Control Points
Trench: It took us a long time to learn how to stabilize the Control Points, the leylines, the meridians of the Oldest House. Darling found a way to soothe this beast. We discovered we must cleanse Control Points of all interference. It’s my duty as the Director, like Northmoor before me. I couldn’t manage it in my own house, at my home. I’ll damn well do it here. Without the Control Points, the Oldest House would swallow us alive. We’d be sealed inside an endless labyrinth, and no one would hear our screams. If an enemy ever managed to corrupt the Control Points, it’d be over fast, spreading like a cancer, leaping over the firebreaks like a crown fire. They are the weak point. Darling’s right about that. He’s wrong about everything else. Dangerously wrong. Suspiciously wrong. Has he been compromised?
Hotline
Trench: I can hear the Hotline ringing in my dreams, constantly ringing. Ringing so loud I can’t hear the voice I’m straining to understand. Why don’t I pick up? It’s a secure line of communication with the Board. They would tell me what I need to know. Do I fear their answers? Would they have warned me of this threat? I didn’t see it coming, the traitor in our midst, a conspiracy plotted right behind me. I can’t trust anyone. I must assume all my intel has been manipulated. The Hotline is the only channel I can trust. Bind it, control it: the rule and the ritual with Objects of Power. It can’t be tampered with. The lifeline to the Astral Plane and the Board. I must seek guidance. Soon. I’ll rest first. I’m so tired, always tired now. But I must reach the Hotline. I think I’m under attack, an attack of dementia, exhaustion. It’s a brain cloud, making me regret. The Hotline. I must reach the Hotline.
Management Team
Trench: A director needs a team. My management team. These people know the secrets of the Bureau as well as I do, some even better. They have proven themselves. Darling, Tommasi, Salvador, Marshall. Marshall especially, my Head of Operations. She sees right through me. She knows I don’t like relying on people. The only person you should fail is yourself. But things change when you become Director.
Oceanview Motel
Trench: The Oceanview Motel and Casino is a familiar friend to me. I stayed in countless motels like it while investigating A.W.E’s across the country, back in my field agent days. Those roadside motels all bleed together like a dream, same and not the same, anywhere and nowhere. The Oceanview operates on dream-logic, and the light-switch cord leaks out to be found in the most unexpected places, and sometimes, successfully encouraged to appear and act as a convenient lock to keep out those not trained in dreamscape navigation. Even Bureau veterans can only find one key in the Motel, the key that opens the door marked with the inverted Black Pyramid. The rest, the many other doors, are still mysteries to us. We’re all merely guests there. Even the Board. Sometimes I need to visit, just to breathe easier for a while. It beats the numb sterile apartment I spend my night in, insulated from everything but myself. I guess that’s where the whisky comes in.
The Coming Storm
Trench: Something’s coming, the whispers growing louder: the worst winter storm in Bureau history. A retribution for my sins, our sins. This threat could destroy the Bureau, everything I’ve built. Destroy me. A web’s spun, turning this place against me. I catch glimpses of it in the corner of my eye. It’s just out of reach, elusive. It’s clever. A perverse game of hide and seek. Is this part of an attack, obfuscating the facts, dimming my eyes? It’s hard to tell. I need answers. I haven’t heard back from Darling. I fear for my friend, my closest ally. I think we made a terrible mistake all those years ago. The thing he studies is putting us all in danger. It’s my duty as Director to keep the Bureau safe. It’ll be difficult. What’s done can’t be undone. There’s no easy fix. Magical thinking is a requirement for survival. Pain and suffering are mandatory. To change things you have to break yourself. I don’t know if I have the strength. I’m old and weak. I’m afraid. I can see my hand trembling. I’m losing control.
Northmoor
Trench: Northmoor was Director before me. I never wanted his job. I never wanted power. I purposefully avoided it, didn’t trust it, didn’t want to rely on it. Northmoor was all about power. A man like an explosion, hungry for authority, for order, for more, until it was too much. I had to find a solution in the end. Contain the situation. Northmoor never liked me, but he went along with it, to his credit. He didn’t really have a choice. I suppose, at the end of the day, a Director’s most basic duty is to keep the lights on. Here’s to you, Northmoor. There were no Prime Candidates waiting in the wings. But I was there. Had been the whole time, keeping my head down, working my ass off. I had nothing to lose. I picked up the gun almost on a dare.
