Sourcebooks: The Field: The Field. The source of our brightest hopes and our darkest fears.

Yo u can t escape from it, even if you try. It is everywhere you go, for it is you. It is wonderful, because you can do anything with it. But it is also terrible, because it can do anything to you. In its simplest description, the Field is a form of energy. In the same sense that mankind is a form of primate. Both technically qualify for the cate gory, but no one who has had experience with either would class it so. What mak es the Field so different from every other form of energy is that with all the o thers, you need to take some action to control them. You need to throw a rock t o control its movement, and you need circuits and wires to control electricity. But with the Field, all that is required is will, is thought. Our hopes and ou r fears, our ideas and our emotions, all leave their mark upon the Field. This isn t a case of our beliefs coming true. That would be a cheesy excuse of the sor t used by dumb fictional universes to justify the existence of various monsters out of folklore. The Field works not by our *beliefs*, but our *desires*. Our needs, not our knowledge. And when someone feels something strongly enough, whe n it becomes an all consuming desire, then sometimes the Field takes that desire and manifests it. And that is when the danger starts. The Madness: But there are things out there which are not of the Field. People see t he world in a certain way, and when something occurs that is too far apart from that way the mind *reacts*. Mostly with terror, occasionally with fascination, sometimes with determination, but we react. And at that moment, when the mind s b arriers fall down and we see the things that *are not supposed to exist*, when r eality and what you think reality is are at irreconcilable odds, then the Field comes rushing in. Normally people have defenses against the Field, to keep the emotions of every person on the planet from rushing in and destroying what we cl ing too. In the moment of violation of belief, and only at that moment, the Fie ld has free rein over us. And nothing is the same. The fortunate majority react with shock, simply blocking out the memory from their minds. By the time morning comes, bringing with it the light of day and the comfort of companionship, we ve decided it was all a dream, that it couldn t possible be real. Of the few who remember, most a too struck with fear to do anything. Fo r the rest of their lives, they will hide behind locked but knowing in their hea rts useless doors, cowering at every imagined sound, every whisper of their frie nds a plot to destroy, always fearing all. Still fewer react with fascination, and spend their whole lives doing nothing bu t exploring the boundaries of what they saw, running experiment after experiment , changing themselves, making themselves both more and less than human. More th an human in what they can do, less that human in what they are. And the smallest group is perhaps the most ill-fated of them all. They are those that *transcend* the terror, that overcome the fear. And in the act o f rejecting the emotions that threaten to overwhelm them, they make the source o f those emotions part of them. They have a link with the Field, now and forever . At first glance, it may seem like a benefit. The Field strengthens thei r bodies and sharpens their senses, making their minds keener and their will str onger. It grants you strange powers, fickle ones yes but powers all the same. But a second look shows that though it makes you more than what you are, it doom s you to be less than what you can be. For the Field takes away that edge, that touch, that little bit of whatever that turns you from being above average to b eing great. You can get by in almost any area, even do very well if you try har d enough . . . but you ll always be a second stringer. You might be dynamite on t he pick-up basketball games, but you ll never hit the pros. You ll write good artic les, but you ll never hit the front page. The ordinaries, those whose lives have never been turned upside down in a single moment of pure terror, will always be

one step beyond you, be more than what you can possibly be. A few of these peop le have realized this truth, and have sworn that they will ensure that no one mu st ever go through the hell that is their lives again. These people are the Age nts, and these are their stories. Long Term Implications: Granted, things are bad enough. But they're getting worse, and they wil l get worse. And worse. And worse. Remember, the Field is genrated by mankind's thoughts and directed by hi s emotions. This means that the more people there are in the world, the more po werful the Field is. Plus, more people means more and more emotions, which mean s manifestations become more frequent. That means that *all* of the problems li sted here are getting more and more numerous and more and more severe. Spells a re getting more powerful, and more and more people are casting them. Monsters a re finding more prey, there are more and more conspiracies, its all becoming wor se. Plus, our modern society, the one that made such an increase in the Field p ossible, is also creating all new monsters. Things like MSN, and Weird Science, and the Enhanced. Things agents a few decades ago didn't have to worry about, that they neve even imagined. And there's another problem too. Granted, today more and more people wh o are exposed to the Madness are Awakening and becoming Agents. But that's only because there are more people. Statistics compiled by the Agency show the terr ible truth. The *percentage* of people who Awaken is showing a small, but defin ite, drop. This is only to be expected, after all. As the Field becomes more p owerful, it gets harder and harder to ignore its call to give into the fear. Re member, the world's population is getting larger exponentially, not arithmetical ly. That means that this trend of fewer Awakenings is only going to increase. Well, just take the concept to the logical conclusion. One day there will come a point where *no one* Awakens, because the Field is just too strong. Granted, there will be more Agents by that time. Plus the Agents will be stronger than e ver, because a stronger Field means stronger Agents. But nothing will replace t hem as they die. And then, when they are all gone, nothing will stand between h umanity and evil. And the human race will die. And you know the worst part? It's happened before. They have confirmed the existence of at least three "cycles" of civilization before us, cultures fa r older than our own who grew too big, and their Agents weren't able to protect "them" either. Techniques: It s a commonsense fact that the more you practice something, the better y ou get at it. Run a lot, and you learn to run faster and longer. Play chess wi th good players, and you get good. Study for school, and you ll do better on test s. For almost all people, the improvement is because of added experience and kn owledge. But if you spend a very long time practicing something for along time every day, something strange just might happen. If you re dedicated and skillful and lucky, the Field will pick up on your desires, and warp itself around you. And within you. The actual muscles and n eurons won t be doing anything, it will be the field. And when they are doing tha t one thing, these people will do well. Impossibly well. Far better than any h uman could ever possibly do. Because it isn t you doing it. Some groups have learned to deliberately manipulate the Field this way, producing individuals whom after years of training can do incredible things. Th ey don t know its the Field, instead attributing it to a sixth sense or spiritual con ditioning. . But know that it is, and always will be, the Field. Some examples of Techniques include: A physicist who has spent his entire adult life, and much of his childhood, calc ulating matrices with imaginary elements. Now, given any physical problem he ca n express it in such a matrix, reducing the most complex things to a mathematica lly solvable form. His coworkers can only stare in awe. However, this applies to *everything* about his life, from conversations to tax returns. He is incapa

