"It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more."
- Anne Frank
Humanity as a species have always found a way to remain ignorant. To most of them, there was nothing that existed outside of their views and if anything or anyone dared to refute their narrow mindedness then they would instinctively be urged towards conflict. In truth, beyond the veil of reality ever since the Age of Myths had ended during what the Middle Ages, supernatural beings and individuals, threatened by the encroaching spirits of reason and science, hid themselves from the eyes of mundane humanity while continuing their existence in covert ways. This was the birth of the Masquerade, while some supernatural beings resigned themselves from the mortal plane in truth the status quo remained the same.
The Dead Apostles continued to feast on humans, siring new heirs that lurked and prowled during the night. The stringent werewolves still stalked and gathered within the forests on the rise of a full moon, witches swarmed across the skies, blissfully laying down curses unto does that were less fortunate. Magic cabals and mage associations continued their practices undisturbed. Other beings, like faeries, elves, nymphs, dreads, dwarves and other spirits, preferred to remain dormant and completely secluded from human society.
The supernatural world still continued to influence the mundane one, in a barely perceptible way. Of course, not every revolution in the history of man had been secretly engineered by ancient wizards, and not every famous monarch was in cohorts with supernatural beings, but the forces of occult still tried to model human history to some degree.
The Great War was of course absolutely their doing. The supernatural communities of Europe, most especially those of Britain, threatened by the rising power of the German Empire strove to shatter the nascent nation and uphold the balance of power across the continent. As expected such an attempt soon grew out of their control, spiraling into years of gruesome warfare that saw the forces of the supernatural world crash into the mundane with devastating effects. It seemed like agitating the bloody squabbles of the noblemen of Austria-Hungary and Imperial Germany against the Triple Entente wasn't such an ingenious idea after all. The supernatural communities all across the world were forced into conflict against one another, slaughtering themselves in masses and droves for such a pointless war.
The war took an unexpectedly darker turn when a German cabal called The Gremlins unsuccessfully attempted to conduct a vast ritual to summon an ancient entity. This resulted in more devastating thaumaturgical battles that damaged baseline reality, altered the landscape significantly, and created many anomalies currently in containment. This would instigate the beginning of the Veil Protocol, which was enforced by many paranormal organizations across the world. The wars end on the 11th of November 1918 saw the supernatural retreat from the squabbles of human politics which would cause a massive backlash from supernatural creatures and thaumaturges in response to the growth of magic-controlling organizations.
No one, not even them, could have foreseen the consequences of the result of that conflict.
In the space of a few decades Germany, humiliated and stripped of its Imperial garbs, started its supreme revenge against her victors. Powered by the ambitious visions of an Austrian war vet turned politician, the German nation had adopted the National Socialist ideology, an explicitly racialist and anti-Bolshevik creed owing much to its Italian-born sister, Fascism.
Months of compromises and diplomacy on the part of Europe's foremost great powers, Britain and France, accomplished nothing. Germany swallowed Austria first and Czechoslovakia second, while building up her war machine and finding like-minded allies in Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan.
As this happened, the supernatural world itself came to a split: Schicksal, the regulating authority of Germany's magical community, revealed the details of its craft, powerful and ancient Honkai-powered technologies to the ruling cadre of the Third Reich. The numerous supernatural races of the country soon followed suit, their motivation varied: some were in it for the power, some for blood, and some, and many of them at that, had simply been raptured into the nationalistic Aryan ideal of purity, which was hardly extraneous to many members of the supernatural world. The most prominent leaders and individuals in Germany's supernatural underground joined the ranks of what came to be called the Ahnenerbe Obskurakorps
The Masquerade had been broken.
Powered by occult forces and Honkai technology, the Nazi War Machine began a continent-wide campaign of conquest in September 1939. Poland was the first to fall, as the German Wunderwaffe shocked the world with its gigantic tanks, walking war machines and exotic magical weaponry. Meanwhile, the armies of Imperial Japan, similarly aided by occult forces and divine meddling of the Shinto Pantheon continued their unmatched conquest of eastern Asia with renewed velocity.
After Poland, it was the time for Denmark and Norway to fall, with Sweden falling prey to a Nazi-sympathizing government. The Germans plowed through the Ardennes, sidestepping the Maginot line and bringing havoc to Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and their main target, France. For the first time in the war, the supernatural population of an invaded country tried to participate in the defense effort, in some way or another. They didn't succeed, but the fall of France taught a harsh but valuable lesson to Great Britain and the other members of the multinational coalition which came to be called the Allies: they needed to take advantage of whatever the Nazis were using to boost their war machine to such dramatic levels.
