MKULTRA and government warlocks

[admiralducksauce]

I'm guessing I'm not the only one here who has played Call of Duty Black Ops.  I had wikipedia'd a few things about paranormal government programs when I was setting up my DF campaign, but playing through the Black Ops single player made me realize I had been neglecting the idea of mundane government programs that could very easily be turned into supernatural threats.

Project Stargate was a remote viewing program, a way to gather intel on targets without the risks of losing assets or even risking discovery.  What if Project Stargate was still undermanned and underfunded but got results from a handful of thaumaturgists and ectomancers?  I admit that this program strikes me as more appropriate for an interesting single PC or NPC's background than to use as a threat.  See also the Men Who Stare At Goats, although I think that was a different program.  It's in my netflex queue but I haven't seen it yet.

MKULTRA and its various CIA sister programs has much more value as a threat, and it directly involves breaking the Laws of Magic.  Brainwashing, Manchurian Candidate stuff, mind control, it has all the hallmarks of warlockery but with the added bonus of the warlocks being insulated by the federal government.  Unless your campaign was actually set in the 60s, I suppose I'm actually talking about an as-yet-unknown descendant program of MKULTRA, since it was declassified in 1977.  Although it'd be interesting if what was declassifed was simply the mundane aspects to the program, and the supernatural stuff (that got results) was too valuable, and those files were destroyed by Helms in '73.

When it comes to mind control, the nice thing for villains is that you can manipulate your agents from behind a nice desk in an office at Langley.  I think it'd be hard for PCs to get thaumaturgical links back to the main villain if they only fight the brainwashed TREADSTONE/BLACKBRIAR-style agents of the villain.  It's also handy since it doesn't require a large contingent of warlocks in the government.  A handful of warlocks or even a single mage would likely be enough to account for whatever Renfielded Jason Bournes you want to use.

Anyways, I'm just throwing out some ideas here, maybe some of you will find them applicable, in which case awesome.

[Buscadera]

Jim has said something about the Library of Congress having a supernatural collections division, which I imagine to mean something in the vein of Warehouse 13 or something similar. There was a quickly defunct PbP on these boards that took place in DC which had the beginnings of some sinister government/supernatural organizations. That was actually the game where I played an agent of the Library of Congress.

[Belial666]

There are, of course, lots of problems with this kind of thing;

1) Wizards can track black magic once they know it exists.
2) The White Council is adamant in its stance against black magic. The off-with-your-head sort of adamant.
3) Magic can wreck technology. Especially the delicate electronics any espionage agency is bound to have. Even throwing around magic in the same building can fry computer memories for example. I don't think the non-magical CIA and FBI divisions would be happy with the supernatural ones operating out of the same buildings.
4) Black magic is bad. If uncontrolled, it can twist people to horrible caricatures of themselves and cause insanity. I don't think politicians, once they realize it can rape their minds, will allow it to be used anywhere near them.

[sinker]

1) Wizards can track black magic once they know it exists.

Wait, when did we determine this? Seems to me that a wizard can spot a warlock (or a victim of warlockery) with his sight. But the gatekeeper seems to be the only one who has exhibited the ability to tell when black magic is going down, and I'm thinking that's likely due to future knowledge. I mean in side jobs Luccio even tells Harry that they don't have a way of determining where or when black magic is being used.

[zerogain]

1) Wizards can track black magic once they know it exists.
<snip>
4) Black magic is bad. If uncontrolled, it can twist people to horrible caricatures of themselves and cause insanity. I don't think politicians, once they realize it can rape their minds, will allow it to be used anywhere near them.

Good points on 2 & 3 @Belial666, though for my own $.02 I usually see these secret government programs as operating without the consent and/or knowledge of the dupes who run for office.  Most of these secret conspiracy stories have at best one or two elected types maybe at the helm, or thinking they are, but the rest of it is run by shadow groups.

