Let’s make a CapeBuster Conspiracy.

[Heresy]

Alrighty then here's an idea that I haven't seen before taking cues from hunter the vigil lets create various conspiracies of Cape Busters/Hunters/Killers in a superhero setting.

Let's start with one part what type of world would you and your conspiracy live in?

A world where there's a Justice League analogue in charge of coordinating super heroes to protect people and just like those groups there's supervillains all over the place some are silly silver aged idiots, some are noble demons with a code of honor and the last are the Jokers of the world nihilistic sociopaths bringing about death and destruction for the lulz and all get thrown in a cardboard prison equally to escape and get back to their own devices.

Or maybe you live in a world like Empowered where the heroes are humongous assholes that treat everyone like shit.

Or you live in a world where the villains rule the world controlling mankind either from the shadows like Wanted or blatantly open like Old Man Logan where they treat their servants and subjects like absolute shit.

The objective is to say fuck all that shit.

Next part is who you are:
Are you a politician/billionaire/high-ranked military official with near unlimited resources both on and off the books?
Or a group of worried common joes scrapping together a neighborhood watch against capes?

Do you hate some/many/all capes?
How would you go about organizing your own cape fighting conspiracy?

In what kind of world do you operate in?

How would you run it's administration?

What would be it's core tenants and Ideology?

What would be your organization's paradigm and focus? Planet busters and city destroyers or street level?

Here's my example:

Title: The Peacebringers.

World Type: Justice League type where the Heroes refuse to kill Villains.

Administration:
Founded by a mysterious council (or one person, nobody is sure and they don't dare ask).
It's a decentralized Cerberus style organization with people split into individual cells with a specific function led by a Manager that communicates to a Comptroller who has several other cells under their command, who in turn sends reports to an Executive in charge of them. Executives are in charge of no larger an area than a US state or the equivalent in other nations and are kept in the dark as to what the other groups do.
The only people aware of how large the conspiracy is HeadQuarters the leader(s) of the organization who keep tabs on everyone.

Cell Work is divided into 3 main branches The Suppliers, The Watchmen and The Blades.

Suppliers are in charge of aquiring things like money, weapons, gear and vehicles for the use of the conspiracy including supergenius designed equipment and gadgets.
Suppliers are given a large amount of leeway in how they do things and are generally the most trusted people in the conspiracy since they have the most knowledge of the other cells in order to supply them properly.

The Watchmen are the recruiters, intelligence specialists and blackmailers of the Conspiracy their main duty is to study the Conspiracy's latest target and look for any and all weaknesses while also creating psychological profiles about them they are the ones that often make or break operations while also keeping an ear to the ground for new leads or fresh talent including capes with an axe to grind and no patience for the current rules of engagement.

The Blades are the warriors and killers, the fanatics and madmen that fight the enemy and most are unaware of who is their backer.
The only person that is a True Blade and a member of the conspiracy proper is the Manager who recruits or leads groups of people with strong anti-cape biases or a simple penchant for violence. They can be random hate groups, local militias or gangs it does not matter.
The Blade will train them in anti-cape tactics, give them equipment from the Suppliers, and use the Watchmen's knowledge to guide these frothing fanatics to victory as officers.

Tenants: The Three Truths.

1. Avenge the Innocent and the Weak. Those that abuse their extraordinary gifts to treat their fellow man with cruelty deserve to have their extraordinary lives taken from them.

2. The Gifted are human as well. The Gifted are capable of great good and evil like all other men, and as such they must be judged on a trial by trial basis the idea that the only good cape is a dead cape must be rejected. For although they have power does not mean they cannot become powerless before the evil of others.

3. Protection of the Conspiracy. Secrecy is our greatest weapon, for we are a ruthless service fighting a ruthless people. Not doing our utmost to protect our identities and those of our brothers and sisters in arms will endanger all their lives. Remember better to be a dead hero than a living prisoner.

