The Ministry Of Paranormal Affairs
Victorian Times
The Ministry of
Paranormal Affairs
Vitals
Leader: Sir Nigel Worthington
Symbol: a badge featuring an hourglass and Ministry engravement
Positions: strongly Material, moderately Manipulative, slightly Virtuous, moderately Autocratic,, strongly Lawful.
Soft Restrictions: No vampires, werewolves, demonborn, angelborn, sex outside of marriage, murderers
Known Members: Sir Nigel Worthington?, Anne Young?, Kitty Gone, Ambrose Ives? and Edgar.
Summary
Working to help regulate the supernatural world by establishing and enforcing its own bylaws in an attempt to prevent Haven from descending into chaos, the Ministry of Paranormal Affairs is a group of assorted humans and supernaturals who are otherwise dedicated to helping the leadership find its way back to their own time.
With two years of modern life under their belt, and a host of investigations to guide their way, the remaining members of the group and their erstwhile leader have traveled to Haven, Mass. in 2017, looking for promised answers in Haven, the last waystation between worlds. As they devote themselves to the search for clues to piece together the puzzle of mechanism or magic that has landed them in the here and now, they have also taken up their former mantle of investigators and paragons of justice against supernatural wrongdoers. While most are fairly relentless in their desire to protect humanity from the worst of these villains, the group shies often from outright murder and tends to take fairly novel, and sometimes unethical approaches, in trying to rehabilitate or place such miscreants under their direct control in an effort to conscript them for their own ends.
Due to their Victorian sensibilities, many of the members of the Ministry favor a distinctly conservative outlook on demeanor and dress,holding propriety to a standard often unseen in modern culture. Not only does this influence the ways they express themselves, but they often find their views and standards out of sync with modern mores, communications compounded by the ingrained sexism, homophobia and jingoist racism found in their social ideologies. Even now, with the remaining handful of members, women are rarely ever admitted amongst the ranks of the Ministry unless they have supernatural abilities and talents.
Though the Ministry may seem primarily reactive on the surface, they have a great interest in the acquisition of resources in mundane and arcane/otherworldly varieties, both in an effort to aid their main goal of seeking information about the magical device that propelled them to this time and in actively dismantling the control of rogue and villainous paranormal groups that seek to erode the natural civil order of polite society.
While they may condemn others for nefarious deeds, the Ministry is sometimes known to offer more of a carte blanche to their allies, savoir faire demanding that they overlook some deviance from their own moral codes in political effort.
Manifesto
While willing to accept that evil exists in the world, no matter even the actions of their dauntless crew, the Ministry seeks to bring a semblance of true order to the chaos caused by cold (and occasionally hot) war between paranormal groups and to help right the deleterious wrongs affected by rogue supernatural elements. Due to the bulk of their current members hailing from a more archaic time in social history, they tend to employ punitive, often puritan, measures against evildoers when they aren't seeking novel ways of bending the supernatural miscreants to their cause.
Territories controlled by the Ministry tend to have less overt crime and violence amongst their supernatural denizens, and where the oft-brutal displays of supernatural savagery fail against them, cunning and social adeptness often succeed, turning the Victorian obsessions with propriety and decorum in and against itself, and the often single-minded group sometimes finds itself controlled by the manipulations of larger and darker forces behind the scenes, or preoccupied with the distractions of red herrings in their occult investigations.
Ministry operatives within these territories tend to be cynical and mistrustful, particularly of those whose appearance and behavior places them at odds with the social mores the group holds dear, though most agents do attempt to react with restrained and cultured hostility as opposed to violent aggression.
Ministry Misdemeanors:
- Theft - Twice the cost of the stolen item paid to the owner, no fewer than $100, if the item is returned a fine of $50 to be paid to the owner as well. 1 Day in the Clinic per every $100 owed if failed to pay fine.
- Tresspassing - $100+$100 for every wallbroken paid to the owner 2 Days in the Clinic if failed to pay fine.
