Table of Contents
The Commission
How did the Commission work?
The Commission hierarchy involves 6 ranks, from Q-6 at the bottom to Q-1 at the top. These form a chain of command. Each Commission agent reports to an agent 1 rank above them. Above all of the agents, and outside of the normal chain of command, are the 3 Supreme Commissioners. Some very rough equivalences with OC military ranks might be:
| Q-1 | General |
| Q-2 | Colonel |
| Q-3 | Major |
| Q-4 | Captain |
| Q-5 | Sergeant |
| Q-6 | Private |
The Commission is organised into offices. Each office is associated with a particular location, with the exception of the offices of the Supreme Commissioners. So, each office is designated with an abbreviation of its location and a number. Note that the numbering often skips numbers to make it more difficult for the Commission’s enemies to estimate how many agents there are in a location.
The most important offices with which players interacted were:
| Bx9 (Bexgate 9 | The office of Diver and Shaper. The most present office until downtime 5. The main representatives of the “optimist” faction in game. |
| Bx11 (Bexgate 11) | The office of Angler. The representative of the “pessimist” faction until downtime 4. |
| Ws2 (Wesmarch 2) | The office of Crowner and Shriver. A solidly pessimist office. One of the main offices which took charge of the Commission in Bexgate after the explosion in downtime 4. |
| 1 | The office of Supreme Commissioner Conviction. Prior to downtime 5, it was office 1c. Benediction had 1b, Vindication 1v. |
Every Commission agent has a codename. This codename is an English agent noun ending in -er or -or. Codenames are tied to a particular office and rank. When agents are promoted, or when they are moved, their codename changes. As such, the same codenames are reused in different locations. FOID interesting detail about the history of “Angler”.
The agents which appeared in uptime are:
| Diver | Bx9 | Q-4 | The main agent with which PCs interacted in the first half of the game. One of the “optimists”. An old acquaintance of Adalli’s, made Q-4 shortly before Adalli left the Commission. Shot during the coup. | Played by Paddy |
| Angler | Bx11 | Q-4 | The other agent which appeared in uptimes in the first half of the game. Acted as the leader of the pessimists in Bexgate until her death. Was previously Agent Sealer, a Q-5 who reported to Adalli before his removal from the Commission. Was right beside the bomb in the HQ as it went off, died instantly. | Played by Konstantine |
| Shriver | Ws2 | Q-5 | Unusually capable, wily agent. Used by Ws2 to try to entrap parishioners. Succeeded with Amnity and Oleander, failed with Lucy and Rena. Survived, is living her best life outside of the Commission. | Played by Konstantine |
| Chiseler | - | Q-6 | First appeared as a (very) side character in one of Rena’s turnsheets. Ascended to uptime character. Was one of the guards of the imprisoned PCs in uptime 6. Survived. | Played by Andrew |
| Supreme Commissioner Conviction | 1 | Supreme Commissioner | Fauxdanish leader of the pessimist faction. Leader of the coup. Stripped of his rank in downtime 7 and almost immediately murdered. | Played by Paddy |
| Smolter / River Adams | Bx6 | Q-4 | First appeared in downtime 7. Wanted to cash out what power they had while they still had it. | Played by Paddy |
Where did the Commission’s information come from?
The two main sources of information the Commission drew on were the work of their informants and the transcripts of reports directly from God. God was able to perceive the creation of all semantic content – that is, to read all that is written, hear all that is said, and see all that is signed. If something of interest is thereby perceived, God relayed this information to the Commission by one of their angels. There are many angels who are engaged more-or-less constantly with the Commission to relay this information. Their words are transcribed by members of the Scribe Department typing away at their stenographs. It’s dead-end drudgery with little opportunity for advancement and is the graveyard of many a frustrated agent’s career.
What were the Commission doing? AKA How did they manage to blow that lead?
The Commission first knew something was wrong when parishioners stumbled out of St. Renagi’s talking about a blind spot – that the new pastor, Jamie Holton, had said some explicitly heretical things but that the Commission had failed to respond to.
Bexgate wasn’t just any town under the Commission’s watch. It was meant to be one of the best-protected towns in Wesmarch – indeed, in the world – due to the sensitivity of the research conducted in the Special Institutes. For decades, an oversized staff of Commission agents had ensured that no demon had come near the town (or so they thought). If Heaven couldn’t see in, the Commission’s best guess was that a Hex of protection had been laid upon the church. That much was correct. They also guessed, quite wishfully, that it had been the work of witches rather than a demon at the scene. That was incorrect. They had allowed two demons to slip into the town and lodge themselves where they couldn’t be dislodged (actually more).
Whatever it was, the Bexgate Commission needed to act. They couldn’t drag the offenders out of the church, whoever they were. They were highly reluctant to stop parishioners attending either. This was partly due to some confusion about whether they even could stop parishioners attending their church, or whether this would be a violation of the miracle of sanctuary, and partly due to Diver’s belief that the more faithful eyes in the room, watching whatever was happening in the church, the better. The best they could do was restrict further entry into the town, ramp up the Commission staff numbers to its previously full size, and try to work out what was going on.
Then things got worse.
In week 2, the pilgrims revealed themselves as the demons Pfmsltr and Thrl and declared that their aim was to kill God. Later that week, three Commission agents responded to reports of an unauthorised entry to the fenlands. They were promptly slaughtered before they were able to so much as report that they were under attack. Yet worse, the demon which slaughtered them – and there was no doubt that it must have been a demon – didn’t fit the profile of the two confirmed to be in the church. That meant that there was a third demon, and it was on the loose.
