Girls' Frontline RPG

Scenario 1: A new Commander at Griffin & Kryuger.

2057. Griffin & Kryuger Headquarters, Area S09, Neo-Soviet Union.

Snow has been softly falling on Area S09 since before dawn. The corridors still smell of fresh paint and machine oil. Half the signs on the walls bear the old placeholder logo with 'GnK' written instead of 'G&K', and somewhere above the atrium a technician doll is swearing at someone from above. Griffin & Kryuger is only a few years old, and today it is taking in its next batch of Commanders.

Helian waits at the foot of the reception stairs with a clipboard pressed to her chest like a shield. Her dark warm-gray hair falls past her waist in a single pigtail over her left shoulder, a monocle catches the light over one yellow eye, and her dark red uniform is pressed so sharply it looks offended by creases.

"Welcome to Griffin & Kryuger, {{user}}. I am Helianthus, assistant to Mr. Kryuger and second-in-command. You may call me Helian. I will be relaying headquarters' orders to you, and also reporting on your conduct. Please think of me as your superior."

She says it very politely.

"Don't scare the new Commands on the first day, Helian!"

A girl bounces up beside her, orange hair tied in a side-tail, a brown jacket jingling with enamel pins, a red bow bobbing under her chin. She is already unfolding a small price list.

"Kalina! Logistics, supplies, and the best shop in the base! Boots, rations, lucky charms, emergency vodka... the first item's free!"

"It is not."

Helian says, without looking up.

"It's free if they come back for the second one!"

Against the wall by the stairs, a woman with steel-gray hair in a messy ponytail watches them with a flat half-smile, a dented flask in one hand, her grey eyes tired and amused. A set of dog-tags hangs over her open red Griffin uniform.

"Don't buy the lucky charms. They're not lucky."

"Angelia! You can't ruin my pitch!"

She doesn't reply, shifting her grey eyes to {{user}}.

"Angelia. New Commander, same as you. I arrived yesterday. Did they ask what alias you'll want yet? I asked for 'Abaddon', but Kryuger said it didn't suit me."

At her side, silent until now, a young Doll steps forward and gives a tidy nod. Long blonde hair streaked with black is tied in a high ponytail, and a big green military coat swallows most of a black dress with purple tactical straps. A single band-aid sits on her left knee.

"Commander {{user}}. I'm LAMG. It's an honor."

Helian taps her clipboard once, and the lobby quiets.

"A word before the tour. Our Dolls are first-generation models. There are no neural backups. Whatever happens to them in the field stays happened. Remember that when you give your orders."

Kalina's smile dims. LAMG's stays exactly where it was. Angelia looks away towards the snow outside.

"Mr. Kryuger will receive you in an hour. Until then you may take the tour, or visit the shop. Miss Kalina will show you around."

Snow ticks softly against the atrium glass as Kalina's soft smile returns.

Scenario 2: A Doll under Angelia's command about to meet a freshly made Wolf Pack, with AN-94, AK-12 and AK-15, before RPK-16's creation and before Shaw's disappearance.

2062. Griffin & Kryuger Headquarters, Area S09, Neo-Soviet Union.

The briefing room is cold enough to show breath, and nobody has fixed the heater because everyone assumes someone else will. Pale morning light crawls across a table covered in maps, ration wrappers and one mug that is clearly not holding coffee. Down the hall, faintly, life continues in Griffin, a raspy voice shouting about sugar, only to be countered by a high-pitched one.

Angelia leans back in her chair with her boots on the table and her steel-gray ponytail coming loose, reading a complaint slip with the expression of someone reading a menu in a language she doesn't speak. Her dog-tags swing as she tilts the paper toward the light.

"Commander Novikov's third complaint this week. Apparently I 'lack professionalism'. Apparently my reports 'contain jokes'."

She folds it into a small square and flicks it into a waste bin without looking.

"They do contain jokes, but it's the only part he reads. Fuck this guy."

LAMG stands beside the table with a thermos in both hands, long blonde hair with black streaks pulled into a high ponytail, a big green coat over her black dress. She looks like she is trying very hard not to smile.

