starting a Sunday overtime shift +- **Who he wants to reach:** Anyone — he has no immediate family in London. His motivation shifts during the scenario toward the group itself. +- **Special ability:** Access to the Shard's infrastructure — radio, CCTV, staff areas, keys. Also the most physically capable character in the group. +- **Character hook:** He is the only character who begins the scenario with a functioning radio and a defensible position. What he does with that advantage in the first ten minutes shapes the rest of the session. +- **Stats:** STR 15 | CON 14 | SIZ 14 | DEX 12 | INT 13 | POW 13 | APP 13 | HP 15 | MP 13 +- **Key Skills:** Security Systems 60%, Brawl 65%, Spot Hidden 60%, Persuade 45%, Drive 55%, Athletics 60% + +### PRIYA MEHTA — Science journalist +- **Why she's here:** Covering a weekend exhibition at the Southbank Centre +- **Who she wants to reach:** Her editor — she is already filing copy, and the editor's message about Meridian may be the key to understanding what's happening +- **Special ability:** Research and source assessment — Library Use 70%, Science knowledge, and the Meridian Biosciences connection through her editor +- **Character hook:** She is the character best positioned to understand the truth of the outbreak. Whether she uses that ability to help the group or to get the story is a genuine player choice. +- **Stats:** STR 9 | CON 11 | SIZ 10 | DEX 12 | INT 17 | POW 13 | APP 14 | HP 11 | MP 13 +- **Key Skills:** Science (Biology/Chemistry) 55%, Library Use 70%, Persuade 60%, Psychology 55%, Write 65%, Spot Hidden 50% + +### TOM BECKER — Scaffolding worker +- **Why he's here:** Sunday overtime job near Waterloo +- **Who he wants to reach:** His van — a practical resource — and through it, an exit route +- **Special ability:** Physical competence and tools — he has a bag of basic hand tools, knows how to break into things and build temporary barriers, and has an accurate instinct for structural stability in any environment +- **Character hook:** Tom's van is parked near Lambeth North — across the river, or a long way round. Whether it becomes an objective is up to the player. What it represents (escape, independence, normality) is clear. +- **Stats:** STR 14 | CON 14 | SIZ 13 | DEX 13 | INT 12 | POW 11 | APP 11 | HP 14 | MP 11 +- **Key Skills:** Craft (Construction) 70%, Mechanics 60%, Athletics 65%, Brawl 55%, Drive 65%, Spot Hidden 50% + + +--- + +## Artwork Assets + +- **Art Style:** Reportage ink sketch — rough, urgent, journalistic. Crosshatched shadows, incomplete lines suggesting motion. Think a war correspondent's sketchbook, or Quentin Blake doing emergency illustration. Nothing should look finished. Everything should look true. +- **Colour:** Black ink, no colour. Occasional heavy black fill for shadow. White paper negative space is the only contrast. + +| Asset ID | Description | Used In | Generation Prompt | +|----------|-------------|---------|-------------------| +| 159-ART-01 | Cover — aerial view of South Bank, Thames in middle distance, smoke rising from three points, figures running below | Cover / Intro | Ink sketch aerial view London South Bank, smoke plumes, figures running, reportage style, crosshatch shadows, no colour, urgent atmosphere | +| 159-ART-02 | The bus crash — double-decker at angle into lorry, crowd gathered, one figure standing very still facing away | Act One | Ink sketch London bus crash crowd scene, one figure standing unnaturally still, crowd on phones, reportage urgency, crosshatch | +| 159-ART-03 | Borough Market — stall shutters half down, Fatima at the shutter handle, chaos visible behind her | Act One | Ink sketch market stall owner closing shutters urgently, crowd chaos visible behind, strong figure in foreground, reportage style | +| 159-ART-04 | The figure in the river — seen from the Jubilee Walkway, a figure standing waist-deep in the Thames, facing away, head tilted | Act One | Ink sketch lone figure standing in river, seen from embankment path, head tilted, wrong proportions of stillness, horror in understatement, crosshatch water | +| 159-ART-05 | Bermondsey Street — narrow Victorian street, small group of survivors moving south, windows above with watching faces | Act Two | Ink sketch narrow London street survivors moving, watching faces in upper windows, threatening quietness, reportage sketch | +| 159-ART-06 | The Blue Anchor interior — pub crowd, Danny visible in corner with jacket over arm, slight wrongness in his posture | Act Two | Ink sketch pub interior, crowded survivors, one figure in corner with jacket over arm, subtle wrongness in posture, crosshatch low light | +| 159-ART-07 | Tower Bridge approach — late afternoon light, figures