The Occult Defence Directorate
What would you first think of if you were to hear the words, "Occult Defence"? Would you think of white robed mages with ancient tomes, bathing the army's of chaos with white light? Of single brave heroes, dueling titans in swordfights?
Well, dear reader, you are very much mistaken, though I don't blame you personally. In fact, the knowledge that the finer details of the battle against the ruinous powers out to destroy humanity are kept secret, and out of the public sphere, is rather comforting. It shows that my colleagues still know what they are doing.
But, if no great hero is going to save humanity from the forces of evil, then who will? The answer, is no One. The task of protecting humanity, in all it's vast grandeur and number is quite simply not a task a single soul may accomplish (despite my previous attempts to do otherwise). Instead, it is currently, for the most part, the role of a single organisation, working at the highest, most secretive levels of the world's backstage. It is the job, of the Occult Defence Directorate.
In its current form, the Occult Defence Directorate is what is considered a "Type 2 Direct Reporting Directorate", with "Type 2" referring to our status as a part of the Security and Intelligence community, and "Direct Reporting" referring to who ths O.D.D. takes orders from, namely, the Council of Nations directly. In this way, the Directorate ranks alongside the United Commonwealth Security and Intelligence Committee, where it is occasionally represented by myself, when needed, and the U.C. Special Intelligence Office. But of course, that does not say very much about the organisation itself. While a more precise look at our hierarchy can be found below, it doesn't say very much about what we really are. So, what is the O.D.D.? As a whole, the Directorate's usual duties revolve around defending the U.C. from such magical threats, suchh as psychotic murderers committing human sacrifices to summon demons from various varieties of hell, to those demons themselves, reaching out to corrupt some unfortunate soul's... well, soul. With that in mind, much of our work involves using both in-house resources, and working together with other government agencies to get the job done. Now, the acts of "working together" range from calling up Special Operations doorkickers from the ASAS or SNAS to slit some cultist throats, to convincing the Foreign Affairs Service to pay for the anti-demonic carpets I had installed in their embassies. Other activities include conducting research on relevant fields, mostly magic related, and mostly revolving around killing demons better, and doing public work in order to inhibit the spread and formation of cults, and dangerous related information (and no, we are not committing censorship). As I mentioned, the Directorate is also represented within the SecInt Committee, not by our dear Director, who we shall read more of later, but by myself, owing to, shall we say, previous professional relations with several of the committee's members, institutional and personal. This grants the O.D.D. access to a wealth of information and assets, gathered by our dear friends dressed in black, a cut of some minor funding, and most importantly, another avenue of communication with the Council, which tends to make it easier to convince them to approvemy our decisions.
After that grand fiasco commonly referred to as the "Reynaud Affair" picked up, almost blew up with the force of a thermonuclear device, and then cooled down again (with my assistance, might I add) over the course of the years 155-156, the powers that be, elected, appointed and civil servant, finally started to taking the threat of the occult seriously. Their decision? First, form a 12 person, interdepartmental committee to figure out just what to do. Fortunately for the continued survival of humanity, the members of the committee were all fairly competent, and knew more than a thing or two about what magic actually is (I was a member of said committee, and despite some of the usual bureaucracy, it went fairly smoothly). One major outcome from the committe was the general agreement that the United Commonwealth needed an independent, coordinating agency to lead the U.C.'s collective efforts against the forces of chaos. Together with my fellow committee members, we went about the task of drafting the new organisations overall duties, its powers and its position within the U.C. One unforeseen snag in the whole thing was the decision of who was going to be in charge of the whole thing. I went about the whole process of organising under the impression that I, being the only skilled magician with even a gram of trust within the U.C., would be placed in charge. However, some of my peers and superiors apparently believed that I lacked certain qualities, namely the necessary restraint in the use of force, to make a good leader of an organisation with a license to kill. As such, the decision was made (without my knowledge, I might add!), to place one Mr. Kurt Wegener, who had slightly less than a decades worth of experience in the Kaiserlicher Sicherheitsdienst, Weslich Empire, as the first Director of the Occult Defence Directorate, with myself being delegated as Deputy Director, Section-I, Occult Defence Directorate. This, as I'm sure you would understand, rather angered me. While I admit much of that anger was as a result of feeling personally slighted, in my defence, I was almost universally considered the expert on the actual subject of Occult Defence, and I was adamant that this Mr Wegener would be an incompetent, politically acceptable hindrance. Fortunately, my first judgement would turn out to be wrong. When we first met, he admmitted his own inexperience, and agreed to accept my nominations for other Directorate executives, many of whom I had known for some time. Together, we would begin the slow process of carrying a brand new governemnt directorate into the world, and after 2 months, we would be ready to begin operations.
Current state.
