Now that we’ve covered campaign options like the Military and Governmental Agencies, we’re left with the option of Private Military Corporations. PMC for short. In a number of ways, this option is the one that is the loosest, in terms of player freedom and international travel.
Now, before I get too deeply into the idea of PMCs and how to make them work in the context of the campaign game, let’s talk about how they function in the real world. And let me be clear… in no way am I trying to glorify the existence of these organizations. PMCs operate within a very specific gray zone when it comes to use of military force, and there has been a lot of discussion as to how they stand up against such things as the Geneva Convention.
Officially, a private military company exists to provide security outside of national military applications. In some instances, they provide bodyguard services to vulnerable individuals, and in others, they work to provide security to places like oil refineries and research facilities. Often, they are made up former military personnel who served and retired to the private sector.
Unofficially, they are mercenaries available to the highest bidder, whether a government or private individual. Further, they are highly paid, well-armed, subject to very little oversight, and have been known to casually flout national and international laws. There are a multitude of articles that look into the real-world implications of these organizations, with a particular eye toward the one formerly known as Blackwater.
Private militaries are a well-established part of dystopic science fiction, showing up in most cyberpunk settings as the province of the multinational corporations. These settings assume weakened national governments as the basis for the PMC’s being in existence, as well as a certain element of laissez-faire outlook from the general populace. They’re also part and parcel of a lot of men’s adventure fiction, with certain heavily armed military groups that take on the missions that the normal military is either unable or unwilling to complete. Plausible deniability is a common theme in these stories.
If we take the setting of Torg Eternity as it’s broadly written – a contemporary version of our own world as Core Earth, with the events of the Possibility Wars on the horizon – the existence of PMCs is a matter of course. They’re solidly established in our own world, and with the advent of the Delphi Council, it would be logical that they would be brought into play to solidify Quin Sebastian’s agenda.
In my own games, the fictional PMC is Tannhauser Solutions, a broadly international military contractor headed by a millionaire American adopted out of sub-Saharan Africa as a child. Frederic Suleiman Ross has concentrated his efforts on Northern Africa, his dealings with various warlords and dictators kept out of the international press through carefully applied money and intimidation. Tannhauser keeps its contractors supplied with the best in equipment and logistical support, and they tend to violate certain aspects of international law, depending on what’s required in the contracts that they take.
With this in mind, the characters can be inserted into literally any potential setting in the pre-Invasion Core Earth, depending on how closely the PMC would be aligned with the Delphi Council. Where the other pre-Invasion campaigns would be fairly conspiratorial, this sort of game could be a little more direct, with the specific contracts being more or less above board. Combined with the ability to carry better weapons and play with high-end technology, the setting fits better with the standard player mindset in a lot of ways.
Many of the same ideas and plot hooks from the CIA/FBI and Military campaigns could be adapted to this sort of game, with the additional note that dealing with Tharkold opens up slightly. Since the PMC should be properly international, there’s no reason why it couldn’t take contracts to support Russian interests, which could put the characters on the ground dealing with Cyberdemon advanced scouts and other threats.
Adventure/Campaign Ideas
Asset Recovery
We’ve already dealt with the idea of the Invaders looting Core Earth Eternity Shards as a means to slow down their opposition. In other campaigns, this necessarily would be proactive, since it would be much harder to convince military command that recovering looted artifacts goes along with the mission statement. For a PMC, it would simply be a case of receiving an assignment to recover specific items that were known to have gone missing. By any means necessary.
This could range from the classic detective work of finding experts and tracking sales in disreputable and dusty marketplaces to slightly more espionage-oriented modern surveillance of suspects. Naturally, it would also allow for high action chases and firefights, depending.
Trade Secrets
The setting of Torg Eternity puts forth a number of ideas that are quickly sketched out and left up to the whims of the individual GM, without a lot of inquiry left to the deeper implications. The advance scouts of the Cyberpapacy are well-defined, with the street preachers setting up “prophecies” of the coming Invasion. They serve to clear the way for Malraux by offering his Invasion of France as a safe haven from the Possibility Wars going on elsewhere. Similarly, the Empire of the New Nile promises to bring back the glories of Ancient Egypt with its Invasion.
For Tharkold and Pan-Pacifica, their advance scouts would be offering up science and technology that would just push the edges of what the Core Earth Tech Axioms would support. This could come in the form of slightly better cell phones a couple of years before they would have been released in the Core Earth marketplace, medical advances that are only now being researched, or reasonably affordable and highly efficient electric cars.
The Delphi Council would recognize the destabilizing effect that this would have on extant markets in Core Earth, and they would have to act before this sort of thing was released to the public. On one side, it would do a lot of damage to the stock market, and on the other, it would provide the Invaders with solid in-roads toward their goals at Invasion.
The only real solution would be for the PMC to raid specific installations where the tech was being developed or awaiting distribution, thereby keeping it from disrupting the economy. And depending on how the GM wanted to play it, the characters could be properly mystified as to why they’re being tasked with destroying the next generation of iPhones.
Corporate Security for the Invaders
Tied in with the previous, it’s not out of bounds to say that the Invaders might have anticipated such a move and taken precautions to secure their assets from industrial espionage or sabotage. This sort of campaign idea assumes that the Delphi Council isn’t providing as much oversight, else they would be inclined to keep the PMC from helping the Invaders. (Unless, of course, they provide cover for the PMC to get them an inside perspective.)
In the mercenary sense of things, this situation would have the PMC undertaking all of the dirty work that the Invaders would otherwise have to do themselves – clearing sites for Stelae placement, looting artifacts from different sources, working on illegal arms shipments, guarding representatives that have the latest cutting-edge technology. You know, all the things that a normal playing group would be dead set against allowing to happen.
While working to help the Invaders seems questionable on the surface, all of this serves to build up to the reveal of a massive plot twist right before the Invasion in the final act. The characters (and their employer) could have been duped by the agendas of the people who hired them, and only through the course of their actions have they started to suspect that they’re working on the wrong side. When the twist comes, the characters are well situated to be able to turn the tables on the Invaders, since they have details on where the Stelae are located, they know where the Eternity Shards are hidden, and they have access to the facilities that the advance scouts have been using. They may have been helping the Invaders at the outset, but they’re also poised to deliver a crippling blow at a critical point.
Reuben Beattie
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