Their main focus is on C&D list Villains that cause significant damage to civilians but by and large don't require a very large or militarized response. They're not in the game to take down world ending threats because they don't have the power to, but they can take care of local vermin that can be eliminated by decently trained and equipped baseliners.

So yeah this is my conspiracy there's more details and I can share them if you ask me but by and large please post your own ideas.

Also ground rules:

No Worm. Period. Anything else goes but not Worm or else we'll get derailed fast as hell.

No morality debates please. Debate the political and practical aspects of murder and your methods of operation, not the morality of it or else we won't get anywhere.

No it's not a dickwaving power level contest between worlds. I don't care about power levels, or the feats of individual characters so much as how an organization in such a world can be made to work effectively on the level of your choosing.
You can either choose to create a cult of punisher expies focused on killing C&D list villains like I did or create a Cadmus/Shield clone that hunts down the big boys like the Juggernaut or Magneto.

No Genocide appeals. That shit has no place here, if you want to spend a thread hating on superheroes or crowing the awesomeness of normies make a Garth Ennis appreciation thread.

Now that that's done please post your ideas I'm really curious to see what you guys create.

 

[Arkalest]

The Centimani:

The Centimani operate in what's left of the Mediterranean Basin, keeping an eye on the trade of dangerous posthuman and "Cape" -related artifacts, preventing local warlods from disturbing the fleeting peace and generally trying to prevent another infrastructure collapse. They're a fairly decentralized organization that's semi-secretive; Cells are tasked with controlling a specific sector or region, and are encouraged to procure resources on site.

A History:
Ever since the first employment of "Capes" during WW1, there have been concern groups who have been questioning the wisdom of allowing superpowered individuals in the army.
Now, a century and a half later, those groups have been proven right by the Pan European Conflict. The Mediterrean is still smoldering from the embers of this cold war turned semi-hot, the coasts dotted with the remnants of hastily built fractal fortresses and crashed hoverships. Entire mountain chains have been reshaped by the forces unleashed, and the men and women who unleashed them are still free to wander as they please, the collapse of the Hague preventing justice from being dished out.

Now, calling the Centimani a concern group may be a bit of a stretch. Their long history paints them more as the sort of people who prefer salons and tea rooms to street corners and meeting halls, and rightfully so. Up to the start of the 21th century, the Centimani were seen as more or less a harmless social oddity that had somehow bumbled its way through the history of south-east Europe.
They were said to have started in the latter part of the 19th century as an organization of wannabe alchemists and spiritsts that was bornee out of the meeting between continental and ENglish nobility performing the grand tour and Ottoman tinkers and historians. Some even go as far as to say that it had been made on a lark, and that it was not meant to endure as much as it did.

But between one meeting and the other, between recruiting young and bored lords and ladies to their extravagant cause, the Centimani grew in influence. Their primary drive back then was the acquisition of "ancient and alchemical knowledgee, artifacts of historical and arcane importance", to quote one of their contemporaries. And they went about this by recruiting archeologists, spiritualists, scholars of all sorts of lores, mystics and even the occasional scientist among their ranks. Backed by the brimming coffers of curious and decadent continental youths, those wise men and women scoured the mediterranean basin for any sort of interesting curios and artifacts, which were then delivered to their safehosues in Athens, Instanboul and Alexandria.

This was more or less gave them a headstart in accruing cape-related knowledge, eventually allowing them to acquire a certain air of renown as an organization dedicated to the more mystic side of things during the 1970s and 1980s. Their ranks and coffers swelled, and new club houses sprouted across all the basin.
It didn't last long, and with the collapse of the EU the Centimani faded from the public eye. To this day, few know of their past as a gentlemen's club. Few know how they came to shift their attention to preserve the Mediterreanean, although what few accounts there are of their internal affairs mention that they started amassing stockpiles of wepaonry at the beginning of the 21th century, under the guidance of the then-hecatonchires.