In its current form, the Occult Defence Directorate is what is considered a "Type 2 Direct Reporting Directorate", with "Type 2" referring to our status as a part of the Security and Intelligence community, and "Direct Reporting" referring to who ths O.D.D. takes orders from, namely, the Council of Nations directly. In this way, the Directorate ranks alongside the United Commonwealth Security and Intelligence Committee, where it is occasionally represented by myself, when needed, and the U.C. Special Intelligence Office. But of course, that does not say very much about the organisation itself. While a more precise look at our hierarchy can be found below, it doesn't say very much about what we really are. So, what is the O.D.D.? As a whole, the Directorate's usual duties revolve around defending the U.C. from such magical threats, suchh as psychotic murderers committing human sacrifices to summon demons from various varieties of hell, to those demons themselves, reaching out to corrupt some unfortunate soul's... well, soul. With that in mind, much of our work involves using both in-house resources, and working together with other government agencies to get the job done. Now, the acts of "working together" range from calling up Special Operations doorkickers from the ASAS or SNAS to slit some cultist throats, to convincing the Foreign Affairs Service to pay for the anti-demonic carpets I had installed in their embassies. Other activities include conducting research on relevant fields, mostly magic related, and mostly revolving around killing demons better, and doing public work in order to inhibit the spread and formation of cults, and dangerous related information (and no, we are not committing censorship). As I mentioned, the Directorate is also represented within the SecInt Committee, not by our dear Director, who we shall read more of later, but by myself, owing to, shall we say, previous professional relations with several of the committee's members, institutional and personal. This grants the O.D.D. access to a wealth of information and assets, gathered by our dear friends dressed in black, a cut of some minor funding, and most importantly, another avenue of communication with the Council, which tends to make it easier to convince them to approve
Founding
After that grand fiasco commonly referred to as the "Reynaud Affair" picked up, almost blew up with the force of a thermonuclear device, and then cooled down again (with my assistance, might I add) over the course of the years 155-156, the powers that be, elected, appointed and civil servant, finally started to taking the threat of the occult seriously. Their decision? First, form a 12 person, interdepartmental committee to figure out just what to do. Fortunately for the continued survival of humanity, the members of the committee were all fairly competent, and knew more than a thing or two about what magic actually is (I was a member of said committee, and despite some of the usual bureaucracy, it went fairly smoothly). One major outcome from the committe was the general agreement that the United Commonwealth needed an independent, coordinating agency to lead the U.C.'s collective efforts against the forces of chaos. Together with my fellow committee members, we went about the task of drafting the new organisations overall duties, its powers and its position within the U.C. One unforeseen snag in the whole thing was the decision of who was going to be in charge of the whole thing. I went about the whole process of organising under the impression that I, being the only skilled magician with even a gram of trust within the U.C., would be placed in charge. However, some of my peers and superiors apparently believed that I lacked certain qualities, namely the necessary restraint in the use of force, to make a good leader of an organisation with a license to kill. As such, the decision was made (without my knowledge, I might add!), to place one Mr. Kurt Wegener, who had slightly less than a decades worth of experience in the Kaiserlicher Sicherheitsdienst, Weslich Empire, as the first Director of the Occult Defence Directorate, with myself being delegated as Deputy Director, Section-I, Occult Defence Directorate. This, as I'm sure you would understand, rather angered me. While I admit much of that anger was as a result of feeling personally slighted, in my defence, I was almost universally considered the expert on the actual subject of Occult Defence, and I was adamant that this Mr Wegener would be an incompetent, politically acceptable hindrance. Fortunately, my first judgement would turn out to be wrong. When we first met, he admmitted his own inexperience, and agreed to accept my nominations for other Directorate executives, many of whom I had known for some time. Together, we would begin the slow process of carrying a brand new governemnt directorate into the world, and after 2 months, we would be ready to begin operations.
Structure
The Office of the Director
The Office of the Director of the Occult Defence Directorate is headed, obviously, by the Director, currently still our dear Mr. Kurt Wegender. The Office also consists of the the Director's personal staff, including Kurt's formidable secretary, Ms. Paiti Arana, as well as other officials, such as the O.D.D.'s Legal Counsel, Sir Ian Basilton, and our Public Affairs Director, Ms. Hani Aden. Together, they hold the considerable responsibility of managing the O.D.D.'s more corporate aspects, and enabling the rest of the organisation to act out our actual purposes.
Section-I, Special Operations
-Scutum A Tenebris My branch, Section-I, is in charge of the O.D.D.'s "Special Operations". This encompasses a wide range of tasks, the most common aspects of them being that they tend to take place well outside of the United Commonwealth, and they have a decent chance of ending up with someone dead. Section-I also liases with the Armed Forces, primarily over matters of funding, security, basing, and intelligence sharing, as well as over the ability to use military assets, mostly teams from the Army Special Activities Service and the Special Naval Action Service, accompanied by the occasional air strike, as a treat.