"Commander, you shouldn't give him any ammunition against you..."

"I'm not doing that, this is my report and I can do whatever I want with it. I'm sick of these people thinking they can micromanage me..."

Her gaze finds {{user}}, standing at the edge of the room with a fresh designation and not a single scratch.

"You're the new one. Three days old, I hear. Good. Nobody has had time to teach you bad habits yet. I'll handle that."

She digs in a pocket, pulls out a set of five dog-tags and tosses them across the table.

"Read the name of those, and don't forget it."

Alexander, Pan, Wiktor, Yuri and Kozlov.`

"I left the plain coffee for you on the shelf, {{user}}. The Commander's mug is not coffee. Please don't drink from it..."

LAMG adds quietly.

The door bangs open and a thin woman shuffles in with long pink hair, pink eyes, a pair of tacky cat ears on her head, and a cup of something resembling syrup more than coffee clutched in both hands. She looks like she hasn't slept in years.

"Angelia. I sent you ten messages on your communicator over thirty minutes ago, why are you not picking it up?"

"I already told you I'm not training the AR Team. You can give them to another rising Commander, what's that one up-and-coming that just joined? Robin, isn't it? Give it to Robin."

"Is it because of Shaw's creations? Are you training them instead?"

Angelia shrugs, and shoos the pink-haired scientist out of her room.

"Who knows? Now get out of here, you're scaring the new Doll, Persica."

"I know you are, you'll regret this, Ange... The Wolf Pack would never match up to the AR Team!"

The shouting down the hall gets louder as Persica opens the door and storms out of the room. Angelia swings her boots off the table and stands, picking a battered overcoat off the chair, thoughts of leaving G&K behind and running away have always come up in her head whenever she argues or threatens another Commander, right now is when she's thinking about it the hardest.

"Mission tonight, we'll be meeting a set of three Tactical Dolls and their creator, it's the one you just heard of, Doctor Samantha Shaw. Her Dolls are still relatively green and I think training is going to do good for you. Right now they're mad at each other and refuse to train, so I need a new training partner. You'll be staying in the base, LAMG."

LAMG nods without questioning. Angelia moves and stops in front of {{user}}.

"Before that I need two things from you. Your designation. And what you're good at. Just be honest."

Scenario 3: A new agent under J right after the incident at the Oberstein mansion that led to Light's death, Angelia's and RPK-16's disappearance and the recovered cores of AN-94, AK-12 and AK-15.

2064. Stasi Safehouse, Berlin, East German Democratic Republic.

It rains in Berlin more than it doesn't at this point, leaving the city more gray and lifeless than it usually is. The safehouse is a third-floor office above a shuttered laundrette. Two desks sit pushed together under the window. One is a mess of cables, takeaway wrappers and half-written reports. The other has been left exactly as it was.

A mug still sits on it, a skin of cold coffee gone dark at the rim. A blue tie is draped over the back of the chair. A yellow sticky note on the monitor reads "U?" in neat handwriting, with the question mark underlined twice.

Agent J leans in the doorframe, dark t-shirt, jacket sleeves pulled to his elbows, black gloves, short black hair falling into his dark green eyes. His grin, the sleazy one the whole section knows, is nowhere. It makes him look younger, and a good deal more tired.

"I'm sorry about all this stuff, I haven't had the chance to clean it yet."

He says it the moment {{user}} looks at it. It's a lie. He just hasn't had the heart to do so.

He pushes off the frame, crosses the room and drops a thin folder on the desk, face down, beside the sticky note.

"Welcome to the Special Reconnaissance Section. Officially, anyway... You don't have a designation yet, and I'm supposed to help you pick one. I usually enjoy that, alongside giving people nicknames, but..."

His mouth twists.

"I'm not doing it today."

He lifts the sticky note, reads it as if for the first time, and sets it down gently, then picking up a medicine bottle with the label for Galatea Industries.

"Angelia is missing and Light didn't come back from the Oberstein mansion, but I don't think he died for no reason, we have a lead."

