MPGS Blue²⁰²⁴

In this section I hope to give a lot of setting information to the short stories, as I know that it would be a fun setting to run a Role Playing Game in, using any one of the myriad of Pen and Paper systems out there, especially the OGL ones like D20, Tri-Stat dx, Action! System, et al. I know I would love to play in a setting like this, for what it is worth. Personally, I wish I had a copy of White Wolf's Wraith: The Oblivion. Just chop and change the rules a little and bingo, MPGS the RPG in a nutshell. I guess I could buy and use Orpheus instead, but there was something special about the Wraith game, and it was a shame to see its demise.

Perhaps the new World of Darkness CRB will provide a means to create a new RPG based upon MPGS Blue²⁰²⁴ without any old Wraith or Orpheus hangovers...

I do not mind people converting the setting for a RPG as long as it is just a home project. Anyone who tries to do a commercial one without my permission will get sued.

Biographies

DI Uriah Jones

Uriah Jones joined the Metropolitan Police shortly after leaving school at eighteen, and was fast tracked into the MPGS when he was found to have a natural ability to deal with spooks, and also to learn some of their special abilities himself. Naturally, he ended up in the Psycho-Squad, also known as Special Operations, which is where he met Lieutenant Jane O'Hannagan, who later became his partner and his lover. His most famous operation was to capture a Banshee that had escaped its prison within the Outer Darkness, but recently he has also taken on some more “pedestrian” cases, mainly because he is getting older and wants to have a retirement from the force before returning as a Spook Officer when the time comes.

Lieutenant Jane O'Hannagan [Deceased]

Jane O'Hannagan was born in New York in 1951 to American-Irish parents and grew up in one of the many suburbs of NY City. During the late Sixties she left school and dropped out, joining the hippy scene and becoming a groupie of The Doors. When Jim Morrison died in 1971 she committed suicide, hoping to join him in death. She found herself in the Inner Darkness of the Pale Lands and spent some time searching for the object of her desire, the late Jim Morrison. He proved to be a disappointment in death.

The Samhain Tearing of 2004 gave her an opportunity to return to the living realm which she took in 2016. After trying to track down still-living relatives in New York [who were not pleased to see her], she decided to move to England. At this time aeroplanes had not yet fitted spirit wards to prevent stowaways, so her move to England was not too difficult.

After arriving in England, she soon discovered that there were many more opportunities for spooks who wanted to make their own way in death than was available in the USA at the time. She joined the Metropolitan Police as a spook officer of the MPGS, and soon moved up the ranks within the Psycho-Squad, a unit dedicated to dealing with high level hauntings and paranormal activities.

In 2024 she had reached the rank of Lieutenant and had also met Uriah Jones, whom she later moved in with. Shortly afterwards she transferred to the Vice and Sexual Offences Unit of the MPGS as Jane and Uriah were finding that mixing home and work life was not working. Her most famous operation was Operation Knickers, which was set up to capture the ghostly Panty Thief of Kentish Town.

Sergeant Nathaniel MacKenzie [Deceased]

Not much is known about Sergeant Nathaniel MacKenzie, other than that he was alive during the 18th Century before his return to the living realm in 2004. He has been DI Uriah Jones' partner on and off for ten years, and gracefully stepped aside from that role when Jane O'Hannagan came into Uriah's life. Since Jane's transfer to the VSOU, he has resumed his role, at least unofficially, as Uriah's work partner.

Sergeant Katie O'Toole [Deceased]

Katie O'Toole is one of the recent dead, in as much as her demise was not that long before the Samhain Tearing of 2004. In the 1990s she was a technical officer with the Metropolitan Police before her untimely death in an RTA. When the Police Ghost Employment Act of 2014 came into force, she re-applied for her old job and ended up in the technical department of the MPGS.

As in life, Katie still preferred relations with members of the same sex, and when she met Constable Lucy Smith during Operation Knickers, she had finally found the true love denied to her in life. Shortly afterwards she moved in with Lucy, and their relationship was formalised in a Civil Partnership ceremony at a registry office in Kentish Town.

Constable Lucy Smith

Lucy Smith joined the Metropolitan Police shortly after leaving school in 2016 at the age of eighteen, and ended up as a beat officer in Kentish Town. She has been with the force for six years, all of which time she spent living in police accommodation in order to save on the expense that came with renting apartments in London. That is, until she got involved with Operation Knickers and met Sergeant Katie O'Toole.

Shortly after the operation she began hanging around the MPGS' Technical Department when off-duty, and soon put in for a transfer to the MPGS when DI Jones gave her the opportunity to do so. Shortly afterwards she got her own apartment with Katie and they were married within weeks.

She is currently on light duties while awaiting a place at day-release training to better equip her as a Spook Squad officer. This means that she is often roped into things whenever DI Jones need a still-living female officer.