- Disturbing the Peace - Warning, then a fine levied for $100 , 1 Day in the Clinic if failed to pay fine
- Assault - $100 per wound level paid to the victim, 1 Day in the Clinic per every $100 owed if failed to pay fine
- Grand Theft Auto - The cost of the vehicle to be paid to the owner, plus $100. If the car is returned, $100 to the owner. 1 Day in the Clinic per every $1000 owed if failed to pay fine.
- Lewd Conduct - Defined here by the touching of your own or someone else's genitals, buttocks, or breasts in public places within the town's limits, warning, then a fine levied for $20 dollars, which increases by $10 every time thereafter, 1 Day in the Clinic per every $100 owed if failed to pay fine.
- Intimidation - Defined here by threatening consequences if one does not do as the perpetrator wants them to. Warning, then a fine levied for $100 to be paid to the victim, 1 Day in the Clinic if failed to pay fine. Criminal charges made by the Ministry do not count as Intimidation.
- Breaking a Venetian Oath - This misdemeanor applies to Oaths that do not result in crimes against humanity or sanity listed below. The breach must be proven and the Oath must have been recorded, either electronically or via a written contract with a Ministry witness. The arresting Ministry agent reviews the evidence and decides. A fine is $100 dollars is levied, with extra costs applied if a misdemeanor was a consequence as listed here. The victim is to be paid three times over any resources they have lost as a result. 1 Day in the Clinic per every $100 owed if failed to pay fine.
Ministry Felonies:
Making the Arrest: A warrant is required to arrest a perpetrator for the following crimes, to be signed by the Minister and the leader of one society in the Ministry's alliance. After the arrest, the perpetrator spends 3 days in the Clinic. The perpetrator may select anyone from their own Alliance to act as a representative who can gather evidence to defend them. The arresting officer must gather evidence within the 3 days and then the perpetrator is afforded a trial. Three people from a neutral Alliance may volunteer as the jury and are to review the evidence presented and decide whether the perpetrator is guilty or innocent. They will serve an indefinite amount of time in the Clinic, during which time the Ministry will also attempt rehabilitation or conscription.
- Murder - This includes the accidential slayings made by vampires and werewolves.
- Mass Mind Control - This includes Condition, Mind Control, Dominance, Brainwash, Haunt and Dreambelief schemes.
- Grand Larceny - This includes Rob, Steal, and Heist schemes. The perpetrator is also fined $100 dollars and is to pay back twice the value of whatever was stolen, $500 dollars to each Society in the case of Heists.
- Terrorism - This includes Blackout and Disruption schemes.
- Illegal Witchcraft - This means the RevokeSanctuary, Storm, Flood, Hurricane, and Malady schemes.
- Illegal Mind Control - This includes locked imprints, long-lasting imprints, and memory modification that wasn't used to maintain the Venetian Treaty, as well as any mind control whatsoever used on Ministry agents.
- Sexual Assault - This is defined by the Ministry as the forcible and violent touching of one's genitals, buttocks, or breasts, or the forcible and violent application of the perpetrator's genitals, buttocks, teeth, tongue or breasts.
- Torture - This is defined by the Ministry as the unneccessary physical treatment of kidnapping victims (which counts as an Assault charge regardless), and includes any humiliations forced upon them after the victim's capture.
- Turning - This is defined by vampires, werewolves and resurrectionists creating vampires, werewolves and wights. Turning someone to a vampire to save their life is not a crime in the eyes of the Ministry, but anyone turned is immediately detained to be rehabilitated or conscripted by the Ministry.
Executions:
- Living Nightmares - The Ministry does not abide the existence of these individuals and treat them as they would treat monsters in the forest. The Ministry counts aiding and abetting these creatures as a felony.
- Ministry Murderers - Anyone who kills a Ministry agent may be killed by a Ministry agent without punishment, though this is not certain death, as the Ministry may attempt to rehabilitate or conscript them.
