Sick Puppies

This unit of about 100 children aged 6 to 16, was formed by Patriarch Masao in an effort to create a unit that on the one side has large chances to infiltrate the Basalite rebels and on the other hand strike terror in the hearts of his enemies. The children are indoctrinated from the day they are picked up from the street to serve and protect their 'father' Oliver Masao. In addition they are trained with various fighting techniques in order to act as assassins, saboteurs and all-round terrorists.The children are divided into three groups: Hoppers, Longfangs and Dawgs.

The Hoppers

Patriarch Masao infrequently sends his toadies into the slums of Strathclyde and other cities to pick up half-starved children without parents. The children are brought to a patriarchal palace on the outskirts of town where they are greeted by the Patriarch who also gives them food. It is important to note that the kids are not given anything before they are right in front of him, a measure taken to instantly make a connection between the Patriarch and food. After that they are given to the Mothers, young women with less concern for ethics than for their continued survival. The Mothers than place them in one of the creches, each home to ten to fifteen children.

The kids, now endowed with regular food and caring Mothers, are then subjected to 'subtle' indoctrination. By way of fairy tales and such they are shown that Oliver Masao is indeed a kind and caring father for his nation. All those not of this opinion must either be mad or inherently evil.

This conditioning is enforced by two things: An additional dessert when the kids have been nice and made a poem for their 'Father' and severe beatings when they are dissatisfied or spoke out against their home.

In this phase the kids are named with the name of their chreche first and their individual names second, a measure taken to enhance group-building. In addition they are issued titles. These titles are used to put them in a military mind set from an early age. In effect they are treated as soldiers. The kids are woken up early in the morning to do physical exercises, after which they can play (preferably with toy soldiers and plastic guns). Aside from play-time, the children are subjected to stringent discipline, which is enforced by evoking bad consciousnesses in those that behaved badly. ('You are a bad boy, the Patriarch is very sad because of you')

After two or three years, usually when the kids are about nine years old, they are transferred to the Pack. Here they are treated very differently. Not unlike freshmen in a boarding school, they are bullied around, forced to eat sick things and are even occassionaly raped by their colleagues.

From this point on, their training becomes even more military oriented. The pubes now learn to fight and kill - mostly the latter as they are being taught not only to shoot but also to poison, to trap and to blow up.

The teacher´s stance towards their students also changes. The caring Mothers vanish and are instead replaced by brutal trainers who never hesitate to remind their students of their debt to Patriarch Masao. The whole training is set up to make the children as cold hearted, hateful and psychopathic as possible.

At the end of this period the children are sent out on their first assignments. Naturally, a high percentage doesn´t come back, either due to them fleeing (and being hunted down) or due to being KIA.

The Dawgs

Another four years later, the kids are already veterans of their trade. If they survive until fifteen years of age, they are given the status of Dawg. Like their namesakes they have become relentless hunters and tenacious fighters, though they are endowed with little in the way of cooperation. Dawgs are few and far between - at any time there are at most 8 of them alive.

Their future from this point on is usually decided by the Patriarch himself. They either become one of his favorite pets, become trainers for the younger kids (who revere them anyway) or are sent on increasingly tough missions. Of course these options can easily be mixed. It must be noted however that these children don't find their way back into 'normal' society. For them the corps is indeed father, mother and home - the only real home they will ever have had.

The children's barracks are situated in one of Oliver Masao's outlying palaces. There, they can live and train without being in danger of getting known faces. Their compound is a complete self-contained unit. It includes training gyms, sleeping and communal areas, a seperate mess-hall as well as several schooling rooms. The Hopper's creches are seperated from the rest by a wall. The younger kids routinely climb the wall to watch their older colleagues.

Rumors of the Legion Jeunesse are just now beginning to circulate through the ESE's populace. The results are beginning to show : The traditionally high 'fondness of children' in the cities, especially Strathclyde and Basal, is slowly turned into mistrust and paranoia. In the tougher neighborhoods of Basal, children are simply not allowed to bring their friends home anymore, and if they do, their parents drive them away with loaded weaponry.

Needless to say, child beggars in the streets are less and less able to sustain themselves, most of them starving or dying of some sickness. But children of middle class citizen's don't fare any better. There have repeatedly been cases of adults killing children thinking they were one of the Patriarch's. Who can you trust when even children can be coldblooded murderers ?

What if one of the kids is in truth a child of Oliver Masao, smuggled into the unit by a frightened (and less than wise) mother ?

Is the street urchin you picked up half-starved in that badlands town really just a child ? And if he is, then why is your group attacked byMasaos elite troopers ? And what happens when your group comes to the town where the kid did his last job ?

The characters are jounalists from outside the ESE. One of their contacts talks of a new terror unit of Oliver Masao. Will the players become curious enough to follow the story through against the resistance of Masao's security forces, the children as well as their own, frightened colleagues?