[Campaign Seed] The Misfit Mob.

[Catsmate]

The Misfit Mob.

I've mentioned the Misfit Mob often enough, usually as background for a scenario idea, and now that I'm starting to pull my notes into shape I thought I should actually post some of them. Comments, ideas and suggestions are welcome.

The basic idea behind the Mob is hackneyed; the team of underestimated not-quite-losers, who pull it of. TV Tropes calls it the Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits (link).
It's specifically inspired by a book by the excellent Scottish crime (‘Tartan Noir’) writer Stuart MacBride for his novel A Dark so Deadly.

Welcome to the Misfit Mob.
It's where Police Scotland dumps the officers it can't get rid of, but wants to: the outcasts, the troublemakers, the compromised, lumbered with all the boring go-nowhere cases.
Officers like DC Callum MacGregor.

So when an ancient mummy turns up at the Oldcastle tip, it's his job to find out which museum it's been stolen from.
But then Callum uncovers links between his ancient corpse and three missing young men, and life starts to get a lot more interesting. O Division's Major Investigation Teams already have more cases than they can cope with, so, against everyone's better judgement, the Misfit Mob are just going to have to manage this one on their own.
No one expects them to succeed, but right now they're the only thing standing between the killer's victims and a slow, lingering death. The question is, can they prove everyone wrong before he strikes again?

‘Mother’ aka DCI Flora Malcolmson. She has had health issues recently and has been given the “Misfit mob” as a penance as she recuperates from a massive heart attack. Gruff and brusque, Mother’s demeanour masks a warm heart.

DS Andrew McAdams, is forty-two years old with terminal bowel cancer, dodging his chemotherapy sessions, and speaks much of the time in impromptu rhyming verse. He has only a short time to live, but soldiers on at work, preferring that to giving up and going in hospital. He is a favorite of ‘Mother’ and is constant tormenting Callum with innuendo about his prior disgrace. He is writing a novel and constantly spouts haiku and often talks in rhyme.

Detective Sergeant Dorothy Hodgkin (Dotty) who is in a wheelchair after losing her leg in a high-speed police chase which ended in a crash.

Detective Constable John Watt known for his grumpy demeanour, has been transferred to the Misfit Mob after none of the other teams will work with him.

Detective Constable Rosalind Franklin, a beautiful black policewoman who has just joined the Misfit Mob after punching the superintendent of her old squad. (after he sexually harassed her)

Detective Constable Callum MacGregor. Callum lives with his girlfriend Elaine who is nine months pregnant and on maternity leave from Police Scotland. Callum has had a horrendous childhood. When he was a wee boy of five he was abandoned by his family at a roadside toilet. He spent his life ‘in care’ and always had the feeling that he was unlovable. A voracious reader, Callum is an all-round good guy with the most appalling luck… Callum has been sent to the Misfit Mob due to the allegation that he deliberately compromised a crime scene.

They haven't appeared 'centre stage' in either of my current campaigns, but they have popped up in The Adventures of the Achronic Omnibus. They can be more flexible and open to unofficial and creative arrangements with outsiders, than 'mainstream' UNIT.

So without further ado...


Every organisation has those people. The ones that don't really fit into nice, neat hierarchies, categories and organisation charts, but can't be gotten rid of easily.
UNIT has more than it’s share of such cases.

The Misfit Mob, or as it’s officially designated Investigation Team Seven (Temporary/Interim) or IT7TI, is where UNIT quietly assigns many of them, hopefully not to cause too many problems.

The leader is Captain Esme Sanford

• The Boss; She Who Must Be Avoided
• Captain
  
• An acerbic but highly capable junior officer who annoyed her superiors by being excessively right when they weren't, and got stuck with this mob. 
• No witch jokes will be tolerated¹.
• Traits: Military Rank, Brave, Voice of Authority, Tough
  

The team's senior scientist is Doctor Darren Horne

• Scientific support; The Brain
  
• Brilliant but difficult to get on with. An acerbic, wheelchair bound², paraplegic scientist. Very capable, driven and difficult to deal with. Assumes he's right and is the smartest person present.
• Uses a motorised wheelchair that incorporates cutting edge technology (it can handle rough terrain, climb stairs and move surprisingly fast). May well incorporate alien tech too.
  