ble of forming any relationship outside of work, because he can t go with the flow of a conversation. Plus, the IRS hates his guts. A martial artist who has mastered the art of Long distance crush . He started out crushing sand to dust in his fist every day. After many years, he was able to m ove onto iron balls. Finally, he gained the power crush someone s heart simply by squeezing his hand. You don t believe me? Then watch. See, I close it just lik e this . . . Ancestors: Sometimes, people do things. Great things. And other people hear about these things, and come to know of these people. And when these people die, the memory of their deeds lives on in human hearts and minds. And more importantly , in the Field. The descendants of such great people have a link, through the Field, to the collective *belief* in that person. Even long after that belief itself pass es, the link through the Field will remain. The descendants, for better or for worse, are linked with their forefathers. Not everyone in their family wil be a Descendent, but those that do often have sad lives ahead of them. Never will t heir lives be entirely their own. Some Ancestors are passive, doing nothing mor e than granting their Descendents some added strength or liability. But some ar e anything but, implacable forces that drive their Descendents personalities and activities to be nothing more than repeats of the Ancestor s life of long ago, fo r good or ill. Regardless of what the Descendents may think of the matter. Some sample Ancestors include: A scout who worked on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. To this day his D escendents have a love of the great outdoors, and often go on camping trips, on which they manage to do remarkably well. A brave Agent whom, two thousand years ago, wielded an Intended he creat ed to slay five Obsessives in a single night of blood and terror. The blade pos sesses great powers, and only a Descendant can activate them. A founder of the Klu Klux Klan. All his Descendents are plagued, if tha t s the right word, from childhood with images of the evil of the lesser races . The y see barbarianism in their dreams, lynchings in their fantasies. The Descenden ts have all grown up to be intense racists, often acquiring political power for the sole purpose of thwarting non-whites at every turn. Sourcebook: Intended Intended are objects, made by human hand, that have a connection with th e Field and from that connection gain great powers. Before the coming on mass production and technology (which led to its ow n problems), every item that people used was made by hand. Buildings, clothes, weapons, utensils, furniture, each and every item was made by someone who put ef fort into the work. Who put concern into the work. Who put *emotion* into the work. And the Field is literally shaped by emotion. Fortunately for all concerned, a high level of emotion is required to ma ke the effects of the Field tangible. The emotive level required is above that of a workman doing a job, or even an aspiring apprentice making his masterpiece. But there was one situation in which there was enough emotion. When a person was making an item for a *purpose*. For a desperate purpose. When they *needed * the item to do its job, to succeed or else all would be lost. And the Field p icked up on that need, integrating itself into the item and giving it powers bey ond the creators dreams. And these items are the Intended. Most Intended are ob jects you can hold in your hand, because that s what primitive societies mostly pr oduce. But some are works of art, paintings that activate when someone looks up on them or plays that activate when acted out. A few are even entire *buildings *, blessings or curses for those whom enter. Some Intended are meant for good things, some for bad. Note that all In tendeds look like perfect examples of the item that they are on the surface, and that fine appearance can itself attract the greedy. But the true danger of Int endeds is that no matter what their purpose, *they never stop*. They will conti

nue until the end of time, repeating their purpose over and over without end. N o force ever wielded by a mortal being or by the forces of nature has ever been able to harm an Intended in any way, from rocks to nuclear bombs. They are immu ne to the ravages of the environment and the decay of time. Some Agents have su ggested that all Intended be dumped at the bottom of a lava pool or thrown into the Sun, but that's not really a solution. They won't be harmed, and there are those who want the Intendeds for evil that could recover them even there. Simpl y put, almost none of Them want the Intendeds out of Their sight. Ever. So for the time being those that have been captured remain safe within Warehouse 11, g uarded by wards and guardians almost beyond sanity. On some occasions, they hav e barely been enough. And so the Intended sit there still, waiting till the day when they will find a wielder and be used once more. After all, they have plenty of time. Some sample Intendeds include: 1-In pioneer America, a mother, in a fit of rage, smote her child so hard on the brow that he fell over, hit his head on the table, and died. Horrified, she hu rried to clean up the grisly mess before her husband came home, not really knowi ng what story she would make up. But there was no soap left, and she had to mak e some quickly. It was as if some unseen force guided her hand as she did so, a nd the soap bar that came out was prenaturally perfect. And when she wiped up h er childs blood, it seemed to come clean away. This Intended, if used on a body, will remove all evidence of the killer . Fibers, fingerprints, footprints bloodstains, even DNA traces, all will be go ne. However, it is only effective if used on the site of a murder of a child. Recovered by a Team in Chicago in 1911 from a serial killer who would murder a c hild, then use the soap to remove all traces. Currently in Warehouse 11, occasi onally loaned out to Teams who will need it. 2-A golden ring, made by a goldsmith in 10th century Germany for his true love. Now it seeks to promote love wherever it goes. It is always found by a young m an on the verge of asking a woman to marry him. He will find this ring, and fee l an irresistible urge to go to her and propose. If the marriage is fated to be a happy one, long with many children, she will be impressed by the richness of his gift and accept both it and him. However, a few days later it will slide of f, and try as she will she'll never find it again, but that won't matter because they have each other. But if the marriage will be a bad one, she will refuse i t, throwing it out the window and breaking her suitors heart. He will slink awa y, never to return. And try as he may, he will never find the ring no matter ho w hard he searches the grounds. Current location unknown, as it constantly chan ges. This Intended is not viewed as a threat, and any Agent who encounters it i s instructed to ignore it and get on with the investigation. 3-An African spear, made in the 2nd century AD in the midst of a war of mutual h atred between two tribes. A warrior made it with the desire to crush his hated foes foremost in his mind, and he wielded it with great honor, slaughtering almo st the entire enemy force singlehandedly before he was brought down. An Agent w ho was fortunately present recognized the power of this object, but he was kille d by disease before he could transport it to safekeeping. It appeared on sixteen occasions before its recovery in Virginia in 1817. In each case an individual of African descent wielded it in the brutal slaughter of another African. It is believed that the spear is still continuing the genocidal campaign of thousands of years ago, placing itself into the hands of descendants of its tribe and giv ing them superhuman fighting prowess while at the same time filling them with th e irresistible desire to slaughter every single living descendant of the other t ribe. Granted, the tribes are long dead but it doesn t care. 4-An ancient tomb, designed by a religious fanatic who desperately wante d to keep infidels from the body of his lord. Whenever someone not of the pries tly caste (which hasn t existed for six thousand years) enters the tomb, the whole geography of the structure changes. The passages aren t where you remember them being a moment before, because they aren t there anymore. Walls shift, doors diss apear. Eventually the victim will die of starvation, and the tomb resets for th e next victim.

