The Stonehenge Agency
The Stonehenge Agency is a highly classified division of the Ministry of Defense, which – according to legend – was founded in the time of antiquity by the surviving members of King Arthur's roundtable (Sir Hector, Sir Bors, Sir Bladwain, Sir and Sir Berboris) and dedicated to guarding Excalibur until such time as a new champion worthy of wielding it appeared. While the British government officially denies the existence of Stonehenge – (and any government officials who were asked would brusquely sniff that the questioner spent far too much time reading American four color comics) the rumor is close to the truth. The charter of the Stonehenge Brotherhood charges the organization with: "Defending the sword Excalibur and all relics of Merlin and Arthur and with protecting the realm from all threats natural, supernatural and infernal." Over the centuries, Stonehenge has built up an impressive collection of magical artifacts and relics, which it keeps under tight guard in its labyrinthine complex which lies beneath the streets of the Whitehall district in London. Stonehenge has historically had a domestic mission and has been Great Britain's first line of defense against vampires, werewolves, dragons, fey incursion and demonic invasions.
Recent History and Organization In the 1930s, as it became apparent that Hitler's Third Reich had an unhealthy fixation on the occult and on acquiring magical relics for military use, Stonehenge expanded its official scope, ramped up the Operations Division and sent dozens of field teams around the world on missions to seize artifacts of supernatural import before the Nazi teams of Nazi archeologists could snatch them up. Stonehenge agents were also deployed on commando missions into occupied Europe to sabotage Nazi programs to develop supernatural super-weapons before they come to fruition. After World War 2, Stonehenge adapted to the challenges of the Cold War. Two Soviet intelligence agencies, the GRU and the Red Directorate, were using captured German mages from the Thule Society to jumpstart their own arcane intelligence programs. With the US politically unable or simply unwilling to pursue the military and espionage applications of the Dark Arts, the burden fell to the UK, and specifically to Stonehenge, to monitor the Warsaw Pact’s supernatural programs and to develop countermeasures.
Operatives The agency has an extensive pool of analysts, researchers, artificers, clerics, mages and field operatives at the London HQ. In addition, Stonehenge has six operational units in the field. These teams have a degree of autonomy but periodically report back in to London for approval and direction.
- Team White continues the World War Two mission of Stonehenge – tracking down and destroying supernatural Nazi hold-outs and magic using neo-fascists. Even forty years on, horrors birthed by the Third Reich continue to rear their ugly head. White is primarily deployed to Western Europe but their missions often take them far afield. They have been the steadfast enemy of the Fourth Reich since they became aware of the neo-Nazi cabal in the late 1940s.
- Team Blue is charged with monitoring and controlling the lycanthrope population of the United Kingdom. Blue has several squads in the field at any given time – usually in rural Scotland, the English Midlands, and Wales. With a core cadre recruited from the SAS, Blue has the closest and most open relationship with the British military of any Stonehenge field team. The team has historically operated in a "seek and destroy" mode. However, recently members of Team Blue have suggested trying to open negotiations with known werewolf tribes. As of the mid-1980s, this diplomatic initiative is still being debated at the highest levels of Stonehenge.
- Team Red is deployed on the continent and keeps tabs on the European contingent of the Vampire Nation. Red seeks to sabotage VN goals and promote chaos and disunity within the undead community as much as possible. It also occasionally assists Team White on an as-needed basis.
- Team Black recruits the majority of its agents from MI6 and the SAS. Black has several operatives active in the Warsaw Bloc and is charged with monitoring and infiltrating the supernatural programs of the GRU and the Red Directorate. They have been unusually successful in this endeavor – and thus Stonehenge has extensive knowledge of the Soviet Union’s spell-casters and magic forces (including the potentially damning blackmail that the Supreme Commissar of the Red Directorate is himself a sorcerer.) Black is the Stonehenge team most likely to carry out offensive missions behind enemy lines. There are urban legends within Stonehenge of Team Black squads liquidating Eastern Bloc sorcerers or even wiping out entire arcane research facilities behind the Iron Curtain. A dedicated Team Black squad is rumored to be deployed to the British Brigade Berlin with the mission to ferret out and kidnap Stasi and KGB double agents within the West Germany government and military.
