Office of Supernatural Affairs

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Character Bios

OSA Staff bios

  • "Chief" - The interminably old former strongman of Scotland carries Dwarven blood in him. None within the OSA know his real name; H is convinced he wouldn't be able to pronounce it if he knew it. The wisest of the team, and the most obvious to appoint to the role of division chief; he claims to have once been a champion weight-lifter and truck-puller, which none of the team have any way of proving. Greying hair in a widow's peak, clean-shaven most of the time, but the mustache grows fast.
  • Stefania - Thought to be either a dryad or an alraune by H. She doesn't say much more than she needs to, and is in fact somewhat unaccustomed to physical speech. She is physically smaller than a regular human woman, at about four feet tall; wears clothing spun from plant fibers exclusively, as animal-based products are uncomfortable. The color of her skin is like birch wood, and her hair, loose and curly, is a dark green, with small patches of pastels like flower petals. Wears glasses; they are the only thing she didn't make herself. Has a habit of teleporting everywhere, even short distances, and is able to sense things through walls (if they are not magically warded).
  • H - Our viewpoint character. Ostensibly human, but does not remember his parents. Was raised by a Shinto priest, from whom he learned that he had an affinity with the Aethers, and trained to focus his energies into magical wards. After joining OSA, he began to develop his skills with wards into specially tuned Wardbreakers, to defeat other peoples' wards and seals as the situation dictates. Underwent marksmanship training with the FBI. His personal sidearm, the Kurdd & Schaumers P50, is the same model used by RCPA agent Olivia Diaz.
  • Ewan - A half-ent, a hybrid creature between a treant and a wood nymph, born to the forests of western Europe. He resembles a hunch-backed human, covered in moss, that hides his face and eyes from everything unless they are needed. He subsists on photosynthesis and weekly showers, but secretly enjoys drinks concocted by humans, especially coffee, tea, and sports drinks containing electrolytes. Only the Chief has ever seen his face up close. In the field, he serves as an ultra-long-range scout and occasional designated marksman, able to watch field operatives from - at minimum - half a mile away, and land shots up to three miles away. Has a deep knowledge of the sources of most minerals and substances, and can occasionally be heard apologizing to the rarer ones.
  • George - Possibly the team mascot; a kappa of indeterminate (or possibly non-existent) gender, who loves anything that tastes like or resembles cucumber. In the field, George acts as a thief and tight-space recon, through which H can remote-view or guide at a distance, though George is not always willing to follow directions. Does enjoy hanging out with Stefania during off-time, which is often the only common ground she can find with H.

Briefing

2219, the era of the great unveiling. Roughly considered to be the time in which humanity's technological levels had stagnated for so long, that some "outside" entities decided we would never progress without their help. Turned out, beings and forces of a magical or spiritual nature, had always existed on our planet, and had hidden themselves in the hopes that we would surpass them, and that magic would become largely unnecessary. The "great unveiling," then, came at the time that those beings and forces were tired of the masquerade. We were never going to discover them properly, so they might as well just come out and say hello.

But of course, like all things good on their faces, this was not completely a good thing. For all of those that wanted to help improve society by the means that technology could not accomplish, there were those who sought to destroy it by those same means. It gave rise to terrorist factions and warlords, whose methods and techniques we could not predict or prepare for. No matter how fortified the location or how secure the cargo, it could be breached, it could be taken, it could be destroyed. The gold reserves at Fort Knox, vanished overnight? The Pentagon's greatest secrets, now a matter of public record? No longer as impossible as our staff thought. And that was why we existed: the Office of Supernatural Affairs.

I was the last one into the meeting room, with two carriers of "penalty coffee" in hand. I was late as a habit. There was no way I could beat Stefania here, since she teleported everywhere, but for everybody else that came in to the office normally, I often lagged by five minutes or more. Frequently more, when the coffee orders came in. But I didn't care all that much. I was as essential as the rest of the OSA, since we consisted of about four people and one…thing, so they couldn't start the meeting without me, but getting to know everybody's drink orders by heart was my way of forging friendships and learning what made everybody tick.