Sourcebook: Weird Science In a sense, weird science is the poorer cousin of the Intended. With th e coming of the Industrial Revolution and the technological paradigm, a new kind of craftsman appeared. The inventor, the person who designed a device that *sh ould* work based on scientific principles using prefabricated components. Fortunately, the actual inventor is sufficiently removed from the creati on of the components that they cannot create true Intended. When the inventor w ould have produced one, the flow of desire is not quite strong enough, and the r esult is a machine that works *exactly* the way the creator intended it to rathe r than gaining unanticipated powers. These devices can be damaged like normal m achines. By their very nature, Weird Science devices can never be mass produced o r even duplicated. Any attempt by normal scientists to analyze one, or even by the builder afterwards if he wants to repair it, will result in their climbing t he walls in frustration. This device simply *should not work*. And of course i t doesn t, only the Field sustains it. Note that the Weird Science does not need to involve a machine, chemicals, genetically engineered life forms and even comp uter programs have been seen as well. Some sample Weird Science devices include: 1-A type of machine that will generate usable electrical power from no a pparent source. These are legion, but this one is notable because it was the fi rst ever free energy device. The creator was a member of the French Communist par ty, who built his device out of a desire to build a simple, affordable energy so urce to break the hold the manipulative bourgeoise had on the innocent proletari at. Current Status: Lying on a shelf in Warehouse 23. 2-Two devices that look like primitive radios (the kind used for communi cation). They will even pick up channels. However if they are tuned to 6.626 kHz, they can pick up signals sent from the other set instantaneously from liter ally anywhere in the universe, or any other, with absolutely no time lag whatsoe ver. They were built in 1911 by a clerk in the Swiss patent office who wanted t o show an arrogant coworker with delusions of science that his theories were cra p and would never gain acceptance. Curent Status: One is currently in a facilit y in Borneo, other one gets sent out with short-term expeditions that will likel y require informational assistance from Them. 3-What looks like a suit of medieval armor with lots of gizmos attached, built by a Kuwaiti technician after Iraq was driven out of his country. Determ ined that no infidels would ever again defile his country, his ardent desires re sulted in the _Sa id_, a *power armor* that multiplies his strength ten times over , and his speed by twenty. His senses are those of the entire electromagnetic s pectrum, from x-rays to radar. He can sent forth beams of ravenous flame to des troy those would harm his people, and cloak himself from their vision to strike again. Current Status: Stored in his garage, he keeps meticulous care of it and avoids questions by claiming to be an anime fan. Some laugh at him because of his obsession with anime, but he knows better. He ll show when. When needed, he ll s how them all. Orichalchum: Orichalcum is an alloy of 26 different metals, all mixed in exactly corr ect proportions (the composition itself is classified). Orichalcum is important because it has some kind of link with the Field, one that not even Their top re searchers completely understand. However, the effects are clear enough. Any to ol or device, from crossbows to computers, built using orichalcum components cha nges in effectiveness depending on the emotional state of the user. The stronge r the emotions felt at the time the item is used, the better it functions. Bull ets are more accurate and do greater damage, knives become sharper, computers ru n faster and get more memory space. In the hands of a man in love, a pocket cal culator can outperform a Cray. However, it s a two way street. There s a feedback effect, as the orichalcum encour ages the emotion its user is feeling. The longer you use the device, the more t his happens. The end result is someone whose emotions render them completely in

capable of calm, rational thought, armed with devices of incredible power. Howe ver, Teams need orichalcum. There are things only a manipulation of the Field c an harm, and Techniques, Intended and Weird Science are all too rare to be given out to Teams on the off chance they ll eventually need them. Orichalcum, on the other hand, can be mass produced. Each Team has a cache of orichalcum knives an d bullets kept in its Base, which are used only when no other recourse is availa ble. Spirits, Angels, Demons and Gods: Under normal conditions, only the strongest of desires will have any effec t on the Field. The Field is not influenced by our ordinary passions, but when the emotion is all consuming, all enveloping, when all your mind and soul are de voted to a single thing. That is when the Field responds. However, there is an exception to this. If a large enough nuber (millions) of people want the same thing, the Field will respond and create a Spirit. Spirits are mindless creatures, than come into existence to do *jobs*. Not specific tasks, but jobs. They have been known to clean houses, create rain , and destroy nations. When they have completed one job, they will go on to ano ther location that also needs help. Many of mankind s legends, from gods to gobli ns, have resulted from the activities of Spirits. However, over the course of many years, the Spirit doesn t stay the same. It travels to too many places, sees too many things. It loses its devotion and discovers doubt, eventually reaching a point where it has real reasoning abilit y and finally true sentience. It is a Spirit no more. At this point one of two things happens. The first, and far more common , is that the newly intelligent creature turns its back on what it once was, goi ng to live as one of the humans it has served for so long. Such beings are refe rred to as Demons. The other possibility is that the Spirit decides to continue with what it once was, trying to apply its purpose to all of humanity instead o f helping lucky individuals. These are the Angels. Angels and Demons are immortal, and over the millennia can acquire stunn ing levels or skill and ability. To make matters worse they re also invulnerable to mortal harm, only something using the Field (orichalcum, magic, a Technique, Intended, etc) can harm them. Though Demons usually just want to live ordinary lives and are rarely a problem, Angels are another matter. They seek to impose their purpose, whatever that may be, on everyone. Though sometimes this has goo d results, more often there is chaos, confusion and death as humanity struggles against the imposed doctrines. Note that the two divisions are purely arbitrary, based solely on the be havior of each individual. There is no physical difference between the two type s, and both have the powers of their Spirit. The Demons simply don t use them. The final stage of this supernatural life cycle is only reached after th e Angel has spent a very long time (millennia) of doing its duty, it will transc end again and become a God, with effectively limitless powers. Gods are less sp ecialized than Angels, representing a major basic archetype (war, women, fertili ty, fire, etc). And they can do *anything*. Absolutely anything. Travel throu gh time, make a million lightning bolts come down from the sky and destroy an ar my exactly to the last individual without a single dollar of collateral damage, bring the dead to life, anything. Gods also bear special note because of the one limit placed upon a God. When a God does anything at all *without being asked*, it loses its powers and is reduced down to being a human. Always knowing what it lost. Always remember ing when it wasn t just immortal, but *eternal*. When it wasn t just all powerful, but *omnipotent*. When it wasn t just all-knowing, but *omniscient*. You say you can imagine how that feels. Well, you can t. Because the human brain consists of millions of cells, with a trillion bytes of processor power and inconceivable p aralellism. And that isn t enough to comprehend being a God. The actual physical mechanisms, the electrical impulses and chemical triggers, are not *physically* capable of comprehending what it s like to be a God. The former deity lives out its life, always knowing, always *remembering* less and less each day, knowing t

hat each moment takes it further away from Godhood, from what they can never be. Note that there are some magical rituals that can control a Spirit. The se rituals are easy. An Angel (or a Demon, but few have any interest) can also be controlled. On one hand Angels are sentient, and more useful, but that same mind also makes them more dangerous. No one can even affect a God. Some sample types of Spirit are: The Soberers. These represent all the desires of spouses who desperatel y wanted their man or (woman) to spend more time with them. They will find the offending significant other and send him or her horrible (and generally few) vis ions of the future that awaits them if they don t get off the bottle (or in more r ecent times, the needle) and start treating their mate with more respect. It is believed that at least one Soberer Angel helped get the Prohibition passed. Messengers: These exist for the purpose of bringing messages. As Spiri ts they take messages and transmit them to the recipient, even if the sender did n't really intend them to be sent. Note that they only transmit the content of the message, the medium can be crazy and has ranged from letters in the mailbox that weren't there before to bacteria under a microscope arranging themselves in to words. As Angels they try to facilitate communication, and have been found d oing things from riding the Pony Express to funding the research that developed e-mail. Magic: Across the world, millions have felt magic. All but a very few have nev er known what happened. Suddenly their house caught fire, or a stock soared, an d they never knew. Most of those who have experienced it and knew it hide behin d locked but useless doors. And a few, a very few, use magic. Manipulate it, u se it, until they falter and it uses them instead. Magic is interesting as the only way to manipulate the Field via conscio us intent. Where in all other cases people reach the mindset required to change the Field through blind emotion, a magical ritual reaches that state through ca refully calculated intent. Through symbols and sacrifices, colors and chants, d ances and gestures, the Field is twisted to the magicians intent. In theory, no ne of these should be necessary, the magician should be able to acheive any effe ct through simple will. It is unknown how much of a ritual s power comes from the trappings, and how much from the magician himself. Almost all magicians, from hermetics to shamans, have no knowledge of th e Field, they explain their rituals to themselves with inner energy or calling on s pirits or something like that. And the rituals can do many things. Or rather, a ny thing. The Field is the most powerful force on Earth. A magician, assuming he knows the right rituals, can control the weather, learn secrets, destroy enem ies or almost anything imaginable. Remember, there are no spells in the world of Conspiracy Practice. No one waves their hand and shoots a fireball. Well actua lly you could spend a few hours casting a ritual to create a fireball, but that would be kind of pointless, wouldn t it. Only rituals, which are never performed casually or accidentally. The worst thing about magic is that *anyone* can do it. The problem is that unless magic is done precisely right, disaster results. The Field will tak e its desires not from what the caster *thinks* he wants but what he *really* wa nts. The results can be disastrous. Because the Field, by its very nature, is not something you can *use*. It s not something you can *manipulate*. It s not som ething you can *control*. You can keep up the pretense for a while fooling ever yone including yourself. But though you can win battles, eventually you will sl ip and the Field will win the war. Ghosts: At the instant before death, the moment when you know you are going to d ie, your whole life passes before your eyes. You remember everything you ve ever done, and all the things you wish you had. And most of all, there is the desire to do those things. And sometimes, the desire is strong enough to imprint upon