Structure:
The Centimani used to be an actual club of heirs, scholars and nobles with a passion for greek, egyptian and roman mythology and antiques, and a propension for the "Orient". There used to be entry fees and treasurers keeping track of members' donations. The order was loosely organized, with three founders having tastelessly named themesleves as the hecatonchires of legend. Each founder presided over one specific clubhouse: Alexandria, Athens and Instabul. They'd pick a club house to meet in every year, and members'd be invited to mock symposiums.

Now, things are much different and yet the same, in a way. The Centimani still operate out of three clubs, they're still headed by three hecantochires, and they still hold annual meetings.

But the clubs have been trasformed into small fortresses under the guise of rebuilding after the collapse, and the Hecatonchires now command respect, rather than mockery.

Briareos is a full body cyborg, a veteran of the Greek Collapse, and is currently sleeved in the towering grey-muscled, skull-headed body of a TALOS morph, he seems to be currently overseering the recovery operations in what remains of Athens.
There, he ammasses all sorts of supplies needed to maintain the Centimani up and running: Medical provisions, satellitary equipment, nanohives. Anything that one of their cells could need on the field, he procures through bartering and favor exchanges. Briareos personally overseers the training of both quarter-masters for the other safehouses and hunter-killer agents, and he- Alongside the men and women who defected alongside him from the PanEU Army's greek subdivision- Are thought to be the main source of tactical acumen and strategic information in the Centimani.
This taciturn man dresses and speaks conservatively, often in fatigues and nanogel webbing with a dozen tools. He adheres to the idea of overwhelming force applied surgically, and the cells under his command specialize in taking down warlords and trafficking operations.


Kottos is one giant of a woman, standing well above two meters and twnety. Her rough, scarred face is of Berber descent, and her grey hair is cut short, revealing jack ports and a spinal port for power armor. This, together with her accent when speaking English pegs her as a veteran of the PanEU Army's moroccan division. She's an expert in infowar, and currently holed up in the Instabul's safehouse and its thrice braided infosphere.
Under her care, the Centimani operatives have created a network of spies, informants and all-seeing eyes that has been carefully threaded throughout all of the Basin, the Atlantic territories, and some say most of Europe and parts of the Second Soviet Unions. Her domain is propaganda, fact-checking and counter-espionage. Whenever there is a statement to be made, she's the most likely to handle it, and whenever the Centimani are called out by some politician or organization on their actions, she's the one who will draft a measured response.
Despite the constant stress of managing all of this, she tends to be fairly sanguine, and is known for having jovial relations with most of the ex-European intelligence community. Few take this as a sign of her being good natured, instead preferring to believe she is just that good of an actress.


Gyges is a harpy morph, freed from indentured servitude under Hellas Incorporated by Centimani operatives. She's repaid their kindness by having her flock join the organization en-masse, and is currently supervising the Alexandria safehouse and by extension the city's massive port. Her raptor-like features, blunt manners and nonexistant social graces do not betray her cunning and acumen for planning, which is best reflected in her operations against the local black market.
Her safehouse is tasked with keeping an eye on all the scavenging, reclamation operations and digs that have popped up in recent times all over the Mediterranean, and parts of the Atlantic and North Africa too. To this end she's currently training several cells in guerilla and blitkrieg tactics, often tasking them with shadowing ships carrying legitimate cargo in order to protect them from pirates and corsairs. She is also tasked with making sure that their

Each of the three main safehouses is fully autonomous, and the Hecatonchires communicate with each other on a weekly basis through some unknown mean- Some say quantum entanglement, or something more mystical still- While their subordinates use more mundane methods of coordination, such as laser uplinks, short wave radios and the occasional carrier harpy.
Said subordinates are organized in Hands: Each region/palce of interest is expected to house two Hands, each composed of five Digits. Structure's flat, with the five members voting on what to do, and they're expected to be proficient in firearms, infiltration tactics and basic espionage. Both Hands share the same minor safehouse, and report on each other's movements and operations to the nearest main safehouse. Hands are also tasked with reporting on possible candidates to said safehouses, and then bringing them into the fray.

