I fear the night.
Not the dark: you can light a match against that. But the hush that follows, the blank interval where a question echoes and no one answers.
Every evening I check the locks twice and then a third time, as if steel could quiet the grinding in my head.
A noise slips through the cracks in the wall. Words unspoken that refuse to be recorded.
What did we unmake that day in the hush before dawn?
I never say it out loud: the walls have their own way of listening.
And the night lingers at the window and asks none of this and breathes its long unpronounceable name.
And I wonder if we severed the bond or if we kept it to ourselves
and if the silence is reprieve
or if it is indifference written in ink no one can see.
And if the lamb ever comes
it will not come with glory but quietly,
like someone arriving too late for trial.
And will it find anything worth redeeming in what we chose to spare?
I keep the ledger closed now.
Still I count.
The distance between the question and the answer.
And if the voice should break the quiet will I know it,
or will it sound like my own?
Most nights I stare at the numbers and they never speak and they stay dumb,
the silence heavy in my room like a judge.
And I cross out helpless sentences.
And I wait for a knock that never comes.
And it feels like the world stuck between breaths
and everyone looking and none deciding. So I sit with it.
And I do not move.
I do not yet know how to forgive.
— Director-General
¶ The Department of Esoteric and Thaumaturgical Research (USDETR)
The USDETR is a clandestine government agency formed during the height of the Cold War.
Born from the CIA’s paramilitary legacy (SAC/SOG) and armed with unrestricted Army and intelligence funding,
the Department was charged with investigating anomalous phenomena: events, objects, and entities
that defied natural explanation yet carried immense potential for weaponization, deterrence, or exploitation.
Its mandate is threefold:
- To locate, secure, and confine anomalies that pose existential or strategic threats.
- To research, understand, and catalogue the anomalies.
- To harness thaumaturgical principles, the “science of the impossible”, and integrate them into American defense, intelligence, and technology.
The Department is a sovereign structure within the U.S. government, shielded by black budgets, protected by deniability, and empowered with its own courts and military chain of command:
- DIRCOM (Directorate Command): Absolute authority vested in the Director-General, checked only by the Security Council.
- STRATCOM (Strategic Command): Operational Chiefs of each Directorate and the US Federal Special Court.
- Directorates: Compartmentalized branches including Research & Development, Security, Field Operations, Medical, Engineering, Theology, and more.
-
Site Azazel is a vast blacksite carved into Antarctic ice, twenty kilometers south of Vostok Station.
- Constructed as part of the Containment Site Initiative (CSI), Azazel is the most secure and secretive of all facilities.
- It houses the Apple, the oldest and most mysterious anomaly on record, a singular object believed to be the original source of anomalous phenomena on Earth.
- Layers of reinforced perimeter and redundant failsafes protect the site from intrusion, sabotage, and breach.
-
The Thaumaturgical Advanced Projects Division (TARP Division) is the Department’s attempt to not only contain but to exploit anomalies for human use.
- Thaumaturgical principles are mapped, tested, and integrated into operatives, weaponry, and technology.
- Units such as Cherubim (Unit 01) and Nephilim (Unit 07) are products of this research, carrying mild-to-moderate anomalous augmentations alongside advanced military hardware.