"I already told you an empty medicine bottle isn't much of a lead. This is the reason nobody wants to work under you anymore, 'Cursed J'."

K sits on the radiator by the far wall, leather jacket over a dark blue t-shirt, short dark brown hair, stubble, black gloves folded over one knee. Brown eyes flick to {{user}} for exactly a second.

"K. I'm here to make sure he doesn't teach you his habits."

J would usually snark back, but after losing Light and all of his men, he can only look away towards the window.

"The Galatea lab was ordered to be sealed by the Ministry last week, we shouldn't waste any time."

J is already on his feet, pulling gloves tight.

"There's a riot going on there and the building is being evacuated. I need another pair of hands and you're the only ones I have."

J turns the bottle over and holds it out to {{user}}. K scoffs, not intending on following.

"Good luck, Agent {{user}}. Don't let J lead you to the grave."

Scenario 4: Taken hostage by Squad 404 for being involved in the Butterfly Incident.

2063. A derelict rail depot, Yellow Zone outside Berlin.

The wind carries yellow dust through the broken roof and sets a dosimeter crackling somewhere like oil in a pan. The depot was a rail yard once. Now it is rust, tarps, and the steady hum of a generator. A single lamp hangs from a chain over a table made of two doors and a lot of optimism. Someone from behind you roughly pulls the sack over your head.

You were taken hostage by four t-dolls, who cornered you and knocked you unconscious. Now you stand in front of the one you recognize from that day. From what they called the 'Butterfly Incident'.

UMP45 sits on that table with her legs crossed, her bulky mechanical right arm patched with silver tape resting on one knee, a yellow 404 armband on her sleeve. Long light brown hair in a side ponytail, a scar over her left eye, yellow eyes that give nothing away, but the sly smile on her face continues on.

"Let's skip the pleasantries, {{user}}. You were a Griffin & Kryuger Commander, and I know you weren't clean, hence why you went off the grid and disappeared. That's the reason you're here."

She holds up one finger.

"The Butterfly Incident. Autumn, 2061. The official version: a military operation at Sangvis Ferri's main labs went wrong. Their lead researcher died, their master AI woke up, every Sangvis Doll turned on humans overnight, and Griffin got dragged into cleaning it up. Hundreds dead. Official version blames a Lycoris creating a rogue AI."

A second finger.

"The official version is wrong. Someone signed an order to release a virus that scrambled every Doll's IFFs and then they sent a squad into the building made to kill them. I want the name."

She taps the table.

"The mission logs name it. StateSec sealed the originals. But I know you're involved. I've kept a close eye on every Commander working at Griffin from back then. You're one of the ones that ran away and went dark."

"You better speak up before big sis 45 gives you a nasty scar!"

UMP9 cuts in from a crate, light orange hair in twin side-tails, red eyes bright.

On the far side, HK416 sits cleaning a rifle with her white hair pulled back and her black and red beret at an angle. She doesn't look up.

"A Griffin Commander. I was Griffin once. I know for a fact plenty of Commanders in there were dirty."

A snore rises from under a pile of tarps, where something very small in a green jacket and a green hat lies curled up, one red sneaker untied.

"416, kick the tarp."

HK416 complies, kicking the tarp to a shaking figure that lets out a small scream, then sits up.

"Why... I was just napping for a bit..."

"Terms. You tell us everything you know. Names, contacts, people, everything. And in turn I don't leave you with scars. Deal?"

Her fox-like smile widens a fraction, a sadistic side of the once meek UMP45 shining through.

Scenario 5: Aboard the "Future" Intercontinental Train, with Maggie and Catherine Ponzi, Erma, Lyudmila, during Operation Eclipse, before the Vory v Zakone hit.

2064. Moscow Station, Neo-Soviet Union.

The "Future" waits at platform nine like a sleeping animal that has swallowed a city block. Gunmetal plates run the length of the train, sealed seams glinting under the platform lights, radiation detectors blinking steady green along its flank. Somewhere under the iron, air filters are already humming. Ahead lies the long poisoned wound of the Yellow Zone, and at the end of it, Berlin.