The actual number of Hands under the Hecatonchires' command is unknown. Some say each commands about 100 Hands, which brings the total of Centimani to circa 1500, but few think this number holds any weight. Many peg the number of operatives as little over a third of that, with field and support agents being evenly split.
Matters are complicated by the facf that Hands can disgregate and regroup pretty fast, and that the Centimani are always drawing on a perennially rotating roster of allies and the occasional mercenaries to aid them in their operations.

It's believed that there is a number of Hands that are tasked exclusively with R&D, while a few others seem to be exclusively focused on improving the organization's standing by aiding in reconstruction efforts and posing as members of local law enforcement.
Meanwile, few of the Hands do still maintain a direct line to the organization's origins. Those women and men are the descendants of the original Centimani members, and are tasked with reaching out to the larger European community.
They're also tasked with fueling R&D through more or less legitimate channels, and furthering the Centimani's agenda by creating legitimate political ties. They often can be told apart from other Hands by their adherence to some of the old Centimani costumes: They wear elaborate masks that bring to mind Greek theater masks, and often name themselves after mythological beings. The members of those Hands are tasked with training their immediate successors, passing on their mask and role once they decide to retire..Or are forcibly retired.



Ideology:
The Centimani's idea of balance is a twofold one:

Short term balance means breaking down any sort of organized crime and illegal traffics in the Basin, removing overt threats to the regional stability such as doomsday cults, up and coming warlords, autonomous remnants of the collapse, and high profile criminals. Cells are tasked with avoiding collateral damage whenever they can, and repurposing their enemies' weapons rather than relying on locals.

Long term balance means aiding in the reconstruction of a strong Pan-EU by letting local commerce and institutions flourish and link back up again. Problem is, their idea often leads them to clash with corporations and oligarhcs, many of which are using the collapse as a way to expand their influence and wealth. As a result of this, the Centimani have found themselves subjected to smear campaigns about their methods and goals, with some painting them as dangerous war profiteers, while others claim that they are nothing more than remnants of the PanEU hellbent on reclaiming their lost territories.

Overall, they prefer to scare their enemies straight rather than outright murder them. Releasing compromising intel, sabotaging people's careers are all fair game for a Hand, and most Digits are trained to resort to calling in authorities first, and reaching for their guns secondly. The Hand trainers do their best to drill into the trainees the idea that you shouldn't shoot someone when a punch to the face does the job and has lasting effects.
However, this doesn't mean the Centimani wholly oppose extra juridical killings. Hands are however called to answer to the Hecatonchires and their subordinates if they choose to carry out an assasination.

Generally speaking, these attitudes- Combined with the lack of material rewards- Tend to reflect the idea that the Hands are nothing but a faceless extension of a single body. There is no space for personal glory or aspirations, and while different Hands may have different methods, they're still all working towards the same set of goals.
As a result, recruiters tend to focus on individuals dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. More politically extreme and single-minded individuals are vetted more extensively, and tend to not make much of a progress among their ranks.




Methods/Paradigm:
The Centimani have no standard uniform, and use the symbol of a clenched red hand as their logo.
However, their operatives have come to be associated over time with myomer-muscled combat suits due to the ops of a group of Hands under Briareos' command, and soon most Hands found themselves outfitted with at least two to three of the suits. They're cheap, easy to replace, easy to maintain and can be easily tailored to a dozen different body types.
Another emblematic part of the Centimani's wear is masks. Most of them are themed after mythological beings, and they often conceal a variety of enhancements and sensors.

3D-printed chemical sluggers and jury-rigged railguns are mainstays of most Hands, together with repurposed construction equipment. The hecatonchires also demand that their subordinates are knowledgeable in at least one martial art or, barring that, the basic of unarmed self defense.
As a whole the organization employs a handful of cyberdocs and geneticists to enhance their operatives, and these professionals tend to be heavily vetted and over-scrutinized before being allowed into the organization. The Centimani also have taken to employing a great deal of uplifts and modified war beasts in their more overt operations.