To counter the rest, within the game @admiralducksauce you can model what you're talking about by having the active agents not be magic users.  Have the controllers, the brainwashers and the like, be either psychics with an inherited "supernatural power" like Domination or perhaps other non-humans touched with the supernatural, and do not limit yourself to faeries.  Faerie is the closest realm to the world, not the only realm with access.  I think a Black Council agent would be more than happy to help something like this get going and protect it.

Against problem #1, I know that in one of the Side Jobs stories Lucio says as much that they don't a satellite network to track black magic, and that it's the warden's job to tell the WC about it, not the WC's job to tell the warden.  If the wardens had missed this program (possible, they're human after all) then it could still very much be active.

[Richard_Chilton]

A quick note on the tracing of black magic.

To quote from Love Hurts:

(click to show/hide)

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Captain Luccio said. “We don’t exactly have orbital satellites for detecting black magic.”
... (cutting a paragraph because it doesn't have anything to do with point and I don't want to type it in)

“Too bad we don’t, eh?” I asked. “Unofficially - is there anyone who might know anything?”

“The Gatekeeper, perhaps. He has a gift for sensing problem areas. But no one has seen him for weeks, which is hardly unusual. And frankly, Warden Dresden, you’re supposed to be the one giving us this kind of information.” Her voice was half teasing, half deadly serious. “What do you think is happening?”

In that scene Harry knows that black magic is happening.  He's seen the results.  The only problem is that he doesn't know where the spells were being cast or by who.  When he finally gets a general area he wanders around all day trying to sniff out things and nothing jumps out at him.

In short, minor acts of black magic are hard to trace.  That's probably why most warlocks are crazy by the time the council finds them - no one noticed when they did minor things (things like Molly did in Proven Guilty) so they did those minor things and kept escalating until they were making waves that were large enough to be noticed.  Kind of like no one noticing someone hurting small animals, then killing small animals, then following people, etc until he escalates to being a serial killer.

Richard

[Valarian]

The Conspiracy X game deals with this exact theme and could be a good place to pick up information on the MKULTRA and other conspiracies (e.g. Bluebook, Moondust, MJ-12). Bit more focussed on the UFO and X-Files type settings, but might still be good for ideas.

[admiralducksauce]

Oh, and the ConX reference reminded me - there's no reason the government wouldn't have its own X-Files-like underfunded black sheep version of CPD's Special Investigations.  The government doesn't only have to be bad guys, and I find having one hand not knowing where the other is sticking its thumb is way more realistic than some overarching conspiracy.    And it gives GMs a chance maybe to break out their Delta Green sourcebooks.

[Wyrdrune]

i am planning to have the goverment's "faust initiative" to press the player characters into service one or two times...

[admiralducksauce]

There are, of course, lots of problems with this kind of thing;

1) Wizards can track black magic once they know it exists.
2) The White Council is adamant in its stance against black magic. The off-with-your-head sort of adamant.
3) Magic can wreck technology. Especially the delicate electronics any espionage agency is bound to have. Even throwing around magic in the same building can fry computer memories for example. I don't think the non-magical CIA and FBI divisions would be happy with the supernatural ones operating out of the same buildings.
4) Black magic is bad. If uncontrolled, it can twist people to horrible caricatures of themselves and cause insanity. I don't think politicians, once they realize it can rape their minds, will allow it to be used anywhere near them.

Heh, those are only four problems, and problems that I believe can be overcome for the sake of using the idea in a game.

Other people have covered #1 pretty well I think.  All the other problems you point out make the game interesting.  In fact, combining #1 and #2 would be why the PCs have something to do, I'd imagine.  It'd probably play out similar to any black magic scenario, with the PCs encountering the aftermath and tracking down the warlocks, fighting their underlings along the way.  At the end, maybe the PCs are Wardens, or they call in the same.  It doesn't mean the MKULTRA/TREADSTONE bad guys are just going to lay their heads down on the block without a fight.  As for why the Wardens didn't take care of things before?  Maybe they couldn't find the source.  Maybe Wardens were killed by mortal agents once they got too close (think of Roark in the short story The Warrior).  Maybe politics play into it, or my favorite, maybe the local Warden has been compromised by the same subtle techniques.  The PCs can't use the local Warden, and in fact he may turn into an evil henchman.  Can the PCs save him, or defeat the warlock(s) before the Warden goes insane from the conflicting directives?  How do they get out from under the charges of killing a Warden should it come to that?

