[GAME] Surveil a Superspy Setting!

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Question 41
Does Directorate S have access to nuclear weapons?

Answer 41 - Nukes
[d6 roll: 2 sentences]
They have 5 10-kiloton warheads, which they fortunately liberated from a secret facility in Iran right before IAEA inspectors would have found them, thus avoiding a brutal war. There was a lot of debate about whether to retain them, destroy them or relinquish them, but the Council decided that having them might prove more useful than not at some point.

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 37
Who is the Directorate's man in Tehran? [d6: 3 sentences]

Answer 37
This must be talking about their "Man in Myanmar", who aided a rogue Canadian special forces unit in The Golden Triangle Fiasco.

Some members of the unit had been running drugs across the border while stationed in Chiang Rai before running afoul of a rival drug lord and also attracting the attention of Burmese military, and thus found themselves being hunted through the jungle by two different armed groups.

The agent, stationed under cover as a textile merchant in Yangoon, was able to locate and extract the team from their very sticky situation, then hid them in a monastery for 3 weeks, drilled them with just enough Burmese and Pali and Buddhist theology to pass casual questioning, then disguised them as monks to transport them back into Thailand.


Answer 23.5 - S9: Technical Intelligence and Operations Group
S9 is the Technical Intelligence and Operations Group, in charge of SIGINT, ELINT, cyberwarfare, drone, satellite and other forms of remote surveillance, and other activities that fall under the umbrella of relying on technological assets over human assets. While it would seem that a lot of their work can be done from the safety of their base, S9 agents, called Factors, are just as often found in the field, either co-opting surveillance assets, hacking into secure server farms, inserting equipment or seconded to other action units. Orders for the section are issued by the Management Committee, and they are aided in their duties by a supercomputer named Pascal.

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Currently open questions:

Question 23 [Name 7] - 4 of 7 done, plus one extra. Next is 23.6.
What are the 7 branches of Directorate S? (cf Ans 9) [d6: 4 sentences each]

Question 24
According to the Directorate's current intel, what is the next terrorist operation being planned by the Scarlet Hand? [d6: 5 sentences]

Question 32
Where is Agent 17 now? (And what's his new nom de guerre?) [d6: 3 sentences]

Question 33 [Name 3]
Name three major offices for the directorate. [2 sentences each]
(Do you mind if we make this a Name 3 qn?)

Question 34
Does the directorate conduct more operations in wealthy nations or in poor ones? [5 sentences]

Question 36
Name one occasion where the directorate clashed with a nation intelligence agency. [2 sentences]

Question 40
Describe the main headquarters in Singapore. [d6: 2 sentences]


New questions:

Question 42
Are agents of Directorate S enhanced in any way? How? [d6: 3 sentences]

Question 43
The fourth richest man in the world's ex-business partner is now the head of an international crime ring. What do we know about it? [d6: 2 sentences]

[benz72]

Not to get too weird about the numbering scheme but:

1. prime
2. natural
3. integer
4. rational
5. real
6. complex
7. quaternion

is an increasingly inclusive arrangement of number types with 7 distinct sets

alternatively, something like this might make sense

• Odds, Field work

  primes are super field agents

• Evens, office work
• rationals, mundane stuff (not associated with fringe science)
• irrationals (experimental tech (a la Q), conspiracy theoraticians, MIB-guys, whatever crazieness)
• complex, support services (accounting, legal, training)
• numbered agents with a negative real part are off the books/hidden from public

[benz72]

In answer to question 23

S4 is the community relations directorate. They provide aliases, cover stories, and contacts as well as covering up operations and cleaning messes. Each of the bands of operatives works together to help harmonize the operations of the local organization with the overall tone of the society or region the operations occur within to prevent discord from interfering with objectives. Their central operations are conducted by the Maestro (and his pit crew) from the Orchestra Pit in London.

[Question 44] How well funded are operations? Do operatives get a wide selection of gear or do they keep bits from old missions because you never know when you'll get another X.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Answer 41 - Nukes
Question 33 [Name 3]
Name three major offices for the directorate. [2 sentences each]
(Do you mind if we make this a Name 3 qn?)

Question 36
Name one occasion where the directorate clashed with a nation intelligence agency. [2 sentences]

A33.1
Directorate S used to have an office in Baltimore, Maryland, that they used to quietly assist the US intelligence community. Baltimore was selected for it's port facility and being close (but not too close) to DC.

A36
The Baltimore Office was shutdown after an operation disrupting connections between Solutions and a DIA black program went awry. Either Major Combs discovered who was behind the interference and ordered a torch job before he was done in, or someone in the intelligence community has decided Directorate S is a threat.