• Principal Scientific Officer³
• Traits: Boffin, Technically Adept, Resourceful Pockets
  

The there's Malyk Bahel

• A psychic. An actual working psychic who can get impressions from objects, read emotional states and often minds.
  
• However his psychic abilities are unreliable and his telepathy is short-ranged and generally receptive only. He has poor social skills, he sees through much of the social niceties. Oh and he has an invisible monkey⁴.
• Malyk also has a terminal brain tumour that's kept in check by a treatment regime.
• Scientific Officer⁵
  
• Formerly an archaeology student, has some contacts in the field.
• He's starting to develop other psionic powers, including telekinesis and Clairvoyance.
• Traits: Psychic, Telepathy, Eccentric⁶
  
  
  

More to come.













1. She also assumes any turtle references are aimed at her.

2. Alien technology can be dangerous to experiment with.

3. A Civil Service grade approximately equivalent to army Colonel. I'm playing a little fast and lose with the new grade structure in the UK.

4. No 'minkey' jokes will be tolerates.

5. Scientific Officer or (Executive Officer are broadly comparable to an army Captain (OF-2 grade).

6. This needs work.

[markrand]

You could throw in a lady cat burglar who's in the group instead of going to jail. Oh, she has some "interesting" contacts and a tendency to make cat noises.

[Catsmate]

Apr 6, 2022 22:27:16 GMT markrand said:

You could throw in a lady cat burglar who's in the group instead of going to jail. Oh, she has some "interesting" contacts and a tendency to make cat noises.

Actually he's male and (hopefully) will be covered in the next batch of Misfits. That's assuming the sick cat and today's meetings leave me time.

[Catsmate]

More Misfits


Sarah (Sadie) Connolly

• Higher Scientific Officer
• Main fields are investigation and analysis
  
• The investigator who can see patterns no-one else can (sometimes even when they're not there). Not great on social skills too; many people remember the time she deduced two of her colleagues were Up To Something (they were having an affair), and what happened next
  That’s why she’s here.
• Sensitive to wrongness as well as patterns, often acts as the proverbial canary.
  
• Traits: Codebreaker, Feel The Turn of the Universe¹
  

Eugene O'Neill

• Staff sergeant
• Main fields are use of force² and driving. Also his ability to loom silently and threateningly works wonders with certain people.
  
• A very capable, tough and efficient NCO but a soldier with no sense of humour and a preference for force as the first, second and third options which doesn’t really fit in with the New UNIT.                                                             An excellent driver, and a qualified pilot also (he got assigned to a lot of training courses).
• Traits: By the Book, Tough, Five Rounds Rapid, Military Rank [Minor]¹
  

Alexandra Macale 

• Scientific Officer (Technical)
• Main fields are technical, especially computers but also electronics and research (as long as it doesn't involve people or books)
  
• The in-over-her-head geek student who delved into the odder corners of the 'net, Saw Too Much, and helped save the world from Things. Then she got conscripted and ended up with the Mob....
  A wizard with computers, not so with people. Quiet and rather nice. Makes possibly the worse coffee in UNIT. Also very proficient with blunt instruments due to several years of SCA-like training in college.
• Traits: Technically Adept
  

Hugo Olsen

• Scientific Officer (Technical)
• His main fields are experience and contacts. Also a very good mechanic and general engineer, skilled with a wide range of weapons and a capable demolitionist.
  