Missions
- Try and investigate evil supernaturals, preferably RPing with others rather than using the order commands, except in the case of high tier characters with research articles.
- Interrogate evil supernaturals captured and in the clinic, using old fashioned forms of torture without truly trying to get information or break them OOCly , but rather to thematically show the difference in ideals and justice from the 19th Century.
- Engage evil characters with antagonism designed to make them feel their actions and misdeeds have profound effects on society without detracting from theme.
Good antagonism would include:
Finding a villain's significant other and capturing or interrogating them, using abilities or rituals to attempt to apprehend them, inviting them to social functions and quietly engaging them in debates in quieter areas, telling them of their crimes when they're arrested, talking up the Ministry's power and influence.
Bad antagonism would include:
Giving villains demeaning or mocking nicknames, doing the same thing over and over again to be annoying, anonymous harassment, insulting their power/evil/scariness.
Your goal should be to roleplay the Ministry as an organization that sees itself as the law enforcement agency of the paranormal world, and yourself as one of its officers or one of the rehabilitated or forcibly conscripted evils pressganged into service.
- Recognize that NPCs are people too and that threats towards NPCs shouldn't be ignored or trivialized.
- Capture enemies and attempt to pressgang them into service to the Ministry or to serve time in the Clinic where the Ministry will try to rehabilitate them, OOCly the Ministry should not try to keep prisoners for more than a week, allowing their minions or companions to free them.
- Try and capture evil characters in operations.
Roles
The Repentant are former villains and wretches who are trying to 'redeem' themselves by serving the Ministry and mankind in theory, though the bulk of them are essentially prisoners or slaves of the Ministry who have been pressganged into service by various means.
Agents are proper members of the society, given law enforcement 'ranks' as a way to establish a hierarchal pecking order. Agents typically spend their time investigating and enforcing their ideals as they see fit, though they must, by necessity, inform a ranking member when their adventures look to lead them into mounting danger.
The Minister of Paranormal Affairs is the clear head of the Ministry, and is to be obeyed in all requests, unless suspected to be corrupted by supernatural or outside forces. Even then, the Minister is to be detained until the influence is removed and reinstated at the earliest possible opportunity.
History
Founded beneath the auspices of Britannia during the reign of Queen Victoria as a minor office in its own right, Her Majestry's royal Ministry of Paranormal Affairs was known to not only investigate disturbances and crimes with a suspected supernatural orientation, but to enforce the will of Victoria's laws upon the more lawless of such miscreants in London, often in league with other branches of the Royal government and the local Bobbies. Their work, in London especially, reinforced many ties to the Order of the 1890's, and MOPA often found itself at odds with Hand operatives of the same era.
Having reached a peak of influence not too long after Jack the Ripper's murders famously rocked Whitechapel, MOPA seemingly vanished overnight, with many of its key members never found again, leaving the group as a mysterious footnote in the passage of paranormal history in Europe
At least until a handful of them turned up again in 2015 London, very much alive.
Sir Nigel Worthington III and his remaining subordinates have many tales of adventure and derring-do that they share with others, but none so confounding as the exploration of the catacombs beneath the now ruined site of an old Anglican church near Hampstead Heath, suspected to be a den of iniquity where a former priest gone demi-demon had been abducting locals to engage in sadistic, blood-based rituals. While they never found the demon, it was in one of the bloody, bone-filled chambers that they found a strange hourglass and subsequently, themselves in modern London.
The church and its ruinous catacombs have long since been demolished, along with any trace of its former occupant. Their former headquarters was discovered to have been transormed into a block mall of apartment buildings and high-rent boutiques. With the Ministry of Paranormal Affair's fancy titles and glory days reduced to a sentence or two in dusty history books covering more wakeful topics, they have relegated themselves into trying to assimilate into modern life as best they can, though old habits are difficult to break, even while they continue to discharge the tasks given to them by their former Royal superior and search for a way back to a time that has long since passed.