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Old 01-10-2019, 07:53 AM   #53
Icelander
 
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Default The Supernatural and the International Situation and National Reponses

Because of the Facade (Pyramid #3/97, 'The Mask of Humanity' by Christopher R. Rice, p. 13-20) and the way that magic and other supernatural phenomena tends to be extremely hard to replicate under controlled, laboratory conditions, quite a lot of statesmen, politicians and bureaucrats still refuse to believe in the supernatural. After all, there is no conclusive evidence. Without very high Will or relevant Advantages, even encountering the supernatural is no guarantee that someone will believe in it.

This means that the official position of governments is that magic and the supernatural doesn't exist. However, with the increasing pace of supernatural murders, disappearances and large-scale violence that may have supernatural causes, there will be people within the government of every state who have some idea that something unprecedented in recorded history is occurring. This means that many countries that do not have an official position on the supernatural will have a secret response of some sort.

In the case of the Vatican, their secret response seems to be backed up at the highest levels and amounts to official, albeit secret, policy. The 'Shadow Court of HM Queen Elizabeth II' is, however, not an organ of the official UK government, but their comprehensive infiltration of that government and its various secret institutions results in them operating much like a unified, effective 'Deep State' within the UK. However, these two are exceptions, rather than the rule.

Much more common is a situation where various groups of friends, confidants and close co-workers within individual agencies or institutions in a country come to accept the existence of the supernatural, but are either unable or unwilling to inform their superiors or anyone outside their particular department. Any response is uncoordinated and performed as the personal actions of a few bureaucrats or other public servants, not a part of any unified secret organisation. As time passes, such organisations may learn about other similar ones and either ally with them, work against them or ignore them.

In the US, for example, it seems that elected officials, as a rule, neither believe in the supernatural nor have concrete positions on it. Individual Senators, Governors or even Presidential Candidates may privately believe in one or more supernatural event, but saying so in public is still stigmatized enough so that no credible candidate for national office has done so. There are, however, several very religious movements that are pushing candidates that run on a religious revival platform, complete with 'taking up arms against the tangible manifestations of Evil in the world' dog whistles for anyone who believes in monsters.

As far as can be determined, there is no unified US government conspiracy to cover up the supernatural or to interact with it in any way. There are, however, powerful factions inside Homeland Security, Justice and the military that are aware of the occult and whose goals may or may not coincide, but who do not trust one another well enough to work well together.

What about other countries?

Which of them have some kind of effective, more-or-less unified secret response to the supernatural?

Which have a balkanized mess of various secret agencies and conspiracies within different factions of their government and public service working at cross purposes (looking at you, Pakistan)?

How does being effectively a dictatorship alter the equation, in the case of countries like Russia, Turkey and Venezuela?

What might have happened in France and Germany? What is the official (if secret) position of the EU?

What about Brazil, what with the Vile Vortex on their doorstep?

And what about any countries that might not even have occurred to me, but some forumite is deeply interested in? Is anyone struck by what would have happened in their favorite (or most hated) countries if the world we know started to experience secret supernatural events in the 1980s and that they were becoming more important with time, in the 2010s having started to change world history in significant ways?
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Last edited by Icelander; 01-10-2019 at 07:57 AM.
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