She has designs on the VSOU, and hopes that she will be transferred to that unit after further training. The fact that Katie is also looking to transfer over to the VSOU is another factor in her decision concerning this.

Organisations

Mishima Shinto Psychic Wards Company, Osaka, Japan.

Formed in 2013 by an alliance between a technological entrepreneur and a venerable clan of Shinto Monks who wanted to find a way of capturing rogue spooks that can be used by operatives in the field, MSPWC soon led the way by developing the Spirit Ward, a psychic barrier between the Inner Darkness and the Outer Darkness set up to prevent Big Bad Bastards that have been imprisoned in the Outer Darkness from escaping. They went on to develop the Spook Trap, a portable Spirit Trap to be used by operatives in the field, GV [Ghost Vision] Goggles that allowed living operatives to see spooks in broad daylight, and several other devices used by LEOs [Law Enforcement Agencies] world wide.

Other companies are now working in the field, but MSPWC is still the leading company and have an 80% share of the market in both new and trusted technologies.

The Metropolitan Police Ghost Squad, London, United Kingdom.

Formed at the end of 2004, the MPGS was the first specialist police unit in the world to be set up to deal with the hauntings. The United Kingdom was hit the worst by the Samhain Tearing because of its history and the fact that hauntings were not that uncommon before the Tearing. Some even say that the Whitby Goth Weekend 2004 was the epicentre of the Haunting Event [another name for the Samhain Tearing], but this remains unconfirmed to this day.

The MPGS itself is split up into different departments, each one designed to deal with the particulars of policing the undead community. The Rapid Reaction Deployment Squads [RRDS] are the psycho-squads of the MPGS. They deal with spooks that are on the rampage and extremely dangerous, and have the technical backing necessary to wage a small war at any given notice. This means that they have their own Technical Department which is independent of such departments within the Metropolitan Police proper.

The Vice and Sexual Offences Unit [VSOU] deals with sexual crimes perpetrated either by or upon spooks, as well as dealing with prostitution and illegal pornography. This department has a high proportion of female staff, both living and dead, in order to effectively deal with female victims, and is considered a good career move for female officers who want to get past any perceived glass ceilings in their careers, actual or otherwise.

The rest of the MPGS is split into departments covering the general scope of crimes perpetrated by spooks, from burglary to muggings to disorderly conduct.

The Pale Lands [Realm of the Dead]

The Pale Lands are split off into two main areas, the Inner Darkness [closest to the living realm] and the Outer Darkness. Beyond the Outer Darkness is The Veil, a wall of light that ghosts avoid going through as no one ever comes back from the other side. No one knows what is beyond the Veil, but several theories are adhered to by many. Some say that the ghost is destroyed totally, while others say the ghost goes off to his or her final judgement. Others say that the ghost returns to the wheel of incarnation, which is the view of most Buddhists, Shinto or otherwise. When a ghost is destroyed, it is considered as being Torn beyond the Veil, as the ghost is literally torn through it to whatever is on the other side.

Ghosts and their Capabilities

Here is a short list of what they can do in my stories so far.

1.They can walk through solid objects.
2.They tend to become corporeal at night, but are almost invisible in broad daylight.
3.They can see each other perfectly well, even in broad daylight, but they can choose to hide to a certain extent.
4.They can manipulate solid objects and throw them [Poltergeists are a good example].
5.They can form romantic relationships with the living and with other ghosts, and have carnal relations with them, but they cannot breed, being dead and all. The Baal Shem of the Hashidim believe that because they no longer have the Breath of Lives that God gave to Adam during creation that they are incapable of procreation. Others just reckon that because they're dead they cannot breed. Both are equally true as at the end of the day the only ghost children are ghosts of people who died as children, and not the offspring of any union between ghosts.
6.They can only be destroyed by being Torn Beyond the Veil. See above.

Big Bad Bastards

These are the most powerful and dangerous ghosts around, including such ghosts as Banshees, Wraiths, and the such like. Here is what I have on them so far:

Banshee [Irish: Bean Sí]

Banshees are female ghosts who are old, powerful, and very dangerous. In Irish legend, meeting one foretold your own death. Considering that some victims of Banshee hauntings have died of heart attacks, the Irish legends seem to have more than a grain of truth to them. Such ghosts can only be taken out with Spook Cages and other heavy weapons that Psycho-Squads have access to. Being Angry Ghosts, they cannot be negotiated or reasoned with.

Incubi & Succubi

According to Catholic myth, they were originally unclean spirits that came into mortal bedrooms to have sex with sleeping mortals and cause them to have erotic dreams and nocturnal emissions which caused them to sin while asleep. In actual fact they are just the ghosts of late sexual offenders who get their jollies from sleeping people. They are not particularly dangerous, just extremely recidivistic [this might change with the event of EMP. If they could be identified like humans can with DNA Profiling, then they might harm or threaten victims in order to stop them going to the VSOU].