[sinker]

As for why the Wardens didn't take care of things before?  Maybe they couldn't find the source.  Maybe Wardens were killed by mortal agents once they got too close (think of Roark in the short story The Warrior).  Maybe politics play into it, or my favorite, maybe the local Warden has been compromised by the same subtle techniques.  The PCs can't use the local Warden, and in fact he may turn into an evil henchman.  Can the PCs save him, or defeat the warlock(s) before the Warden goes insane from the conflicting directives?  How do they get out from under the charges of killing a Warden should it come to that?

Ooh, maybe the warden is tired of always being politically neutral when he's really a patriot at heart. Maybe he's actively working with them of his own will because he wants to.

[admiralducksauce]

Ooh, maybe the warden is tired of always being politically neutral when he's really a patriot at heart. Maybe he's actively working with them of his own will because he wants to.

Right, and that same decision would put a good man (maybe not a good Warden, but you might say Harry's a terrible Warden too) at odds with the PCs.  Not only might he side with the villains due to his beliefs, he HAS to side with them or else his lack of Wardening could get him killed by the Council as well.  I like that a lot, it makes the decisions the PCs face harder.  Or maybe not, they might just kill everyone and be home in time for cornflakes but it muddies the situation in a suitable way IMO.

As for #3, magic hexing technology, well, I admit I forgot about that one.  Easily solved by putting the offending Big Bad in an offsite location where the inability to have state-of-the-art automated security means the PCs have a chance of infiltrating the secret location.  Dogs are good when you can't use video cameras everywhere. 

#4 is a nonissue IMO.  This stuff is so far removed from any politician that it won't matter.  Once they find out?  Who says they're going to find out, and why would they accept that it's black magic?  It's more palatable to believe that the CIA was slipping their target LSD for 7 years as some sort of experiment.

Oooh, LSD!  LSD plus Three-Eye!  What if the Big Bads' plan isn't even about directly mind-controlling targets?  They're making truth serums and geas-injectors for the CIA, which puts the warlocks one more step removed from their victims.

"They told me it was a training op, Senator."

[Bruce Coulson]

The government (or agencies within the government) always make for good opponents.

Magic works.  Magic can do things that technology can't.  The United States faces threats to its interests, and its citizens, from supernatural agencies.  Given these three parameters, there would be some government agency, somewhere, trying to make magic work for US interests.

Wizards, and the White Council, often seem to overlook that despite a mundane reaction to deny the impossible, there are enough people in the government that someone, somewhere, at some point, would have encountered a supernatural threat, survived it, accepted it...and had enough authority to do something about it.  A 'spook squad' that is distrusted...but gets results, so it gets funding.  And recruits.  And may have already encountered Wardens, and considers them a threat.

Here's a nasty suggestion.  The Black Council, although thoroughly ruthless, is acting as it does to gain control of the Council because they're aware of the government agency, and realize that sometime soon there's going to be a showdown between the Council and the Agency?  Yeah, they're playing hardball; but they're up against opponents far worse.  If they're not there to make the tough calls, then the Council goes under and it's full-out magickal war; mortals vs everyone else.  Given the stakes, sacrifices have to be made...

[sinker]

I also forgot that there's an easy solution to #3. Water-cooled systems. Running water disrupts magic.

[devonapple]

I also forgot that there's an easy solution to #3. Water-cooled systems. Running water disrupts magic.

You could have this powerful Director in an immense circular office enclosed by an aquarium wall. The doors would be tricky though.