The Black Tower
A continent-wide information institution. The Black Tower’s operations are deliberately opaque. What is known is that they collect, hold, and trade in information, and that access to their resources comes at a cost.
The Black Tower is an information institution first, and everything else second. Publicly, they are archivists, historians, record-keepers, analysts, and custodians of knowledge. They catalog lineages, treaties, disasters, wars, discoveries, and people. If something is known, chances are the Black Tower has a record of it.
Privately, they decide what knowledge survives, and what it’s worth. They control information flow, suppress dangerous truths, erase inconvenient people from history, and when necessary, remove sources permanently. They are not loudly political, but no major power acts without considering what the Black Tower knows.
Their core activities are:
- Intelligence gathering and analysis / Record control, alteration, and erasure
- Espionage, blackmail, leverage, and quiet coercion
- Targeted assassinations (The sublimely discreet kind)
Notes:
- Most members are not what they appear to be and have layered Identities.
- Need-to-know doctrine. No one sees the whole structure.
- Clean exits. If they kill, it doesn’t look like murder.
- Plausible deniability. Always.
What it’s like to work with them:
You’re paid in coin, secrets, or protection, but never all three.
You are disposable by default.
If they trust you, it’s because you’re useful and deniable.
To be expanded.