at the gatehouse, Pete visible with axe at his leg | Act Three | Ink sketch Tower Bridge approach, civilians at gatehouse, strong foreground figure with axe, long shadows, last light, reportage urgency | +| 159-ART-08 | Bankside Pier — RIB in foreground, dark underpass mouth visible behind, water reflecting city light and fire | Act Three | Ink sketch riverside pier, rigid inflatable boat moored, dark underpass mouth behind, fire reflections in Thames water, crosshatch darkness | +| 159-ART-09 | NPC portraits — six character sketches: Fatima, Callum, Sharif, Marcus, Helen, Pete | Throughout | Individual ink portrait sketches, each with one defining visual detail: Fatima (apron, purposeful), Callum (uniform, lost expression), Sharif (glasses up, calm), Marcus (phone-selfie-stick, terrified beneath content-face), Helen (tote bag, extraordinary calm), Pete (hi-vis foreman, axe, broken-steady eyes) | + +--- + +## The Tangent + +*After the session, one thread worth pulling in a future game:* + +Priya's editor never ran the Meridian Biosciences story. He had it 48 hours before the outbreak. Maybe that was a coincidence — the documents arrived too late to verify, the legal team wouldn't clear it. Or maybe someone at Meridian or in the Ministry of Defence knew the story was coming and made a decision. Maybe the editor is still alive, somewhere north of the river, with those documents on his laptop. + +And Meridian's London annex is still down there. In the railway arches under Elephant & Castle. The breach is three days old. The compound continues to work. + +A follow-up scenario — "Day Two," or "What Priya Found" — could be a direct investigative thread: what does Meridian know, who sanctioned the MX-9 programme, and is there a way to use that information to force the government's hand? The second session would be more political and more urban-exploration than the first. It would also be far more morally complicated: what do you do when the truth costs as many lives to reveal as the original accident cost to cover up? + +The seed is there. The players will find it if they look. The GM decides whether it grows. + +--- + +## GM Notes — Private + +**On running the alert:** +The two-tone alert sound is real and every UK player will have heard it in their pocket at least once. If you can, play the actual sound from your phone at the table at the right moment — Handout 159-H00-C appears simultaneously. The shock of recognition is the opening of the scenario and you will not replicate it any other way. + +**On lethality:** +This scenario is designed to produce a cost. If nobody dies or suffers permanent SAN loss, the scenario has not quite worked. BRP is deadly and that is the point. Do not fudge rolls. Let the game breathe. The table will thank you for it later, even if they don't thank you in the moment. + +**On the government:** +The players will want to know why the government delayed the alert. They should not get a clean answer within the session. Helen and Priya between them can get close to the truth. The full truth — Meridian, MX-9, the COBR decision — is available for a second session. Do not volunteer it. Let the players pull on the thread. + +**On the cordon:** +When Callum hears the radio fragment about the north bank cordon, play his reaction first. He has been trying to do his job all day. He trusted the institution. Give him a moment where he doesn't say anything. Then let the players deal with what they've seen on his face. + +**On Helen:** +Helen is the scenario's best-kept secret. Play her as a slightly bewildered older woman who keeps saying it's a gas leak. Save the moment when she reveals herself — whether through her Cabinet Office background or through a single extraordinary act — for when the table least expects it. Played right, she will be the character people remember. + +**On Marcus:** +Marcus is a liability and a gift. His phone dying at a crucial moment — if it happens — should not be player punishment. It should be a beat. The 41,000 people watching his stream will stop watching. He will have to be just a scared 19-year-old. How the group responds to that is as interesting as anything the scenario provides. + +**On pacing at the table:** +The scenario runs fast. The Introduction fires at the beginning of the session and the players are in motion immediately. The temptation will be to linger in Act One at the Market. Resist it — the Market breaking is the engine, not the destination. Act Two has the emotional weight. Give Act Two the time. Protect Act Three ruthlessly. + +**Event players (registered):** +- Damian Maher +- Lorna Joyce +- Elena Giordano +- Valentin Fuchs +- Adrian Hall +- Alan Rowe -## GM Notes -