Allies, Points Of Interest And Enemies:

Sybil, or the Sybilline Order, is a group of mind-linked hackers of assorted species and sleeves who aid the Centimani in intelligence gathering. They are composed by a group of priests and by their attendants, traveling the Mediterreanean sea in a small fleet of modified fishing trawlers. Their activities are financed through selling illegal software, performing data heists and crafting memetic hazards.
The Centimani have been using their services for decades, and it's said that the Order was a project that the organization started at the dawn of the 21th century on behalf of the Greek government. The Sybil itself, the conglomerate of all the present and past minds of the Order, acts as a respository and relay for top priority communications.
Said hive mind is composed of a handful of talented hackers who've undergone extensive surgery to fully enhance their hacking capabilites, and are supported by a handful of AIs retrieved from fallen PanEU warmachines. They're extremely good at creating and running VR simulations and scenarios, and the Centimani rely on them to train their operativees in more peculiar forms of warfare.

Tartarus is an abandoned military base located near Mt. Olympus. This subterranean complex is unofficially considered the fourth main safehouse, and here the Centimani store their most advanced technologies and those artifacts that are too dangerous but can not be safely disposed of. It's fully autonomous, using gheotermal power, and it's said to be connected to a large network of tunnels that thread the entire countryside, dug by autonomous drones.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

This is an incredibly vague premise.

Like, what an organization for managing post/trans/meta/ex/super-humans will look like is going to be ludicrously different if they exist in a world where superhumans are exclusively created via artificial, repeatable methods (like the universe of Cowls which I wrote) than to a universe where superhumans are exclusively created by cosmic accidents or mutations or whatever.

The tools you're going to use are going to be very different between worlds where superhumans can reliably resist rocket launchers and punch through bank vaults than one where the vast majority of superhumans can be threatened by a Predator drone and a special forces spotter team barring plot shields.

Etc etc.

Is this for a story idea or something? If so, you might be better served by determining the shape of the world (which necessarily requires you to know what your plot is going to look like to some extent) before determining things like 'organizations' and other things which are frankly just worldbuilding set-dressing as fun as it is to make them up.

 

[Heresy]

epic stuff

Click to shrink...

Holy shit that's so cool I loved it!

This is an incredibly vague premise.

Like, what an organization for managing post/trans/meta/ex/super-humans will look like is going to be ludicrously different if they exist in a world where superhumans are exclusively created via artificial, repeatable methods (like the universe of Cowls which I wrote) than to a universe where superhumans are exclusively created by cosmic accidents or mutations or whatever.

The tools you're going to use are going to be very different between worlds where superhumans can reliably resist rocket launchers and punch through bank vaults than one where the vast majority of superhumans can be threatened by a Predator drone and a special forces spotter team barring plot shields.

Etc etc.

Is this for a story idea or something? If so, you might be better served by determining the shape of the world (which necessarily requires you to know what your plot is going to look like to some extent) before determining things like 'organizations' and other things which are frankly just worldbuilding set-dressing as fun as it is to make them up.

Click to shrink...

Eh Its not really an idea for a story so much as it is a writing exercise I thought about with a friend of mine.

It's purposely vague because the idea we had was basically to have people imagine an organization like the one I described in the OP and how you would do things.

I originally thought to make it a more limited scenario with a chosen world, but then I thought that would strangle a lot of people's creativity, better to let people either tailor a world for their organization or to let them tailor their organization to an existing one.

It's also why I banned Worm because as much I love the series I know this thread will get clogged by it and it's relevant topics.

The end goal here is simple.
I want people to post cool and fun ideas while I do the same it's all in the name of fun and who knows I might do a quest or story with some of the stuff here later but that would be more of a side effect than the main goal.

I hope this answered your question and as a fan of your Quest I really do want to see what you make.