the Field and produce a sort of copy of your mind, one that will do in death wh at you couldn t do in life. However, it isn t you. Ghosts have no actual connection, other than the o riginal creation, to the person they come from. They are not people but recordi ngs of people, not cities but street maps. They exist for a single purpose, the n vanish away. To accomplish this purpose, which may take a *long* time, they c an do things like possess people, haunt houses, etc. The reason that Ghosts are popularly believed to be some kind of soul, s omething that survives once the physical body is dead, is because they generally only appear after their Originator has died and seem to carry on what the perso n wanted to do (often Ghosts think this as well). There are actually Ghosts whose Originators live even after the Origination of the Ghost. This happens whichwh en the Originator believes he is about to die, but somehow (luck, he was never r eally in danger, someone performed CPR) survives. This can lead to real confusi on. Some sample Ghosts are: 1-A Japanese submarine officer during WW2. His craft was damaged, about to be destroyed by the American torpedo his sonar showed moving in at incredibl e speed and he was about to die . . . and the terror created a Ghost, even thou gh it turned out the torpedo was a dud. The Ghost sank the enemy sub, and went on to destroy two more submarines before it finally hit one that happened to hav e an Agent on board who was able to exorcise the spirit. 2-A monk, whom had made mercy his life s work, who was tending to victims of the Black Death, and caught it himself. His last thought was of all the heal ing he would never be able to do in his lifetime. The desire lived on in a ghos t, which to this day comes to the sick and injured and heals them of their wound s. 3-A highly patriotic Marine in Vietnam, both his legs were blown off and he couldn t make it to the chopper in time and it took off without him. He died there, but his Ghost survives to this day guards the place where the encampment once was, killing any whom come near. 4-A single mother who died and left behind her infant child, whom she lo ved dearly. To this day, her Ghost protects her son from all harm and inconvien ience. When those bullies threatened him, she have them all chicken pox. When it appeared he was getting too into his poetry instead of something sensible, sh e manipulated probability to ensure that the book deal didn t come through. When he fell in love with that trailer trash slut, she caused a car accident to end t hat threat. And so on. Pathy The Teams have always known of the Obsessed, people who became so interested in something that they mutilated their own bodies to become it, and in doing so gai ned supernatural powers over it. A man who liked to hide the shadows would char his own skin to become blacker, and in doing so would gain the ability to *beco me* a shadow. A person obsessed with reading lips would take needles and plunge them into his own ears, and in that moment of madness gain the power to listen in on any conversation, anywhere. When the Field was discovered, it was believe d that Obsession was a manifestation of it, the desire to learn more about the s ubject giving the Field direction, which in turn gave the person more and more p ower over his area, which in turn reinforced his desire to learn more, which inf luenced the Field . . . However, researches carried out in **DATE CLASSIFIED** by **IDENTITY CLASSIFIED* * proved this to be only partially correct. Some of the Obsessed were known to have had tested positively for latent psychic power before their transformations . Analysis of these findings, as well as aural analysis of the few captured Obs essed, revealed the nature of pathy. At its most basic level, pathy is a form of psychic power that manifests as an a ffinity for something. Ever meet someone who had a *knack* or something, able t o understand it almost intuitively?. Anything from neurochemistry to guns are p ossibilies. It is likely that this person had the first level of pathy, possess

ing a link to that particular topic. Studies indicate that perhaps 1% of the po pulation has this first level. The overwhelming majority will never go beyond t his level, and never become a threat. Many highly skilled people in any field w ill have first level pathy. One famous example is Stephen Jay Gould, with his a ffinity for biological evolution The second level takes time. At this level, the person becomes a freak , focusing more on their area of pathy than on anything else. If they can get a job that s omehow involves their area, all well and good. If not, they will likely not be able to support themselves. An example was Howard Hughes. Some of these people are recruited, but most are ignored. At the third level pathists begin to see the world in terms of their pathy, and the use it as the first solution to any problem. It is also at this level that the side effects become apparent. People, other than nulls, who are near the pa thic will *feel* the effects of the pathy. Pathics who are of guns will cause t he *sensation* of bullets firing near anyone who is near them, for example. An example of a famous third-level pathic is Vlad Tepes, who was obsessed with impa lement. Any person who is of this level is automatically recruited or killed. They are too dangerous for any other possibililty. The fourth level is the most dangerous. By this point, the pathic will, by conv entional standards, be completely insane. Unlike the other levels, the change i s not gradual. Instead the pathic will, in a single moment of self-mutilation, alter himself to become one with his obsession. Most die at this point, the wou nds they inflict being too much for their physical bodies to survive. But those who do survive come out changed. They have transcended conventional boundaries , gaining a literally supernatural influence over their obsession. There is no choice at this point, the pathic must be killed before he kills a human being. It has been theorized that if a Team could find a pathic early on in the transfo rmation and prepare him for the change to the fourth level with some therapy or medical procedures, the result would be a being with the power of an Obsessive w ith the morals and intelligence of a sane human being. So far all attempts have ended in dismal failure. Pathics are even sometimes made into "honorary Agents". They don't have to worry about the Madness, the Field protects them as it does True Agents. Enhanced Individuals: Ever since the 1960s, various organizations and individuals throughout t he world have been experimenting with technological enhancement of individuals. These have included cybernetics, genetics, man-machine interface, new drugs, lo ts of things. So far, every single one of the subjects has gone mad (in almost none of the cases have the researchers actually worked on themselves). The resea rchers, of course, think this is due to rejection, or improper design. Only The y know know the truth. Though rejection and faulty plans do play a part, the real culprit is th e Field. The Madness works upon those who have left humanity behind, and drives them mad. This of course can be a real problem for Agents when they escape fro m the facilities where the research was done (most of the time, the kind of peop le who do this research in the first place don't really bother to track the thin g down, since the most it can do is kill some people). Those who Awaken are eve n worse, as they now have both the powers of the Field as well as their abilitie s. Some have even become Agents, but "normal" Agents tend to look down on them. The general attitude is that Agents with enhancements are like a women in biki nis who jump out of cakes- at funerals. Not that there's anything inherently wr ong with women in bikinis jumping out of cakes, but there are some times that th ey just aren't appropriate. The Agency is about humanity, and how is it to main tain such a credo if it willingly throws away what makes us human in the first p lace? Aliens Some of them have come by warping space to shorten their journeys. Some have traveled through gates in space and time, and some have been borne by wing

