Dungeons and Dragons - Retrospective, Nostalgia, or genuine desire.

I recently was a panelist at a convention on GMing and after the panel I had a conversation with Jeremy Petter of the now infamous Loading Ready Run internet comedy troupe and something he said has struck me since, "Dungeons and Dragons is the Gateway Drug of the roleplaying hobby." While some people might shake their heads at the statement I was struck by the profoundness of it. Dungeons and Dragons is historically where the Table Top roleplaying hobby began and as much as it may have problems there is no small amount of nostalgia attached to the system and setting in this current era's zeitgeist.

When asked "what was your first gaming system?" I answer honestly that the first one I got interested in was White Wolf's World of Darkness, it was dark, full of neat stuff to read, and made for excellent fodder for my imagination. But when I think about it the World of Darkness was always That Cute Red-Headed Girl to my Charlie Brown. I had to grow up a lot more to get to the point where I could find the people and the place to play it. By comparison Dungeons and Dragons was My First Girlfriend. The first group I could get togeather and play with was in university, they were people I knew, and yeah, on the quality scale they were inexperienced but enthusiastic. Then somehow, I found people who wanted to play my first love, World of Darkness, and it was good. But somehow at the lofty heights of low-mechanic storytelling role playing I found myself looking down from Olympus thinking to myself, "huh, that still looks like fun, " and "oh, look over there!" Other people were doing interesting things too!

It's odd to consider oneself a veteran hobbist at my youthful age of 26, but I could argue (successfully) that I have the experience to back it up. I have run games to successful completion, LARPed, I have run conventions, I have panneled, demo'ed, homebrewed, and argued the subject matter, but with my years in the hobby I'm back at square one of just wanting to play some Dungeons and Dragons. Strange, no? I am playing a game I enjoy, I am making plans to run one or two games, but when I was standing at my stove cooking up some pasta sauce I found myself wistfully sighing that I haven't been in a good D&D campaign for the longest time. It is the next chain of thoughts that I find more interesting, the urge to shut up about my desire to pull out the D20 and keep it quiet before my friends hear about it.

If there was a commonality between the numerous friends I have who tabletop roleplay is that most of them love storytelling systems but have developed an antipathy to Dungeons and Dragons. The reasons are various and more often than not justified: the rules are too complicated, the system is too combat based, it's a Skinnerian reward system for the ego, there isn't enough support to tell a good story, the sub-genre of fantasy that it's based upon is too juvenile/simple/silly/Tolkeinian, it doesn't tell the kind of story I want to tell. I say, "fair enough, but knowing these things why do I still want to play it?" What about this game still appeals to an experienced and somewhat jaded customer?

Nostalgia! That lying warm-in-your-belly feeling of comfort that reminds you of brighter, simpler, and happier times. Nostalgia is a powerful force, it takes you back to places, it can make you spend tons of money, it can help you ignore problems, nostialgia like puppy love can make you stupid. Seems like a harsh assessment no? I don't think so, I think it's the truth, nostalgia acts as a wonderful motivator for people to do things then later regret them. It takes memories cuts away the bits that might spoil the rest, and makes them as permanent as a fly stuck in amber. I remember my favorite characters, I remember the neat tricks I pulled off, heck, I even remember some of the dumber moments that have become funny stories around the gaming table. But I don't forget the dissapointments, the irritations, the poor players, and the things that just didn't work out. There's the associated memories of reading the fantasy genre when I was an adolescent, the escapist books that can help bolster a shy youth's courage enough to think "I can do this." I'm not willing to lie to myself and say that isn't a part of it, but the hobby is about escapist role-play, and it's about having fun doing so, so why this escape?

There's a phenomenon of managers in the service industry randomly taking a menial job off a subordinate's hands such as washing dishes, sweeping up, or some other mindless task. The idea is that after dealing with such high-concentration jobs that there is much stress relief in performing a mindless task for a bit. I bring this up for two reasons: 1) Tabletop RPGs are supposed to be a fun escape, and 2) for many people having this kind of escape can be empowering enough to face real life again. Given current economic situations, having a bit of a power-fantasy can be a healthy response. I've seen this in Players in MMORPGs, they take great satisfaction in being one of the biggest baddest dudes around, it is the sense of acomplishing something that took many hours and feeling awesome because of it. Though I, rightfully or not, feel a smug sense of superiority over people who dedicate that much time to a MMORPG I know that playing make-believe with several friends isn't much more societally acceptable.

I suppose when I get down to it, what I crave as my friend Sam so astutely pointed out is the melodrama of the Fantasy Epic, "The hero always saves the world/ the villains get what they deserve/ the boy always gets the girl..." (Great Big Sea, When I am King) The melodrama of the fantasy narrative has a place in my world of stories that perhaps is currently experiencing a lack. Not to mention the simplicity of: the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and when the black and white of things is simple enough that the grey is obvious and fun. But melodrama is doable elsewhere, which brings me to the other element: the fantasy epic. When I think of the D&D story model I think of the "peasant to king" saga that is taking a character to new heights of power, authority, and greatness.

But then, without the other players there is no group experience. D&D is a strategic group effort, the point of the game is to cooperate with each other to succeed whatever scenarios the GM thinks up. Humans as a rule find the process of creating an emotionally charging group exercise pretty easy, it's not hard to do and it creates a connection between people who participate. I still think fondly of the D&D sessions that I have played through and both the characters and the players who I shared the experiences with. No melodrama or epic storyline would be complete without friends to explore them with.

Eulicid Foundation: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.

In a Game like the Eulicid Foundation it is fair to assume that the EF is not the only organization out there. As such I'm listing a few societies that have either gotten exposed by the EF or work paralell with EF intentions. Here are some of the other conspiracies and active organizations and a small blurb about them, some organizations will recieve more blurb to them than others, this is supposed to be a look over, they are hardly all of them, just a few to give ideas on what MIGHT just be out there. I've separated them as per my favorite spaghetti western as per the namesake characters.

