InsaneJournal

The main branch of the Company is located in Cardiff, Wales. The Company building is located in the country, outside of Cardiff proper, but it is a short ride into the city. You will not find this mythical manor, nor the lake that surrounds it, in any maps. It is meant to take us out of our everyday reality and into the mysterious fabric of the game. For the purposes of this setting, all characters will dwell within the Society manor grounds or the nearby area. Characters can be recently and even temporarily relocated there. Characters will travel all over the world for their jobs, so you do not need to restrict scenes to this area.

Many of those who are hands on agents will have encountered some element of the supernatural before being recruited, however anything beyond a hardly credible ghost sighting will have to have been wiped from their memory if they were not a part of or immediately recruited into the Company. You are free and encouraged to incorporate into your back stories how your character fought a mummy along side a Company employee years ago and has a feeling of déjà vu when meeting their fellow employees as this can make for some great conversations. The Company works very hard to make sure the public does not know about the supernatural and we like to think they are doing a truly stellar job of it, so please keep character histories consistent with this.

Once employed with the Company, characters will likely have many experiences with the supernatural. We welcome and encourage characters to have experienced many things outside of the norm once employed. Fighting mummies, being cursed, temporarily trapped in the past, being haunted, etc are all reasonable and welcome events for character histories. Please use these as plot points to help build your character with a mind to making them interesting and able to interact, use common sense. Characters may encounter magical creatures in the fulfillment of their duties, but magical creatures, such as werewolves, vampires, faeries, etc, will not be playable characters in this game. Please contact the mods before applying any kind of immortal or highly powered character.

The Company provides and requires all employees to attend self defense and basic combat courses. While a list of common specialties is provided and characters should have an area of expertise, the Company values employees who are at least passable in several areas.

The Treasury at the Cardiff House is currently the largest warehouse facility in the Company worldwide, though each of the Mother Houses has their own private Treasury. All the writings and artifacts collected by the Company agents are distributed into the Library, the Archives and the Repository that comprise what is collectively known as The Treasury. The Treasury serves many purposes, acting as a museum, secure storage, classification and documentation facility and a location for artifact restoration, identification and safekeeping.

The Company has several bases scattered across the world, one on each continent, which are referred to as "Houses." These provide housing for employees, a base of operations, safe storage for artifacts and documents retrieved and a communications center. The Cardiff House is currently the largest, both in terms of employees and items kept in the Treasury. Employees are assigned to and usually live out of one House, and are dispatched to missions and dig sites from there. The most notable House, outside of the Cardiff House, is the Quito House in South America (Ecuador). This House gained note when, roughly fifty years ago, new assignees arrived to find the entire House empty, every inhabitant having vanished without a trace.

۞ The Mother House is in Cardiff, Wales and services all of the European continent.
۞ The Asian House is located in Myanmar, Burma and is the oldest standing House.
۞ The African House is located outside Cairo, Egypt. This was the home of the first Company House, but it was destroyed in the 1600's and has been rebuilt in a new location.
۞ The South Pacific House is located in Dunedin, New Zealand.
۞ North American House is located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
۞ South American House is located in Quito, Ecuador.

The coins are an ancient and enchanted currency that features a lion. Every member of the Company is given one upon being hired, this coin should be guarded and kept close at all times. The coin serves to identify the holder as a member of the Company or a trusted envoy, this can be shown to other coin holders to ensure the aid of other employees in a crisis.

Many of the Company's employees have media training and either specialize in journalism or have worked as journalists in the past. Their jobs include spinning new truths and selling these stories to the media to keep the general public in the dark, as well as keeping a true-to-life account of what happened on the missions for the Company's Archive. In addition, the Company uses an artifact to brew a tonic which will blank the memory of anyone who ingests it.

A century or so ago, the Company came into possession of a coin which releases trace elements into water, when soaked in it. When that liquid is ingested, it places a person into a trance-like state, similar to deep hypnosis. The Company began issuing vials of the memory blanking tonic as a standard issue item to their employees. Anyone who consumes even a drop of this liquid will have the last several hours up tot he last few days of their life erased from their mind and the employee will be able implant an artificial memory. This can be a detailed memory, or something as simple as "you just don't remember the last four hours." Employees are cautioned, if you chose a detailed memory that includes actions, thoughts or emotions which are not compatible with the beliefs or personality of the subject, the implant memory will not "stick" and the subject will simply have memory loss of that time period. No one is immune to the effects of this artifact, and abusing or using this artifact for personal gain will result in the employee losing their job, likely a great deal of their memories and could face more drastic action. Please use with caution and respect. Employees can always receive more vials of the memory blanking tonic from the Archive in their Company House.

Digs and artifact recovery missions can be draining, both physically and mentally, as such the Company is generous with down time between missions for those employees who want or require it. The Company grounds offers plenty of recreational places, including both indoor and outdoor gardens, a recreation room, private theater, a wet bar open to all employees and stables. All employees will are also expected to help with the Treasury, during brief pauses between missions, their contribution may be as little as providing a written recounting of their latest excavation. Employees who take more than two weeks between missions will be expected to dedicate extra time to the Treasury, they will be free to pick whichever branch interests them most: Archives to help organize incoming field missions and recent discoveries, the Library to help organize and digitally transcribe text or the Repository to help examine, test and preserve artifacts.