- Team Purple is based in Canada with teams throughout North America. Its mission is to monitor magic-users in North America and take action if their activities are considered a risk to British interests. Stonehenge has been concerned since the 1940s about the lack of official US interest in magic and the potential for the American government to be compromised by sorcery. Team Jade is charged with countering inter-dimensional threats, be they from the fey, infernal realms or even more frightening places. Recruiting heavily from British clergy, academia and arcanists, Jade Team squads operates on a world-wide basis. In 1982, they exposed an extra-dimensional scouting force that had co-opted the leadership of Haiti and was preparing a beach-head (using an experimental power-plant as a portal) for a global invasion.
- Team Amber is the emergency backup force for Stonehenge operatives in the field. A ‘trouble squad’ from Team Amber is kept on ready alert around the clock for deployment anywhere in the world to support agency operations. Team Amber squads consists of battle seasoned, veteran operatives and are made up of a mix of veteran Stonehenge commandos armed with magic artifacts and conventional weaponry and the agency’s best spellcasters. In 1983, Amber was instrumental in defeating Oilliphéist, an ancient dragon of Irish antiquity, which Provisional Irish Republican Army spellcasters had summoned to attack Belfast. Team Amber also has the nickname "the Last Legion".
Leadership Since its’ founding, the core leadership of Stonehenge has been the surviving Knights of the Round Table and their male descendents. In the modern era, this group comprises the upper ranks of Stonehenge -- while the bureaucracy of mages, spies and field operatives who make up the rank and file of the organization are recruited from throughout British occult circles, intelligence service and the military. The agency is still in possession of Arthur’s sword. Throughout the history of the Stonehenge Brotherhood, new wielders of the blade have emerged periodically. This happened most recently in WW2 when a super-soldier wielding the ancient blade joined the British superteam the Crown Guard during WW2. Per the Stonehenge charter, when such a new wielder of Excalibur emerges, he (or she) is considered the de facto leader of the group.
The most recent wielder of Excalibur treated this as a purely ceremonial consideration and faithfully took his orders from the leader of Stonehenge (and often directly from Churchill as well.) Outside of the ruling council, the highest ranking officer in Stonehenge is Director Jared Burgess. A mystic specializing in druidic magic, Burgess was recruited into the agency as a field operative in the early 1940s and has worked his way up the ranks. Around the HQ, Burgess prefers the title Archmage, although this honorific is strictly a concession to the Director’s ego and is completely unofficial. Burgess is one of the most powerful mortal sorcerers on Earth (second only, possibly, to Supreme Commissar of the Red Directorate.) Burgess has fought and defeated power enemies from Scottish werewolves to the Thule Society to fey to gibbering otherworldly menaces that would drive lesser men stark raving insane; and he never lets anyone forget it. Despite his ego, Burgess is highly, almost obsessively, conscientious, and takes his responsibilities to Queen and Country incredibly seriously.
Headquarters The massive subterranean headquarters of Stonehenge is located beneath the Department of Security and Pensions Indexing at 55 Whitehall St (which is merely a cover for the supernatural agency). Stonehenge moved into a secret, abandoned Masonic lodge built in the Roman sewers under London in the mid 1800s. As the agency’s needs have grown, the HQ has expanded, sometimes co-opting the labyrinthine networks of ancient tunnels underneath London and other times building their own structures as their needs required. The Stonehenge complex contains the agency's command and control center, magic research and development facilities, its arsenal of magic artifacts and devices, barracks, holding cells configured for a variety of unusual occupants and specially constructed diplomatic facilities for dealing with the Fey Courts (or other extra dimensional beings).
It's wonderful. You did a great job.
ReplyDelete