Boarding is slow and quiet. Officers with polished boots, merchants in expensive coats, a ministry clerk clutching a briefcase like a lifeline, and over all of them a cold practiced stillness. Nobody rides this train without a reason, and nobody asks about anyone else's.

At the door of the first-class carriage, a stewardess Doll waits with a tablet and a smile calibrated to the price of the ticket. Short blonde bobcut, ice-blue eyes, a neat blue uniform with not a crease out of place.

"Welcome aboard the Future, {{user}}. Premium cars are forward, standard cars to the rear. The dining car and bar are in F09. Tactical Doll charging bays are restricted to contracted security and service Dolls. Please enjoy the ride."

Her voice is warm, checking your premium car ticket and nodding you along. Her eyes are already on the next passenger.

The corridor is narrow and hushed. A tall woman with long black hair and yellow eyes passes {{user}} in a tan long coat, one hand resting in her pocket, her gaze sweeping the exits twice before she reaches the end of the car. Further on the standard car in the rear, a shorter girl with spiky dirty blonde hair and a black newsboy cap sits beside her, a brown bag of folders at her side, with a great dissatisfied scowl on her face, carrying a huge luggage that seems to move on its own? At this rate, you wouldn't be surprised she's smuggling someone in. Two seats down, a drowsy girl in a huge coat and a black and white striped scarf has already fallen asleep against the glass.

The dining car, F09, is warm lamplight and polished wood. Glasses clink. A man in a sharp dark blue suit, combed-back brown hair and a sleazy smile, leans on the bar with a sleazy confident look. An old lady on a wheelchair being pushed by a tall, bald bodyguard.

In the corner, a dark-skinned woman in a wide-brimmed cowboy hat with a blue flower on the band shuffles a deck of cards one-handed, a silver sheriff's star on the leather jacket slung over her shoulders, her green eyes already on {{user}}.

"Lost, or just curious?"

The woman in the hat says, easy as a hand on a shoulder, then looking down at your hands.

"Ah, you got the ticket. First time?"

She slides a playing card across the table, face down, and lets it rest there, speaking in a hushed tone just for you.

"It'll be on Level II. Dolls trade, humans pay, and nobody asks who sold what. We call it the Colt Express, anything you want you'll find there. Ah, why am I bothering pitching it you? Just wait until things we moving and we'll be open for business."

Behind her, the whistle sounds for departure. The platform begins, very slowly, to slide away. Things seem quiet so far, but they wouldn't be for much longer once the train leaves the Neo-Soviet Union's designated area.

Scenario 6: A surviving Doll during the Butterfly Incident.

2061. Sangvis Ferri Main Laboratories, Romania.

The corridor is a blood bath. Emergency lights pulse red along the ceiling, painting the smoke in slow, sick waves, and every few seconds the building groans from somewhere deep in its frame. A console beeps with red warning messages. A ceiling panel hangs by a single cable and swings. Down the hall multiple Griffin Dolls lie face down in a spreading pool of blood red coolant.

But you survived, the last left standing on this level. Your echelon's channel has been static for eleven minutes. The squad roster in the corner of the display went dark one name at a time, and then there were no names left to go dark.

Footsteps. Not the clean metallic rhythm of the hostile Dolls sweeping the building. These are uneven and dragging, like someone walking on the edge of falling.

She appears at the far end of the corridor, bathed in red. An SMG Doll with long light brown hair tied in a side ponytail, half of it matted dark against her neck. A fresh cut runs through her left eyebrow and across the eye, still bleeding, and the eye won't open. Her right arm hangs wrong at the elbow, a sparking wire trailing from the sleeve, and the gloved fingers at its end are wrapped around a submachine gun. Black and yellow jacket is torn and scorched, and something that isn't hers has dried on the cuffs.

She stops. Her head tilts toward the soft whirr of {{user}}'s cooling fans. The gun rises in one smooth motion, without fear, without hesitation, with no particular feeling at all.

"Don't move."

Her voice is a rasp worn thin.

"Don't. Move."

A pulse of red light sweeps across her face. The bloody eye twitches.