Missions are previously planned events that deal with artifacts or dig sites that can be organized by mods or players. We encourage players to create and play out missions, and players do not need mod permission to create a mission or to take one on. A premise, an artifact to be found and various obstacles, which can be psychosocial, magical, technological, language puzzles, etc. Missions are posted in the OOC Community with a current missions tag, you can find completed missions under the history tag. Collaborate with other players in order to run a mission and be sure to add the !completed tag to any missions that have been threaded out.

While those in the Society will insist they are not the Illuminati, because they are not seeking to control or manipulate governments, the Society does partake in several actions that are associated with the Illuminati. They do control a great deal of information and keep knowledge of the supernatural from the general populace and they do collect and keep most of the valuable and powerful items in the world. Most members of the Society will laugh off accusations of being part of the Illuminati as conspiracy theories.

Each employee will be provided with a luxury apartment within their branch of the Company. Since the game is focused on the Cardiff Motherhouse, most characters will have their homes within these apartments. There are three housing options in Cardiff, the first are the apartments located on the upper floors of the Motherhouse, which are limited to employees who live alone or couples who are both employed by the Company. The East/West Annexes, which are a short walk at ground level and also connect to the Motherhouse through underground tunnels, offer larger rooms, though they are not so recently renovated as the apartments in the House itself. These apartments welcome employees and their significant others who are not employed by the Company, however they do not accommodate children. Lastly, private cottages are located a short distance from the Motherhouse and each boasts a small, somewhat private yard. Unlike the other housing options, a low monthly rent must be paid on cottages and employees who have spouses or children not employed by the Company are given first pick on these homes. Large dogs are allowed only in the cottages, cats and other small, quiet, confined animals are allowed in the Motherhouse apartments, the Annexes accetp small animals. Employees are able to decline Company housing and secure a home of their own off of the Company property if they so choose. The Company pays for all travel and housing expenses for employees on off-site missions.

Please see our floorplan here for a better idea of the size and layout of the Motherhouse. The East and West Annexes, which are housing units located just a short walk from the Motherhouse itself, are also included in this diagram.

This is something of a long question, so we will break it up into smaller ones. See below for more information.

Active players will be allowed to apply for up to nine (9) characters, but will not be allowed to apply more than three (3) per activity period. We understand many of us have a wealth of muses, and we want you to be able to bring a manageable number of them here. In order to apply for four or more characters, you will be expected to maintain an acceptable activity level with your current characters. We understand about scheduling conflicts, we do not expect players to post every day, but we prefer that players are active on the days they are available. Those who consistently only tag sporadically, as in one tag every several days, it is less likely they will have more characters will approved.

Anyone with three (3) or more characters is expected to be active with at least three (3) characters on any given activity period. If you can be active with more than three characters, wonderful. If you cannot keep them all active, or one of your muses needs a breather, or for some other reason you do not feel like you can post with them, you are allowed to put them off rotation.

It means they are temporarily not available to be played for some reason. OOC'ly it means the player will not be participating in any threads or plot for the duration of the character's off rotation. IC'ly, it is most likely that the character is simply away on a lengthy mission, or otherwise engaged. When a character is taken off rotation, you must give an IC explanation as to why they are away. The game itself offers very easy reasons, as the Company has other Houses outside of Cardiff, one on every continent. Your character can be off on a lengthy mission, or be transferred to one of the other houses temporarily. Otherwise feel free to present believable options to explain their absence, such as a vacation, sabbatical, illness, death of a family member, etc.

If one of your characters needs to go off-rotation, please notify the mods at the Inbox. Please put "OFF-ROTATION" in the subject line, then list the character or characters you need to take off the active roster in the body of the message. Please post both the character name and their journal name for each.

Off-rotation does not mean a full hiatus. Players will need to post a simple update on the comm or your pup's journal at least once every two activity checks to let the rest of the game know they are still alive. This can be a personal journal entry, a letter to another character, a post card, a 'Wish you were here' post with a pic of a dig in Egypt/Mesopotamia/Central America/the bottom of the ocean or a simple report to the Mother House about events on the mission they have been dispatched to.

All characters must return to active status within six weeks of rotation. Players can pick and choose who they want to be active with at any given time, but mods will not allow someone to sit on a PB indefinitely without actually playing them for over a month and a half. The mods reserve the right to request that players either return characters to active status or drop them, particularly if it is a popular face that new players might be interested in. Please understand this is simply in the interest of fairness to all players and not us being mean.

This game runs in real time, one day real time is one day in the game. You are free to forward and backdate threads, but please try and use common sense and avoid excessive forward and back dating.

If you still have a question, please feel free to ask it on this post, or comment on the Inbox to have your question screened. Please let us know if you see any mistakes or typos. Your mods are vigilant but not perfect, and little things might escape us from time to time. These pages are all constantly being updated and corrected as needed. Thank you.