I set the two drink carriers on the board room table, then gestured a ward on the door as it closed. "Here we are, folks," I greeted, slipping a paper cup out of the carrier carton. "Soy latte, non-dairy cream…that one's yours, boss?"

The muscular, but round, OSA Chief raised his hand affirmatively. "Aye, slide it over."

I did so, somehow managing not to knock the paper cup over in the process. I got the next one out, in a bright red cup. "Egg nog latte, extra whip, dash of cinnamon… Stefania?" The long-haired, glasses-wearing nymph simply nodded in my direction. I handed it to her with both hands, as if presenting a gift, then grabbed the next out of its carrier. "London Fog, that one's…Ewan?"

"Just hand it," replied a very tired and grumpy man opposite the table. I didn't think I'd ever seen his face before, he always had his head down on the desk. I'd been told he photosynthesized, so he would only really be awake in direct sunlight. I wondered why he even needed the coffee.

The next drink to come out of the carton was in a transparent cup, the likes of which I thought they stopped making a hundred years ago. The liquid inside was thick and somewhat green colored, and the cup was cold to the touch. "Oh, this one's got to be George's." The imp-like, duck-like being at the corner of the table gurgled excitedly. He did like things that tasted of cucumber. Half of us suspected he was a kappa, like the Japanese myth, but nobody could really say one way or the other.

"Which makes the last one mine," I declared, taking the last seat at the back corner of the table, next to Stefania, and retrieving the last cup from the carrier, an extra-tall hot chai in a cup bearing the letter H. "Now, what's the thread this time, boss?"

Thorsten Heimdallsson. (image src: HAL9000, via DALL-E)

The Chief, a Dwarven man in a suit that, despite being tailored specifically for him, seemed a bit too tight around the waist, punched a large green button on his side of the table. The board room lights all died in an instant and a tiny projector rose from the table, aiming at the wall on my side of the table. Beamed on the wall was the image of a man in a suit, with an immaculate coif of hair, and bloodshot eyes in a sickly shade of bright orange. He was not showing his teeth, but I figured he'd have fangs. In the photo, he was getting into the back seat of a car, assisted by a taller bald man wearing sunglasses. The Chief let us stare at him for a few seconds, then cleared his throat. "This man is Thorsten Heimdallsson. He is the owner of the second-richest holdings company in Europe. And, until recently, that was all that OSA considered noteworthy about him."

Stefania adjusted her glasses, and then her plant-fiber vest. "Implying that we've discovered more since then?" Her speech had a German brusqueness to it, augmented by her always-neutral, near monotone voice. I suspected that she was an Alraune, but I never could figure out how to broach the question politely. "Or has something changed?"

"We don't know how to answer that, yet. You will notice the eyes--" The Chief shone a bright laser around the man's face on screen, "--are not a natural human color, and his skin has gone rather pale. Both of them are strong indicators to him being vampiric in nature."

The grumpy man raised a hand, but not his head, from the table. "We don't have anything on file that says that," he rasped and grumbled.

"Which is precisely the problem." The Chief's eyes narrowed. "The Great Unveiling Act, article three, stipulates that potentially viral beings such as vampires and zombies must be documented. Mr. Heimdallsson does not exist in any of our registries. We have reason to believe he is trying to hide his status from us, which in itself would not be a problem, if not for what else he could be hiding beneath that."

Action

"H, I need a wardbreaker," Stefania called out, gesturing at the door with a free hand as she stood off to one side of it, flattened against the wall.

I safetied my handgun - a Kurdd & Schaumers P50, loaded with silver bullets - and carefully let it into its holster. I spread my fingers apart and hooked them at just such an angle as to feel the vibrations in the door's aura. "That can't be all it has on it," I remarked. The door was sealed with a Plebeius ward, and seemingly nothing else. It was the single most common door ward that one could use; to set one upon a heavy door in a high security building was like hiding national secrets in your ten-year-old daughter's locking diary. "Stefania, can't you sense anything beyond the door?"

"Nothing. The ward is blocking me."