Internal Lockdown
Trench: So much is expected from the Director. The responsibility. The privilege. To steer the Bureau into dangerous waters and safely out again. To inspire and lead its people, to protect them. The Board is there to advise you, but they want things in return. You hold all this in your old, trembling hands. I had to lose everything before I could see the Bureau is the Director’s life. There’s no room for anything else. If the forces contained here escaped, we’d be dragged back into an age of superstition. Terror. Death… assuming you think we ever really left that behind. Any emergency, any major containment breach, and the lockdown goes into effect. I implemented this security measure in my first years as Director. I knew we were vulnerable. I’d personally seen the cost of sloppiness. I made sure the internal lockdown could only be lifted by a Directorial Override, only to be used when the Director is confident the sectors are safe to be opened again. This way, the Director is a last line of defense. And if I screw up, it’s on me and me alone.
Ashtray Maze
Trench: I’m averse to using Objects of Power. I don’t want to lean on things I ultimately can’t trust. But the ashtray and the cigarette, smoking there forever, have their uses. The Ashtray Maze they conjure is an impossibly changing labyrinth that no one but the binder and those the binder invites, can ever pass through. The things we hid in Dimensional Research, the things Darling studies, the danger and the risk involved, call for every measure of security and protection I could bring to the table. The maze, hands down, is our strongest lock. I gave Darling and his chosen crew license to pass through the maze. Lately, I’ve started to think I should revoke that license.
Panopticon
Trench: The Containment Sector, the Panopticon, is home to the Altered Items we find and contain. It is a maximum security prison. It’s a vault for the most valuable treasures on Earth. It’s a powder-keg big enough to blow this world to dust. A temple, a place of worship filled with idols of angry gods. It’s all of these and none of them. It’s something more profound, unbelievable, unknowable. Something worse. Altered Items. We’ve found many. They appear mundane, but nothing could be further from the truth. They are all powerful, dangerous. They press heavy on our minds, because that’s their nature. They’ve been altered because we can’t stop thinking about them. We put them on altars because they’re used to being worshiped. This keeps them calm. We contain them, but they don’t want to be controlled. We study them to discover what makes them tick. If this place were ever breached, it would be chaos of biblical proportions.
Prime Candidates
Trench: After Northmoor stepped down, I doubled every effort to find new Prime Candidates. There was no one. No one but me. That wasn’t good enough. I pushed hard. I never wanted the Bureau to end up in that situation again. The Bureau needs a Director, always. When my time reaches an end, I want more options on the table. P1 through P5 were all false leads, dead ends and disappointments. Then P6, Dylan Faden. He fell into our arms. No parents. They’re gone, casualties of an AWE. The boy has exceptional talent. The Oldest House will be his home. We’ll build him from the ground up. He’ll be trained and taken care of. Darling can be in charge of this project. I can’t. I’ll stay away. I will not fail the boy like I failed my own family, my daughter and my wife. We weren’t careful enough back then. Something came home with me. I took work home. My Susanna got sick. When I realized my mistake, I wanted to bring her here, for Darling to do what he could. Kate flat out refused. Civilian doctors treated our daughter, but they didn’t have a clue. She died. Kate left me. Same old story. That was a long time ago. The Bureau is all I have now. And the Prime Candidates are our future. There are two. P6 and P7. We’re spoiled for choice.
Slidescape-36
Trench: We used the Slide Projector. I led the expeditions into Slidescape-36. They told me not to go, the Director should not put himself in danger. I told them to fuck off. I’ve seen action before, and I had to witness this myself. To find some meaning in all of this. I couldn’t sit on my ass, alone with my thoughts, my memories. Anything but that. Those who survived were deeply affected by what we found there, by what Darling brought back… It changed everything. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen. But I did find my meaning in that desert. A sound, like a needle, drilling in, cutting through the containment suit, reverberating in the base of my skull, my whole being. Darling said it was nothing. But he was wrong. It’s been there ever since. Growing into a certainty, into an understanding of what’s at stake here, what kind of a threat we’re facing and what must be done to stop it.
Endless Grind
Trench: My reflection trapped in the darkness of the coffee I nurse. The rain turns the lights of the city into a mosaic on the windows. The day’s paper lists all the things wrong in the world. The list grows longer by the day. The difference between the morning and the night: coffee, whiskey. No other difference. The alarm goes off at 5 a.m. It feels like I just closed my eyes. It’s dark. I sit up on the bed in the gloom. I get up. I shower. The driver waits for me downstairs, takes me to the Oldest House. An old man stares at me in the car window. It’s raining. It’s dark. Late at night, he brings me back here. It’s not a home, it’s a room where I sleep in, waking up just as tired as I was before going to bed. Endless grind.