[UA] Homebrew Cabal: Memnon

[David Tormsen]

All right, so I have a campaign I'm preparing for, but one of the
players has read the whole book. And he's the type to forget a bunch,
but then come back and recall some inconvenient item at an
inconvenient point. So instead of making it a Global campaign, I'm
gonna keep it Street and use mainly cabals of my own devising. To this
end, I began to work on two cabals. One was going to be a cabal within
the FBI (using stuff from the Shadows within Shadows thing on the UA
website) chasing after Tape 27, and the other was initially going to
be a TNI substitute. And it sorta got out of hand. So now I'm just
curious what people think of it. It's nowhere near polished though,
and is suffering from a severe lack of NPC member writeups, but I just
wanted to subject it to you good people and your criticism before
bulling ahead.

And so...

  Memnon Security Services

Memnon is a private military contractor which was formed in 2000 out
of two organisations, Private Enterprises in South Africa and
International Defence Options in the United States. Both companies had
a history of interaction with the occult. Private Enterprises had
encountered African magick and fought a long struggle with a cabal of
authentic thaumoturges in Johannesburg in the 1980's, while IDO had
become involved in the occult underground through contact with Latin
American narco-alchemy. Today the company is making millions off the
War on Terror, and funnelling more and more of the R&D funds into
magick.

   History

Until 2000, Memnon's two parts had very different histories, though
they worked in a similar line of work.

International Defence Options was formed in 1982 by a group of Vietnam
war veterans who were tired of non-military life and were eager to
continue fighting Communism.  It was after a few years of getting
themselves established and fighting with the Contras that they first
encountered magic, that is, narco-alchemy. A Nicaruguan right-wing
warlord thought it would be fun to share some of his "special" LSD
with a team of IDO fighters. It didn't end well. A few gunfights, a
raid and a kidnapping later the contras were dead, and the IDO
employees were on a plane to the States with their first "chemist".

IDO, now they knew what to look for, began to encounter other adepts,
though mostly in Latin America. They became vaguely aware of Voudoun
through clashes with some powerful mask-channelling avatars in Haiti.
They scored another couple of narquis from Colombia in 1992, and had
their first encounter with the Cecilines. They discovered a burnt-out
Gulf War veteran dispomancer in 1995. They began to explore the idea
of using magick to supplement their operations. This had mixed success
during the '90s.

Private Enterprises was formed by a group of grizzled Rhodesian
ex-pats that fled their country as it became Zimbabwe, and South
African ex-military types who hadn't adapted well to civilian life.
Many of their early operations were against the SWAPO rebels in what
is now known as Namibia, but they were soon involved in conflicts all
over the continent.

Private Enterprises always had a more Old-World view of magick, with
most of its exposure to the Unnatural being with rituals and authentic
thaumoturgy, as well as African traditional magick on a few occasions.
It was by chance that Private Enterprises became involved in a
disastrous situation in with, which led to an excursion into a
mysterious Otherspace in Soweto, which led to the door of a hoary old
cabal of thaumoturges known as the <>bond. Private Enterprises had a
few encounters with the postmodernist schools as they began to blossom
in South Africa in the 1990's, but for the most part had a very
traditional view of how magick worked.

It was in 1998 in the Congo that IDO and Private Enterprises became
aware of each other. They had both been commissioned by a mysterious
wealthy individual to retrieve something called "the Shard of
Incandescence", which was regrettably deep inside territory controlled
by the Mai-Mai militia. Territory that was also the regular stomping
grounds of the then-Godwalker for the Savage. Two IDO teams, one of
which was given syringes of Mars Dust; and one Private Enterprises
team who were ritually Bonded and armed with a variety of authentic
Xhosa charms. It was, of course, a fiasco, but the two groups joined
forces in the end and were able to fight their way to
Rwandan-controlled territory. After the dust settled, several key
members of each company decided to have a little chat.

As the South African anti-mercenaries law was passed, Private
Enterprises needed to move much of its operations offshore in any
case. IDO had been looking to expand into Africa for a few years as
well. The merger was finalised in 2000. This would not only allow them
to share occult knowledge, but also complement each other in a mundane
fashion. Many of Private Enterprises (now Memnon) operations were
moved to nearby Namibia, where the company had always had a presence
in Walvis Bay, while the intangible elements of the company were moved
to Texas.