"I've got a bad feeling about this. Stand back." I motioned for her to fall back a few more feet, until she was in position behind a filing cabinet. It still wasn't the best place to take cover from a trap, but it was something. I held one hand to my left ear. "Ewan, any activity yet?"

Roughly a mile away, watching from a rooftop across town with his ultra-high-powered scope, Ewan's voice crackled into my ear over the aethernet. "Not a stone-damned thing," he growled. The old half-ent was in ideal circumstances, here, being in both direct sunlight and with a good long distance for him to focus his sensitive eyes upon; to hear him still sound this upset was bothering me almost more than the door.

"There's something seriously not right, here. They're letting us in. We haven't spotted a single sentry since we got to this floor, and there's no way they didn't see or hear us."

The Chief's voice came over next. "I share your misgivings, H, but all we can do is press on, for now. I advise a defensive breach."

"Good idea, boss." Before setting to work on the door, I laid down some free-standing wards - pavises, enough to absorb a few high-caliber rounds if it came to it - on either end of the hallway, two facing the door, two covering the rear, with just enough room for us to slip through in case we needed to double back. I then approached the door again. Remote Viewing couldn't tell me what was inside the door, but I'd never known a Plebeius ward to stop me before. "Breaching in ten. Ewan, got us covered?"

"Clear shot all the way to the end of the hall," came Ewan's growl over the aethernet.

I started to move my hands in rotational symmetry, angling my fingers in ways reminiscent of karate stances, or overactive orchestra conductors. The first basic wardbreaker I'd ever learned, now down to muscle memory. I was told it resembled the mathematical shape of a butterfly, though my tutor did not possess the gift of sight. In the final kata, I turned my hands into narrow points, then thrust both towards the door like knives.

The door did nothing. A moment later, it began to glow, then crackle. I crossed my arms in front of me, raising a defensive shield, and then as if to respond to this, the glow in the door suddenly launched outwards towards Stefania and me. She was spared the force, as she leaned into the filing cabinet to avoid it falling on her, while I skidded down the hallway with a rubbery squeal coming from my boots. When I finally stopped moving, I was leaning far enough forward to resist the force that I nearly fell on my face. While I grimaced and gritted my teeth, Stefania got on aethernet.

"Chief, roughly how difficult is it to mask one ward as another?"

"Very," was the Chief's only reply.

"Then this is no ordinary ward."

Inside that room

"What in hell is…" The massive ring occupied the majority of the hangar-like room, attached to the floor and held upright by two rolling clamps, that looked like they allowed the ring to rotate. It was surrounded by sigils, along the rim of the ring, but also all around the floor surrounding the central platform. Symbols from multiple civilizations, spanning thousands of years of human history. Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sanskrit, old Runic.

The Aethernet radio in my ear grumbled to life again. "I can only barely see into the room," said Ewan in a low rumble, "but this seems familiar. Can you show me closer?"

He meant Remote Viewing, or telepresence via ESP. It was normally a trick I pulled using George to scout ahead without being spotted, but it could work in reverse as well. I stared directly at the ring, and focused the image of it in my mind. I had difficulty achieving a strong connection over this distance, but once I had, Ewan could now see what I saw.

"This is about what I thought it was," he said, his basso voice feeding back over the psychic connection. "This was a gateway experiment site. The ring will have been constructed of obsidian; you would need to take a sample for me to identify from where and how old."

"Does any of that matter?"

"The site is much older than it appears," he continued. "Ask Stefania."

She already knew what Ewan was referring to. "I was here when this building was constructed, a hundred fifty years ago. My mother's Tree was here."

"Was…?" I almost asked out loud. "You mean…"

"This place was a forest, before," was all she said.

Ewan, taking charge of the moment, spoke up to HQ. "Chief, we will need some transportation to retrieve materials from this site. And I will need to be brought here myself. There are tasks I must perform."

"Roger that," replied the Chief. "I will bring the van around to you first. H," he said, pronouncing it "haytch," "I will need you to hold the line until the two of us have arrived. Please ward the entrance and the area surrounding the ring."