The Good

Excalibur - U.K.'s post-war Reboot of H.M.O.I. Created after the second world war by in the post-war boom of anti-communist agencies. They are very messy in their methods but good at cleaning up the evidence.

The Ghost Warrior Society: A strangely international fellowship of shamans and spirit warriors dedicated to fighting off the beings that prey upon this world. Despite any differences between culture, nationality, or even distance within space share a totem, the totem of the Ghost Warrior.

The Inquisition- The modern incarnation of the Catholic Inquisition, on a black budget and trained in the holy blessings of god!

The Knighthood of St. George: Pan-British group of monster hunters and occultists that use the resources of the Church of England to destroy the tools of Satan.

The Promethean Order - Victorian founded group of extreme humanists that push a Church of Satan Style idea of Human Determinism.

Section 9 - The United States Anti-Occult task force, not quite police, not quite army, still trying to understand what is neccesary in today's world.

R. O. K. S. T. (Russian Occult Crime Security Taskforce): Created post-world war two, benefiting from Soviet Research in psychic phenomena, most experienced with otherworldly phenomena.

Order of the Silver Dagger - A Neo-Pagan group of community defenders said to have been founded by Gerald Gardner against the old evils in the world.

The Bad

Ancient Order of the Ivory Chalice
There are Ivy league schools, Ivy League clubs, and fellowships older than grave dirt. This is one of them, Generals, Senators, Members of Parliament, Captains of Industry, people who have joined a fellowship for the privilege of power and the connections to maximize it. Pity that no-one told them what exactly they drank when they took the pledge, or what the Chalice was made of.

The Corpse Eaters
Entropy is a powerful force, it's an inevitable force, it's also a terrifying force that scares the shit out of humanity. But then there are the people who don't fear it, the people who instead choose to embrace it, become it, consume it. Embodying entropy in order to stave it off, they feed of the corpse of the universe, and it is their fuel and purpose to achieve a great oblivion of apotheosis and be free of their spiral of destruction.

The Omega Conception
No one knows from where this disease began, some blame a military bioweapon allowed to develop to some conscious ascension, some blame intra-terrestrials trying to blend in our universe, the truly fearful worry that it just happened one day, a natural mutation brought on by humanity's rapid development over the last millennium. Either way the Omega Conception is the first meta-virus in existence able to manifest in non-biological, non-physical forms, and it is trying to become pandemic.

Order of the Basalt Throne

This order of psychopathicly ambitious maniacs really is no order at all, there are no ranks, there are leaders but leadership goes to the strongest, and only the most effective in power survive. But why this focus on power. Because their God is the Idiot Demon-King that Howard Philips Lovecraft woke up screaming to one night. A being devoid of all intelligence with literally omnipotent power, all you have to do is take it, and use it.

Temple of the High Ones

This is a neo-religion, it began with strong celebrity backing and it is slowly growing across the globe as a modern polytheistic revival of Greco-Roman state religion. But that is the face they show the public, and like their public face the high ones are not so human, nor are they so beatific. They demand great things from their close followers, most of the time more than any sane person can give.

The Rebis Assembly

A nightmare conglomeration born of Transhumanists, Computer Scientists, and Alchemists. Their goal is nothing more than upgrading humanity into the obsolescence of the reactionary biological. It is lead by the electronic fusion of the two founding members that performed the fusion according to Alchemical principle. They transformed themselves into a Rebis, a complete hermaphroditic being born of paradox. The Rebis wishes to join all of humanity into their being thus creating a greater oversoul for their former humanity by which perfection of form and thought can be made thus abandoning human limits.

The Ugly

The Blind Collegiate - An informal school of occultists and will workers underneath the streets of London. Cultists are rendered blind in order to be trained to read the the secret knowledge that writing conceals in books and media. While not strictly dangerous these individuals frequently know too much, about anything, thus it makes them unpredictable in their inscrutable motives.

Children of the Fimbulwinter - Norse Asatru cult that are actively trying to prevent ragnarok, and believe that they are all descended between a tryst between Baldur and a giantess. Neo-Vikings that practice the less than media-friendly rituals and will as likely save an agent as kill them in their quest for Valhalla.

Eater of Nightmares - Drug addicts, psychoneurosis, mystics, visionaries and lost souls. They find sustenance for a being that lives off the dreaming fears and miseries of humanity. In serving they find themselves experiencing a blissful state of serenity as they are freed of their fears and worries. Though as they find their abilities to feel fear slowly atrophy they must find new sustenance for their patron, or make it.

Slayers of Apep

Cultists of Suketh, they have existed since the Middle Kingdom, to spread chaos and the destroy the horrors from beyond our world. Neither benign nor wholly malignant, they exist to both destroy and protect with equal fanaticism.

The Janni
They call them different names, but they are all the same, the spirits of the material elements, as powerful as they are universal. But there are those who know how to speak to them, master them, and have them serve. These wizards have taken the name of a race of half-jinn, and abuse their rituals of control for their own purposes.

Eulicid Foundation: A Skeleton History filled with "Fluff", and with a question pad.

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 17^th to 18^th 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 18^th and early 19^th 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.

Merits for Eulicid Foundation Sanity Mechanics

When introducing a new set of mechanics to a World of Darkness game, especially one where I am creating the setting as well as the mechanics, there's the question of "just what can I do with this?" Usually it manifests itself with merits and abilities that represent a natural evolution in response to the new mechanics. and since The Foundation is such an old and powerful institution you'd think they'd have a trick or two up their sleeves...that did not include the concealed dart launcher tipped with curare.

