These are a few points in the Official History of the Eulicid Foundation, All agents are given a run over on Foundation history so that the agents may mentally prepare themselves for the strangeness that is going to become an everyday occurance and be able to spot any weird happenings that have historical precedent within the Foundation.
- The original techniques and methodology that would be the genesis of groups like the Eulicid Foundation were founded in the days of Sumer and their efforts to protect the city states from the demons that stalked the night. Many of these methods and techniques were introduced into the plethora of culture that later developed in Post-Mesopotamian culture and were either improved upon or translated by the adopting culture. Remnants can be extrapolated from elements of Semitic, Vedic and Middle Eastern Culture.
- Many of the better implants associated with the Eulicid Foundation were discovered around 600BCE in a region of mountains that would become Pamir National Park in Tajikistan, early demon hunters were awed at the implants ability to aid the fight. Though due to a lack of medical knowledge some of the implants were not nearly so effective, methods needed to install some of the more common implants often had people dying during implantation, or it required the patient to go through trepanning and risk a structurally weakened skull or severe cerebral damage.
- By the period of classical antiquity (BCE 400 – CE 500) Each Culture had developed its own paranormal protectors or demon hunting society, usually under the auspice of a state cult or religious group. Each group was formed with the intent to protect the people of their societies from those dark things that existed beyond the gods or made from the evils the gods allowed.
- With the advent of Christianity and the catholic church in the roman empire many of these cults and societies either went further underground developing into a more conglomerated organization or shared their knowledge and members with the new church and her developing groups of exorcists, sicarii (red robed Dagger-Monks), and witch hunters to combat against the infernal enemies of the church.
- As official secular organization the foundation began as an obvious Sub-branch of England’s intelligence service created during the reign of Queen Elizabeth by Sir Francis Walsingham. It should be noted that this was the first organized intelligence service by any government in Europe.
o Sir Walsingham named the branch Her Majesty’s Occult Intelligence and had the operations headed by John Dee, a well-known mathematician, astrologer, and sometimes magician. Who would keep the intelligence service secretly going until his death.
o During Dee’s tenure he would divorce HMOI from English intelligence in order to become a black budget operation to allow his engagements minimal difficulty from court Interference. His organization was awarded ownership over many plots of land to fund his efforts. Little known to the Queen, Dee’s ability to scry into the future had allowed him glimpses of the most profitable investments centuries ahead of time. Not the Dee’s Prophesies were limited to financial efforts, many of his prophesies were related to agency expansion and events to prepare for. After his death his successor to HMOI and discovered with his will many letters forward dated and sealed for the benefit of the future of mankind.
- During the English civil war HMOI was forced to flee the majority of its operational holdings, which was relocated to Scotland in a former monastery just outside Edinburgh city limits. During this time HMOI began distancing itself from its intimate connection to the crown in specific and instead upon England’s safety as a whole, no matter the cost.
- IN the 17th to 18th centuries HMOI developed its appearance from a government branch into a corporation that invested in trade routes and international property. Using this as subtext for occult exploration and research. Calling itself the Goldscale trading company, they began using the company to infiltrate other countries in the attempt to keep an international eye on matters of king and country. The secondary goal was to hopefully poach information from other organizations.
o It was in this era when the Foundation achieved its major Coups within the occult community. The revolutions in America and in France allowed the agency to set itself up in America outside of the scrutiny and power of the monarchies in Europe. In the French Revolution Agents within France were able to steal valuable material that was previously fashionable in the former court of Louis XIV. The real Coup was to extract several Vatican Agents from Paris mid-Terror and recruit them into the organization with their skills, connections, and information.
o Furthermore the expansions of the various European empires allowed the organization to move forward into new countries opening trading houses and using them to spread their influence even further. The new international trade routes allowed information to pass farther and faster, and let agents to move about across the globe.
o In new lands and cultures the Foundation began adopting a culturally pragmatic attitude in regard to the many new witch-hunter groups and occult societies. The Foundation frequently found itself saving cultures that their countrymen were exterminating.