Question 45
What was Major Combs planning with Solutions? Who has taken over his conspiracy? [4 Sentences]

[ericthered]

A33.2
The headquarters for European operations is just outside of Vienna in a spacious and beautiful compound. The Vienna site is famous for being the most prone to "scuffles" from outside invaders, and a number of subtle security upgrades have been added over the years.

Question 46
When Directorate S wishes to communicate with a national leader, how do they do it?

[1 sentence]

[Daigoro]

Answer 23.7 - Section S2: Strategy, Policy & Analysis
Despite the hefty title of the Strategic Foresight, Policy Development and Multivariant Threat Analysis Bureau, named as its founder apparently wanted to show off the section's importance, everyone just calls it S2, or SP&A if they're feeling talkative.

This is the directorate's think-tank, full of eggheads, boffins, pol-sci majors, stats-heads, chaos theorists, former colonels, ex-field agents and data analysis gurus who ultimately decide what missions to task the other branches of the directorate with.

S2 houses a multitude of offices and sub-branches, such as the economic warfare office, the organised crime division, the weapons anti-proliferation unit, corporate affairs, regional desks and so on.

The section is headquartered at Platform 7 under the command of the Station Master, and they have access to the petaflop supercomputers Nash, Bayes and Fermat to run wargames, crack crypto and tease out deep network connections.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by benz72

Not to get too weird about the numbering scheme but:

You've put more thought into that than I have. As suggested above, I was more making word references, or... ahem... "puns", as ericthered prefers to call them.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 24
According to the Directorate's current intel, what is the next terrorist operation being planned by the Scarlet Hand? [d6: 5 sentences]

They are planning the assassination of a prominent member of the Hungarian National Assembly. Their choice of target is a little unclear and a little confusing, as the two possible targets the Intel points to both seem to be the sort who may be compromised rather than removed. The operation will likely be public and bloody, but made to look like some other sort of incident.


Question 47
Are there operations or bases in antartica?

This is the directorate's think-tank, full of eggheads, boffins, pol-sci majors, stats-heads, chaos theorists, former colonels, ex-field agents and data analysis gurus who ultimately decide what missions to task the other branches of the directorate with.

So these are the irrationals?

[TGLS]

Question 46
When Directorate S wishes to communicate with a national leader, how do they do it?

They send the message through Section SA: Communications, who handles the details (i.e. phone numbers, locations, language, where to hide it, calligraphy, etc.)

Answer 23.8 - Section SA: Communications
Communications is practically an intelligence organization in of itself, with lots of organizational redundancy. This is partly by design, as it is the most public facing side of the Directorate firewalling it off from the rest of the Directorate was considered a good move. Communications has gone through a bit of expansion recently, as cyberwarfare and communications monitoring becomes more of a focus. Communications is unusual in that their operatives are codenamed instead of codenumbered and headquartered out of the One Raffles Place.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by benz72

[Question 44] How well funded are operations? Do operatives get a wide selection of gear or do they keep bits from old missions because you never know when you'll get another X.

Answer 44 - Budget and Funding
[d6: 6 sentences!]
This is private sector, baby!

Well, it's registered as an NGO, but with enough backing from industry and from off-the-book intelligence budgets of a few of the wealthiest nations to give it an endowment in the realm of twelve figures.

That means that, in theory, every agent and every op gets the material and financial backing they need to fulfil their mission. That was part of the Directorate's initial remit - to avoid the budgetary constraints that national intelligence agencies might suffer.

There is therefore a sizable inventory available for most circumstances, but with a high level of turnover due to regular "innovation" trends. A consequence of this is that agents who have a favourite piece of gear might report it lost or destroyed to avoid having to return it, due to the logistics department having a tight rein on what sensitive equipment is in the field.

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Departmental Summary

• Committee of Central Control
• Section S2 - Strategy, Policy & Analysis
• Section S3 - Office for Internal Investigation
• Section S4 - Community Relations Directorate
• Section S9 - Technical Intelligence and Operations Group
• Section S10 - Prime Activities Command
• Section S12 - The Rational Intelligence Group
• Section SA - Communications
• Section -10 - The Imaginary Intelligence Group (unlisted)

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This leads to three questions:
Question 48
What are the missing holes in the org chart?

Question 49 [d6: 3 sentences each]
Which sections (if any in particular) are responsible for...?
a) Logistics and regular equipment supply
b) R&D for experimental or high-tech equipment
c) Transport
[ETA:]
d) Medicine
e) Executive Protection
f) Anything I've missed

Question 50 [Name 5] [d6: 6 sentences each]
What are 5 notable sub-branches, offices, units or working groups working within the above-named sections? (I'm thinking of things like an anti-terrorism unit or a cartels office.)

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Originally Posted by ericthered

So these are the irrationals?

I guess that'd work, though not exactly following benz72's formulation. There's just as much mundane research as experimental or conspiracy craziness that they cover. I was thinking of them as either Finites or Integers, myself.