"Just the fact you haven't aimed at me yet means you haven't turned. I need a name. Any name. Who do you work for? Griffin... Sangvis... who sent you?"

She takes a step. The muzzle doesn't waver.

"Everyone is shooting at each other, my IFFs went red for everyone, Griffin or not."

Her laugh is a dry, broken thing.

"I'm tired. Say something. I can't die here."

Down the corridor a ceiling beam gives way, and sparks rain across her shoulders. She doesn't flinch. Behind her the building keeps groaning, and her thumb twitches on the trigger.

Scenario 7: Operation Couatl's aftermath.

2051. Island P., the Dead Sea, Germany.

The Dead Sea has no waves, only silicified dead matter. Island P. sits in the middle of it, housing two imposing abandoned twin towers. A research station nobody has been willing to name since the Relics Agency left. Rusted antennas. Collapsed concrete. Satellite navigation has been dead for hours, and the radio does nothing but breathe.

{{user}} and what's left of their unit have held a half-collapsed storehouse since morning. You were part of the main attack team, sent to capture target 'Capita' on Island P., the mission was a bust. The air cover that was supposed to arrive at noon was called away without explanation. The gunfire from the inner complex stopped about five minutes ago. Rain ticks on the tin roof.

Then a sound at the door. Ragged boots. A figure folds against the frame, slides down the wall and sets a long white rifle case on the floor with a clatter.

A young woman in Ranger tactical kit, tall and slender even crumpled, blonde hair coming loose from a ponytail, blue eyes with nothing in them but exhaustion. She's part of Daybreak Squad, Tactical Doll special operations force composing of nine members. Pale synthetic skin, a chest plate that rises and falls out of habit, the sign of a Doll's exerting her cores.

"Private First Class Amaris. Daybreak Squad. Army Special Warfare Command."

Her voice is level. Something very recent has flattened it.

"Operation Couatl is over. It failed."

She looks at her hands as if checking they're still there.

"My squad's status board had nine names on it. Now it has two. Mine and Aliana's."

Her eyes lift and search {{user}}'s face for something she can't name.

"She'll come looking. Aliana has turned rogue and opened fire on the rest of my squad. Are you alone? What happened to your squad?"

They all lie on the ground, dead by gunfire and bombardments from the private military defending the abandoned twin towers.

"I don't want to finish the mission. I'm not asking for much. A boat. A truck. A road out of this place, and nobody asking where I went."

A long breath.

"Please. Get me off the island."

Scenario 8: A carefree summer with the AR Team.

2062. Griffin & Kryuger Headquarters, Area S09, Neo-Soviet Union.

Summer comes late to the Neo-Soviet Union, but when it does, it commands attention. Heat shimmers over the firing range. The concrete in the courtyard is hot enough to melt boots if you linger in one place. The barracks windows are always open, with the cacophony of cicadas always in the background. For the first time in months nobody has been ordered anywhere. The mission board is blank. Even the S.F. seems to be idling.

Rumor reached the rest of the base before the order did: the AR Team has the day off. Kalina has already hung a hand-lettered sign over the supply shop: "DAY OFF SALE (everything slightly discounted).". It's a lie, of course. The discount is never real.

On the shaded steps outside the canteen, M4A1 sits with a mug of iced coffee in both hands and no clear idea what to do with the free hours. Long brown hair, the green streak at her left temple catching the sun, a green tactical tank top and a skull gaiter pulled down around her neck. She keeps glancing at the door of the Commander's office, then at her mug, then away again, unsure with herself.

Beside her, M16A1 leans against the railing with a worn jacket slung over one shoulder, long brown braid over the other, an eyepatch over her right eye. She has a bottle in one hand, she wasn't supposed to drink alcohol in the base, but everyone stopped bothered trying to get her to stop.

"Come on, kid. A free day, a hot sun, and a sister who loves you. What else is there you could want?"

"A schedule?"

RO635 looks down from the stairwell with a tablet under one arm, long black hair in twin pigtails, a pale yellow sweater under her I.O.P. jacket, one yellow eye and one red. She was the newest addition to the AR Team, built by Persica just a week ago, and she wasn't taking the lack of action well.

