The Basics
You and your teammates are elite investigators drawn from various walks of life, all with a background in investigation. You are reality’s last defenders, combating the plots of the
Esoterrorists, a loose affiliation of occult terrorists who seek to gain personal power by tearing the fabric of the world apart and letting the monsters in.
Who Are You?
You lead a double life. Most of the time, you’re an ordinary civilian, paying the rent and leading a normal existence. You may be a world-weary homicide detective, a lab-coated forensic scientist, a grizzled old-school reporter, a tweed-jacketed scholar, or even a hanger-on in the criminal underworld. However, you belong to a cell of a secret, worldwide organization called the
Ordo Veritatis. This benevolent conspiracy, which operates with the tacit approval of the world’s major powers, fights the machinations of the Esoterrorists. For security reasons, investigators maintain minimal contact with their cell leader (always codenamed
Mr. Verity, irrespective of age or gender) throughout a case.
Investigators are fact finders first and enforcers of the unwritten laws of civilization second. Once they’ve determined the dimensions of an Esoterror plot, identifying its principals and their bases of operation, they can step aside and call for back up, or if the perpetrators are easily taken down, the team may perform mop-up duties, known as the veil-out, on its own.
How Does the World Work?
Magic doesn’t come into the world easily; it has a basic set point of sanity that’s hard to tamper with. That’s why ghosts and other occult manifestations are typically only encountered in certain haunted locations by highly sensitive individuals. But when people begin to doubt the sanity of their everyday world, these breaks in the fabric of reality become easier to create. Your enemies stage hauntings, create Fortean phenomena, and insert false evidence of nonexistent conspiracies into the historical record. These begin as hoaxes but, as they create mass hysteria, become real. As they peak, they spawn the so-called
Creatures of Unremitting Horror, bizarre modernist monsters who must be destroyed before they become as much a part of consensus reality as lions or convenience stores.
Who Are Your Enemies?
The Esoterrorists are a worldwide network of misfits and rejects from various occult traditions who’ve banded together to enhance their power at the expense of others. When these plots succeed, the personal power of the involved Esoterrorists increases. Many use the power they glean for personal gratification, whether their tastes run toward money, drugs, or sex. Most enjoy power for its own sake, sadistically inflicting horror on an unsuspecting populace. There’s no head of Esoterrorism, no command structure. Don’t think cell as in conspiracy, think cell as in cancer.