Boardies

    So why be a Boardie? The hours are variable, the pay is mostly in kind (equipment, being allowed to live in a super-secret base or space station, free transport, chance to die facing down Evil...), and the social life can be a tad strained. Plus there's the way you instantly become a target for the nastiest critters known to man, and plenty more man is glad he doesn't know about.

    Well, there's the perks. There's the development of Super-Secret powers and gadgets, which is enough to get most people drooling at the very thought - never mind the hours of training and testing needed to see just what one's reaction to the Board's ambient weirdness has manifested as. There's getting to meet the Boss, which is oddly flattering. Especially if she starts talking about how fun you were to create, which tends to raise worrying questions about predestination. Then there's the aforementioned attention from Evil, which can be gratifying - it's like finally being able to shoot that really annoying middle-management type (in some cases, Boardies have been able to go back and shoot that annoying middle-management type). Some even sign on to get to be part of that secret organisation they keep hearing about, or because the Board are the only people willing to fund their projects. Many walk out of college into what they discover is the internship of their dreams. Some are recruited because only the Board would take them.

    The first and most obvious sign that Something Weird is up with the Boardies is always the names. Boardies love codenames, ranging from spy-thriller types to ones people just like the sound of. There is good reason for this - the myriad forces allied to Evil are never above hostage-taking, blackmail, or dirt-digging in the media. Changing one's name, even face, is the outward sign of an important change in a Boardie's worldview - that the "old me" is a relic and a potential liability, best left behind in one's quarters with other past mementos, where no-one can get at it with malicious intent.

    Make no mistake, it's a weird world out there. One where the town you live in, or the one down the road, or even the house next door could see anything from Men in Black to a rampage by Godzilla over the course of a year. The average child born on this strange Earth will have seen a dozen strange or miraculous events as (s)he matures, and many are fascinated by the way their childhood dreams merely fade into adult reality - that the world they live in is just as fantastic as they dreamed. Most get on with their mundane lives, trusting to luck and the skill of others - governments, armies, scientists - to keep them secure. Some don't. Many more find their beloved defense mechanisms fail, and the world's insanity is thrust upon them. Still more, the ones who go on to form the Board's hard iron core, find people actively employing this weirdness for their own selfish ends...and then someone walks out of the darkness and offers them a chance to deal with such people.

    Even before recruitment, most Boardies are this world's weirdoes...or even the weirdo's weirdoes, those who never quite fit in with their native societies' expectations, who always seemed faintly at 90 degrees to reality. Others are people caught up in events by accident or design - the people who have cried "Enough, dammit!" when faced not only with supernatural power, but the destruction and death left in its wake. If there is a common denominator, it is the inbuilt desire "to do something" about the undercurrents of malice, selfishness, and ignorance in global society that are given dangerous power by a globe lousy with energy and mystic forces. And when the Board gives those undercurrents a name, and offers the resources to battle them on their own terms, few people so driven can resist...