Superseeds
Projects and programs
Much like diplomatic and intelligence services nowadays, which have desks devoted to their main areas of interests, Section W divided the many monster types into projects whose job was to study and fully understand how to produce and exploit that creature.After a particular monster-soldier creation process was mastered, they were integrated into service and the project was changed into a program that kept on administering the resources under its jurisdiction.
Project COMEBACK
The first and easiest (though not necessarily easy) ritual in which Section W became proficient was the one for animating the dead, i.e., creating zombies. These were of the mindless, flesh-craving variety and though having a certain tactical usefulness, presented a few problems.Control was one of them. Although zombies can be directed to go somewhere, they aren't able to do anything but attack once they get there. They can't discriminate between targets or perform any complex operations beyond grabbing their target and biting.
Also, despite being reasonably easy to dispatch (burning or damaging the brain by bullet, blade or blunt attack), zombies can reproduce independently by killing their targets. On one hand, a single zombie could eventually give rise to an army. On the other, this spawning could get out of control, forcing Section W to terminate the operation with extreme prejudice.
Finally, raising a dead operative only brought back his or her body. All his skills, knowledge and memories were lost.
Thus, zombies were only useful as terror weapons or for running interference with enemy troops; and even then with all the caveats explained above. Project COMEBACK was about to be shut down when one of its researchers found an obscure ritual buried deep into the Munster Papers.
It was an alternative raising ritual, much more complex and long. It resulted in a revenant, a sort of better zombie. Revenants had all the advantages of regular zombies ñ virtual indestructibility, invisibility to heat sensors, etc. ñ and none of the problems, except for the physical vulnerabilities.
Best of all, a revenant retains the intellectual power and memories of his previous life. For all intents and purposes, it is the same person, only now in an undead body. Plus, revenants do not hunger for human flesh.
Deemed a success, Project COMEBACK became a program in 1953 and is used to bring back valuable assets whose body is still in a reasonably good state, i.e., not blown apart by a bomb. This includes other personnel than military types. Rumor has that there are a few ex-presidents, as well as brilliant deceased scientists, running around in secret bunkers.
After revival, revenant field agents are fit with metal plates inside the skull to protect their weak spot. They also wear armor when necessary.
Revenants usually act as infantry and commando units, especially when hazardous conditions might be expected, like those created by chemical weapons and radioactivity. Revenants can take a lot of punishment and remain functional.
Revenants can also be brought back more than once, but since the wear and tear on their bodies tends to progress rapidly, it's not common to see revenants that have been brought back more than twice or three times.
Project PATCHWORK (see below) has collaborated with COMEBACK to try and find a solution to this problem, but so far the two "technologiesî seem to be incompatible.
Informally, revenants have numbers added to their names to show how many times they have been raised. So, if agent Herb West has been brought back twice, he's called Herb 3.0.
Project REDWINE
Vampires as black ops agents were the wet dream of Section W and those that followed their efforts to weaponize monsters. They are superstrong, fast, can change shapes (one of their forms is mist, for crying out loud) and control minds. In summary, they are perfect.Of course, there would be problems. The first was finding one to study. Vampires proved an elusive bunch and the first capture came only in 1955. It was a young specimen, a Hungarian man named Miklós. Most of the early knowledge about vampires came from Miklós' dissection.
The many weaknesses of the vampires proved problematic for field work, especially not being able to enter a house uninvited. Also, superstitious knowledge remained alive in Eastern Europe, making the main foes of the vampires skilled in repelling them.
Section W researchers realized another thing: turning into a vampire changed a person's psyche, making him extremely independent, resentful of authority and emotionally-detached. Worse: these became more intense as the vampire got older.
The changes could be detected even in brand new vampires, like the ones Section W convinced Miklós to create. Despite this psychological abnormality, the "houseî vamps were employed in tentative missions, which ended when one of the vampires snapped and killed or turned his whole unit in Prague in 1959. It took Section W three months to finally clean that mess.
All vampire agents were destroyed or imprisoned to function as guinea pigs. Section W issued a directive stating that vampires should be used only as informants and even then, only if they were 100 years old or younger. Older vampires should be terminated on sight, if possible.
Having vampires as field agents was deemed too dangerous, so REDWINE tried to find another way to exploit their abilities. They eventually zeroed in on vampire blood, or vlood. Through Miklós they already knew that drinking a vampire's blood created a psychic link between the undead and the drinker.
The vampire could track the drinker through this link and, if he concentrated, catch images and sounds through the drinker's senses. Although having a supernatural tracking switchboard was considered an advantage, it was deemed too dangerous if the vampire escaped.
