comment: |
  A team of steampunk heroes that go around continually preventing
  apocalypses.
  
  The [[Excrucians]] infiltrated the actors looking for the
  Inconvenient Truths.  The ApocalypsePreventers infiltrated following
  them with the Apocolypse Compass, but they didn't actually know what
  in the tower was dangerous.  When the Excrucians got close to the
  Truths, the Doom Alarm went off, causing [[InkCatherly]] to push
  [[Cid]]'s Emergency Sequestration button, even though it was labeled
  "Do Not Press".
name: Guardians of the World
members: |
  \PulpScientist{Invents all sorts of wonderous things.  Using Science!
    Has a bit more experience with this sort of thing than the rest of you.}
  \AirshipDude{Built an airship.  Works for the Company as a "constructgineer"}
  \InkCatherly{Calls \them{}self an explorer.  Mainly contributes enthusiasm.}
body: |
  Most people think the world is stable, safe, secure.  Sure, there's
  suffering everywhere.  There's pain and hunger and disease.  People die in
  droves.  But that's, like, normal.  The world makes sense.  An
  asteroid could hit, but it's astronomically unlikely.  No rains
  of scissors are going to fall from the sky, puncturing millions.
  Fire and brimstone aren't going to devestate any major metropolitan
  areas.  The gods are Isn'ts yet.  The world is far from perfect.
  But the world is, and it's going to continue to be.

  Most people think that's just the way it is.  It's natural, it's
  normal, it's not because of anything in particular.  That, however,
  is where they're wrong.  There are threats to reality all the time.
  You're not talking World War II-type stuff.  That was bad, sure, but
  that's not your department.  You're talking stuff like people proving
  P=NP and using that to summon demons.  People unleashing the Horses
  of the Apocalypse from their subterranean vaults.  Cackling scientists
  in their volcano lairs
  drawing the moon into a collision course with the Earth.  That sort
  of thing.

  Stuff like that never happens?  That's because you prevent it.
  You're a branch of the \name, an international organization that
  works to preserve the world and protect it from threats that
  overwhelm the ability of ordinary individuals and nations to deal
  with them.  You save the world three times before breakfast, learn
  to live to tell the tale, and vanish off into the sunset.  Then have
  a soft-boiled egg.\footnote{Breakfast's important!}

  Well, to be precice, that's what \PulpScientist does.  At least to hear
  him tell it.  The other two of you are still new at this.  But you're
  glad to be a part of it.

  You keep yourselves a secret for two main reasons.  The first is
  that it's actually really helpful for the world to make sense.  If
  people trust in science and logic and that they understand reality,
  they're unlikely to become renegade alchemists and brew forbidden
  immortality elixirs.  And moreso, their expectation of how things
  will happen is a resource you can use.  It's a lot harder for a wolf
  to eat the sun when everyone thinks that the sun is a mass of
  incandescent gas and that no matter how big the wolf is, it's not
  big enough.  It's not //quite// that the laws of physics are subject
  to peer pressure.  It's more that, what the world expects to happen,
  usually does.

  The second reason is, of course, that you are not without enemies.
  There are those who hate the world, and those who think the world
  has wronged them.  Worse than those are the Excrucians, who think
  the world is a twisted lie that all humanity must escape.  All of
  these would seek to stop you, to thwart your plans.  To kill you
  before you can stop them.  And thus, you remain in the shadows.

  Your particular mission initially seemed pretty straight-forward.
  \PulpScientist has an Apocalypse Compass that points in the
  direction of the nearest threat to the world.\footnote{It measures
  the thickness of reality and computes some derivitives.  It's very
  scientific.}  It brought \PulpScientist{\them} to Santa Ynez, then
  to the tower in the chaos where \AirshipDude works with the
  \Actors.

  Then it got a bit mystifying.  \AirshipDude helped \PulpScientist
  infiltrate the \Actors.  \PulpScientist was expecting some sort of cult, or
  maybe an forbidden artifact from the days of the gibbelins.  But there was
  just an enthusiastic mishmash of actors and
  some impressive special effects equipment.  And
  not much of a trail.  You've found a new member (\InkCatherly), but
  not much else.

  Your best guess is that there's some sort of powerful secret here
  somewhere.  The shows here are supposed to make sense from the
  senseless, and that can encourage such things.  It's probably broken
  into a few pieces, dangerous Answers.  But you made no headway
  tracking anything specific down.  The problem is, you're not sure
  where to find it, or your opposition.

  Your opposition, however, must be doing better than you are.  The
  compass isn't your only piece of monitoring equipment.  You also
  have the Doom Alarm.  It goes off if the fabric of reality becomes
  extremely thin, or something.  It went off during the dress rehersal
  for \AirshipDude{\first}'s new show, "Revenge of the Sky Pirates".
  \InkCatherly{\first was on the airship, on stage.  \They did what
  any other overly-enthusiastic young hero would do in such a
  situation: pushed the big red button labeled "DO NOT PRESS".}

  That was the Emergency Sequestration Device.  It isolated the
  surrounding area in a pocket dimension outside reality, to safely
  contain threats as a last resort.  And so, you are in the Place
  Without Recourse, with your opposition and whatever the threat
  actually is.  If it's a set of dangerous
  Answers, like \PulpScientist{\first} thinks,
  and the Answers get back out to the real world, that could be bad.  Real
  bad.  You want to get out yourselves, of course, 
  so you can go back to saving the
  world.  You want to find your opposition, and ideally keep them
  here.  But most of all, you want to ensure that the threat that
  brought you here does not escape, nor any other threats to reality,
  be they dangerous Answers, lost magics, forbidden alchemy, or mad
  science.  For the good of all the world, you must not fail.

  == Recognizing Dangerous Answers ==

  If you have some Answers you think might be dangerous to reality, you
  can test them.  \PulpScientist still has the Apocalypse Compass, but
  the fabric of this
  place is a bit odd, so it's not working all that reliably.  
  Once per hour, if you have the Compass you 
  can test some collection of Answers.  Take them to GM, and the
  GM will tell you how many are dangerous to reality, but not which ones.  You
  can only test these once per hour total, so you probably want to
  think carefully before you test!  Mark the appropriate box on the
  Compass when you use it.

  Note that the compass can't tell you whether a given answer is a good
  or bad choice for someone trying to answer their question.  It
  can only detect Answers that are inherently dangerous to the fabric
  of reality.

  == Goals ==
  
  * Find any dangerous Answers and make sure they don't get back into
  the outside world.
  * Stop anything else dangerous from getting out.
  * Ensure that you all manage to escape safely, so you can save the world
  next Thursday, too.
  * Keep an eye out for enemies of the world, and stop them by any means
  necessary.
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claimedby: Xavid