Since the very dawn of the American era, the tales have been there. Vicious wolves who could take on the form of man, or men who grew hair and claws to savage their enemies. Mysterious sightings of spirits and people with strange, mystical powers. Fatalities in the streets, with the victims showing little in common but a distinctly pale visage. In times past, these seemingly innocent folks were slain as monsters, burned as witches, and drowned as warlocks.
Two centuries later, the stories still abound. But now, a new search for the truths behind the myths has begun, with the United States government leading the way.
Back at the start of the Cold War, just after the Roswell incident, the stories of aliens and much more human monsters ran rampant throughout the press. Fine, they said. Let the media have their field day with Roswell’s weather balloon. It was the tales of the Sasquatch that intrigued the government. To that end, the CIA established the Department of Extra-Normal Affairs—The DEN, for short—to investigate any and all instances of the supernatural. They empowered their highly trained government agents to investigate at will with the idea of turning anything and anyone they discovered into government-sponsored weapons against the Great Communist Threat.
As time passed, however, the DEN broke off from the CIA and went underground, becoming little more than a footnote in their files as another in a series of Cold War projects that never truly lived up to its potential. One agent, however, had a vision of what DEN could and should be. And as the 1980’s gave way to the 90’s and the Reagan/Bush era gave way to the Clinton White House, Lyssa Ravenwind—once a field agent for DEN—took over the supposedly defunct organization and rebuilt it from the ground up. No longer did they answer to the CIA. Barely did they now answer to the President. Director Ravenwind knew what was out there, and that neither the government nor the American people were ready for that sort of knowledge.
The stories are true—and it’s up to the agents of DEN to find out just how true they are.
Game Information:
Players start out as rookie
DEN agents, mortal in all aspects, choosing their base identity and private
life from a stack of 21 pre-generated templates, each with a number of dots
already filled in and each able to be further customized by the addition of a
few extra dots. These deep-cover agents are then taken from their private lives
at the start of each module and thrust into increasingly more dangerous
missions, learning that they are indeed not the top of the proverbial (and in
some cases literal) food chain.
Director Ravenwind—a Hunter, in game terms, possibly even the mysterious Hunter One—has in her the ability to see into an agent’s future. She uses this to determine whether or not they will eventually become one of the denizens of the World of Darkness, yet still remain a valuable agent of DEN. She has chosen each recruit personally because they exhibit, somewhere in their future, the ability to become something more than they already are.
Over the course of the campaign, PC’s will also learn another vital piece of information about themselves: that they themselves are not as mortal as they seem. Some will become Garou, their ancestral genes activated in a moment of stress. Some will be awakened to the powers of Magi. And others will fall prey to the dark desires of the Kindred. Each of these events will take place once every few adventures, in tournament-level modules played by advancement only at conventions.
For further stats on Lyssa Ravenwind, details on DEN’s HQ in Washington, lists of field operatives, and adventure or further campaign details, feel free to contact DEN creator and lead writer Chris Ahrnsbrak at trailsong@yahoo.com or at ICQ #70841284.