- The New occultism of the 18th and early 19th century made recruitment for the Eulicid Foundation easier and countering the more malicious groups much more straightforward in means of opposition. But in a time when the most powerful people lead lives both especially public and especially private the contemporary conspiracies both benign and malignant get confused in the needlessly complicating social haze of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Occult and Spiritual movements such as Theosophy and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn became breeding grounds for new recruits and new oppositions, by the end of the era the Organization had effectively decided who were the fakes, the real deals, and the real threats.
o The growing knowledge and technologies of including the new sciences of Anthropology, Psychology, and discoveries in medicine and engineering helped be foundation in the coming decades.
- The First World War, a previously unknown horror was introduced to man. Of the many world ending plots that would have lead to mass death or societal destruction it was a horrifying Irony that mankind committed itself to a massive death toll without outside encouragement. The subsequent effect across the twilight had ghost hunters working for well over a decade calming ghosts down. It was half-thought that the great depression was one giant karmic payback for the death toll for the war.
o Fortunately the growing mechanization and political upheaval of the world forced the Foundation to begin further preserving people and Ideas from destruction. As total censorship became a common political tool. The sheer number of books and art saved from the furnaces by the foundation has stunned historians who join the Foundation.
- In the late 1930’s the organization had already began anti-Nazi operations long before Hitler and Himmler began their attempts to use the supernatural to empower their movements. When the war began the Organisation actively and comparatively openly aided the Allies against Axis occult interests by "officially" allying themselves with the Allies war interest. This decision was made upon realising how difficult it would be to continue covert actions while allied intelligence kept their eyes open for suspicious activity, which Eulicid Foundation Agents would no doubt be doing as part of being a Foundation Agent. The Foundation made itself invaluable by countering cultist groups that benefitted from Axis sponsorship to move forward their own twisted agendas. Frequently the Foundation would work with OSS agents to perform covert actions against axis developments, occult or not. This alliance continued right past the end of the war, the Foundation was fighting SS werewolves (Nazi partisan resistance groups) for years.
- Due to their open activity in the Second World War the Foundation realised that not since the days of Queen Elizabeth I was the Foundation so well known to world powers. The United States, Great Britain, and the U.S.S.R. all knew about this organization, worse still they knew it was old, settled, and needed. Though each country would create their own anti-supernatural agencies after the fact it was generally agreed that they couldn’t significantly interfere without removing an entrenched global safety net. So instead of trying to stop it, they came up with the next best thing, Defining it. The Eulicid Foundation was internationally recognized by the newly fledged United Nations in an international accord as a non-government-organization with international policing jurisdiction. It was passed with the most undefined terms in regard to the official political powers of the Foundation, but that was made for the safety of member countries…because there was always the fear of giving the foundation too much power or worse not enough.
o The Agents of the foundation have the following rights and duties according to this UN Declaration,
§ The Foundation is expected to remain discrete in the everyday knowledge of world citizens; Foundation Agents have permission to have Interpol, UN, or similar credentials when dealing with significantly localized law agencies.
§ The Agents of the Foundation have all the rights of Sworn Officers of the Law including the right to carry concealed deadly weapons, protect citizens and fellow agents, perform investigations, apprehend suspects, take prisoners, and collect evidence. Agents are expected to respect the local laws of the country they are in, any necessary violation of local laws are expected to be cleared through the Foundation, preferably before the fact.
§ When in situations where questions of agency jurisdiction occur the Foundation has a higher authority.
§ The Foundation is allowed a degree of extraterritorial jurisdiction and autonomy on matters of taxation, licences, and property on all official Foundation property.
§ Article 9 Section 4: In the event that the agent is meeting with local government, be it peace officers or otherwise, the agent is allowed to deny relevant knowledge if there is reasonable evidence that said knowledge becoming general knowledge will cause greater harm.
Storyteller Questions and Answers (Likely to be expanded as they come):
Where is the money coming from? Shadowy Jewish bankers? The Masons? Bilderbergers? The Rothschild’s? The United Nations? How much money do these chaps have to play with, anyway?