• The septuagenarian, timeworn, cynic with not so happy memories of the Doctor's exile. Drinks rather more than is wise (patron of the Rainbow Code), has a vast range of ‘old time’ contacts⁴, several equipment stashes and hideaways, some souvenired gadgets and weapons, copies of old files The Powers That Be wanted destroyed.  Slightly paranoid and beginning to show the health problems that go with his ‘active’ lifestyle. Widower with two children and several grandchildren of whom he’s extremely protective.
  Suggestions of a ‘Shadow UNIT’ amongst the retired old-timers are of course nonsense.
• Traits: TBD, Technically Adept and Friends at least
  

Angela Cardenas

• Scientific Officer
• Scientific support, a very good general lab tech and a wizard with breadboards and a soldering iron.
• The PTSD case who had to kill her comrades to save the planet.                                                                Angela was assigned to the Mob after therapy and rehab following the Tillar Incursion of <>⁵ when it was felt that a return to normal duty was both highly desirable and impossible. There's something 'odd' about her brain, she's immune to many forms of mind control and most telepaths can't 'hear' her. Her oddity came in very useful during the attempt by the Tillar to invade Earth by possessing UNIT personnel. Unfortunately she had to kill the entire team she worked with in the process. Most the Mob are a little freaked out by her.
  
• Traits: TDB. Boffin and Technically Adept, Indomitable and Psychic Training.
  

[/ul]
Percy Williams

• Scientific Officer
• The team's historian and general researcher. Very good at ferreting out details, especially from written and archival sources, and complements Alex.
  
• Percy has an air of almost complete detachment, and sometimes appears not to believe the people around him are quite real. The shrink says this is a defense mechanism⁶ because of his detachment from this world.                      He says that that is quite reasonable as he's not from this world. He was found dazed after an Artron pulse was detected in Dartmoor a couple of years previously. Investigation of his computer, tablet, phone, wallet and books determined he was from a parallel Earth, with a broadly similar history.
  
• He knows Joan Zegrus (of Coco’s Delivery Service) and the two are reasonably sure they come from the same world. Percy spends a lot of time reading and studying history, writing articles on the divergences and extrapolating historiography from these⁷.
  
  
  

Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?





1. This needs work.

2. Excessive is optional.

3. Think DS Gerry Standing.

4. Ranging from former UNIT to the Hourglass Club, various TDPs and aliens, not-quite-criminals, dealers in alien tech and more.

5. About five three previously.

6. Don't they always?

7. Which UNIT doesn't let him publish. However they don't know about a certain website.....

END
[/font]

[Catsmate]

Even More Misfits.

This is the final batch.

Caspian Yu [Caaaspaayanayou]

• Administrative Officer¹
• Main fields are technical and off-world knowledge
  
• The alien on community service who's not trusted fully and has a dodgy shimmer
• Caaa was once a minor Laakan 'independent trader' who made occasional runs to Earth to drop off tourists and collect halite and native artworts for the galactic market. All rather illegal of course, given Terra was a closed planet but what harm did it do? Ze² scrupulously, well fairly scrupulously, avoided cultural contamination and dealing in weapons. It all went horribly wrong when the part of Trahalia who were on Earth "for the primitive culture" revealed that they were actually hunters from the outlawed hunter clade. Several people died, and UNIT (whose detection array was now intermittently able to detect Caaa's craft despite the sensor cape) were unhappy. Hir ship impounded Caaa was given a choice. And ended up in the Mob as "Restorative Justice"³....
  
• Undisguised ze looks fairly human, and somewhat like the Vinvocci, except hir skin is red/orange and the spikes on hir body are flexible and move under stress. Ze could pass as a very tall (2m, 6'6") human given a hat, facemask and concealing clothing. Maybe.
  
• Ze picked up a 'shimmer', a tactile force field generator, to interact with the locals. It's programmed with about twenty human forms, some of which are shorter than Caa's actual height, which can appear odd. However it's damaged and occasionally flickers or switches between images. Ze can't fix it.
  

: [/font]violently allergic to citris fruits, poor sense of smell, excellent vision which extends beyond the human range, salt water irritates hir skin.
[/font][/font][/font][li]Traits: not Technically Adept ("I'm not technical really"), Acute Vision, Cutting Edge Technology/Time Traveller (TL6)
[/li][/ul]

Daisy Bright

• Assistant Scientific Officer
• Fields of expertise: lab tech, analysis, biochemistry and genetics
  
• The new girl, known as 'Happy Goth'⁴ to some, and SuperHappyFunBall to others, especially under the influence of caffeine. Bright by name and nature. Doesn't sleep much but sometimes crashes.
  
