Containment

   The Board does many things. Its current stated purpose is to fight against evil, of course, but that hasn't always been its primary purpose. The Old Board was founded to reflect the Goddess' curiosity about humanity, and the sheer scope and funding of M-Div and Weird Science means the Board continues to live up to this. The edge of the envelope of knowledge, technology, and sanity is pushed further back every day, and the Board is responsible for much of this.

It also performs, as a happy side effect, one other service -- it siphons away powerful forces of chaos and destruction and directs them exactly where they will do the most good. This in and of itself lets a lot more ordinary people sleep easy.

Containment is composed of people for whom this "side effect" is actually the Board's most important function. Officially, their mandate is to "keep a lid on things" -- this is most famously ensuring that Board operations do not unduly harm or attract the attention of mundanes, but it also covers more mundane situations like keeping safety equipment well-maintained, and safely packing up Interesting Material for storage or transport.

CLEANUP DUTIES

Containment believes very strongly in the Ounce of Prevention; most of their work in keeping the Board unnoticed involves social engineering and occasional bits of subtle memetic deployment to ensure that the wider world doesn't even bother investigating them. An enormous body of lore has accumulated over the centuries for this task, written in many hands, but most of it is attributed to an anonymous "Man in Black." Well, several, given the many different hands, but they made no effort to distinguish themselves when speaking to posterity.

For situations when the Pound Of Cure becomes necessary, more invasive memetic and subliminal techniques are used. Knockout drugs and memory erasers are an old standby, but have become progressively more difficult to use without requiring coverups in their own right. When such cases do become necessary, the victim's memories are left mostly intact; the parts that remain tend to resonate pretty strongly with the standard-brand conspiracy theory. As such, the leak does no real damage, because Everybody Knows that such theories are only believed by cranks and loons.

Three guesses as to just who encourages Everybody to Know this.

POLITICS

Containment's influence has waxed and waned over the years; when the Board is highly active in the world and the Director is security-conscious, unsmiling, black-suited minions of Containment are a common sight throughout Board-controlled areas. When it grows more introspective and keeps to its mountain retreats and its the space stations, they're almost invisible. When High Command is security-obsessed and the Board as a whole is not, Containment has functioned as internal, or even as secret police.

Containment's nominal power has been waning for some time; many of their historical duties have been taken over by other departments. FLEET Intelligence handles internal security affairs these days, while day-to-day Boardie-herding is done by Operations. Their sole remaining purpose is keeping the lid on and the inevitable blast radii as small and as conveniently-positioned as possible.

That's a pretty sizable task on its own these days, and as a result Containment agents spend nearly all their time in the field, reinforcing and evolving the social mores that keep the Board safely unbelievable to the public.

Attrition due to the war against Hell has caused the Board to interpret "the public" a bit more narrowly than has been traditional for conspiracies in the past. Individuals who, through resistance to social engineering, or through ability to remain functional in the face of great evil and/or High Weirdness, are quietly referred through channels for eventual recruitment instead of being channeled through the normal cleanup/reinforcement process.

Some of the older hands in Containment are uneasy about this; a fair number of Boardies believe that the War can only fully become Armageddon if the scope broadens too far, and such Boardies tend both to gravitate to Containment and to think that wide recruitment is broadening the scope. They also tend to be rather famously Less Than Happy with groups like FLEET, or even your average trigger-happy newbie. That said, there is a war on, and the forces of light really do need all the help they can get. As a result, these Boardies are usually assigned to Collateral Damage Minimization duty, and everyone wins.

Well, except for the poor Boardie (or poorer Sorcerer) who thought tossing fireballs in Central Park would be a good move...