Oh, this storyteller knows how they are bank rolled, and sadly it’s mostly a mundane answer. If you consider the idea that the official organization was founded in Elizabethan England and that they have had the ability to grow and develop outside of a government black budget for years, the foundation has more money than many small countries, and you probably didn’t know you’ve been supporting them for years.
-Could they get their hands on a nuke if they spotted great Cthulhu himself in the deep sea, near Antarctica?
Hypothetically? Yes. It would take more time than most mortals would like since we’d all be going batshit crazy with face eating and whatnot. But they hypothetically could….but it would likely be a Russian nuke on an experimental bomber of late Cold-war design.
-How does the group relate to international government? How does the EF deals with mundane governments and interests like bankrupt Greece, bankrupt Ireland, the Taliban, the PRC, post-Kaddafi Libya, etc.
Nothing is ever easy politically. In a world full of psychos and governments that think of the United Nations as “a good idea if I was in charge of everything,” The Eulicid Foundation was allowed to exist under the UN with comparatively generous powers, but the hidden world doesn’t wait for paperwork. Though regular channels are preferable, in emergencies it’s better to beg forgiveness than seek permission. Furthermore if forgiveness is impossible you have two options: coercion or simply ignoring the political problem. Results matter, and it’s not the Foundation’s purview to stop normal everyday crime.
Part of the challenge of running a globetrotting game is squaring up how the horror genre relates to the everyday horror of international policy. What bad things can happen to characters in this game, what does the Eulicid Foundation do to mitigate this?
The real strengths of the agency are its resourcefulness and its spread. But outside of agency property the real world frequently doesn’t work on any ideal. The Foundation is more feared than respected by those official organizations that know of it, agency credentials intimidate, and the shady nature of what the Foundation does doesn’t help people’s response. If someone wants to cause unofficial trouble or official trouble there are the means to do so, least of all at the end of a gun. Most of the time Agents prefer to avoid notice or pretend to be something else, it’s easier that way. While the agency will help get agents out of mundane troubles, when their problems are combined with the government such as supernatural interference within political systems at which the black ops nature of the Foundation comes out of closets and foot lockers. The Foundation has an official policy that they will not be passively bullied and that every violent action against Foundation or Agent will be answered with Karmic efficacy.
So far, the EF has wisely decided to use its resources to preserve and rebuild its agent's sanity. What, then, does the mindset of an agent who's been with the EF since the sixties look like? What sort of implants does he have installed? What mnemonic devices and meditation techniques has he learned? How elder-vampire broken is this guy? For that matter, has such a person encountered some serious, elder-level, one-hit kill Cthulhian hoodoo and lived to tell the tale? How?
That’s for the players and the characters to find out. People do survive, people learn how to survive, but it’s more fun for people to figure this out In Character. This may seem like an ST cop-out to get out of explaining things, but really part of the game deals with secrets and how they can change you, so I have to say that If I told you I’d have to kill you, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?
What parts of the normal WoD world is Part of the Eulicid Foundation world?
Well, I'm planning to do a series of rapid fire questions to quick answer much of that, and the short story is: Not much.
Vampires do not have covenants, I’m not even sure if they have clans, many of them might have no resemblance to requiem vampires, what might be considered a vampire might not be a hemophagic human in a sapient permanently animated post-mortem state.
If you encounter a werewolf, it sure ain't gonna be an Uratha. First of all, there was no Father Wolf guarding the boarder between the Shadow and the Mortal realm. Second of all if you find werewolves they will have better similarity to either the Varity of creatures from Changing Breeds. Think either Dog Soldiers or American Werewolf in London. On the other hand, there is a Shadow though some details will obviously different.
If there are Mage-esque supernal realms, no human has ascended to them. On the plus side, there is no abyss as Mage the Awakening understands it. There are will-workers in this world, however these people have none of the Gnostic benefits that awakened would normally have. However the many Astral, and other planes of existence do exist, though some details may change.
