A little context to my future characters and their allegiances.
Faction Name:
The Group
History:
The Group has always been small in number, with no more than one cell being active at a time. Their motives remain shady, but one may be able to extract some form of anti-government/corporation motives from the fact that corrupt managers are liable to disappear in Babylon and business executives have been known to turn up on the poorer side of town in Babylon where they are either taken in, dehydrated, starving, bruised, scabbed and scarred but ultimately alive by the authorities with a story to tell or found by the downtrodden denizens of the poorer rings of Babylon and finally killed as a message. There have been a few cases of the murders of corrupt BESC members being taken out but the only connection that can be made with the Group is that they may be prime suspects, as no criminal organization, religious extremists or other radical groups have come forth claiming responsibility.
There has been only one case of a member of the Group being caught, it is the exact time when authorities got a name to put on the rampant assassinations of government, military and corporate personnel. Donald Brixton, a young twenty year old idealist with established left-leaning political ideals was a well-known name in the outer rings of Babylon, being an outspoken advocate for workers' rights, a thing that had been abandoned as far as the companies that contracted to work in mines and the Tower Towns in the wastes around Babylon. Brixton was said to have disappeared after the deaths of twenty-two child workers from the Tower Towns in a cave-in, with the remaining ten survivors being severely reprimanded, and their families intimidated to ensure that the mishap did not reach the ears of higher-ups in the Central Government of Babylon. After Brixton's probings, it was said that he had gained a lead on the names and faces of the managers and higher-ups of the contracting companies. He disappeared soon after, his bills not being paid, and a subsequent raid on his house for tax evasion revealed that not only was he gone, but he had been gone for quite a wile.
Brixton turned up after five months. Five months filled with news headlines talking of the murders of several higher-ups and lower managers of the Vilnius Contracting Company. Brixton was taken in as a prime suspect in the murders. It was revealed in his interrogations that he had been kidnapped on his walk home from an activist support seminar in the poorer residential districts of Babylon. He described his kidnappers as black-clothed, masked and strong, easily overpowering the healthy young man and taking him to an unknown location. It was then when they threw him into a locked cell with a chair, a table and a bed. He was given food, and asked what his investigative journalism had given him in terms of knowledge of the cover-up. Brixton told them everything he knew, thinking that it was some shady arm of the Central Government taking him in for treason, or paid goons of the Contracting Company accosting him for corporate espionage or simply digging too deeply. Brixton only remembers that the men, when asked of their name, answered with a remarkably shady one: the Group.
The Group maintains its place as an impartial and watchful eye over Babylon. Some say that they are there to protect the common working man from the machinations of the many-armed carnivorous octopus that is BESC and its corporate counterparts; others say that they are just another incarnation of BESC, just another group of idealists that will take out one corrupt government only to replace them at the top. Overall, the Group remains in its place as a dark thought in the dark and forgotten corners of CEOs, managers and corrupt BESC Police Officers and military personnel, it's clear that this fact will not change.
Structure:
The Group is small in number, never having more than one cell active at any given time. These cells are also few in number, with the largest being ten personnel. These cells are speculated to be arranged with one Station Chief, one or two Coordinators, one or two Intelligence Officers, and three to five Paramilitary Operatives.
It is also speculated that the cells maintain a large network of third-party help in their various operations, keeping strong ties to the many Tower Towns in the wastes and sometimes coordinating with Tower Towns to help defend against pirate bands or removing any BESC personnel threatening the lives of any of the residents. Some in the poorer districts of Babylon can definitely be paid a hefty sum for information regarding targets, as well.
The roles of each position in a cell are as follows:
(Note: Contingency Responsibilities are those responsibilities given to each position in the case of catastrophic compromising of a cell that results in the death or capture of every member besides those holding the position in their respective Contingencies.)
Station Chief (SC): Station Chiefs act as leaders of the cell. They make sure everything runs smoothly in the cell's Station, works with the coordinators to facilitate a plan for any Direct Action Operations and is the only full-time member of the Group besides Intelligence Officers. This means that leaders are always working for the Group, whereas the people filling positions under him in the cell are able to carry on lives until they are called to action by the Station Chief and his Intelligence Officers.
The Contingency Responsibility of a Station Chief is to activate the fail-safes of a Station and disappearing back into the populace.
Coordinator: Coordinators are the ones responsible with receiving information that the intelligence operatives gather, creating a viable Direct Action Operation out of it and proposing it to the SC. Once the Coordinators are able to pick out the important parts of any information gathered and turn it into something resembling a mission, they propose it to the SC. If the SC sees that the mission will be beneficial in the long-term, then the Coordinators will work out a plan of attack with the SC, using any information gathered in this phase by the intelligence officers.
The Contingency Responsibility of a Coordinator(s) is the backing up of important information before destroying the original copies. After this is achieved, their next action is to activate the fail-safes and disappear back into the populace for hibernation.
Intelligence Officer: The job of an Intelligence Officer is to find HUMINT assets who will be able to give out information relating to a certain target, planning out an Area of Operations and inserting Paramilitary Operatives into the AO for Direct Action Operations. These targets can be anything from a person to a PDA. These people work to recruit assets that can be used to gather information and then pass it to the Intelligence Officer. After the Intelligence Officer has gotten enough information from an asset, the asset is blanked of the memory of the Intelligence Officer and dumped at a location picked at random. The Intelligence Officer then writes up an intelligence report and passes it on to the Coordinator(s). If their intelligence helps in creating an approved mission, then they will once again go out into the field, recruiting assets and finding sources that are integral for narrowing down the potential Area of Operations. Once the Area of Operations is found, they check in with the Coordinators. The creation of a mission plan between the SC and the Coordinator(s) takes place in this phase.
A second but very important responsibility of Intelligence Officers is the recruiting of Paramilitary Operatives and any other members a cell may need. This means that Intelligence Officers must be able to sacrifice many aspects of life apart from the Group to work around the clock to gather information on potential members. This is perhaps their hardest jobs, as it requires intricate planning to be able to flip a BESC Military member or a member of the Police force into Paramilitary Operatives, or be able to convince those showing aptitude for the Coordinator position to the cause.
The Contingency Responsibility of an Intelligence Officer is the destruction of all information and the activation of the Station's fail-safes. Their next action is to carry out their specialty and gather HUMINT sources for the purpose of carrying out sabotage and assassination of the clearest and most present danger before disappearing back into the populace.
Direct Action Operatives (DAO): Direct Action Operatives are the right-hands of the Group. These people are tasked with carrying out the Direct Action Operation that has been carefully planned by the Coordinator(s) and the Station Chief. Typically, these people are recruited from the police force of Babylon or the BESC's military arm in lieu of picking people off the street and spending precious time trying to train them for high-stress situations that tax both body and mind. Members holding this position of the Group must be able to follow plans to the T but also have the capacity to formulate their own plans, should the initial plan fail. The duties of this position are both sabotage and assassination in the over-arcing goal of winning an asymmetric war against an enemy that has been outlined by the Intelligence Officers, Coordinator(s) and the Station Chief. Because the enemies and goals may be wildly different, it is up to the Station Chief and his Intelligence Officers who they will recruit, from assassins to military personnel.
The Contingency Responsibility of DAOs is the activation of the Station's fail-safes before conducting Special Reconnaissance on the clearest and most present danger before carrying out Direct Action to cripple or destroy the opposition before disappearing back into the populace for hibernation.
