We had an exercise at work that involved INTERPOL which meant I had to look up their Notice system. It's the kind of thing that spices up your day job, and I thought the Directors out there might find it interesting:
- Red Notice: To seek the location and arrest of persons wanted for prosecution or to serve a sentence.
- Yellow Notice: To help locate missing persons, often minors, or to help identify persons who are unable to identify themselves.
- Blue Notice: To collect additional information about a person’s identity, location or activities in relation to a criminal investigation.
- Black Notice: To seek information on unidentified bodies.
- Green Notice: To provide warning about a person’s criminal activities, where the person is considered to be a possible threat to public safety.
- Orange Notice: To warn of an event, a person, an object or a process representing a serious and imminent threat to public safety.
- Purple Notice: To seek or provide information on modus operandi, objects, devices and concealment methods used by criminals.
The Red Notice stands out, obviously. Eye-catching. Very Bill Browder. But a Director may get more juice out of the Blue, Black and Yellow ones.
Blue Notices are the ones most likely to apply to player characters. All that Heat has to go somewhere. A Solace might reasonably become the subject of a Yellow Notice. Black Notices, though, that has potential. You might find almost anything hiding under that rock.
Operation Identify Me is an example of a series of Black Notices and I wouldn't go clicking that link if murder upsets you as it's a sad, long list of dead women. Cold cases going back 40-odd years, for the most part. However, if you want to invent a Black Notice of your own it gives a pretty comprehensive means of doing so.
Case name: The woman with the artificial nails
Case code: 2023-BEL06
Very simple case name. The code is year of entry on the system, location (BEL - Belgium) and number in the case file. In this instance she's the sixth in the Belgium list.
I find myself drawn to that case name. It's almost poetic. It looks like the kind of thing you might find on the cover of an old detective novel. Not an Agatha Christie, but perhaps a Dashiell Hammett or a Raymond Chandler. Even a Steig Larsson
There follows some facial reconstruction and pictures of items found with the body, then a series of relevant points:
Date of death (estimated):
Date of discovery:
Location:
Sex:
Estimated year of birth:
Estimated age:
Height:
Skin tone:
Hair colour:
Eye colour:
Clothing:
Tattoos, birth marks, scars:
Jewellery:
This is followed by a brief description of the case itself, the circumstances under which the body was found, likely point of origin and so on.
Yellow Notices work in a broadly similar way, except without the colorful case name as the names of the missing are usually known. The notice would include a picture of the missing person and some relevant information:
Family name
Forename
Gender
Date of birth
Place of birth
Nationality
Place of disappearance
Date of disappearance
Countries likely visited
Issuing country
Details
Father's family name and forename
Mother's family name and forename
Language(s) spoken
The police would have a more detailed version of each Notice so agents may find Cop Talk or Law useful, but in practical game terms if you wanted to use these in a session this is likely all you'd need to give the agents.
All that said, let’s gamify.
Black Notice: The Burned Body of the Mauerpark
The agents come across this Black Notice through Tradecraft, Law or similar, probably as part of a general sweep for information in Berlin.
The burned body is an adult female approximately 20-30 years old, found on 28th April 1992. The body was found in the Mauerpark, a public park on the site of the old Berlin Wall where the heavily guarded Death Strip used to be. The Wall crumbled in 1989 and the spot was designated a green space; these days it’s a popular spot, with a Wall memorial, Karaoke amphitheater and flea market as well as the green space where the East German defenses used to be.
That was all in the future, in 1992.
The body was discovered in the early hours of 28th April, by garbage collectors who noticed a peculiar smell and alerted police. She was short, probably between 20-30 years old, red dyed hair (original color light brown) no clothing when found. It was believed by investigators at the time that she was killed in another spot and then dumped here. No sign of sexual molestation. Fingerprint analysis came up empty.
This case is as cold as it gets.
Or it would be, if someone in the British secret services wasn’t making enquiries. Discreet ones, but not discreet enough. There’s just enough Heat on this one to attract notice, particularly if the PC agent in question has Berlin as one of their Favored Cities. It doesn’t help that [the Investigative Journalist / Human Rights Activist / Mysterious Monseigneur] is also poking around, and not being that subtle about it.
Who was the dead woman, and why is she attracting attention now?
- Option One: One Of Ours. The British connection is the Boffin, and he’s looking for a former associate. Way, way back he sent one of his assistants, Dani Forester, on what ought to have been a milk run to collect some important material on the German Vampire Program, and she never came back. The Prince of the day assured the Boffin that everything had been done that could have been done, but the Boffin never believed that for a minute. Now he’s retired he feels the need to kick over his traces and find out what really happened to Dani. The Americans, who have a vampire program of their own, would rather he didn’t find out that Dani was the victim of one of their botched operations, disposed of to cover up their own vampire’s misdeeds. The Prince of the day, eager to cooperate with his American cousins, collaborated in their cover-up. Chickens are about to come home to roost.
- Option Two: One of Theirs. The British connection is the current Hound and she’s after what she thinks is evidence of the Alraune, aka Dani Forester. Back in the day Edom was closing in on her, and Hound thinks the fiery death scene was a fake-out. The [Investigative Journalist / Human Rights Activist / Mysterious Monseigneur] isn’t after the dead woman; they’re after the Hound and think that linking them with an old scandal may be the perfect way to drag Edom into the spotlight. What none of them appreciate is that it really was Alraune back in 1992, who faked a death to cover their escape. Now they have a life in Berlin, but wouldn’t you know it, they never bothered to change their appearance all that much. Someone showing an interest in a woman with her face, whether burnt in 1992 or not, isn’t helping her Cover one bit.
- Option Three: One of the Enemy. The British connection is Cushing, who’s memory isn't as confused as he pretends. He's pushing old contacts to find out whether there was any evidence of a people-trafficking Node operating out of Berlin. He believed at the time that his superiors were covering up a nasty little scandal because there were important members of Thatcher’s government who might have been caught with their hands in the till. The [Investigative Journalist / Human Rights Activist / Mysterious Monseigneur] is after a modern version of that same Node, and isn’t aware that it goes all the way back to 1992. If they only knew, it actually goes all the way back to 1942; the Conspiracy’s ‘man’ in Berlin has been busy all that while, and there are more than a dozen bodies disposed of with roughly the same MO throughout the 20th Century. It’s still involved in human trafficking, but it’s gotten cleverer about disposing of the unfortunate accidents.
That’s it for this week! Enjoy.
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