International Police Organization Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense

Though the BPRD is best-known for its colorful array of field operatives, it could not function without a large and diverse operational support organization. Following are abridged dossiers of several of these personnel.

Thomas MANNING, Ph.D.
Executive Director

Dr. Manning is the BPRD's executive director. In the overall organizational scheme of the IPO, this makes him the equivalent of an assistant deputy chief (in this case, he reports directly to the Deputy Chief for Tactical Operations, Steve Rogers). A colony-born human of middle age, he possesses - almost uniquely among the BPRD's personnel - no paranormal abilities of his own. He claims that this makes him uniquely suited to manage what he sometimes wryly terms "the rest of the sideshow," and in fact his organizational skill and complete unflappability in the face of the bizarre have served the Bureau well. Gruff and often irascible, he is nevertheless firmly behind all his operatives, however much he complains for form's sake that he never set out to be the ringmaster of a circus.

Maximilian Friedrich Wilhelm SCHRECK Graf von Orlock
Deputy Director, Vampiric and Lycanthropic Studies

Count Orlock is an Earthborn human vampire, both born and turned in the 17th century, who traces his lineage (in terms of the sanguivorus curse) to the seventh generation - that is to say, his vampire progenitor was six steps removed from the originator of the curse, the demonic duke known as the Lord of Blood. In his particular line, this distance from the source has manifested itself in physiological disfigurement (he himself cheerfully describes his as a "degenerate branch", though he claims he was ugly as a living man to begin with) and an extreme form of the traditional vampiric vulnerability to sunlight. Despite these handicaps, he had a long and successful career as a paranormal investigator, and has treated his elevation to the deputy directorship of his department as a sort of well-earned retirement.

Adam FRANKENSTEIN, MD, Ph.D.
Chief Medical Officer

Dr. Frankenstein, the legendary creation of the 19th-century Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein, describes himself without evident irony as the last of the "real Renaissance monsters". A skilled surgeon, expert pathologist, galactic authority on paranormal diseases, and talented violinist, he wandered the galaxy for centuries - his appearance, cripplingly freakish by the standards of unContacted humanity, going largely unremarked in the broader galactic community of the 21st century and onward - before settling in New Avalon shortly after the city's founding. He was Avalon County's original medical examiner, setting the standard of excellence by which that office is still known, and found himself scouted for the BPRD when the Bureau was first formed. Though a giant in stature and physical power, he abhors violence and takes his oath to "do no harm" very seriously.

Vivienne FRANKENSTEIN, Ph.D.
Chief Parascience Officer

Adam Frankenstein's wife Viv, also Dr. Frankenstein in her own right, holds qualifications in biochemistry, physics, and numerous other less easily summarized scientific and parascientific disciplines (and, oddly, kinesiology and sports medicine). As the BPRD's chief parascientist, she likes to say that she directs most of the "R" in "BPRD" - she's the director of the Bureau's research and scientific investigation laboratory. If a BPRD operative encounters a phenomenon that is neither psychic nor the obvious effect of an artifact, the task of determining what is causing it falls to Viv and her staff of hand-picked experts in scientific esoterica. She also plays the viola opposite her husband's violin in the BPRD string quartet, and yes, she's heard the one about how the difference is that they burn longer.

EURYALE
Chief Librarian and Archivist

One of the three Gorgons of Greek myth (and the only one known still to be alive today), Euryale manages the BPRD's vast stockpile of strange, forbidden, and occasionally just useful information, from the Scrolls of Mu to the great databases of the Equations of the Knights of Radnak. If a BPRD agent needs information contained in a moldering scroll, a dusty tome, an archaic data solid, or the hard-light labyrinth of the Crystals of Zin, they must enter Eury's domain to get it. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of where everything in her library is and what one might hope to find there, and she's very particular about things being put back where they belong. Woe to the agent who disrespects the Library. Eury doesn't wear those glasses because she likes rocking the Sexy Librarian look (although she does); she wears them to stop her eldritch gaze turning everyone who comes into the Library to stone.

Annalise FLEMING
Chief Technical Officer

'Lise is a techno-savant - a person born with the metapsionic gift of instinctive rapport with technological devices. Computers, communications systems, energy weapons, gadgets of all kinds - she loves them and they love her. Electronics do favors for 'Lise Fleming, occasionally going well outside their strict technical specifications to accomplish them. She's also an authority on the occult and parapsionic uses of what to most people are dangerous recreational drugs, including the extremely specialized field of hallucinomancy (the use of hallucinatory experiences in divination). Her CV includes a long list of dreamwalking and trip-diving techniques that should be flagged "don't try this at home" - though, to be fair, 'Lise prefers to try them at home, as opposed to in the office. She insists that the feng shui in the office is all wrong for that kind of thing.

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