Coldblooded (****)
Prerequisites: Composure 4, Empathy 2
Effect:
Some people learn how to be cold, hard, bastards. It does not mean that they are emotionless beings who would not coo at a child, give a happy dog a pat and maybe a good scratch, or that they would never cry at an emotional scene in a movie. It does not mean that they lack human empathy, usually it’s the opposite problem, that they may empathise just enough to develop a greater sense of complex ethical responsibility or that they become inured to such unpleasant tasks that they must find a way to cope with the fact that they still are empathetic human beings.

This mindset does not merely encompass such extreme acts as murder or torture, but also thievery, perjury, or any instance where the person is knowingly performing an act where they know they are somehow harming another human being. While the difference between a mother stealing a loaf of bread to feed her starving family and a detective murdering a serial killer in cold blood because they will get off charges on a technicality are different in order of magnitude the coping techniques used by the people who must learn to do these things are the same. When the character has to perform a sin against humanity that is required from a sense of higher ethical responsibility they receive a +2 Bonus to their Sanity Defence for the purpose of not receiving Sanity Damage.
Note: People who take this merit have learned to cope with the horrific things that must be done, but they have learned how to do them without costing them their ability to empathise with other human beings. Individuals who can do these things without feeling any significant amount of regret are either sociopaths or clinically insane. Remember that.

Jaded (**)
Prerequisites: Emotional Detachment (Asylum P. 50)
Effect:
When you see your first accident close up, you feel disgusted, you might puke, or it might disturb you on an emotional level you’ve never felt before, or never wanted to feel again. But after you’ve seen the same kind of thing again and again, you get used to it, even mass murder can be objectively observed if one has had the misfortune to have seen it often enough. It’s the method of adaptation that is all too human in nature, that when you see bad things often enough, they don’t provoke the same reaction the same way. While you may still feel disgust, horror, or most commonly a great sympathy for what you perceive it just doesn’t shake you anymore, because you’ve seen it all before. The character gets a +3 bonus to Sanity Defence when encountering a horror event that could be described as an atrocity.

Quick Witted (**)
Prerequisites: Wits 3, Composure 3.
Effect:
In an emergency, while everyone else is still in shock, you’re one of the first to recover and take account of the situation. Maybe it’s an enhanced survival instinct, or it’s the fact that you’re good at problem solving in stressful situations, or it’s simply a talent you’ve always had. While most people will still be there slack jawed or panicking you’re one of the people who have already decided to do something. The character recovers two shock damage in the amount of time it would normally take to recover from one.

Unflappable (****)
Prerequisites: Quick Witted, Wits 4, Composure 3
Effect:
Things just don’t faze you like they do others. You aren’t just the guy who is first among the mob to act in an emergency, you’re already trying to figure things out while people are still deciding just what the hell happened. It’s not that you can’t be shocked, surprised, or otherwise caught off guard, it’s that it takes a hell of a lot to do it. On top of the benefit of being quick witted the character also soaks the first two shock damage that the character would normally receive from a horror event.

Dr. J. Daniels Psychiatrist (**)
Prerequisite: Flaw: Addiction
Some people need help coping, some people need chemical help, and we aren’t talking about anti-psychotics...or at least what most people consider anti-psychotics. Though the traditional aids have been alchohol, nicotine, and opium many individuals found their own escapes and ways to deal with those things that keep them up late into the night. When giving into their addiction after receiving a significant amount of sanity damage(more than five points of Trauma damage) the character may heal either three trauma damage or one psychosis damage. This ability may only be used once per game session.

Tempered by Faith (****)
Virtue: Faith
Sometimes believing is enough, sometimes holding to your beliefs can let you deal with the horrors of the world. For you, your Faith in God, Allah, Goddess, or even the sincere compassion of a bodhisattva gives your willpower some extra durability against what the world can throw at you. When a character spends a willpower to increase their Sanity Defence, in the event that damage is still inflicted, the character may soak either two shock damage or one trauma damage.

Pillar of Virtue (***)
Hope, Fortitude, or Justice Virtue
Some people, no matter how screwed up, can find within themselves a powerful foundation built upon their willingness to maintain integrity and keep going in the face of hopelessness. You are the kind of person that proving yourself again and again to be a virtuous person has let you rise above everything the world throws at you. Once per game when the character would otherwise regain all willpower from acting on her virtue they may instead downgrade all Sanity Damage that the character has inflicted upon them.

Willing Ignorance (****)
Prerequisites: Meditative Mind, Resolve 4
Effect:
You’re not sure how you learned the trick, but you can erase your own memories. There is no real manual for this technique, and no one can really teach it, but still some individuals just learn how to affect their own minds adequately to just remove unwanted memories completely. While you may still remember the context of these memories the memories themselves are completely gone, down to the last detail. By spending a willpower the character may remove two trauma damage or one psychosis damage from their Sanity boxes. This ability can only be used once per game session.

