Wednesday 11 March 2020

Projection Agencies in Esoteric Enterprises


Visitors from somewhere. Official seeming. Well equipped, well organised, brandish ID for agencies that don’t exist,  and never existed. Speak in professional jargon.
Agents of the projection agencies are unfamiliar with many of the little details of the real world. They recall alternate histories, and see things not as they are but as they might have been. They catalogue everything they encounter, are relentlessly curious about every mundane facet of everyday life.
They know of the Men In Black, and treat them with a degree of scorn. Some say the Men In Black and the projection agencies are engaged in a cold war of infiltration and counter-infiltration. Certainly, the Men In Black seem to hate them with a degree of venom that is far more personal than they display against most occult criminals.
The existence of Projection Agents is unstable. If seriously injured, subject to great stress of exertion, or exposed to anti-magic, they simply dissolve into static and vanish. This instability is not entirely a detriment, however. They engage with reality as if one step removed, able as if reality were a game and they have cheat-codes. Infinite ammunition, no-clip mode, bullet-time, fast-travel.
When they dissolve into static, they aren’t destroyed, merely sent back where they came from. Sometimes, they return, seemingly no worse for it.
They hate and fear paradox, and the untamed magic that creates it. Regardless of their other alliances and rivalries, they seem willing to work with anybody to exterminate paradox beasts.
They talk in vague terms about the ‘seven hundred and seventy steps of reality’ and the grand conflict between law and chaos. They frequently enlist local talent as pawns and proxies in this grand conflict.
They do not exist. They never existed. None of the preceding text is true, do not trouble yourself with it.

Projection Agent: 1 flesh (1 dice), 13 grit (4 dice). AC 15(bullet-proof vest and high dexterity). Charm 4/6, Stealth 4/6, Perception 4/6. Saves 10+. Handgun (+5, d8), All stats 13.
Cannot be healed by any means except other projection agents. Engaging in any sort of stressful or strenuous activity deals 1 damage to them. Upon taking damage to flesh (or other serious harm), dissolves into static and vanishes.

Possess various supernatural abilities, varying by department and agency. Using any of these powers is a stressful activity for the agent, and as such does one damage to them.
· All security agents can intercept attacks that would hit their allies, taking the damage in their place, and when an attack drops an enemy get to make another attack for free.
· All logistics agents can cause objects to appear from nowhere, or gain information that should be impossible for them to know.
· All tech support agents can heal all damage done to a fellow agent, or remove a curse, poison or similar effect, if given a turn to work safely.
Surveillance agents get abilities depending on their agency.
· Morphean Agents can become completely invisible merely by remaining still, walk through physical barriers, and see invisible things.
· Orphic agents can reanimate dead things as husks, view and understand the death of any corpse they touch, and age a victim they touch by 3d20 years.
· Theresan agents can ward off unnatural things by brandishing a holy icon, tell if something is unnatural instinctively, and heal the injuries of normal mortals with a touch (curing d6 flesh damage or a serious wound).
· Liddel agents can grow or shrink at will, blink out of existance and return a set amount of time later as if no time had passed for them, and render a victim they touch 2d20 years younger.
· Hypnos agents can pause time for a single round for a victim they touch, create a holographic image of anything they want, or listen to and understand radio signals.


6 comments:

  1. When I saw the title of this post, I thought it was going to be something like Orpheus from OWoD.

    (This is still great, though)

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    1. Not gonna lie, i thought the same thing.

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  2. This is a good bridge between games and interesting to see protagonists of one game as NPCs in another.

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  3. I'd been wondering about the best way to combine those...

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  4. Love this. Love fitting these two together; I was just thinking about what would be useful from DMT because I was throwing all your work into one folder for ease of access; past time to do so.

    Really love EE a lot. It's the best take I've yet seen on this sort of modern occult conspiracy game. I like Arcana Rising quite a bit too, but ultimately it's just not weird enough. If I wanted to run a game like that I could probably just hack 5e.

    But EE is so great. It's a perfect melange of weirdness that makes it really easy to import stuff from other conspiracy fiction, like The SCP Foundation or the old TSR Dark Matter campaign setting or Call of Cthulhu stuff, or the video games The Secret World and Control. I'm working on a hack for importing the Service Weapon and psychic powers from Control for a high powered sort of game. It might be what finally gets me to launch my own gaming and world building blog, as I'm pleased with how it is going.

    Thanks for all your work! You're one of my favorites in the field.

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  5. Observers from FRINGE come to mind (<3), perhaps a bit of, Correction Agency, too.

    I love EE; I'm so glad it was written.

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