s of starlight, and some simply *willed* themselves here. Some alone, and some in groups. In ships or in their own bodies, for a thousand different reasons pu rsued in a thousand different ways. But there is no getting around the truth. They are HERE. And they ve been here for a very long time. The Teams have reliable recor ds of the alien presence on Earth dating back fourteen thousand years, when much of the previous data was destroyed in the last hurrah of the Lenaruv civilizati on of South America (later corrupted to Lemurians). Archeological and magical i nvestigations put their presence on Earth at hundreds of thousands of years ago. And this should not be so surprising. It would always have been the height of chauvinism to assume we were the only race in the universe (or for that matter on our own world) to evolve sentience. On millions of worlds across the galaxy, beings have become self aware. Many of them have, at one point or another, jou rneyed to the planet its inhabitants call Dirt. Investigations carried out by the few Teams with a chance to observe ali ens directly for extended periods (other than during combat or as prisoners) hav e revealed some stunning facts to Them. Aliens and humans seem to think largely alike, which is very surprising. Various theories have been proposed-that ther e is a natural state of mind for all life to evolve into; that souls get reincar nated across species and we re really all the same race; that its just chance. Th e most likely theory, however, is that only races that think like humans would h ave any interest in leaving their own worlds in the first place. However, this doesn t mean that the results of the minds are always the sa me. Aliens are products of completely different social, biological and planetar y evolutions. Just as important is the issue of what we base our thoughts on. You see, there really is such a thing as a collective unconscious, as racial mem ory. The ones of the aliens are very different from those of mankind, with the result that they come up with very different thoughts. Another stunning fact, revealed through conversations, is the issue of a lien loyalties. All the so far encountered aliens were loyal to one of three th ings: themselves, some other specific individual or to their own species, as a t otal. The concept of loyalty to almost anything in between or above these: a na tion, a creed, a religion. Science fiction s much beloved Federation cannot exist, because the individuals would not be able to translate their loyalties to it abo ve their own species. On a smaller level there are no bureaucracies, no democra cies, only brutal dictatorships. Alien races simply don t organize the way we do. Even worse, no alien seems to have any comprehension of good , or evil . The idea that there are some actions that you shouldn t do simply because *those actio ns aren t right* is a completely, well, alien, concept to nonhuman psyches. Only on Earth do you have people arguing on philosophical grounds, only on Earth do p eople actually argue about who *gets* to go into a highly dangerous situation. Only here. The Teams were dealing with the aliens for millennia before they realized what t he aliens really were, i.e, before They knew about solar systems and planets. I t was assumed that they were some kind of monster, along with all the others. E ach alien race is given a number when first discovered, which can be anything fr om an attempted invasion to a DNA analysis on a odd piece of bone found mixed in with dinosaur skeletons. There are approximately ten thousand known alien races *. The overwhelming majority are known only through archeological or divinatory evidence, or through single encounters that have never been repeated. At least four turned out to be DTs, and were officially categorized before anyone got so ber enough to notice the difference. Also, a number of creatures that weren t ali ens have been categorized as aliens, and vice versa, due to lack of knowledge of the agents who had the encounter. However the numbers are never changed, due t o administrative reasons. Sourcebook: Abductors Abductors are not an alien species, but a methodology in much the same s ense that forgers are a type of criminal. Abductors are those races or individu als here to study mankind for purposes ranging from what our consumer interests are from using us a mercenaries to discovering the nature of love. To this end,

they kidnap humans and perform experiments on them, which include but are not l imited to autopsies, vivisections, implantation, organ transplants, exposure to chemicals or radiation, genetic modification, sensory deprivation, impregnation with babies normal and otherwise, psychological manipulation and anal probes. All Abductor bases, ships, and Magi are prime targets for Teams. Someti mes Agents will deliberately place themselves in a situation where they are prim e targets for abduction, in order to catch the Abductors in the act. They may e ven allow themselves to be abducted, to follow the ship. Such things are never done lightly, however. Because once you ve been abducted, you re *changed*. It s not just what they do to your body and your mind. These are terrible enough, but a t least they intend to commit these acts. The true horror is in what they do yo ur soul. Even when they bury the actual memories, the impact remains. For the rest of your life you will never be able to truly face any situation analogous t o the experiments. Always your mind will freeze, and your heart will skip a bea t, and the act of will will be beyond you. This applies to even the most everyd ay of situations. If they put caps on your head to measure your brainwaves, the n for the rest of your life putting on a hat will be an act of extreme courage. As is being near a dog if they tested allergies, or lighting a match if they di d work on burns. Because even though conventional doctors can heal the body and the mind of the victim, and the Teams can do so far better, not even They know how to heal a soul. Sourcebook: The Educators Educators are alien species who are conducting activities designed to edu cate mankind, mostly consisting of giving us technology. The sad truth is that m uch of modern technology is actually handouts from alien races, our most magnifi cent gems actually crumbs from the aliens tables. Over twenty races are confirmed to be involved in this, and half again a s many are suspected. Of those, the motivations of only a few are known. Three are planning for us to destroy ourselves, the first because it wants to take ove r the world after we are gone, the second because they re taking bets on how long we ll last and the third seems to be testing out a sociological theory. One wants us to be a profitable trading partner, two others want us to be useful slaves a nd still another is on its way in a badly damaged STL spaceship and wants us to be on the level where we ll be able to manufacture replacement parts. Some have s uggested that some aliens may simply want to further human knowledge and improve the lot of the common man. Yeah, right. No one in the know really takes this idea seriously. Except for some of the more seduced Magi, that is. Sourcebook: Magi They and Their Teams are the major threat to any alien activities on Ear th. Teams have the home court advantage, and more importantly Their ability to organize and coordinate lets the Teams use that effectively. The combination of magic, technology, combat prowess and influence can prove a devastating weapon. To get anything done, many alien races and individuals have recruited human al lies here on Earth. Using humans has several advantages. Those the aliens recruit often alr eady have power on Earth, which means that the aliens have a base to start from. Humans understand humans better than aliens do, which makes them more effectiv e fighters. Finally, humans can appear in public, at least without driving those whom see them insane. For a covert war, this is an incalculable advantage. And there has been no shortage of volunteers. Alien technology and science alon e is an almost irresistible thirty pieces of silver. If you re a government, what price is too high for an impenetrable shield against enemy missiles? Or an inv incible super soldier without conscience? For a corporation, what s to much for a new production technology that will let you destroy your competitors. To terro rists, a microbe that will destroy all paper and wood and leave the humans shock ed and back in the Stone Age. To an individual, a device that will give his ene mies heart attacks no ordinary coroner will be able to tell from a real one. Is the possessions, the land, the lives of people you ve never met too high a price? Is your humanity too much to pay? Not hardly. But worst of all are the ones who do it for *love*. Such Magi revere al