Mental Fortresses: “Fighting style” (* to *****)
Prerequisites: Meditative Mind, Intelligence 3, Wits 3, and Academics 2
Effect:
The Ancients had a technique, or more appropriately a method by which long series of information could be memorized through a series of memetic cues that would retranslate information into specific image-thoughts created within a greater construct which could then be added to and improved. In Ancient Rome and Greece this was the method that great orators could perfectly recite hours of speech verbatim from how they were written. In the early history of the foundation these techniques that were normally more academic in nature could be used to reinforce the mind itself. By building a literal fortress of thoughts and ideas to sort through, differentiate, and apply information in a deliberate manner with all the same intent of an architect building a castle.
* - Bricks and Mortar
By having learned the memetic tricks associated with the ancient means of memorization Foundation agents can benefit from the original intent of the Method. The Character can easily memorize any series of information including cognitive patterns; if the character must roll dice to recall information they have actively observed they receive a +2 dice modifier. This stacks with Eidetic Memory.
** - Forming the Walls
From the bricks and mortar of ideas the Agent can now begin rebuilding their mind with the deliberate intent of organizing and reinforcing specific cognitive pathways. In effect the character’s fortress now has walls to keep nuisances out! The Character can use the higher between their Resolve or Composure as their Sanity Defence.
*** - Raising the Watchtowers
With walls in place to prevent unwanted invaders from getting in the Agent then must find a way to foresee problems approaching and for a castle the method to do so was to build watchtowers. For the agent the metaphor applies just as well as they create early warning systems to allow the agent to prepare for incoming attacks. When the character has been warned of a specific horror event they may add +2 to their Sanity Defence as if they spent a willpower point to enhance their defence.
**** - Arming the Ramparts
The best defence is not just a high wall, it’s a high wall with stakes on the bottom, boiling pitch on the top, and several nasty things all over that make the fortress even more uninviting to invade. Agents begin devising constructs within their fortresses designed to work actively in maintaining the defence of the fortress. The character adds +1 to their sanity defence.
***** - Depths of the Hidden Keep
The Castle has been built. The defences are up, and every detail about it means something to the agent who built it. But what Agents learn as they master this technique is that while a fortress can be defined by its walls it may also be defined by its depths. The agent begins creating shortcuts to the forgotten places in the mind where thoughts go to die, and with an expenditure of will, some intended invaders find themselves in such an oubliette. By spending willpower point the character can absorb a number of Sanity Damage points equal to their resolve. The character will soak the worst Sanity damage on the character first. However this ability can only be used once per game session.

These following merits are techniques that were developed by the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung with aid from fellow psychiatrist-psychologist Wilhelm Reich. The works by these two men were both too radical for their mentor Sigmund Freud, and they were certainly too radical for their respective eras, but fortunately their work was long admired by the various agents within the Eulicid Foundation who often remarked that contemporary society seemed to stymie the potential of these two men. Having admired their works from afar In 1950, the Foundation sought both Doctors out to hire for their unique viewpoints and specialties, Jung agreed and worked further in his cognito-symbolic research, Dr. Reich however wished to try to move forward his orgone theories into common usage in the US. When the United States Department of Drugs and Food began their persecution of Dr. Reich with the intent to silence and Jail him the Eulicid foundation chose to aggressively recruit Wilhelm Reich by faking his death in 1957. Noting the unique ability of these men to synthesise esoteric ideas the two doctors were tasked to work together to create new psychological methods to protect Foundation Agents in the field, their achievements were only marred by Carl Jung’s natural death in 1961 at the age of 85. Though his colleague died and their combined work ended Dr. Reich’s continued research in Orgone therapy has long benefited the techniques and skills of Foundation medical teams well past his death in 1998 at the ripe age of 101.

Cerebral Vent (*)
Effect:
The Mind has dark places where things are forgotten, where the stress and strain of existence can vent and release. By adapting a practice that would eventually be discovered by Cognitive Behavioural Therapists the doctors realised that the stresses that would normally crack the human mind could be safely redirected by creating overflow channels into those dark and forgotten places. In any event where a character receives enough sanity damage to roll over a grade, the character in effect negates that one damage preventing the leftmost box of shock into Trauma, or the leftmost box of Trauma into Psychosis.

Resilient Psyche (**)
Prerequisites: Resolve 3, Cerebral Vent
Upon realising the potential of Cerebral Venting Dr. Reich wondered what would happen if they applied the same techniques using an active system rather than a passive one. Rather than allowing the overflow of damage to flood the mind, and letting minor cognitive constructs work to their maximum he devised a method whereby several memetic techniques could effectively redistribute the overflow en mass unto these mental abysses. In the event that a character receives enough psychic damage to roll over into a new grade of damage and it would roll over more than one grade the character may spend a willpower point to negate any additional damage past that single point. Note: this effect stacks with Cerebral Vent’s effect.

Jungian Seed (**)
Effect:
According to Carl Jung, The Shadow is a personality of a person’s unconscious mind that exists in everyone, born of a person’s weaknesses, repressions, fears and ambitions the Shadow exists as both and unwanted element within the psyche and a necessary one as well. The Jungian Seed is a psychological technique using an amalgamation of their specialties they found a means to allow a person to manifest their Shadow in the event of an emergency to save the self and allow the whole self to recover. In the event that the character would be rendered unconscious or otherwise mentally disabled the player may choose to activate the Jungian Shard so that the Character can escape whatever situation caused the effect. Despite the distasteful reputation and makeup the Jungian Shard genuinely cares about the character and has their best interests in mind, though perhaps not the most ethical ways of showing their best interests. In the event of a threat they are as likely to cowardly run away as they are to fight like psychotic maniacs against what they would perceive as a threat. The Shadow can use all of the character’s skills and abilities though they are purely motivated by the fight or flight survival instinct should said threat no longer exist the shadow will return to the character’s unconsciousness. This effect can only last for a number of rounds equal to a character’s permanent willpower, though the player may choose to spend a willpower point to allow the survival instinct of the shadow three additional rounds before expending itself and being dragged back into the unconscious thus causing the character to return to unconsciousness unless they may reawaken(storyteller decision.)

Special Rule: In the event that a character is entirely full of psychosis damage and they have this merit their shadow may manifest for an extended period until the character has had sufficient time to recover at least one psychosis point thus allowing the unconscious mind to assist the process of healing the agent. Though this allows agents to return to duty, the time taken to recover by this means is considerable.

Gestalt Partition(**, ****, *****)
Prerequisites: Meditative Mind, Intelligence 3, Resolve 3, Occult 3
The Consciousness is not a mono-entity, it is made up of many processes that create the whole that we recognise as a person. What Dr. Reich theorised was that it was possible to take some of the functioning of these processes and create a backup consciousness separate from the primary consciousness and supplemental to it. Each 2 dots create another box of sanity “health” that exists outside of a person’s normal mental health like a separate row of boxes. The Character may use these boxes to “store” damage received in the line of duty or to “soak” incoming attacks. As the partition is both supplemental and separate the character does not experience any penalties associated with damage received. The time taken to recover the damage within the partition is added to the recovery time, as the two systems do not function in parallel for purposes of healing.