But vlood had another effect: if injected into the bloodstream, it gave the user super-human abilities. That was the jackpot for REDWINE. By receiving 20 cc of vlood, a person stopped aging, gained the ability to bench press half a ton, and could move three times as fast as a normal human.
All these effects last for a week, when another shot of vlood is required. These effects are not dependent on the recipient ñ a skinny teenage girl and a 200-pound Navy Seal will both be able to bench press half a ton after a shot of vlood.
Vampire blood is highly addictive and continuous use will make the person develop the same psychological abnormalities as vampires, only more intense. So dhampyres (Section W's name for vlood-infused agents) are put on a rotation system of one week on, two weeks off vlood.
The side effects and Section W's limited supply of vampires makes vlood an obscenely controlled substance. Still, there are rumors that certain politicians and highly influential businessman have access to it, because even if they follow the rotation, they can still slow their aging by half.
Dhampyres are used mainly in special operations. There are whole squads of Navy Seals and Army Rangers that are vlood-powered, but the substance is also issued to regular agents not part of these outfits. All agents in the dhampyr track receive extensive training to learn how to deal with their superabilities.
REDWINE became a program in 1965.
Project ALPHADOG
Killing machine. That's how ALPHADOG researchers described the werewolf they captured in 1949 after his first full moon. It was clear this arcanotype had a tremendous potential for warfare, but unless they were able to control the werewolf's rage, they would only be good for terror tactics.ALPHADOG spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of research to solve that problem. They learned that by using pentagrams and heavy-duty rituals, they could prevent transformation during the three nights of full moon or induce one the rest of the month, but the werewolf had to stay inside the pentagram for the effect to continue.
Humans infected (ëcursed' was considered too negative for morale) with lycanthropy didn't display any remarkable abilities that could be exploited either. They had an enhanced sense of smell and heightened healing abilities, but nothing that rivaled the regenerative capacity of the wolf form.
Given all that, Section W archived ALPHADOG in 1960 and diverted its resources to other projects, especially REDWINE, which at the time was beginning its experiments with vlood. Nine years would pass before werewolves were again considered as viable monster-soldier options.
In 1969, while watching the live broadcast of the Moon lading, a former ALPHADOG researcher named Russell Jackson had a sudden inspiration. He contacted his superior in the project and before the year had ended ALPHADOG was up and running again.
Jackson knew the main problem with the ritualistic solution was that they needed the pentagram and the massive ritual just to replicate the magical signal of the full moon. However, the Apollo mission brought back samples of lunar rock and Jackson believed that these could provide the energy to power non-full moon transformations.
With the Moon rocks providing the juice, all that would be required would be a small ritual to channel the energy when the user demanded it. After procuring a sample from Nasa and conducting experiments with differently sized rocks, ALPHADOG arrived at a prototype.
The researchers set a lunar pebble half an inch in diameter onto a metallic wristband engraved with mystical runes that contained the channeling ritual. The artifact, when worn by a lycanthrope, allows the user to trigger the change at any time, day or night.
The pebble does not contain enough energy to power a full transformation into the massive pony-sized wolf that is the regular form of a werewolf. As planned, it only allows a halfway change into a humanoid wolf that is still super-humanly strong and armed with fangs and claws, but still retains a human mind, although more feral and somewhat prone to berserker episodes.
ëWolfers', as the wristbands are called, do not run out of energy, although there's a recharge period of 8 hours between transformations (2 hours if the wolfer is left under the light of a full moon). The longest change a wolfer has been able to power lasted 2 hours, 17 minutes and 32 seconds. After that time, the werewolf reverted automatically to human form.
Werewolves are master scouts and trackers, but also excel at close combat. The combination of super-strength, natural weaponry, regeneration and ferocity allows them to succeed even when severely outnumbered. Section W maximizes this by issuing Kevlar vests to all lycanthropes, so as to increase their protection against silver bullets.
Individuals bitten by a werewolf are infected by lycanthropy. If they survive the combat, they are arrested and offered a chance to work for Section W. Those that refuse are terminated. During full moon nights, lycanthropes are kept in armored, sealed vaults engraved with the blocking ritual.
The change heals all damage suffered by the departing form, even permanent damage, like spinal injury. Rumor says that some VIPs that provide special services to Section W accept the curse infection in order to get rid of things like crippling injuries and terminal diseases.
After the successful tests of the Russell solution (he received a medal for it, in secret, of course), ALPHADOG became a program in 1975.
That's it. In the next installment, we'll have the other two main monster-soldiers, a brief talk about other arcanotypes and, if we have space, hunters and seeds.
I hope you liked it. Feel free to share any comments, suggestion and criticisms on the forum.