iens, almost worship them. The fact that aliens exist is a very powerful truth, and far too much for many people to integrate. Because the fact of the matter is, many apparently sane and reasonable humans don t like their own species. If o nly people were a little less violent, less passionate, more curious about the w orld. If only our planet was less polluted. The aliens offer an alternative to this, and it is easy to become dependent on them for philosophy or the next tec hnical handout or sexual favors. Many aliens will encourage this, knowing full well that these people are the most vulnerable of all to the wrath of Their Team s. In some particularly twisted cases, the love is even returned. Then things get *really* weird. A few of the aliens here are: Number 9,422 (Pleiadeans) This is a race of beautiful humanoids, apparently originating in the Ple iades. In 1951, they came down to the United Nations to offer their help in bri nging mankind to the next level of civilization, a world of universal peace and harmony. If we would only lay down our weapons, the Pleideans would give us inc redible gifts. They would cleanse our ecology, cure our diseases, and get rid o f the excess portions of our population. This last offer aroused some questions , and in the discussion it came out that the Pleideans had decided that roughly 90% of Earth s population (all of Africa and South America, most of Asia, the home less, the elderly) simply didn t contribute anything to the planet, and should the refore be eliminated. The delegates didn t just vote the motion down, they lynche d the emissaries. The delegates decided to never tell their respective governme nts about the visit , but they all vowed to strive for the exact opposite of what t he Pleideans wanted in all the negotiations they were involved in. The end resul t of this vow was what we now know as the arms race. The Pleiadeans, puzzled by our response, now simply sit in their invisible spaceships and look down at our planet in confusion and sorrow. Number 3649 (Preyed Spiders) This is a race of arachnoid hedonists, first encountered in 822. In phy sical form they resemble a spider the size of a cat, but with ten legs and seve n eyes on eystalks. They are incredibly jaded, and only the thought of absolute risk is enough to excite their sensibilities. The only pleasure they are still capable of deriving excitement from is the hunt, not hunting others but *being hunted*. They deliberately find the most capable and dangerous individuals in t he galaxy, and deliberately enrage them so they will try and kill the Preyed Spi ders. This race found being hunted by a Team to be very exciting, and would oft en bait a Team to try to kill it. This generally consisted of a dead homeless p erson every few hours in a way that only an alien could do, until the local Team gets the message. They never hurt the Agents themselves, that would ruin the f un. Eventually They declared a moratorium on hunting down Preyed Spiders. Afte r a few years of not being hunted (and an estimated two thousand deaths) they ap parently got bored with Earth and left, and have not been sighted since 1623. Number 10,027 (Toxica) One of the more recently discovered varieties, an Agent whom worked in a n industrial corporation on her day job noticed that some of the R&D ideas had n o apparent source. That is to say, no one seemed to have actually worked on the projects, yet somehow they were completed. She alerted her Team, and after a fe w days of blackmail and illegal surveillance discovered a strange device in the possession of one of the researchers, of obvious alien origin. This device gave the Magi blueprints for various technologies, all of which were extremely pollu ting. The rest of the Teams were alerted, and other such devices have been foun d possessed by other scientists. The Toxica are believed to have been responsib le for the styrofoam cup, the aluminum can and the aerosol spray, among others. No one had ever seen one, and no one has since. The Toxica also seem to financ e various anti-environmental lobbyists across the world. In total, they seem to be trying to induce us to pollute the Earth, but no one knows why.

Megacorps: Perhaps the greatest power in the modern world is money. Everyone has a price, anything can be bought. Money shatters friendships and makes new one. Bitter wars are fought over territories which have intrinsic value whatsoever, b ut because someone somewhere decided they were valuable , they become something wor th dying for. Monopolies and markets, capitalism and communism, the most concre te realities of ideology, supported by naught but the most ephemeral portion of reality, someone who decreed that you could exchange one thing for anything, fro m when someone untold years ago decided that some yellowish metal or some hard p aper was worth something, and that became our world. Even ordinary people know how corporations can get out of control, peopl e with real lives and real dreams become just one more number on a balance sheet , how the environment becomes a next quarter problem . Where what is good for the corporation is good for the country but not necessarily vice versa, where men in boardrooms condemn people to die, just to boost the profit margin. Behind the lies, things are much worse. Those who are In The Know are a ware that practically everything on the planet worth owning is owned by perhaps a dozen (not even They know the exact number) companies, the poorest executive o f which beats out Bill Gates. The rulers of these companies kill people not wit h concern but with statistics. They kill people when in order to test out produ cts they send out teams to see how many police officers can be killed with the n ew weapons, or how long it takes for the toxic affects to become apparent in the schoolchildren when mixed in with the milk. They kill with their pollution fac tories , massive facilites that don t actually produce anything but toxic waste done for the simple purpose of making anti-pollution devices marketable. They kill w hen they start wars to sell guns, then keep the war going just long enough for t he casualties to create a labor shortage that would otherwise result in a wage i ncrease. They fight each other for dominance of the world, in a war of the stre ets as much as of the boardrooms. Only the Agents stand between the corporation s and the world. The faceless figures who run the companies are aware of Them and the Tea ms, but only as one more element in the power play, an overly moralistic one tak es seemingly random delight in smashing subsidiaries and product lines but seems to take nothing for itself. But things are getting worse, as to counter the th reat some companies have turned from statistical to personal evil, using magic a nd enhancements to try and create a counter for Agents. It remains to be seen i f this will work. Black Ops: Almost every government in the world of Conspiracy Practice maintains at least one (and often several) "black ops" units, groups which peform activities that the international community (and in cases where the public's opinion actua lly counts) the public would find to be distasteful in the extreme. Assassinati ng foreign (and in some cases domestic) political figures who might one day rise to power with opinions not in the interest of the government, spying on your ci tizens and on your allies, launching raids on foreign facilities you consider to be involved in activities you don't like, that sort of thing. Note that black ops aren't sent to investigate things like strange rumor s of giant worms in the Sahara or coal miners dissapearing in Oregon, most gove rnments simply don't care about such things. The Agency has done a good job of keeping the worlds governments in the dark. Though *individuals* within the gov ernments often suspect that something is going on that they're being left out of , they simply don't know about the Field or the Agency or such things. To them it *has* to be some other government up to something, they simply can't imagine any other possibility. Black ops are, however, often sent to attack or investigate the activiti es of other governments, activities that sometimes involve things that would dri ve an ordinary man mad. Remember, that religious fanatic who claims to be in co ntact with the ancient monsters of Mesopotamia isn't necessarily lying, not in C