• Unflaggingly cheerful, to the point of irritation and sometimes homicidal urges. Almost intuitively brilliant understanding of biology. Very good with animals, including non-Terrestrial ones.
• More seriously she's third generation UNIT. Her grandmother (still alive and answering emails) was ‘on the clerical side’ from the 1960s into the 90s and typed a lot of reports. And has an eidetic memory....
  Her father was a technician, served under Osgood in the old days. Still putters in his shed.
  Lots of contacts in UNIT and access to 'organisational memory' and unofficial channels.
  
• Traits: Biochemical Genius, Technically Adept, Animal Empathy
  

Rachel Vance

• Higher Executive Officer⁵
• The Fixer. Handles "Supplies and Procurement" for the Mob. Knows everyone, everywhere and what they want. Also knows how computerised inventory systems work….
  
• A tall, quiet woman in her late twenties, Rachel is a born Civil Servant from a family of generators of bureaucrats, including some very senior ones. Her knowledge of processes and procedures is encyclopedic and appears to he inherited through some weird family nature. Can name-drop or call old family friends in a range of senior positions.
  
• Worked rapidly through the normal Civil Service until she ended up getting involved in a Mob investigation. She arranged a transfer, seemingly without anyone noticing, and arrived one Monday morning to run the place. Which she does with terrifying efficiency. About the only person Captain Sandford is wary of.
• Oddly she actually likes working with the Mob and they're attached to her, and her ability to cut through red tape and get things done. She also possesses am uncanny ability to blend into the background and not be noticed. This has proved useful outside her normal office environment.
  
• Traits: Face In The Crowd, more.
  

Julie Johnson

• Detective Constable⁶
• The investigator.
  
• Formerly a Police Constable, until she encountered something weird and ended up on medical leave and involved in a UNIT investigation. After several months of counselling (seeing your partner and sergeant eaten tends to strain the mind, especially when you’re paralysed and expect to be next) she was transferred to UNIT.
• While she's a good investigator, and excellent at dealing with witnesses of the outré, she's still got some problems. The fact that she’s still on medication means she wasn't cleared for standard duty; hence her assignment to the Misfit Mob. She's clever, intuitive and would be a DI soon in the 'regular' police.
  
• Traits:
  

Demetrius Tucker

• Administrative Assistant⁷
• The Rogue
• A mostly reformed burglar who encountered a nest of Nigiri feeding⁸ and called for help. Adrenalin junkie. Knows his way around locks and security systems. Not entirely trusted by UNIT, the police, the Mob or his former associates. Flexible and agile and very good at getting into places. Also at talking his way out. Has a good network of contacts.
  
• Surprisingly good cook and makes excellent coffee.
  
• List item 3

 
Chyou Parks

• Administrative Officer
• The Face
• More than just a pretty face, but that helps. Better at wheedling restricted supplies from a hardened QM sergeant than even Jo Grant. Empathic and with
  excellent interpersonal skills. Freezes in combat. Good interrogator,
  sometimes, though tends to be too empathetic.
• Traits: Empathic
  

1. A junior Civil Service grade, the old Clerical Officer.

2. Laakan sexuality and reproductive biology is complicated. Caaa is a pre-nuptial catalyst.

3. "But what did we do?".

4. Yes she's 'the Abbie'.

5. A middle management grade in the Civil Service.

6. She's passed her sergeant's exams but there is no opening due to her odd position.

7. The most junior grade in the Civil Service.

8. On the homeless.



[/font]

[grinch]

I’m a big fan of “extraordinary individuals” (hence the likes of Cindy Harker, Mister Millow, Professor Douglas Arthur and hopefully many more to come) so the Misfit Mob are very much up my street. They would make for good allies to turn to in a UNIT game (especially if the higher ups have been compromised by some alien menace) or in a regular Time Lord campaign a good means to introduce your PCs to UNIT. Let’s face it, unless you’re the Doctor or some noted character I doubt your PCs would be allowed to meet the likes of Kate Stewart and Osgood straight away.