Poltergeist [Alpha Level]

Poltergeists are adolescent ghosts [ghosts of people who died before reaching adulthood] who never grew up and still throw temper tantrums, with destructive results. They died as angry teens, and tend to haunt households with adolescents in them. This is one of the few kinds of sympathetic hauntings out there. Unlike Beta Level Poltergeist, these Angry Ghosts do a lot of physical damage to property and persons, and have homicidal tendencies not shown in standard poltergeist.

Wraiths

Psychotic ghosts that take perverse pleasure in scaring people to death, or killing them directly. Many were convicted murderers in life who have decided to carry on with their recidivism in death, while others were murderers who were never caught and convicted. Such wraiths that have been caught and imprisoned in the Outer Darkness include the likes of Jack the Ripper [and no, we still do not know who he really was in life. His identity in death is solely that of Jack the Ripper, and no trace of his mortal life apart from that remains].

Paranormal Technologies and Sciences

Ectoplasm Matrix Profiling [EMP]

EMP is a new forensic science currently in development as a spectral counterpart to DNA Profiling. Early research looks promising, but it's not yet ready for use by the forensic departments of LEOs. Expect to see it become common use within five years [2029].

Ghost Vision [GV] Goggles

GV Goggles use the Spectral Wavelength Matrix [SWM] to enable a still-living officer to see spooks in broad daylight. They look remarkably like IR Goggles, which is hardly surprising considering that the earliest versions were merely re-calibrated IR Goggles.

Holy Water

Holy Water has always been used to purify haunted buildings, and it was soon discovered that being hit with it caused a ghost a great deal of discomfort – enough to incapacitate all but the most psychotic of spooks. Like CS canisters used against still-living suspects, it is not without potentially dangerous side-effects. In very rare circumstances, it could cause a ghost to be Torn Beyond the Veil.

Ionising Spectral Matrix Cannons

Top Secret

Silver Bullets

In very rare circumstances, a person that has been possessed by an Angry Ghost may be shot with a silver bullet with lethal results when all other methods of restraining the person non-lethally have failed. All trained firearms officers within the MPGS have at least one clip loaded with a variant of the silver bullet that has the same stopping power as a dum-dum bullet, in a calibre and case size that is appropriate to the firearm that they are carrying.

Silver bullets only work when there is a live host carrying the Angry Ghost.

Spectral Camcorders & Cameras

Spectral camcorders and cameras utilise the Spectral Wavelength Matrix [SWM] to take pictures of ghosts for evidence gathering purposes. Apart from the ghostly green monitor screens these devices have, they cannot be told apart from ordinary digital cameras and camcorders.

Spectral Wavelength Matrix [SWM]

This is the light wavelength that ghosts are visible on, which is a wavelength of light that is on both the Ultra-Violet and Infra-Red frequencies simultaneously. When a ghost passes in front of light, it causes a disturbance in both the IR and UV parts of the invisible spectrum, and with special equipment that takes measurements in the disturbances of the invisible spectrum, both IR and UV at the same time, you can see the ghosts causing the disturbance in both IR and UV waves around it. This is exactly how Ghost Vision [GV] goggles, Spectral Camcorders / Cameras, and the such like work.

Spirit Wards

The Spirit Ward was developed by Mishima Shinto Psychic Wards Company to contain the Big Bad Bastards in the Outer Darkness permanently using a mixture of high technologies and Shinto ritual.

Since then, Mishima have developed smaller variants of the Spirit Ward to be used locally within the living realm, either to contain ghosts, or to keep them out of a designated area. The anti-terrorism barriers around the Square Mile of London City are equipped with Spirit Wards, as are special temporal prisons all over the UK, built for housing lesser spook criminals. All police stations and military installations are also fitted with Spirit Wards, that have to be temporarily lowered to allow permitted undead staff to pass inside.

Mishima are currently working on a new version that will allow authorised spooks past without lowering the protection given against unauthorised entry. Development looks promising, but it is still early days, and no prototypes, as yet, have been developed far enough to allow a pilot scheme to take place outside of the laboratory.

Spook Traps [aka Lucifer Hawk Traps]

A natural development of the Spirit Ward, Spook Traps utilises the same technology to provide a way of capturing ghosts and containing them in a sealed environment no larger than twelve inches square by six inches deep. It is not a particularly comfortable way for a ghost to be contained, and there have been some protests about its use on an ODC [Ordinary Decent Criminals]. Mishima and others are currently working upon restraints for such criminals that work rather much like conventional handcuffs.