Department 32

• Group Name: Department 32 - varies. (Undercover elements of Department 32 make up new identities and new departments to be from as needed. Bureau Thirteen, Department of Temporal Investigations and others are known.)
• Created by: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Enterprise.
• Appearance: Originally as agents Duchlesy and that other guy in DS9's Trials and Trtibulations. The as Daniels and the "Temporal Cold War" sub plot of Star Trek: Enterprise.
• Number of Members: Varies. Literally as the time lines and necessity changes. The core of Department 32 is an amazingly intelligent and paranoid Admiral who knows just enough to realize she doesn't know anything. and knowing nothing must act at once.
• Nature of Members: Usually intelligence officers who, having encountered something time travel or alternate universe related are drafted into the futile effort to keep the madness from spreading.
• Organization: Borrowed from Starfleet Intelligence. A core intelligence gathering, analysis and information control organization, and independent cells of operations agents who's access to information is theoretically limited.
• Game Role: NPCs who arrive and then take devices, people and objects away and deeply classify them to prevent the madness from damaging the main game world.
• World Role: A mechanism for Starfleet to try and deal with temporal madness.
• Relative Influence: Large, and non-existence. A secret organization that knows too much and has permission to take extreme measures in the name of national security. Usually they find the harsh measures of Department 31 futile, useless or counter productive - what they're dealing with is much crazier than the Tal Shiar or the Obsidian Order.
• Public or Secret?: So secret that you now must kill yourself for knowing too much. Don't worry. they'll help. Or so secret that because I told you, we'll be drafted into trying to help keep the secret.
• Publicly Stated Goal: None.
• Real Goal: To contain and control the effects of time travel and alternate universe travel, to preserve the integrity of the time line and prevent time travel related causality failures from erasing the universe.
• Relative Wealth: Huge - they can commandeer anything in Starfleet they need to try and keep the crazy down.
• Group advantages: Super secret. Often manned by people from alternate universes and times who do not exist in records and bring weird/effective skills to bear.
• Special Abilities: Time machines and AU conveyances have been captured by Department 32. Only the totally naive newbies want to try and use them. Machines and devices for effecting time and probability have also been captured.

  Department 32 has some knowledge of alternate times lines and counter factual history, enough to begin plotting current trends and to occasionally spot odd deformations of probability that mark time related interference.

  Department 32 has high level executive power to do whatever it takes to preserve time and space itself.

  Usually this is used to bury and hide inconvenient people, things, places and events.

• Group disadvantages: They deal with madness. When Time Travel turns up, the first thing out the window is cause and effect. Suddenly you have no guarantee that anything you do will have the effect you want, or that you'll be able to repair it if it doesn't.

  Alternate universes mean anything that can happen IS happening, Somewhere. Know that somewhere you're a borg drone. Somewhere cthuluesque horrors are feasting on your mind. Somewhere, you and your companions are invading other space and feasting on the minds of Cthuluesque horrors. Somewhere you're applying a hot iron and demanding that your victim repent And somewhere not too far away, you're the one getting the hot iron applied to you. And when these insane things impinge on the real world the first casualty is reality. The second is your faith in reality. The third is your ability to keep track of the random insanity and back track to what you used to think was reality. Consequently - members of Department 32 are either mad or heading that way. The Admiral in charge seems to have attained some sort of stable madness, but she's so highly classified no one is allowed to check. The disturbing part is when agents come to realize that this doesn't matter. Department 32 is a good agency to avoid.

• Special disadvantages: A time travel/AU event becomes an exercise in improvisation. Agents and officers on the scene have to invent solutions based on what they have handy. Close enough is close enough.

  The realization that all of History depends on such slim strings of desperation and improvisation - and is subject to retroactive change without notice - Often makes brave, strong, hard men hide under their beds and cry.

• Those who favor them: The mad. Patriotic Conspiracy theorists. The Third Bob. Refugees from Alternate universes and unpleasant periods of history. Starfleet officers who get caught up in AU/time travel madness.
• Those opposed to them: The Mad. People who believe that time travel and alternate universes are actually symptoms of psychosis. Ane History Scouts Evil warlords and brain sucking monsters from across all time and space.
• Area of Operation: The Federation - and then wherever.
• Headquarters Location: Far Side City, Luna. Early, naive and optimistic leaders of Department 32 thought that the ENTIRE MOON could act as a shield if some rogue time machine acted up. Now people in the know know there is no shield.
• Public Face: None. Shut up.
• Notable Members: The Doctor. The Brigadier. Occasional Variations of Spock from Vulcan. Daniels. Anyone in the Command Staff of the Starship Enterprise, although they aren't told until necessary.
• History of the Organization: In the 2150s. the Earthforce Starship Bonaventure was affected by the "Temporal Cold War" - and evil warlord twinked the Suliban (Who didn't need the help) in an effort to take over the galaxy of the past.

  Now, pegging a date to this is futile. In 2063. the Borg invaded Earth of that era to try and head off Earth's invention of the warp drive and the formation of the Federation. The Titanic's maiden voyage of 1912 is littered with time travelers.

  The asteroid that hits the earth in 65 million BC is a positive tourist attraction with ships from all times and places arriving to watch the history shaping event.

  In the 29th century The Temporal investigations division, now the biggest part of Starfleet responded to the threat of the Suliban Warlord and began to move to counter him. Eventually this madness turned back upon itself, and consumed itself in an orgy of nonsensical psuedo-causality. But it didn't.

  Temporal investigations says they cannot count how many times similar things have happened, but estimates range into the thousands. if you think about it, it's make you crazy. That, a phaser and an ability to follow syntactically impossible sentences and you'll be ready for a stint in Department 32. or the nut house...or both.

  And of course none of the above never happens, don't worry.

• Fate of the Organization: It implodes, over and over again. But keeps cropping back up as a non existent agency time travels into the past and tries to do something futile which will after a long, insane, chain of events lead to it's own destruction.

  By the time well meaning crises response people figure out that by trying to help, they're just makingit worse - it's too late and the cycle has started again.

  People have tried to time travel and warn these early time travel crises response pioneers to just knock it off. This usually leads to an alternate timeline where these time travel crises response pioneers wind up ruling known space with an Iron Fist. And then they send agents back in time to ensure that they always maintain power, and wind up sparking a time traveling resistance movement which ends up destroying them.

  Things like this are why experienced Department 32 agents won't willingly touch captured time machines. It's never worth it.

  specially perceptive and intelligent agents eventually wind up heavily drugged at the Elba II prison colony, mumbling something about "Kill Garry." (Sometimes "Kill Skippy")

  Experienced Department 32 veterans assure us that we don't want to know...

  ...--We believe them.--

The Admiral of Dept 32