The Darker Twin (*****)
Prerequisites: Jungian Seed, Gestalt Partition (** or **** or *****)
When the Doctors first discovered Sie Doppelt Dunkler, as they referred to it, they were unsure if it was a benign creation or not. It occurred to an agent who despite her talents and her adoption of the Jungian Seed and Gestalt Partition was frequently found suffering from the mental trauma that would affect her worse than other Agents. However, on a mission in Tajikistan when it seemed that she was rendered catatonic, fellow agents noted that she got back up and began attacking the enemy with renewed vigour, enthusiasm, and cunning that was entirely unlike their previous experiences with her Shadow, not to mention that after the threat was gone the Shadow stuck around. After assessing that it was not possession they took her back to base and it was discovered by Jung and Reich that she somehow amalgamated her Shadow into her Gestalt Partition to create a mirrored personality. Possessing many of the aspects of her Shadow she was a “Dark Twin” to the primary agent’s personality, though it maintained the function and overall goals of the Shadow to protect the primary personality. Though it was discovered that The Darker Twin was a benign form of multiple personality disorder many agents outright refuse to learn how it was done for fear of what their Twin might do or say.

The activation of The Dark Twin is the same as the Jungian Shard, however instead of a being of limited drive and energy the alternate personality that is made from their Shadow and the Partition is instead the shadow’s reflection of the real deal. The Dark Twin has its own sanity boxes at +4 health boxes added to the Gestalt, these boxes can no longer be used to take away sanity damage. The Twin also adds +1 to their sanity defence, defence, perception rolls, social rolls to get what they want, and rolls to attack. However the twin receives a penalty of -2 to any task that involves an extended action or any action that is not actively seeking a direct solution. Furthermore the Twin must roll Resolve + Composure whenever they must do something that would be terribly dangerous and grievously harm the character or do something that will likely threaten their sanity further. Though the Twin cannot be banished by normal means the prime personality recovers sanity at twice the rate while their twin is active.

The Twin personality has all the same attributes and skills and abilities as the Prime Personality, they have however less inhibition, greater arrogance, and often have personality traits that are the exact opposite of the personality they are based on.

Reflections on Danse Macabre: Idea for a Covenant.

So, I came up with the idea for this covenant December 2010. This particular covenant occurred to me after I read and thought about the historical consequences of the Fall of the Camarilla. One thing that kinda stuck with me was just what DID happen to those poor fuckers in the Legio Mortus who were outside of Rome proper on the far outskirts of the empire when the city of Rome fell? I felt that there was something to work with in this so I have made a Covenant that is both a nod to the old Vampire with some new ideas. So, Ladies and Gentlemen! I present: The Children of the Empire.

The Children of the Empire

Alternate Names: The C.O.E.(Formal or informal), Hassan's Inheritors, (Archaic), The Specter Show(mocking), Specter (Informal), The Children (Formal), Imperials (Joking or derogatory)

History

In the far provinces that the legions once conquered, it took time for the news of the Fall of Rome to disseminate. Several of the surviving Senex and Legio Mortum members who lived outside the central provinces would abandon their old ties to make up the Invictus and hold their old standards of political maneuvering. But for one legion of the damned, the 9th Legion this conglomeration was not a viable option.

The 9th Legion was sent to the outer end of Romania to fight off the foreign invasions that were coming from the east. They were hand picked due to their steadfast loyalty to Rome and the legion, that and their skill at lasting an extended period without contact with civilization. When at last they heard the news of the fall of Senex, the Julii, and Rome herself the 9th Legion was stuck in this new roman province due to an onslaught invasion from the Baltic regions. At this news these legionaries then came to two horrific realizations: either they were to meet ignoble death by invaders for an empire that no longer existed and would not account their honourable efforts, or admit defeat by abandoning their posts and dishonoring their honour as soldiers of a legion. Placed in a situation that seemed impossible to turn to their advantage, and feeling divorced from the empire they fought for, the morale of the famed ninth legion broke. In the depth of their depression some legionaries fell to the red fear, some others wassailed out of impotent furty, and some turned their attentions introspectively, meditating on their situation and digging themselves into a deep self-destructive despair. However from this bleak no-win situation it was the legion's centurion, Mathias of Clan Nosferatu who divined the solution to their doom.

Emerging from his tent he took the legion's standard and stood before his soldiers and one by one asked them one question: "Would you choose to die by enemy now as a soldier of Rome or would you choose to die later preserving all of The Empire that remains?" To those to chose to die as soldiers of Rome he decapitated them with merciful quickness. Of those who chose the latter he ordered them to build a pyre for the fallen showing them a soldier's respect to comrades. Mathais demanded those surviving soliders swear to follow him in order to see his vision met. Mathias declared to his soldiers of the former legion that Rome died because it was weak! He declared that in its inability to adapt, to meet challenges, to know the dangers that desired to destroy it, Rome had forfeit it's right to existence! His epiphany that lead to this conclusion: only the empires made of stone and script may be destroyed, but The Empire the True Empire is one that could never be destroyed. Their duty as children of the empire was to make the True Empire that was invincible to the frailties that Rome and Rome's precursors suffered. With renewed dedication he lead his followers out of their camp stripping any object of use, and in a warrior's pyre of the blaze that was the camp the ninth legion faded into obscurity while the Children of the Empire moved forward into the long nights.