Memnon came into its present power with the War on Terror and its
aftermath. It soon developed a reputation for being able to handle
even the most bizarre of circumstances. A series of bizarre encounters
in Afghanistan and Iraq served as a trial by fire for the new company,
now to mention the countless mundane terrors that dominated those
regions. Today, Memnon is a successful and trusted private military
contractor, but with a seedy underbelly and connections to some very
dodgy characters.

Operations

Before any nonsense with magick or the occult underground, Memnon is
first and foremost a professional and respected private military
contractor. 90% of Memnon's activities are mundane, if not always
legitimate. It currently has teams stationed in Somalia, Angola,
Sierra Leone, Haiti, Bosnia, Bolivia, Papua New  Guinea, and has
extensive operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among their concerns are
providing security for western diplomats and high-profile reporters,
Iraqi and Afghani politicians, reconstruction projects, UN medical
centres, oil refineries and so forth.

It does also engage in a degree of mundane criminality. In the past,
Memnon has dipped its hand into drug trafficking, white slavery, gun
running and passport forging. In recent times, as bigger fish in the
private military world have been caught with this sort of thing,
Memnon has scaled back and reduced such illegalities. This has,
however, allowed it to devote more time to the occult trade.

There exists an extremely underground and scattered market for
historical and mystical items, ritual components, rituals themselves,
and even adepts and avatars.  Memnon has become involved with the
trafficking of artefacts, objects of historical importance and ritual
components out of wartorn regions. These are secured, and then
secretly exported, sometimes to clients, but mostly to trusted third
parties, namely the Dealership and a group in Prague known as the
Auctionhouse.

Afghanistan and Iraq have been goldmines in this regard, as museums
and palaces are looted and their wares scattered. Memnon has been able
to get a hold of a lot of valuable artefacts and information, and it
has definitely earned it some enemies in the local occult
undergrounds. Though these are fractious and chaotic, those adepts and
sorcerors who have managed to survive Taliban or Baathist rule,
American invasion and subsequent chaos tend to be seriously hardcore.

Other than the occult trade, Memnon has made it a priority to study
and utilise magick. Of Memnon's 20 000 personnel, there are around 30
adepts, avatars, mageekians or thaumoturges. Less than 50 other people
within the company are clued-in, and their level of ignorance varies
wildly. Even so, Memnon's employees are known to be superstitious by
those who interact with them.

Memnon has tried to turn adepts into soldiers. It doesn't work. The
obsessive little bastards are normally too degenerate or too crazy, or
they break taboo in a heated situation and become pretty much useless.
Turning soldiers into adepts also seemed a risky venture, and avatar
paths seemed too difficult with little reward. So Memnon decided to
use magick to instead 'improve' their employees.

Narco-alchemical workings are packaged into fit packs or into
automatic syringes and issued to mercs. The workings are given very
different names, often contrived chemical names or strings of letters
and numbers. Most of the mercs issued with these workings believe them
to be of scientific origin, though clearly 'top-secret'. More clued-in
squads are trained in Tilts, have positive rituals cast on them or
allowed to carry useful artefacts.

Memnon has developed a reputation for being able to deal with almost
any situation. They have found themselves hired by government,
corporate and institutional agencies in order to rid areas of
unnatural pests or wily local sorcerors. These operations are rarely
stated so openly by the institutions that require them, they normally
involve some nervous looking government stooge or corporate drone with
a manila folder standing in some underground carpark. But Memnon can
deal with jumping through those sort of hoops and dealing with the
deliberate ignorance of official organisations. After all, getting
paid $3 million to clear out an infestation of clockworks in Kosovo is
good money.

Those in the Occult Underground who have heard of Memnon (and there
aren't many) have heard stories about the company employing
Annihilomancers and Entropomancers as part of mercenary squads in
flashpoint regions, who charge up from the chaos and destruction
around them. This is mostly hyperbole. There was an incident in 2004
involving a Annihilomancer being attached to a team of Memnon mercs
somewhere in Basrah, but it ended in fiasco as the local sleeping
tiger woke, a riot ensued and the idiot adept was shot in the head.
That was the last time that Memnon  experimented with adept
mercenaries.

Resources

Memnon Research and Consulting Services provides a wide range of
geopolitical information, real-time and predictive threat assessments
and investigative reports for corporate, institutional and government
clients. Memnon Technical and Training Services provides technical
security training, asset and key personnel tracking, surveillance and
counter-surveillance capability and physical security enhancements.
Memnon Special Research and Training provides the magick.

