Cyclops
CYCLOPS is FIST seen through a dark mirror, working
from the very top of the military-industrial complex
instead of the bottom. They are nearly omniscient,
with moles in every national intelligence agency.
CYCLOPS agents work tirelessly to keep anomalous
occurrences tightly under wraps, aiming to secure,
contain, and exploit the unknown. You might think
of CYCLOPS as a sprawling personification of the
system itself—put simply, CYCLOPS is The Man.
When a group like FIST starts getting into things
they shouldn’t, they inevitably butt heads with
CYCLOPS Recon Operations. Like FIST, CRO teams
are coordinated autonomous units of extraordinary
and frequently paranormal individuals, complete
with their own codenames, trait-like abilities, and
special equipment. Make sure the players know
these agents are least equally competent to them
and always incredibly dangerous—a group of CROs
is often called a murder.
The Director is CYCLOPS' engimatic leader. Almost
all facts regarding the Director (up to and including
their very existence) are speculation, hearsay, or
intentional CYCLOPS disinformation. Conflicting FIST
reports have described the Director as everything
from a brunette middle-aged WASP woman to a
warehouse-sized computer to a ghost story the
goons at CYCLOPS tell themselves. It's possible
that CYCLOPS has no leader and is an entirely
decentralized, stochastic apparatus of control.
CYCLOPS propaganda is hidden everywhere, and
portrays the world as mundane and largely under
control, with a rotating cast of cultures, identities,
and factions used as the pesky scapegoat du
jour. To the average civilian, the world of FIST looks
identical to our own, and CYCLOPS likes it that way.
With no one on the ground who can relay what
actually happened, all that remains is supplying a
culturally plausible and unremarkable explanation:
dangerous crime. This, in turn, further justifies the
existence of the systems which CYCLOPS uses
in the minds of the public—if we are threatened
by dangerous crime, then we must need to crack
down on it. In time, CYCLOPS men-in-black may
walk among the people openly, unbothered by the
burden of optics, for in this new context mirrored
glasses, earpieces, and bulletproof vests no longer
raise a red flag.
CYCLOPS High Command, if it exists at all, is the
most well-hidden and heavily guarded facility in
the world. Locating High Command would take an
entire campaign of FIST missions, as the players
collect leaked info, raid intelligence agencies for
coordinates, follow a trail of informants who keep
turning up dead, and so on. Even if FIST manages
to track down High Command, they will be tasked
with infiltrating an absurdly large, almost completely
impenetrable military compound, populated by the
strangest entities and artifacts ever consigned to
containment, and guarded by some of the scariest
people (and/or non-people) who inhabit the world
of FIST. Somehow taking down CYCLOPS would
change the entire world slowly but fundamentally,
and reward the players with untold riches and
power... or, perhaps, CYCLOPS' alleged competence,
omnipotence and strength are all calculated lies, to
obfuscate the fact that any structure can be broken.
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