Until the Crusades the Children of the Empire remained a small but loyal conspiracy within the other covenants. From their positions in cities spread through the civilized world The Children slowly gathered followers and observed the development of modern technologies and techniques as they were applied to the battlefield. Extrapolating these techniques they learned methods appropriate to their body of tactics and began gathering information on war-making and statesmanship. As effective as they were in finding advanced knowledge they continuously came across the same problem in their discovery: contemporary techniques of warfare required too much material resources in weapons and people to be able to effectively threaten entire societies on a significant level. While weapons improved, tactics improved, and civilization moved forward rediscovering scant few secrets of the past more often than not methods proved again and again to be inefficient to defend The Empire. Despite this difficulty, The Children learned much in the following centuries, mostly about how not to rule and influence people on the long term. But by creating such a network of spies and moles to keep abreast of developments they were among the first kindred to hear of a small Islamic sect that had developed an effective way of influencing nations without resorting to armies or complicated weaponry, advanced tactical assassination. From the Hashishin sect of Islam the methods and tools of effective assassination were neatly poached by The Children. Even after the Hashishin sect fell, the Children of the Empire still honor Hasan-i Sabbah as being their great patron for inventing the method to preserve the True Empire, not through fighting wars of territory and state but of fighting wars of information and ideas. Just as the ninth legion fell centuries before due to the death of their morale, The Children learned how to take that affliction and weaponize it, and with that pen their history is written.

When the Children finally revealed themselves in the 16th century it was following an epidemic of destabilization and assassination in the cities and regions they wished to expand to, out of nowhere members of court would seem to go insane and either kill off kindred or sabotage some foundation of kindred society that had never been accounted for. Despite the fact that every city that they wished to truly gather within as a true covenant suffered from similar surgical chaos there were only four cities where the Children took praxis, Lisbon in Portugal, Toledo in Spain, Corinth in Greece, and Damascus in Syria. With the exception of these cities the children's introduction into the dynamics of politics on the aftermath of chaos was surprisingly succesful. As a small sect from the middle east with historical relation to Rome that merely wished to return to greater kindred society many suspicions were unvoiced or silenced. Despite suspicion the Children were mostly disinterested in rulership and far more inclined to encourage political stability in their newly established territories. Outside of cities with a considerable population of the Children small chapter houses were built with a small number of Children representing the organization as a whole and the many services that can be offered, for a price.

In their modern incarnation the Children have both honoured and improved upon their historical roots as soldiers and spies by also becoming, policemen, engineers, assassins, hackers, scientists, and brokers. Despite the fact that the Children emphasize the meritocratic pseudo-military nature of their covenant Children of the Empire methodology is surprisingly pragmatic in its execution. Members of other covenants who encounter The Children at work are often impressed at the efficiency and reverence they demonstrate in their actions, "Not quite a cult, not quite an army, and not quite an intelligence agency with the benefit of history's errors." a Carthian observer accounted of interacting with the children to a vampire colleague. Unfortunately that Carthian was liquidated for knowing too much about the Covenant's nature by being absolutely correct, fortunately the colleague was an informant for the Children. Skill, talent, and raw power are respected and admired in the covenant, though like the many intelligence agencies, security forces and mercenary companies that The Children have learned from, a respect for tradition is no justification for maintaining obsolescence, which is often said as a solemn rebuke to the Invictus members who criticize the Children's methodology.

Inside The Covenant

The Children of the Empire have learned that information is a commodity that many kindred value dearly but any trained observer can take for free. Misinformation, disinformation, and the simple act of knowing how to imply much by saying little are the typical behaviour when The Children are interacting with outsiders. The children are taught how to act when under any degree of public scrutiny, as themselves or as stereotypes. A C.O.E. member might be indistinguishable from an Invictus or Carthian member on a matter of common appearance or behavior, or they may just seem to be a down-to-earth guy with a few quirks that read "ex-military". Most Children have an On-the-Job/Off-the-Job kind of mentality, when not in some kind of duty for the covenant a Specter is free to do as they will, however when duty to the covenant becomes a factor a Specter knows when they must act accordingly.

Outside of the nine mother cities of the Children most Specters understand day to day covenant affairs as being part of the business set by the Chapter Pater or Mater. The leader of each chapter is named with the Latin word for Father or Mother, this has been the case since the founding of the covenant, as the leaders are supposed to have a parental responsibility to the Children under them and a familial responsibility to the covenant as a whole. The Leader of the Chapter is decided through a combination of respect, experience, and merit, frequently it is the oldest vampire in covenant in the city but this is not a hard rule. If a subordinate wishes to take the leader's place it may be decided by any number of manners, Ordeals, Trials, or a simple political coup, though in some cases the former leader may step down willingly, there is no shame in the last decision. In the event that the new leader isn't up to snuff, well, a incompetent leader is seldom long destined to remain in lead, let alone to get in the position to lead. There has been precedent of Paters and Maters stepping down as an object lesson to the chapter in why they became leaders in the first place, given the long history of the covenant the Children often nip fellow vampires with more ambition than ability in the bud.

Rank and file within covenant is less organized than any other, the aristocracy of talent is often the unofficial rule of discrete hierarchy, covenant members are encouraged to train with each other to know the strengths and weaknesses of their fellows for future operations. Ironically by setting this uncovering of weakness under the guise of group training, rather than the normal predatory instinct to take advantage of a fellow vampire's weakness, a pack-mentality kind of bond is instead crafted between Specters that make their use of small unit tactics amazingly effective. Thus the normal frictions that occur between vampires in close contact are instead channeled into more constructively competitive rivalries or strong bonds of comradery that have their own unique ways of being exacerbated by the beast.

A chapter-house is always a location that is large enough to house each member of the covenant in the city, it is always a subtly well fortified location, and it usually is not the location that most Non-children kindred in the city go to when they need to deal with the Children. A chapter-house is barracks, research and development, operations command, and temple to the Children, a multi-use building meant to be improved and maintained as needed. From the Chapterhouse missions are delivered, neophytes are trained out of their human limitations, long-term goals are organized and executed, and the spiritual foundations of the covenant are embedded into their members.