Section-II, Internal Operations and Security
-Arte Et Marte Section-II, Internal Operations and Security, is headed by an old friend of mine, Ms. Audrey Smithers, the ex-Assistant Director of the Special Security Service, Kingdom of Albion. This branch oversees the O.D.D.'s anti-occult activities within U.C. territory, often taking the form of assisting police and internal security agencies with their activities, and using their resources to crack down on internal cults. Section-II is also responsible for what is often referred to as "Institutional Security", which is to say, keeping the government safe from occult threats. This takes the form of conducting security checks on all government employees, on the U.C., national, and regional levels, as well as the installation of physical protective measures, such as specially made enchanted carpetry and furniture on government property. The latter equipment are mostly produced by the next agency.
Section-III, Research and Development
-Calamus Gladio Fortior Section-III is headed by an old acquaintance from the Duke's Univerity, Albion, Mr. Seung Hwan, who headed the university's Department of Magical Research over there before I
Assets
Bases
Section-I:
While Section-I often relies on the foreign military bases operated by the Armed Forces, or the foreign stations of the various Intelligence agencies, we do own a decent amount of real-estate, mostly in the form of supply depots to sustain our operations. The parts of Section-I that require large amounts of well hidden space, mostly dedicated to our 'special' combat forces, are often located in more desolate, uninhabited locations away from population centers, such as our considerable base located at ██████████.Section-II:
Operating on United Commonwealth soil, Section-II often takes advantage of allied agencies' existing infrastructure, such as police field headquarters, or the areas around certain military bases. Still, they do also own some facilities, particularly a series of high-security containment sites, and communication centres.Section-III:
Owing to its status as the research arm of the O.D.D., Section-III often operates out of existing government and academic research labs, under a number of pseudonyms, or through other agencies existing links. Section-III also manages many facilities dedicated to studying specimens of an occult nature, which are legally required to be several thousand kilometers away from large population centers, and tend to be guarded by either my own forces, or ones on loan from the military. They also have a few secret facilities for developing and manufacturing the previously mentioned items, including some magic weaponry. While not stated, you could probably add one to two bases per world to all Sections, dedicated to administrative necessities.Forces
Section-I:
My section is, due to our mission requirements, the most well armed one by a fair margin, owing to our command of a large battalion's worth of Special Forces trained units, under the Section-I Special Action Center, or S.A.C., not to be confused with the Air Force command of the same acronym. They are supported by sufficient air and maritime transportation capacity to move them in force anywhere on their respective World within a day, mostly borrowed over from the Airlift and Sealift Commands of the Air Force and Navy respectively. The troops themselves are given an in depth course in both normal combat skilles, as well as the theoretical and practical knowledge on magic threats, with the most common lesson beaten into their heads being not to physically touch anything even vaguely corrupted. This training also teaches them how to use certain magic weapons, coordinate with the actual armed forces, conduct field medical aid on magic related injuries, and other necessary skills. These troops can be supported by the SAC's Special Weapons Division, the most powerful weapon of which is a large fleet of Aeroships, the description of which I will not be putting into writing. Suffice it to say that these Aeroships combine some considerable firepower with the ability to deploy anywhere, granting our forces fire support anywhere it is needed. Last but not least, the group known as ██████████████████████████████ . They are by far the most prolific killers of all things demonic I have ever seen, other than █████████, but owing to █████████████████████, we are unable to ever add to their ranks. Hence, I prefer to only utilise them in particularly important, sensitive or dire circumstances.Summary
While the Occult Defence Directorate is a fairly young organisation, I must say I've already gotten rather attached to it. While it hasn't been all smooth sailing, as my battle over leadership with Kurt showed, but overall, the O.D.D. is one of the few groups where I actually feel at home, and where I can really contribute greatly to humanity, even if no one will ever know about it. Yes, we've had our controversies, and squabbles. Every now and then, I hear whispers of plots to have the whole thing broken up and sold off. But, in the end, I know that when there's something not quite mortal looking to jeopardise humanity's continued existence, the O.D.D. are the ones called in to save the day. With folks like us, who needs heroes?
Semper Occultus
Founding Date
160 A.S.
Type
Government, Secret Service
Alternative Names
The O.D.D, the Inquisition
Notable Members
Funding
Due to our secretive work, the O.D.D. takes great pains to make sure that as much information is kept secret as physically possible. This includes funding, and while we do have our own budget allocated to us, currently of around 12 Billion Cheques, we also have other sources of revenue. For one thing, a great deal of our assets were purchased on our behalf by other parties, primarily the military and various SecInt agencies, valued at almost 20 Billion Cheques. We also receive money siphoned from a variety of other agencies, ranging from Agriculture to Foreign Affairs.
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Ooyay! That censure! Lovely! And I quite like the narrator's perspective too!