Wealth of Science
Setting
Headquarters
Symposium #WV3200 maintains several bases of operations throughout the city. Each Convention has two or three (or more) major headquarters. There agents of the appropriate organizations are to report. However, the central command of Kansas City is located at the U.S. Center for Engineering, found uptown amid many other tall and spacious urban towers. Its many offices house proles and Enlightened agents alike, many of whom don't know what the people in the cubicles next door are doing.
Secret and restricted access stairs and elevators lead down beneath the building into sub-basements transformed into a whole other world of advanced science and hyper-technologies. Laboratories, barracks, training halls, and Primal Energy storage and conduction facilities occupy three sub-levels beneath the building's mundane basement. Though the place is technically run by the New World Order, every Convention has vested interest and equal influence in the place, assuring that if an agent is being spied on, at least it's only by his own Convention!
Each Convention also maintains key bases in the city. The Syndicate has the Kansas & Missouri Offices for International Banking (KAMOFIB), a towering structure found in the affluent uptown district, too. Zeros Research Facility is a combined Progenitor and Iteration X complex that sprawls in the northern corner on the east side of the city. And the Void Engineers’ main base of operations is located in secret west of the Rolling Hills, far past the city’s borders proper. There beneath the open prairies it houses its barracks and control facilities, as well as hydraulic lifts for some of its advanced vehicular technology. (So that’s where the black helicopters come from!)
Nodes
The Technocracy in Kansas City actually controls no Nodes. They are on the hunt for one, however, and are aware that their Reality Deviant enemies maintain and hide their Nodes too carefully. However, through a variety of activities, not the least of which includes the Providence Tithe Act, the Union is at least supplied with a steady measure of Tass and free Primal Energies. Agents can requisition access to this Quintessence; they will generally be permitted to gain up to ten drams a month without question. The technology in the headquarters permits agents to absorb Primal Energy from the storage facilities into their bio-chemical systems even without knowledge of the Sphere of Prime.
Laboratories
Space for proper laboratories within the various bases around the city is limited. Most agents surrender any claims to such places and build their own outside of the secure bases. Acquiring a space within the base generally demands having the right connections in the Union's upper echelons!
Defenses
All of the Union's bases are placed under powerful warding sequences of Enlightened Science. The bases are barred from intrusions and surveillence, and only a handful know the codes that bypass ("back doors") these protective measures. In short, nothing short of a god could battle its way past all the agents and guards while unraveling these defenses. Every base has these defenses, but the main headquarters at the U.S. Center for Engineering has the strongest.
Backgrounds
Agents of the Technocracy in Kansas City gain the Background, *** Construct, for free. All other Backgrounds must be purchased and acquired normally. The gain of any Trait is irrelevant, however, to this game’s concerns. Players can acquire Backgrounds however they wish. The descriptions above should help players moderate themselves appropriately.
Citizens
Citizens, also known as "proles", are the equivelent of "Acolytes" for the Union. Symposium #WV3200 maintains on average close to 5,000 citizens in its employ. That’s right, 5,000. However, the vast majority (over 4,000 of them) are ignorant of the true power they serve. They are government officials, low-level corporate executives, lawyers, nurses, and telephone operators -- all sorts across the spectrum of humanity, in every walk of life. These Citizens are subjected to the most basic levels of Conditioning to keep them on the right track. While this scarcely immunizes them to supernatural manipulations like vampiric mind control, so-called Mind magick, and more, this does mean that when they are not subjected to those powers, they are doing what the Union wants. Therefore, when they stop doing what the Union wants, agents may investigate to find out why their proles are misbehaving...and RDs may find the handy pawn they just ensorcelled to be under more protection than they could have guessed!
The Citizens that are "in the know" typically work directly for the Union, in their bases or in the field attached to Enlightened agents as back-up (such as unEnlightened Men in Black).