The Stereotypical thoughts about what goes on inside Children chapterhouses often brings images not inappropriate in a spy movie or TV show. Images of quartermasters with warehouses full of illicit goods, shadowy conference rooms where specific lighting masques the members, banks and banks of high tech goodies operated by TV friendly faces, yeah, the children have seen those too, and it's spoken of in the same mocking tone that Invicti speak of Renaissance fairs, a characteriture of the real thing. No member of the Children get paid the gross salaries expected in the mortal world for what they do, no they do what they do because they want to. The Covenant's spiritual background is expressed as a combination of Hashishin mystical practice, Neoplatonism, and Jungian psychology. The essence of the Children's spiritual practice is the True Empire and to understand it as Mathias did, the platonic ideal of a perfect empire in every way shape and form. The spiritual goal then that drives the Children as a whole is their desire to make manifest the one True Empire from platonic idea into reality by any means possible to any degree possible. In this light the covenant as a whole understands that in every government, there is some symbolic shard of perfection that is captured by word or art, from these artifacts the Children must derive symbolic meaning from its material manifestation.

To the Children, the world of darkness has two kinds of inhabitants, the proles who live in comparative bliss, and the ones in the know who see just how horrible the world actually is. However, on another level of reality wholly separate from the world of darkness is a world of perfection without flaw and without decay. Those jaded individuals who join the covenant after acquiring a cynical outlook find that the Children's cause and the personal knowledge of the True Empire is a catalyst to a genuine ideal. This foreign experience becomes a solid foundation of which many experience such power, loyalty, and dedication that with no previous equivalent find themselves unexpectedly devoted to the cause. Because while the world might be corrupt and people might disappoint, to make the way for perfection to enter such a damned world is a genuinely noble cause.

Rituals

Proving One's worth:
To join the children one must receive training with a taskmaster worse than any drill sergeant, even those who have successfully gone through elite training find the drills and practices deliberately difficult, for human error is no longer an excuse for failing to learn and improve. After satisfactory results of their training candidates go through a trial by ordeal meant to test the candidate's ability to take the pressure that Specters are likely to experience in their duties, no one goes through the ordeal without breaking in some manner, however what the Children want to know is just how long it takes for a candidate to break, and where the fracture points are. Last but not least the candidate must go through the proving mission. The proving mission is the sole test where failure to meet their objective is completely unacceptable. The mission must be done solo, with none of the covenant's resources, and the objective is always a goal that properly exposes the ability of the candidate, further more to show off their strengths and to overcome their weaknesses. For the Candidate passing the mission is the sole focus, for the testers HOW they meet their objectives makes for the longterm potential for the candidate, while the covenant has uses for blunt tools the swiss army knives tend to get preferable treatment.

The Initiation:

Of the Children that are brought into the covenant most find themselves under the training After completing mandatory training, a trial by ordeal, and their proving mission a candidate is at last allowed to become a full member of the covenant. The initiation ceremony has a new Specter fully armed and armored in their preferred gear. They are then at last allowed to enter the temple for the first time. As they enter they find an honour guard gathering and surrounding them dressed just the same that act as an escort to the leader of the Chapterhouse. In the center of the Temple the Pater or Mater holding a Roman Legion's Standard, The standard has all the relevant information and achievements of the chapter. When the Initiate reaches the center of the temple the Mater begins telling the tale of the ninth legion. At certain points the Mater pauses and names a single piece of gear that the candidate is wearing then ask a single question, "Can this protect the Empire?" The question is open ended and the candidate is encouraged to justify their response, if the candidate answers well the Mater will then ask them to remove it. If the candidate does not answer appropriately the Mater will correct them informing that it lacks the key essence needed and asks one of the honour guard to remove it. This questioning continues until the Candidate has been ceremoniously stripped naked the mater declares if the Initiate has not figured it out that only a candidates heart and mind can truely defend the Empire. The candidate is then made to go down on one knee raise their right hand to their heart with the left resting on the standard as the Mater asks the question that Mathias asked his legion so long ago. There is only one right answer, and if the candidate does not answer correctly they will meet final death as each of the honour guard dispatch him. After the ceremony the candidate is handed a Gladius sheds some of their blood upon it and swears by it that any who would prevent the Empire's coming will meet death at their hands or they will be struck down by that very blade.

Via Verum

The "road to truth" is a rite of meditation that is the most sacred ritual of the covenant. It is a guided meditation performed by the chapter's Leader to bring to all Children as close to the The Empire as can be achieved. The ritual has ecstatic element that then releases the consciousness of the members and takes their awarenesses to the very edge of the True Empire to glimpse at the Empire's awe inspiring perfection. What makes this rite so unique amongst the others of its type is that all members involved in the meditation are fully aware of the other Children who travel with him to the Empire and the vision is perfectly shared by all attendees. Though the vision is perfectly shared the vision is difficult to describe to those who did not share the vision, as if the platonic universe witnessed cannot be completely expressed through language.

Dedication to an End

Sometimes people die, oftentimes people die at the hands of the Children, however to the kindred in this covenant assassination is a sacred act. While killing and murder may be an incidental event that is required to achieve an objective, assassination is another thing entirely. Assassination for the Children is the sacred act of deliberately ending a being's influence upon the material world to ease the emergence of the True Empire. By this ritualized practice an assassination must be precise, surgical, and intimate with his target. The Assassin must know his target like he would know a lover, the death must be planned to the minute detail. The Assassin should know the date, time, method, and effect of his target's death. The Assassin must be aware of the consequence of death, and what ripples it creates. This is done both to emphasize the importance of the act and for the assassin to avoid the callousness that enourages the beast.