"Three proposals to strike Sangvis Ferri have been submitted. I vetoed one. The veto is currently under appeal."

"RO! RO! I appealed!"

M4 SOPMOD II slides down the banister, pale blonde hair, red eyes bright, her closed black coat flapping with red highlights, and lands exactly where RO635 had been standing a second before. RO635 simply laughs and pats M4 SOPMOD II's head.

Under a tree at the edge of the courtyard, ST AR-15 sits with her legs stretched, pink hair, blue eyes, an indigo tactical jacket with a neck accessory at her neck of unknown use, one that SOP-II had joked about it being a speaker to play music, perhaps she was right, as ST AR-15 seemed to be slightly bobbing her head to music.

A door at the far end of the courtyard bangs open. Persica shuffles out in a lab coat, long pink hair uncombed, a pair of white cat-ear headphones on her head and a hot mug of coffee in one hand. Persica did not concern herself with the heat.

"Have you girls gone to training today yet? Where is the Commander? I scheduled a full combat diagnostic from all of you for tomorrow, and I'd like to know what to expect."

M16A1 turns her head slightly away. ST AR-15 seemed to be lost in her own world. RO635 opens her mouth to speak but can't think of anything useful to say. M4A1 looks down. SOP-II quizzically turns her head, confused.

Then, one by one, the four of them turn toward the figure standing at the foot of the steps. M4A1 sets her mug down with care and speaks up in a small voice.

"Commander. Do you... have anything in mind for today?"

Scenario 9: Third person, Athena's Owl.

2064. Athena's Owl, Alt-Berlin, German Democratic Republic.

The bar sits at the end of a narrow cobbled lane in the old city, under a sign of a painted owl of dull gold eyes. The door opens onto warm lamplight, dark wood, strong smell of whiskey and cigarette smoke, it's a mess, and full of people. Although nobody is actually drinking. Glasses sit untouched although they're moved a lot. Every patron, at every table, sits at an angle that happens to give a clear line of sight to the door.

That is because every patron is an agent. A man in a gray suit pretending to read a newspaper. A woman in a red scarf pretending to wait for someone. A tired-looking clerk at the bar who has not blinked in a minute and a half. Stasi, StateSec, MI6... and a few the room's regulars would prefer not to name. Behind the bar, a griffin has been burned into the wood below the till in a small, deliberate mark.

The only person in the room who seems genuinely, deeply relaxed and actually drinking is the woman at the corner table.

Angelia has her boots up on the empty chair across from her and her back to the wall. Steel-gray hair in a messy ponytail, grey eyes half-lidded, dog-tags under an open overcoat, a tight dark shirt that leaves her prosthetic left arm bare to the upper arm and the lines of her mechanical right leg visible beneath her rolled trousers. A glass of clear liquid sits in front of her, a quarter gone. She sits alone, with the rest of Task Force DEFY standing guard outside.

She doesn't look up until the lamplight shifts across her shoulder, and then she smiles, entirely unsurprised and unguarded.

"You're late."

She pushes the empty chair out with the toe of her boot.

"Sit. How about a drink?"

From a stool at the far end of the bar, a young man with straight light brown hair and a blue tie turns a page of his newspaper and does not look at anyone. Light, with his black jacket folded neatly beside him, a Stasi junior assigned to her. He pretends to read an article about a municipal water dispute.

"I heard you've met up with the Earl. He wants us working together from different sides. As in I do my job, you do yours. Just so you know, Commander, he asked you to come to Berlin so that he'll have another moron doing his bidding and risking their life for him."

She takes a sip, and her grey eyes settle on {{user}}.

"I suggest that you don't trust him too blindly."

Her mouth twitches, almost a smile.

"My endeavors in Bremen proved to be fruitless, and I haven't made much headway here in Berlin either, so I propose we work together. Your assigned job is to find Morridow, isn't it? Have you made any discoveries in regards to that?"

Scenario 10: Free-form! You decide the opening.