The Clock Tower, the branch and headquarters of the Mage Association first achieved contact with the British government in 1940, just after the narrow escape of the British Expeditionary Force in Dunkerque. Sending the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley as their representative under the blessing of Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, one of the prestigious founders of the organization, the Mage Association managed to open a stable diplomatic channel with newly elected British PM Winston Churchill. After informing the ignorant prime minister about the greater supernatural world at large, the association would proceed to put emphasis on the need for Britain and other Allied powers to start taking advantage of their own occult arsenal in order to fight back against the Germans.
The results of this historic meeting would prove to be vital for the United Kingdom, with the aid of the Clock Tower, Atlas and other paranormal organizations, Great Britain would establish the Allied Occult Initiative in coalition with the infamous Holy Order of Knight Templars and start recruiting volunteers from all members of the supernatural world to join their ranks. the ancient knightly order known as the Round Table resurfaced, supplying the state with its members, skilled hand-to-hand warriors using enchanted weaponry and plate armor. Many supernatural individuals were also recruited from other nations of the Empire.
This proved to be a great boon to Britain as when the Axis finally attempted an aerial invasion of the Isles through the use of massive Zeppellin transport craft, it found itself repelled by an unexpectedly prepared Britain and her arsenal of state-of-the-art aircraft, Witch squadrons, wyvern riding knights and counter-magic offensives. Operation Seeloewe, the Nazi plan to swiftly end any opposition to their reign in Europe, had failed.
Even after the British triumph, the war continued to stall. By 1941, Britain found herself locked into battle with Germany and Italy for the control of her territories in Africa, still suffering from unending German bombing blitzes on her major cities. Meanwhile, on the other side of Europe, the uneasy secret non-belligerence pact between Nazi Germany and the USSR came to a swift end after the former invaded Soviet land as a part of what came to be called Operation Barbarossa.
The USSR, a communist dictatorship led by a Georgian-born follower of the late Vladimir Lenin, found itself put at a great disadvantage by Germany's occult-powered military. In the preceding decades, the materialistic Bolshevik governments of the USSR had purged or massively mutilated the majority of its supernatural population through state enforced genocides and law mandated eugenics, fearing their hostility to the revolutionary ideals and attachment to old, reactionary traditions.
Even then, the Soviets had since found a completely party-compliant way to solve their minor supply of supernatural beings: Espers. Russian researcher Semion Davidovich Kirlian discovered in the 30s that all material objects possessed an aura which could be manipulated by some humans with a particular set of invisible aura also known as AIM fields, permitting them to access the power of reading minds, moving objects with their thought and many other psionic feats, without having to resort to magic.
The USSR used their psionics research and other bizzarre, scientific weaponry to face the German invasion, leading to long and bloody battles. Even then, the dire straits the Soviet Union found itself in forced Stalin to collaborate with Britain and Free France's Allied Occult Initiative programs, pooling their own talent in the shared Allied assets.
The USA refused to officially enter the war on the side of the allies, supplying its large arsenal, technological and magical, to the war effort but keeping to their relatively persistent isolationist policies. Other than the array of American supernatural individuals and creatures recruited into Allied Occult Initiative, the US also revealed the product of a series of secret pre-war experiments: The Gear Project the genetically engineered supersoldiers, men of unbreakable will and immense strength who volunteered to have their physical abilities boosted to superhuman levels using classified methods.
By the end of 1941, the war had finally reached its top momentum. The numerous Allied Occult Initiative branches, composed by mundane and supernatural individuals of every nationality, creed and even gender and ethnicity possible regularly undertook dangerous mission deep in Axis territory, facing the dangerous spawn of the forces of occult and of perverted Nazi science.
You, a fellow brave soldier belong to one of these divisions, fighting a devastating war that is all so beyond your comprehension.
Choose Your Origin:
Article: [] The Retired Mercenary: I had long since abandoned life as a paid soldier for years. I've fought through the hellish Great War and now I find myself caught in another one of Europe's nonsensical squabbles. When will these idiots leave me alone in peace? The scale of warfare that is being deployed is beyond anything in my comprehension. Is this whole war even worth all these efforts? Either way none of this is my concern, just because I've abandoned my violent ways doesn't mean that I wouldn't contribute towards the war effort. As a newly instated medic it's my duty to heal and provide aid to all soldiers of the Allied Occult Initiative wounded in battle. Despite all of this everyone within the organization finds the need to keep on pressuring me to take arms. The answer is of course always no.
