Chapter 1
She fell in to the desk chair and looked around, the old scratched desk looked like it had survived all three world wars and it most likely had. Folders, book, bits of paper and post-its covered 90% of its surface, there was a mug in a corner that looked like it was ready to declare independence. Someone had tacked to the wall a number of old newspaper articles and a copy of Requiscat.
Intake duty was not for the faint of heart or easily bored. The job was full of long periods of quiet followed by the arrival of mucky, bloody colleagues bearing esoteric horrors and traumatised survivors. She quietly cursed the usual intake crew with disgustingly good health as she wiggled in the chair. She poked a finger at the resident desk mug but decided that one of the disposable ones from the kitchen might improve her life expectancy. The desk phone rang. She looked longing towards the hallway but signed and answered “Intake”
“Verify Alpha Echo Romeo Romero” an earthy baritone came down the line. She punched the code in the computer, and the system promptly let her informed it was an active team calling in, which she had already figured out upon hearing Lewis’ dulcet tones.
“Lewis, you are verified. What have you got?” she tapped a pen against the rings on her left hand while she waited for a reply; then she heard the surprise in his voice “That you Em? Who’d you piss off to get desk duty?” she tried to put a smile in to her voice, “All I can say Lewis, is file all your invoices and don’t talk back to the accountants. You bringing me something nice and stinky?”
“Bringing in an oozing almanac which has an unfortunate tendency to immolate you if you look at it funny”
“Is everyone all present and correct? Bringing any plus ones?”
“It’s a good thing we weren’t wearing our Sunday best, but otherwise fine. No plus ones, the idiot mage playing silly buggers took himself out but that was it. Rebecca says you owe her a drink”
“Second round’s on her. Bring it in through the service entry and proceed to …” she tapped a few more commands in to the computer “…. Undercroft level 3, we’ll have an archives crew standing by”
She hung up and tapped a few more commands in to the computer to alert the unit assigned to tag things of the incoming object and went straight back to staring in to space.
She was not used to being cooped up; her usual post was also in the field, however whenever one was out of favour with the high and mighty of the Outfit you tended to find yourself benched, filling any unpleasant desk duty which could be found. It would do her well in future to ignore that arrogant little shit David from Operational Oversight- or at least where her bosses could see anyway. (Everyone knew Operational Oversight was where you dumped people who should be out in the field anyways)
The Outfit was the first, last and only organisation she was likely to work for. Raised by her Irish catholic dad and English protestant mum she was taught to be sober, sensible and have a complete lack of faith in the supernatural. This had served her well until a school camp in which all the girls had decided to hold a séance. The field unit that busted in the door has been able to get most of the zombies back in the ground, and the clean-up crew had been able to put most of the girls back together, but she didn’t get to go back to school after that, or home for that matter. She didn’t exactly enlist, but it was the kind of organization where if you worked for them, they didn’t have to kill you for your own good. Only the non-human races were given the option of actually signing up for service. They had waited a few years before they showed her the pictures of her ‘funeral’; it was a kindness she supposed. An 11 year old wouldn’t have understood why it was safer for her parents to thing she was dead. When it became obvious that she had more magic than anyone knew what to do with and no fine motor control (read: couldn’t light only a candle, instead setting the whole house on fire) a strong old mage spelled her brain to only release a certain amount of magic at a time so she could gain control, and they had put her to work.
When it became obvious that she had more magic than anyone knew what to do with and no fine motor control (read: couldn’t light only a candle, instead setting the whole house on fire) a strong old mage spelled her brain to only release a certain amount of magic at a time so she could gain control, and they had put her to work.
In 1066 amidst a plague of the mythic and magical, reality was splintering…the world was going to be torn apart. This kind of behaviour had been going on for years but found an epicentre in an alliance of druids, Aes Sidhe and an international cavalcade of gods (yes, more than one) deciding that Britain would make a great magical homeland. King William (yes, The Bastard) decided enough was enough, had conquered England, and fought to get magic under control. He then sent out men throughout the world, with a message, come to Normandy or William the Bastard would live up to his name and unleash his power on the world. The King was a Null, the most powerful anyone had seen, if he concentrated magic stopped working. All magic users would be completely defenceless, but it was a death sentence for any magical creature. Come to the table, save the world from too much magic, or he would unleash his own power, and all magic would be snuffed out. Everyone came to the table… almost. Even most of the gods came for the meet, and agreed to limit themselves, by binding their power in line with the Accords; their miracles would now be mostly minor.
William forged a coalition across with the magical races and creatures and turned the tide, stabilising the world, all agreed to a curtailing of wild power, all except for the few ‘wild’ gods. Given how close the world came to disaster they called it the Domesday Accords.
The king dedicated his personal war band to maintain the balance and create a record of the real; cataloguing the world in accordance with the Accords agreed to by all races and creatures in to a book…you know where I am going with this.
Not all the material in the Domesday Book made it to the hands of the public, especially the chapters on the real monsters under the bed, but King William’s Guard or the Outfit was created. It had many incarnations, war bands and watchmen, before it came to finally reside as a part of the British Armed Services, the Crown creating the office of the First Witch Lord to sit on the Defence Council.
Emily had seen the First Witch Lord after she had first been conscripted into the outfit. Even as an 11 year old she knew power when she saw it. It was reassuring to know the biggest, baddest power she’d seen out there seemed to work for the Crown. Not that the Second Witch Lord was much less scary but the head of her own division knew when to pull out the whiskey after a bad day at the office.
They were organised around a military structure, using military ranks. The First Witch Lord was the ultimate leader of the outfit. The Second Lord ran overall field operations, while the Third Lord looked after the Silence, the intelligence arm (read: spies) and investigative (read: criminals) division. The Fourth Lord looked after the archives, the place where all the nasty things that could hurt people, R&D including weapons development. The Fifth Witch Lord was the Logistics Command – including personnel, training and medical.
When it came to missions they were dedicated and effective, but with everything else that their people had lived through… Let’s just say conscription took its toll on military discipline. The bulk of their recruits did office work, stayed out of the line of fire, and the ones that didn’t drank a lot, acted out or took other things to help keep the frightening things they now knew existed at bay.
Borrowing from previous incarnations as watchmen, the outfit placed active teams around key locations; they each had their patch that they kept an eye on. The Outfit basically took care of anything that went bump in the night or made people say “eeewww its all sticky…” before the screaming started. They were the shield for the Real. The Real, included humans and anything supernatural that behaved itself in keeping with the Accords. They bagged, tagged and archived, and the collected research and archives of the most secret and supernatural parts of the world rested not in some secret bunker or esoteric catacombs but in grimy sublevels of the oldest army barrack there was. The catacombs in the Undercroft were, let’s say extensive.
Emily checked in the computer, saw there were no field teams close to bringing some magical menace in for show and tell and decided to go rummage in the kitchenette next to the office for a clean mug and some coffee. She heard rustling and poked her head around the door. It looked like the next shift was in, which meant she no longer had time for coffee and needed to get her arse to her next scheduled act of penance.
Looking for the Barracks? You’re very unlikely to find it. Head down Tudor Street, and you’ll hit a boom gate under a lovely little arch; but you won’t feel the need to go through, only feel like you may have seen some beautiful historic gardens and moved on. The Barristers who think they work there actually work a block over, but the warding is very convincing. The gardens have been run around by recruits since the Outfit received the lands in perpetuity from the Crown. It’s located conveniently close to parliament, or maybe parliament is conveniently close to it? If you do find it without an invitation, they will probably give you a job offer you cannot refuse.
Kitty Powers 