onspiracy Practice. The same goes for outbreaks of strange diseases, crashes of unknown craft, and so on. Remember, black ops are *always* extremely well trai ned and equipped, and their abilites may exceed the Limit. All of which make th em very tough foes. Burglary, blackmail and murder are a black ops bread and bu tter, and they do these things very well. Some sample black ops groups are: The Peacekeepers: This black ops group works for Amnesty International, going fr om country to country and busting open prison camps, assassinating certain offic ials, and so forth. National Security Specials: One of the four American black ops groups (none of w hich, due to the noted tendency of the right hands of governments not knowing wh at the left is doing, are aware of each other), this one does the standard Black Ops stuff. Division Seis: The Venezualan black ops group, its job consists mostly of trying to destroy oil wells in foreign countries and scuttle oil tankers, thus increas ing the price of Venezualan oil. Warworld: There are other universes out there, places where reality took some diff erent path, where things happened just a bit differently. In the overwhelming m ajority of the universes, there is no life. The value of pi was too high or too low, q-up was too too strong or too weak, and life or matter simply never evolv ed. But in the ones closest to us, things progressed enough like our world for long enough that only the history is different. They became aware of this probl em in 1856, when a group of extradimensional Vikings raided our reality intent o n plunder. The technically advanced Norsemen were driven back, and their gate c losed and has never reopened. They then began a research program to travel to o ther worlds, in the hopes of finding allies in Their struggle for humanity. The first few worlds were barren wastelands, apparently planets where, at some poin t in history, Teams had failed to adequately defend the human race and now all l ife was gone. Finally, one world with human life was found. If you could call it life . It was a world where humans were livestock for the Raacgi, where only a few p eople still lived free. The Teams gave the free humans massive amounts of help, both material aid, in the form of weapons, medicine and technology and in the f orm of personnel, Agents who left Earth to fight on Warworld. Though there were Agents on Warworld as well, from Warworld s own Field, the low human population k ept the Field weak, and the Agents weak as well. When WW2 began (party as a res ult of Agents who might have noticed the signs being occupied on Warworld) most of these Agents went back to Earth and most aid was cut off. Today aid to Warwo rld is much less, due to escalating conditions on Earth. However, there have be en a number of incidents where Warworlders kidnapped Earth Agents and took them one-way trips to Warworld, in order to have the Agents fight there before they c ould return home. Teamworld: A place hideous beyond measure, a world of fear and terror and silence, where no one cares enough to defend against evil. A world where the Teams won. The discovery of Teamworld in 1982 permanently ended the project to expl ore other dimensions, as They felt the risks were too great to bother exploring further, to afraid of what they might find. There is no history in Teamworld th at tells the truth, but some stuff can be read from what s there and what must hav e happened. In our dimension, Teams have sworn to be silent, shadowy gaurdians, and guardians only. It is neither the place nor the talent of the Teams to rul e mankind, they must do it for themselves. Thousands of years ago, the Agents o f Teamworld cast such assumptions aside, and took over directly. They went on w ars of extermination, slaughtering every non-human being on the planet. Million s of norms innos died or wnet mad under the strain, but enough survived to win. Technology was developed, and brought to a high art, mastering abilities far be yond those even the Agents of Earth have access to. The people live in a single

city in Asia, a city of a billion people, a city where literally your every tho ught is observed and recorded by the Watchers, as Agents of Teamworld call thems elves. When an exceptionally evil and ruthless serial murderer arises, he is ta ken away and forced to transcend or die. Innos, by now genetically engineered f or submissiveness, toil endlessly night and day to construct the Teamworld war m achine. For Teamworld is not a place so much as a factory, a factory that produ ces endless fleets of conquest that go throughout the universe, slaughtering eve ry race they meet. They have never returned to Teamworld since that one day, an d They have no intention of doing so again. Ever. Beastmen: It s not just humans who contribute to the Field. The other creatures on this planet do so as well. The birds, the bees, the fish, even animals, even th e plants contribute their emotion to the Field. But animals have far fewer emot ions than humans do, so they contribute less to the Field. As a result, the ove rwhelming majority of the strangeness that happens on Earth are due to the human field. But sometimes a human will find himself touched by the Field of the ani mals, and strange things occur. In the first stage, a human is simply fascinated by the animal s type (sna kes, spiders, primates), focusing on it as a hobby, something to do. But them t he changes start, physical changes. People who touch snakes lose their eyelids, and their skin becomes scaly. People who link with dogs hang their tongues out to pant. Not that none of these changes is outside the normal realm of human p hysiology. They look odd, but not inhuman. Finally the third stage begins, in which they lose contact with their hu man side altogether, gaining the powers of the animals they touch, but in turn l osing what makes them human. Their mind. Their attention span. Their ability to discern things. Their ability to *reason*. Understand, they don t actually be come dumber. They just can t think of things. Things like money, or dividing tim e into arbitrary units, or nations, or kings, or social responsibility. The fig ht shadowy battles with one another, living lives of carefree emotions, laughing and crying whenever they wish. And killing whenever they wish as well. Other Sapients: Homo sapiens sapiens is not the only, or even the first, sentient race t o evolve upon Earth. It is simply the one which currently dominates the earth. Through archeological digs and divinations, They have determined that at one po int or another over the last few hundreds of millions of years hundreds of nativ e races have lived on Earth. Of course, almost all are now extinct. Those whom are not include: Delphinus Sapiens: This race evolved from dolphins the same way humans evolved from monkeys. They are highly intelligent, in fact the *average* delphinus is c onsiderably smarter than your average humans, though our geniuses are the same a s their geniuses. However, the delphinus lack something very important. Hands. In fact, it is impossible to tell the difference between ordinary dolphins and dephinus without clos inspection, and even then only if you know what to look f or. Someone who simply knows a lot about dolphins will simply think they are od d dolphins. Without the ability to use tools, they cannot build their own techn ical civilization. So they look upon ours with jealousy and envy, and as a race have sworn to destroy ours. They have some knowledge of magic, which they use to recruit agents on land in their attempts to destabilize our world. They have also been known to use their spells to torment some poor human, just to cause p ain. Cetaceous Sapiens: This race evolved from the humpback whale. They are far lar ger than delphinus, and far, far smarter. However, they have never taken any ag ainst for or against humanity, and only diviniations have revealed their intelli gence at all. They seem to be content to simply spend all their time thinking. Raacgi: Oni. Demons. Akumas. Mashim, Nephelos. Tikoloshe. P o. All these an d a thousand more were the names of the Raacgi. While we evolved from primates, they evolved from ovines. No less intelligent than man, they and us were natur