They have training bases in Texas, South Carolina, Namibia and South
Africa. Their central offices are based in Dallas, with subsidiary
offices in Johannesburg and Windhoek, and small, often temporary
offices worldwide. They have access to thousands of highly skilled
mercenaries, though of course many of them are tied up with operations
in locales across the world. Connections to many US and South African
government departments, as well as military and paramilitary groups
worldwide.

Memnon maintains two research facilities devoted to the study of
magick and the unnatural, one in McAllen, Texas and one in the small
city of Sakopmund, Namibia.

McAllen is largely a producer of narco-alchemical substances. IDO
built this facility (conveniently located near to the Mexican border
in case of catastrophe) to control the narco-alchemists in their
control. There are five such adepts, two Colombians, one Nicaraguan,
one Cuban-American from Miami and one hapless junkie with dreadlocks
from New Jersey. Being adepts, they constantly argue over fine points
of their own belief structures and ritual components and such. They
are kept in line by the no-nonsense Memnon guards who watch their
every move, and spend their time bickering, one-upping each other and
churning out minor and significant workings for Memnon.

Swakopmund was originally known as Tsoakhaub, a Nami word roughly
meaning 'excrement opening' that was later bastardised by German
settlers into its current name. It is more commonly referred to by
American Memnon employees as "the shithole." There are around 35 000
residents, and the city has become one of the most modern in Africa,
partially to deal with the needs of the nearby uranium mine at Rossing
and partially due to its status as Namibia's prime beach resort. It is
home to a Chinese satellite tracking station and some of the most
well-preserved German Art-Deco architecture in the world. And then
there s Memnon.

The Memnon facility at Swakopmund began as a normal training facility,
and to an extent it still is. However, it has additionally become a
vast library and depository for occult texts and artefacts. The core
collection is African, containing a variety of magickal charms and
ritual pieces of varying capacity. A collection of occult texts
liberated from the Groerbond forms a key portion of the collection as
well. Around this core has been added a variety of new items, stolen
from Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and the Pacific.

Sakopmund has been suffering a increase in unnatural phenomena
recently. Mostly minor incidents such as cold spots and spontaneous
moisture, mostly around the immediate vicinity of the facility, but
there have been a few reports of missing time among the locals and at
least one haunting. These haven't yet had any drastic effect, but they
have caught the attention of the local police, who have begun to poke
around, and the Cecilines, who dealt with the haunting. There was an
incident where the Chinese tracking station detected some sort of huge
winged thing in low earth orbit, but this has been written off as a
glitch. Probably.

What you hear…

Memnon has been contracted for security services in post-Katrina New
Orleans, but has managed to get itself into trouble. They have managed
to get on the bad side of some powerful elements of local Voudoun by
attempting to scavenge artefacts and ritual components from flooded
Voudoun hideouts. Memnon has had experience with Voudoun in Haiti, but
getting into an occult war on US soil is an entirely different story.
And with so many New Orleans residents relocated to other states and
cities, its possible that Memnon could find itself under threat in
other areas.

Relations with other groups

TNI: Alex Abel and Memnon are perfectly aware of each other. Memnon
has even provided security services for several of Abel's subsidiaries
in the past, but Abel has recent been turned off by their seedy
reputation. They both maintain a mutual ignorance of each other
capacities, and while Memnon does know of the existence of TNI, it has
had no reason to relate them to Abel.

Sleepers: The Sleepers traditional neglect of Africa, the Middle East
and Latin  America and the low profile and secrecy maintained by
Memnon have largely kept them off Sleeper radar.

GLS: As yet they are unaware of each other. But boy, what good enemies
they'd make for each other.

The Dealership: Memnon has made extensive use of the Dealership in
order to unload much of its artefacts and ritual components. Memnon
now provides security for the Bad Man and the Dealership in dangerous
situations, while

Order of St Cecil: The Cecilines have reason to hate both IDO and
Private Enterprises, but were not aware of their merger. Someone may
put two and two together at some point, particularly if Memnon
increases the use of its magickal enhancements in wartorn countries
with Catholic populations.

Satan's Chosen Temple: Rebecca DeGhoule (in her Judy Brodie days) and
aforementioned New Jersey narco-alchemist Walter Green dated for three
months in 1998. If he ever escapes the McAllen facility, he might give
her a call and ask to crash on her couch in exchange for some
significant workings. This can only get worse.