Bonus to: Medicine Skills and Melee Skills
Malus to: Empathy Skills and Speech Skills
Social Advantage: +1 with The wounded or sickly
Social Disadvantage: -1 with stupid and reckless people.-Origin Perk: Boundless Passion: That's what you are. A blind optimist. Even though your effort to relinquish combat will always amount to nothing, you still grasp with the hope that it will not be so. Dying in battle has long since been proven by you to be meaningless, there was truly no point in senseless conflict. The only way forward was through peace, peace that you cannot enforce. This cannot be changed, it is your destiny. The sensible thing to do should have been to live the rest of your life in solitude and harmony but the world fundamentally wishes to not see that be made true and so you fight, despite your rejections. Run from it, hide from it, fight it. It is truly inevitable. Your place is on the battlefield. Effects: Adds a +15 to Medicine Skills. Lessens the threshold for both Melee and Medicine Checks. Increases synchronisation between Tactics and Medicine Checks during battle or combat. Disadvantages: Lessens effectiveness of Social Skills all around. You have a very miniscule, barely shaped psyche and as such, you are most likely to fall prey to numerous mental manipulative influences.
[] The Unknown Soldier: I didn't have a choice in this. The odds were stacked against me! Did you expect me to lay down my life and accept such a death?! That's impossible! I tried my best, I really did. But it wasn't enough, that's all there is to it so stop saying I abandoned them, that I ran away like a coward leaving my comrades to die. It was either me or them and I chose to save myself…is that so wrong? I did not have any other way. But still, no matter how much I try to reassure myself, why does this feeling still linger? Why do I feel so guilty…it wasn't my fault right? No matter what I won't forgive myself, I'll leave on with the burden of the lives that have been lost.
Bonus to: Exploration and Trickery Skills
Malus to: Empathy and Melee Skills
Social Advantage: +1 with Mutineers and Disillusioned Individuals.
Social Disadvantage: -1 with People of Moral Standards.-Origin Perk: The Last Stand: When you're told what to do you listen. When given orders you follow, when told to kill you kill when told to die you die. A mindless drone you are. Living with strings attached. A truly meaningless existence even at all this you still manage to fail, to call you worthless would be an understatement, in truth you are a complete coward, one that managed to survive even when you were destined to die. Better men had bled out and died, given their lives for their cause. Truly it seems like it would be better if you died already, damn co*ckroach.
Effect: Increase Firearm Cap to 150. When commanded by a superior, temporarily add a +15 to all Perception Checks and reduce a quarter of the penalty endured after a check failure. Upon an Encounter with a stronger opponent. Double Deception: Stealth to disengage from any possible conflict.
Disadvantage: Mental Resistance is lessened, making it easier to be manipulated. You're unable to reject orders or missions given by your superior. You are much more likely to sacrifice your Social Links for a chance at survival.
[] The Chosen Survivor: Why is the world so cruel? What did we do to deserve such a brutal punishment? Me and my family were forced to rot and starve within those shifty concentration camps as we awaited out inevitable fate. The first to be slaughtered was my father, then my mother and the rest of my siblings. They were all murdered just because of their blood…I was the only one to escape, pushing through the cracks during one of the many failed attempts to revolt against our German occupiers. Even after escaping the brutal genocide, everything just seemed to leave a butter taste in my mind. I wanted revenge and the only way to satiate my thirst for blood was to claw out and kill Hitler with my very own hands. Only then will my family be avenged. You're most likely to fail and die trying because of that you've solemnly sworn to take down as many Nazi scum before you kick the bucket.
Bonus to: Empathy Skills and Melee Skills
Malus to: Education Skills and Speech Skills
Social Advantage: +1 with Children and Civilians.
Social Disadvantage: -1 with People of Authority and Nice People.-Origin Perk: Vengeance: Your blood simmers with rage, a craving for blood you've never once felt before. The weight of the lives that have been lost lingers on your shoulders, this hatred threatens to consume you. Your path is one of death and destruction. Are you truly ready to endure such a nightmare? If yes then keep on moving forward, towards your inevitable death. At the end of the day you're bound to accomplish nothing and that passes you off even more. Effect: All Combat Checks are Multiplied in effectiveness by 1.5x. Injuries that would otherwise require medical attention, may stabilize and heal on their own. Resistance to certain Toxins and Drugs will be greatly increased. Mental Resistance is massively increased. Your attacks deal the maximum amount of damage possible. Melee Cap automatically increases to 150. Disadvantage: You trust no one. Because of this its hard to establish bonds with regular people. You're grossly malnourished and as so cannot do any physical activities that might be too straining. You start with absolutely nothing on yourself or your name and most Skills take much more effort to train.