Prometheans likely exist, but gods help them. Made in the same azothic manner, with similarly humanistic goals, by the same Demiurges, the primary difference is the sheer lack of numbers and organization. Though the five core lineages do exist the Created lack any form of recognizable society, but they are much more developed individually. There are perhaps sixty Prometheans on the planet, and much fewer pandorans.
Changelings likely exist, but they are less "the lost" and much more lost. Lost to humanity and abandoned by humanity. Changelings are still stolen by the fae, they still escape from arcadia, but if there are no great number of stable courts to help them organize and give stability to their lives the lost frequently give in to their madness and become more changeling than mortal. There are maybe a thousand changelings across the planet, possibly two, but we are only counting the ones with enough clarity to be still humane.
Geists. Well, since synergy wouldn’t work in this model of humanity, a Sin-Eater would go batshit right quick unless they are really really lucky or they had some kind of obscure occult background to equip them for intimate lives with such alien entities. Sane Sin-Eaters are rarer than an honest politician and twice as priceless. You’d be lucky to find ten sane Sin-Eaters across the globe.
But if they're more powerful than normal conspiracies, isn’t corruption isn't far behind?
Well, that's the question isn't it, corruption involves abuse of power, and as much power that an agent may have, corrupt compared to what? As much as they police the world they police themselves as well, that and agents who aren't mentally or ethically equipped for the job don’t last long either way. The other problem is that they aren't a faceless corporation, foundation agents frequently work with each other, consult each other, and cross train with agents across the globe; however they are a really ambiguous organization past a point. There is no glass ceiling in the Eulicid Foundation, however after a point there is a smokescreen. Agents know most people in their organisations and parallel departments, but past the middle management level of organization knowledge is sparse. No one knows who officially runs the organization, there are thirteen positions at the top and their names have not been officially mentioned since 1784. Not to say that members don’t step up to positions in this executive realm of shadows, it’s just that no one can remember their real name, or what they used to do...funny that.
What about other conspiracies? Do they exist?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer:
The Eulicid Foundation has never been the only organisation in the world that fights the horrors in the darkness, they just have the benefit of being the most organized and the most resourceful. Other groups have existed for centuries and have stuck around long enough to have some clout and skill, while some are decades to years old and without much of the benefit of years that the Foundation has. The Catholic Church’s Inquisition still exists, though they no longer make work of seeking traditional heretics. Several aboriginal groups have “ghost hunting societies” that pass on a cultural traditions that have worked since time immemorial. Taoist Wizards, Brahmins, Imams, many religious groups have traditions of guarding worshipers from the influence of evil. Then there are the more modern groups: some are hunting lodges of one sort or another, some have more exploratory urges driving them into the supernatural, and some like those groups made after the second world war in many western countries, just try to keep up with the professionals in defending their people. But still, these are the “good guys”, perhaps misinformed, perhaps superstitious, perhaps jealous rivals, but at least they want the best for humanity. The Opposition has secret conspiracies too, doomsday cults, compacts between soul-sucked abominations, covenants with entities that want nothing but to drink the screams of those dying in pain, or those sick mundane freaks who blindly kow-tow to dark powers in human form or not effectively placing their sheepish necks right into the predators jaws…Worse still, these are the one’s we know about.
On the Question of the Altruism of the Eucilid Foundation, a dialogue.
Sam says:
(on the Eulicid Foundation)
I think the only wrong way to do it is making them ultimately altruistic. There need to be some skeletons in the closet.
Dan says:
*chuckle* Dude, this is still the world of darkness
Sam says:
No no, I getcha. Just sayin'.
Dan says:
They are ultimately altruistic, but they have taken such a teleological stance that you could strap magnets to Kant's corpse surround him with copper wire, and he'd power the Netherlands.
Sam says:
And their altruism doesn't necessarily conform to the standard "acceptable" form.
Dan says:
Well, mass murder tends to be frowned upon, even when it could be near-perfectly justified, the same with assassination, blackmail, framing, or a simple death-curse Good doesn't mean nice, and sometimes Good People have to do horrible things to keep other Good People going.