al enemies. Dogs hate cats, and that is how Raacgi feel about humans. And vice versa. However, the entire race was exterminated by Agents thousands of years ago, so they aren t a problem anymore. Except on Warworld, of course. Home Gigantipedus: Another primate species, they struggled with man for dominan ce hundreds of thousands of years ago. However, they had a disadvantage. Sex, or more specifically the lack thereof. It s not that they don t like it, but they d on t approach it with quite, the ah, eagerness that we do. So we outbred them, an d now their race is confined to a few remote corners of the Earth. The Agents h ave placed these creatures under Their protection, and any attempt to find them will meet with terrible force. Homo Praedatorius: There is a common belief that humanity is at the top of the food chain. Well, that's wrong. Actually, homo praedatorius ("predator man") i s on top. They evolved to eat humans, but nature didn't take the Field into acc ount. The Field created Agents, who were able to defeat the preds in a manner s imiliar to rabbits turning on the wolf. Today, praedatorius (who look exactly l ike humans, it takes an autopsy or surgical exam to find the massive muscular, s kelatal and disgestive oddities) mostly pretend to be people and mate with one a nother, buying their meat from the grocery store instead of hunting down humans. This is all done under Their aegis, and often brings a ray of hope to an Agent s heart. There is a *chance* of peaceful coexistence, and the praedatorius are proof. Granted there are almost no discernible differences between the two race s, but you can't have everything. Even so, every once and while a praedatorius will succumb to its hunter's instincts and select a random human, luring him to a secluded place and eating him. MSN: A uniquely modern problem, MSN (no one's completely sure who first came up with it, the letters actually mean Mitchell, Sanders, Newman, the Agents who first figured out what it was) is the ultimate growth hormone. Feed it too a pl ant, and you get a plant ten times its size. The same for animals. And humans. But do the math. As size increases, so does volume, and so do nutrition al needs. Soon you have a population of very big, very *hungry* plants and anim als, and the mutating effects of MSN turns them into carnivore to boot. Agents have reported, giant carnivorous bugs, giant carnivorous rabbits, giant carnivor ous apple trees, you name it. These things can be killed normally, however. The problem, however, comes when you realize that MSN is actually pretty easy stuff to discover and make. Anyone doing really serious research into neu rology, metabolism, hormones or any of a dozen related fields, and who has enoug h luck and talent, is probably going to discover it. The first report was in 18 23. Plus, plenty of people who discovered its danger have simply dumped the stu ff in rivers and oceans to get rid of it. The result is that MSN is now all ove r the world. The mutated genes can lie dormant for generations, until finally t hey express themselves and start the problem all over again. Psychics: Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of years ago, during one o f the previous cycles of civilization, things called Constructs were created. In some way unknown to even Them, the Field was twisted and manipulated like clay, used to make things like machines only in function. The Constructs existed, in visible, until activated by simple thought. The advantages over conventional mac hines are obvious, such as you never need to carry them around, no installation, no repair, no instruction manuals. With the resurgence of the Field, many Constructs are coming back on lin e. Or rather, they are coming back into existence. Luckily, over the eons the gene to control them seems to have mostly left the human race, with only a few p eople left able to do it. Those who do use them mostly subconsicously, and even so they will only work in the few places where the Constructs have come on line , the reason psychic power has so often proven impossible to reproduce if done i n various places. Plus, after being used the Constructs need time to recharge ( the Field isn't powerful enough to support full operation yet). Some sample Constructs include:

Tempers: These seem to have had been temperature control devices, and can heat o r cool an area. In some cases, fires can be started or ice created. Surveillance devices: These are responsible for such phenomenom as clairvoyance, dowsing and remote viewing. Gateways:These are the most recent to appear, and possibly the most foreboding. They are instantaneous gates between two specific locations. They first came o nline in 1995, and more are constantly popping up. Plus, the range of the gatew ays is increasing, from what was a few hundred feet at first to several dozen mi les today. What other gateways will appear, and what other constructs are waiti ng for us? The Afterlife: There isn't one. The world of Conspiracy Practice is not so kind. Teros and Deros The evolution of plants was one of the great events in the history of th e world. The new kingdom of life transformed carbon dioxide to oxygen, changing the face of the planet and allowing carbon based life to dominate the world. However, silicon based life was not so lucky. The new atmosphere was sl ow death to the established order, which thrived on methane and the heat generat ed from the suns rays, undimished by ozone. As plants grew to dominance, the si licon based life went the only direction it could-down. It burrowed deep within the Earth, finding caves where oxygen had not yet gone and where the heat from the Earth's core gave them the energy they needed for length. And just as life on the surface world evolved, so did they. And in time, they acquired sentience . Well, not exactly as life up here evolved. Silicon based biology is fun damentally different from carbon based biology, in that it lacks species. You c annot put them into neat little niches, and they do not interact in "ecosystems" , or "ecologies". They simply are, encountering every creature they meet. Beca use each and every silicon based life-form is the only one of its kind. Recently, some of the ones that evolved (or rather, just happened to hav e) sentience have acquired a desire to colonize the surface of earth. The probl em is, the oxygen still kills the silicon based life. Therefore, they have enga ged in two equally horrible plans to solve this problem. The first of these plans (from the group known as the Teros) is to trans form the surface into a duplicate of the underworld by opening up huge vents in the Earth's surface, driving out all the oxygen. That this will kill all carbon based life is of no concern. The second, used by the Deros, is just as bad. T hey have not realized that the two life forms are essentially different, and pla n to breed new lie forms capable of surviving on the surface world the same way they would underground - by mating. This desire, combined with a complete lack of what hole to stick it into, has left a trail of blinded and traumatized peopl e across the planet. The worst part is that neither plan is actually going to work. Legends. From Jason <drozdj@pdq.net> Legends are rare types of spirits that evolve differently from the norm. Legends come about when a spirit is created for a particular job. Then that spirit is d estroyed, by whatever means, but enough beleif exists that the spirit is re-crea ted-often in a slightly different form and far away from the orriginal sight. If this happens often enough (a couple dozen times, at least) that spirit can gain sentience on its own, as well as remove it self from the need of human belief. These eternal, sentient spirits are refered to as Legends. While Legends act like typical spirits, their intelligence makes them much more dangerous. And even if a Legend is destroyed, it will reform - us ually in a diferent shape and location - about five years after being destroyed. Some example legends The Beast: This Legend lives to cause fear - usualy by killing and eating people

. Always appearing as a mockery of human form, The Beast has been known in the p ast as Grendel, the Wendigo, the Boogey Man, Trolls, Ogres, Redcaps, Cyclops, ev en Baba Yaga - all these and more are The Beast. Curent Status: Classified. The Strongman: Another Legend, this one is always a 'hero.' Samson, Hercules, Be owulf, Hachiman, Gilgamesh, and others are all The Strongman - the man with the strength of fifty, who batters down his foes. While the Strongman is a hero, and usually willing to help in a fight against blatent enemies of humanity, The Str ongman is also painfully chauvenistic, and will often demand recompensation - in the form of wine, women, food, and money. Current Status: 'Died' two years ago fighting an Angel. The Trickster: A being of wit and a silvered tongue, The Trickster is the figure that uses tricks and words to get what it wants. Usually mischeivious, and almo st always greedy, this Legend takes the form of a talking animal more often than it does a human. The Trickster has been identified as such figures as Theseus, Anansi the Spider, the Monkey King, Coyote, Raven, and others. Current Status: U nknown, but it is bleived to be in the Middle East. The Chimera: More than just the chimera of greek mythology, The Chimera is the m onsterous, non-human Legend. Cunning, intelligent, and deadly, The Chimera preys on humanity, and is perhaps the oldest Legend. It appears as a combination of s everal animals. In the past, The Chimera has been - in addition to the three hea ded minster Belleriphon fought - the sphinx, the griffon, the hydra, the ba, the naga, the minotaur, Quetzalcoatl, and others. It has been confirmed, however, t hat The Chimera is not resposible for myths about Centaurs or Mermaids. Current Status: The Chimera was last seen in the form of a giant long neck turtle, with the hind section of a fish. In this form it destroyed a Nazi encampment in Afric a during World War II, and hasn't been seen since. (Now, in more practical terms for writers - Legends are special spirits embodyin g archetypes of mythologies around the world. Tricksters, Strongmen, monsters ma de from almalgamated mundane animals, and human-like creatures that eat human fl esh, all have been seen multiple times in most mythologies around the world. The y act like typical spirits, most of the time. But, they ARE intelligent and self -aware. They are quite capable of recognizing traps and setting their own. They also have little regard for their own safety, since even should they find someth ing that can destroy their body, as long as the Field exists they will return.)