Covenant Advantage

Members of the Children may purchase the Armory, Contacts, Fighting Style, and Mentor at half the experience cost. This does not apply at character creation.

Lexicon

Babbage: Specter specialized in communication and codes.
Carrier Pigeon: a mortal Dominated into delivering messages to other chapterhouses
Collateral Damage: people harmed in an operation aside from objective targets

To Cowboy: To perform a messy assassination, with many bullets and excessive collateral damage.

Deep Throat: Term for a source of information that the Specter does not want to divulge.

Fida'i: Solo member on a killing mission

Fubar: Used to describe a situation where Covenant interference is required in another covenant's business

Hunting the Tiger: a mission where the objective is to prevent assassination

James Bond: Either a show-off Specter or a dangerous idiot.

Kiss of Death: To kill an apostate with their oath blade "kissing" them with the tip, this punishment is only reserved for true betrayers who have compromised the

Lance: Three person team used for most operations.

Magister: Practiced member of the C.O.E. who acts as an Itinerant teacher

Mergaq: Portmanteau of "Mergers and Acquisitions" Used when a vampire is handpicking mortals for either the embrace into the covenant or as a useful contact

Mr. Johnson: An anonymous client.

Neophyte: A member who has just completed their proving.

N.Q.'d: To offer no quarter.

Omega'd: A lance designed to go into deep cover as sleeper agents

Pater/Mater: Leader-priest of a Chapterhouse.

To Pull a Hoover: To blackmail a figure of considerable power.

Robspierre: a Straw-man made to kill off for political gain.

Regent: A Prince who is of the Children of the Empire

Spook Show: To perform an operation just to impress the city's kindred

Yojimbo: a Specter agent provocateur placed in a city to stir things up

More things on the Children of the Empire later....

The Eulicid Foundation: a Gaming Project. Part 1. The Concept

So this is a gaming/writing project that I have been driven to do. I have to make myself a tabletop gaming world to play some of my specifically themed tabletop games in. I will be using the New World of Darkness storytelling system, but I will theme the world and the games more on the Call of Cthulhu variety of Horror fiction, and because I have no intention to publish my written material for money I'm going to outright say what I'm borrowing and what I am not. Though in this light I'm saying now that I will noticeably state what is borrowed from White Wolf's World of Darkness line of games and what is not, as I have no intent on either being sued for stealing copyright infringed martial or being accused of plagiarism I make this preface.

So why don't I just use the NWoD world of darkness Hunter the Vigil line, they certainly have created a brilliant system and a great world to work with? Well, because I want to make something in a world that is notably NOT within the World of Darkness cannon. As most of my friends are used to the game, and most notably have read many WoD books I want to distance myself from much of the published product without leaving what I like about NWoD: The Storyteller mechanic and the massive amount of work they've done already. I'm original but I'm not so stupid to give up something that other people have already worked on, that's just silly. There is another reason why I would step away from the "metafiction" and setting of NWoD, so that when I use material in similar ways or introduce ideas that seem familiar I can feel free to ignore the meta and setting without feeling obligated to what has been written. (Anyone who tries to argue that NWoD has no meta fiction needs to go 1) lookup the definition, and 2) go suck eggs. )

But what about good ol' Call of Cthullhu? The answer is complicated. First of all Howard Phillips Lovecraft is a staple of geek culture, if I say "Cthulhu" and you think of an abomination that combines octopus head with batwings and a body that seems more apropriate to a Kaiju film than a piece of modern horror, you've got half my point. H.P. Lovecraft's work and the Cthulhu Mythos that his work has spawned is now so ubiquitous with Horror media that the best work done in his particular motif is that of an homage. Because really, who wants to spend minutes describing a monster, trying to raise the tension and maybe get the players nervous, only to have someone say "Oh! It's a Hound of Tendilos! We're Fucked!" While partially the correct reaction some of the tension is released by the players knowing what they are dealing with, further more that what they are dealing with has a name. Once more this is a departure from the metafiction and the plethora of things that the mythos represents.

For the Simple Answer: I don't want to run a game that complicated mechanically, I cannot homebrew or play with the system as I could with NWoD which would allow me much more leeway in figuring out what is "fair" and what would munch on the player's sadness like sweet sweet fruity candy.

So what do I want? I want a game that plays with modern horror, I want a game with eldrich horrors that are unknown, I want to make monsters that make people go insane, I want Player Characters that are not stuck within a tight paradigm of options. I want to take inspiration from the Films Nightwatch and Daywatch, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, the Delta Green supplement for Call of Cthulhu, Warren Ellis' comics Global Frequency and Planetary, Mike Mignola's Hell boy, The X-files, and Men In Black.

So thus, I make The Eulicid Foundation. A Non-Government Organization that no-one knows about but every government dreads having operating in their countries, but the foundation is given highest clearance for fear of what might happen if they don't. Foundation Agents can appear to be those ubiquitous Men In Black of conspiricy fame, or they might be a parapeligic genius with a particular talent or a person who is so deep in the strangeness of the world that there is no way to have a life otherwise. The Foundation takes in agents based on talent or experience, agents are the most paid on the planet if they can live long enough to spend it.

Most people in the modern age don't really know what goes on in the world, they don't pay close attention to world events, and most people are not inclined to look into those places that seem truly abandoned by humanity. Sometimes humanity hides things, sometimes we look the other way in some unconscious desire to stay safe, those of us who look deep into those places are changed. It's like opening your eyes for the first time, seeing the planet for the first time, and seeing that most people live in comfortable lives unaware of what horrors exist under their noses. The world is both more complicated and more simple than we think. Gods are real, so are monsters, it's just that most people can't understand them, they are the monsters that are moving in Nietzsche's abyss, and the sane don't want to get a close look. But then some people take responsibility for humanity, because civilization and the great delusion of reality are truly precious things.