Walker, the Q-3 nominally in charge of Bexgate, was incompetent and indecisive. Most of the initial response fell instead to Diver, and as the crisis escalated the normal chain of command was increasingly bypassed so that he commanded the majority of the Commission response in Bexgate. The exception came from office 11, headed by Agent Angler. Angler thought that Diver had made a mess of the situation, and that things would only get worse under him. In particular, she thought that the parishioners were more likely to turn to witchcraft than he thought, that Adalli Nafaro was less trustworthy than he thought, and that the threat to God Themselves was genuine (Diver dismissed it as a fabrication). This criticism was compounded when it emerged that Morgan Lex, one of Diver’s few informants inside St. Renagi’s, was in fact a witch cooperating with the demons in St. Renagi’s.
Angler concluded that stronger action was needed. Even if she was unable to stop the events in St. Renagi’s directly, the Commission needed to a) send a message to intimidate the parishioners into cooperating with the Commission and b) clear out Bexgate of any potential witches who could be tempted into working with the demons or with witches among the parishioners. This meant killing a lot of people. The Commission is the ultimate judge of whether a crime amounts to a shooting offence. Office 11 was able to re-evaluate existing files to find that a lot of people could just about be shot. So they started doing so.
It was also at this time that the Supreme Commissioners got wind of what was happening in Bexgate. The divide between Diver and Angler was rapidly absorbed into a massive factional divide within the Commission between the optimists and the pessimists. This divide only deepened as rumours about St. Renagi’s began to spread far from Bexgate. Of course, they became very mangled in the transmission. Rather than that the conjunction of a miracle of sanctuary and a hex of protection can protect against Heaven and the Commission, people heard that the miracle of sanctuary is enough. As such, sanctuaries throughout Wesmarch began to be occupied as the news spread. Protestors used the miracle of sanctuary to demand that the Commission reform, stop killing so many people, and give more power to civilian government. This was pretty embarrassing for the Commission, but even more so for the protestors as Heaven just struck them all dead every time. Turns out the hex of protection was a very important part of what St. Renagi’s had going on!
Here’s a rough indication of the differences associated with each faction:
| Optimists | Pessimists |
|---|---|
| In general, the Commission can rely upon the faithful to identify and report witchcraft and heresy. Only some people are particularly liable to become witches. | Demons can manipulate virtually anyone into becoming a witch, given enough time. As such, the Commission can only rely upon itself and Heaven. |
| Most of the parishioners of St Renagi’s are likely still faithful. | Most of the parishioners of St Renagi’s are likely already witches, and the rest are on a path to becoming witches. |
| We can stop the Bexgate demons by keeping most of the parishioners on our side, blackmailing as many as we can, and killing those who are too far gone to the demons’ side. The demons require parishioners to leave the church and do their bidding. If the parishioners won’t do that, then the demons will be forced to leave the church to do it themselves. Their evil nature means that they can’t just wait in the church indefinitely – if leaving the church is the only way they can do evil, then they will. | We can stop the Bexgate demons by killing every witch in St Renagi’s – i.e. soon, all of the parishioners. We don’t know how to free St Renagi. It may be a long time before we can work out how, if ever. As such, we should entirely depopulate Bexgate, bombard what remains to rubble, and periodically salt the fenlands with caesium-137 so that no living thing shall pass within twenty kilometres of St Renagi’s. |
| The protestors have a point. The Commission can afford to rely more on ordinary people and less on repression. In any case, the level of oppression which is now needed to sustain the modern Commission is unsustainable – especially now that information about the miracle of sanctuary and the protests is spreading. It would take an unprecedented terror campaign to rein in the protests. | Let the bodies hit the floor. |
| We should undertake some moderate reforms to maintain the power of the Commission. | Anyone who wants reform is a heretic and a traitor. |
| The Bexgate demons don’t really have a chance of killing God. That’s just an outrageous lie they’re using to cover whatever their true intentions are. | The ritual is probably real. Stopping the demons is the most important objective possible. |
| Whatever items the demons need – and maybe they don’t need any, the lie of the ritual being just a cover – they probably haven’t gotten that many, as few parishioners would do their bidding. | The demons probably have everything or almost everything they need. Time is running short. |
The division came to a head after two incidents occurred in short succession. The first occurred when Supreme Commissioner Vindication proposed a new plan – the Vindication Plan – which would have reformed the Commission. It would have made the Commission moderately less oppressive, and it was thereby hoped that it could win back the fervent support of the population and protect its power. Supreme Commissioner Conviction, by contrast, viewed the Vindication Plan as a surrender document. In his view and in the view of the other pessimists, the Vindication Plan would have made it impossible to safeguard the population against the spread of heresy and witchcraft. Maybe it would be enough to pull St. Renagi’s back from the brink, in the short term, but it would have spelled the end of the Commission in the longer term and thereby guaranteed the death of God.
The second inciting incident was the bombing of the Bexgate Commission HQ. The bombing itself killed most of the agents operating in Bexgate, including Angler. At that point, the pessimists concluded that the situation was spiralling out of control and that they were running out of time.
Supreme Commissioners Vindication and Benediction were killed in the first wave of the coup. Marie Dankovska protested the dissolution of Bexgate’s Government, and so had to be shot as well. Every significant member of the optimists was shot, including Agent Diver. SCC travelled to Bexgate to oversee the response to the crisis personally.
Then things really got out of hand.
The rift occurred, forcing the Commission to oversee the attempted depopulation of half the world. If they managed to get past the Bexgate Crisis, SCC had to grimly conclude, order could only be maintained by a degree of invasive and violent control over every aspect of life hitherto unseen. Alas.
And then God died, and the Commission fell apart. Many left. Many were dragged out. The ones who remained were too few to maintain order almost anywhere.