Year of the Spy

[Grey]

INTERNAL COMMUNIQUE: Bureau of Inhuman Activities

DATE: June 1985

TO: [REDACTED]

FROM: [REDACTED]

RE: CODE UNREAL CITY


Rawhide has approved your unit for immediate activation with jurisdiction over the Los Angeles metropolitan area and the Arizona Exclusion Zone. Your request for a metaphysicist has also been approved (PN: They've been vetted and you're cleared for sorcery within operational limits). You are cleared to impersonate any Federal office and the requisite papers are en route. Your priority will be locating The Play before it can fall into the wrong hands, but standard operational targets remain: artists, intellectuals, and immigrants.

-----------------------------------

The year is 1985. Los Angeles' poorer neighbourhoods are gripped by a crack epidemic, and no one has forgotten the Watts Riots. Reagan is squaring off against the USSR, and suspicions of spies are as prevalent fear of nuclear apocalypse.
But that's not the end people really need to fear.
The Bureau of Inhuman Activities has been around since the Guatemalan Crisis in the thirties, and your job has only gotten harder as Soviet spies and unaffiliated cultists alike infiltrate the USA. The Reds are known to be trying to weaponize weakly godlike entities, so sometimes the distinction is academic.

Your unit has just been activated to monitor LA, with specific orders to track down a dangerous occult book in addition to pursuing investigations on your own initiative.

Good luck, agents.

Hit me with character concepts. The BoIA is concerned with the survival of humanity at large and does not discriminate when hiring. Most hires have had contact with the occult prior to being offered the job. At least one character will be the sanctioned sorceror - if you're interested in this role, I will have very high expectations of you.

Mechanically, this game will use Chronicles of Darkness with some adjustments. Prior experience and copies of the book not necessary but helpful.

Cthulhu_Wakes Coin

 

[Coin]

I'm throwing my hat in the ring for this one. Always wanted to be a part of one of your RPs and this is right down my alley.

Permitting, I think I may play as an astronomer perhaps something of a diviner of the astral sort? Not necessarily the sorcerer, but definitely occult in practice.

 

[Grey]

The cell will surely need an agent with expertise like that, but they'll additionally be trained like any other agent - the Bureau likes to hire from the FBI and CIA where possible.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

*Slowly raises hand*

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

/chair reveal

He was a dabbler, a collector to be more precise. In his teenaged years, Gavin rolled with a lot of cults and New Age movement bullshit. True, a lot of it was teenage rebellion against straight-laced parents (buzzcut father with the neat tie and gold watch), but it soon became about community, a sense of belonging. Well, before Wichita and the DeVries compound's infamous ending. He finally packed up, went West, got into school and found he had a mind for enigmas, philosophical conundrums, and a deep eye for history. The Bureau needed puzzlemen for the weird shit they'd run up against with the cults. Why not bring in an educated former Kool-Aid drinker? A man with insight to the whole crazy thing?

 

[The Dark Wizard]

I'll give you a character concept shortly.

 

[Epiphany]

I'm pretty tanked this week (prepping for an all-week onsite next week) but just noticed this interest check...and I'm interested!

Looks like you've got a sorcerer and a puzzle solver/researcher. I think I'll propose Jia Sun, Chinese American daughter of a Chinese defector fleeing China's cultural revolution...and possibly something much, much darker. Wushu expert, skilled with a gun, former (current?) CIA agent, fit to play well-mannered, nondescript muscle for the team. If that's okay?

 

[Grey]

I don't think I have a sorcerer, yet (depends on what is chosen by The Dark Wizard ), but a former CIA agent as primary muscle would be just fine and I like that concept.

I forgot broad roles, really - ideally I want an analyst, sorcerer, field director, and an ordinary agent or two.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

I don't think I have a sorcerer, yet (depends on what is chosen by The Dark Wizard ), but a former CIA agent as primary muscle would be just fine and I like that concept.

I forgot broad roles, really - ideally I want an analyst, sorcerer, field director, and an ordinary agent or two.

This seems like a cliche but I'll fill the Sorcerer spot if we still need it .

 

[Grey]

This seems like a cliche but I'll fill the Sorcerer spot if we still need it .

I'd appreciate it! Here; this is an example of the tone for such a character:

Spoiler: Coulson

You first heard the voices when you were five. When you slept, you dreamed of three impossible towers, or steeples, built purposely awry so as to seem forever tipping and falling. You saw a great plateau and the worms that walked upon it. Your parents didn't know what to do about the nightmares, the screaming. And when, one night, your teddy bear struck mama with a little wooden sword, well... It was a few years in hospitals, then foster homes, until finally the Bureau picked you up.

All things considered, you turned out pretty well. You can pass for a functional member of society most of the time, chain smoking and shivers aside, but your apartment is festooned with fetishes and sigils. Your body is a roadmap to the Dreamland, all tattoos and scars under your business suit. You still have teddy's paw, dangling from a watch chain, as your focus and anchor.

You're nervous and energetic, almost to the point of excitability. All that contact with magic has left you with synaesthesia, and you seek out esoterica less for a real love of what you do, more a desire for control, and the strange comfort that proximity to magical paraphernalia gives you.

You’ve worked with the Bureau for a long time, and you’ve barely aged a day. Your first real mission was uncovering and destroying a cult in New Orleans, back in the sixties. You know the Bureau is watching you - you would be too, if you were them.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

I'd appreciate it! Here; this is an example of the tone for such a character:

Spoiler: Coulson

You first heard the voices when you were five. When you slept, you dreamed of three impossible towers, or steeples, built purposely awry so as to seem forever tipping and falling. You saw a great plateau and the worms that walked upon it. Your parents didn't know what to do about the nightmares, the screaming. And when, one night, your teddy bear struck mama with a little wooden sword, well... It was a few years in hospitals, then foster homes, until finally the Bureau picked you up.

All things considered, you turned out pretty well. You can pass for a functional member of society most of the time, chain smoking and shivers aside, but your apartment is festooned with fetishes and sigils. Your body is a roadmap to the Dreamland, all tattoos and scars under your business suit. You still have teddy's paw, dangling from a watch chain, as your focus and anchor.

You're nervous and energetic, almost to the point of excitability. All that contact with magic has left you with synesthesia, and you seek out esoterica less for a real love of what you do, more a desire for control, and the strange comfort that proximity to magical paraphernalia gives you.

You’ve worked with the Bureau for a long time, and you’ve barely aged a day. Your first real mission was uncovering and destroying a cult in New Orleans, back in the sixties. You know the Bureau is watching you - you would be too, if you were them.

Alright !

I can work with that.

 

[Vaneheart]

This looks neat. Did you fill up all the spots yet?

 

[Grey]

This looks neat. Did you fill up all the spots yet?

Not yet. Can't start until next Tuesday, so you've got time to whip something up.

 

[Vaneheart]

Ok. I have a few concepts I will toss your way.

Are the Analyst or Field Director spots filled yet? Otherwise, I could totally do a regular field agent.

 

[Blackadder]

I am interested. Hrmm. Sorcerer, researcher, muscle... actually, isn't there room for a mundane counterpart to our occult insights guy? The forensic expert perhaps?