International Paranormal Activities Committee -- IPAC
IPAC operates as a multi-national entity responsible for dealing
with threats from Paranormals. Their charter is broad and includes
alien activity, mutants, and supervillians of any kind. Its existence
is not widely known, and member nations hide the funding under any
number of umbrellas. In the US funding comes from the Armed Forces,
FBI, CIA, NSA and United Nations budgets.
IPAC has a number of paranormal operatives of its own, as well as
a reasonable number of highly trained normal human agents, mostly
culled from member nation's elite military forces.
IPAC operates and maintains facilities for imprisoning super-powered
criminals, and the premier facility of the type is the Para-Normal
Detention Facility, PNDF, just outside Port Alexander.
The structure of the IPAC, at the operational level, is simple.
The basic set-up features
agents, code-named Alpha, Bravo, etc. The code-names are job-titles
and so each Strike Team, for instance, has a Fire Team Alpha, a Beta, a
Charlie, and a Delta. Each team has a Team commander referred to
by name and the courtesy title "Mister"; eg. Mr. Wilkins.
Special Agents, such as Glory/Iron Maiden, are outside of that hierarchy.
Instead they
usually have a handler, to whom they report and with whom they usually work.
Handlers are at the Team Commander level.
That's as much of the hierarchy as is usually visible. The TCs are almost
certainly further divided and ranked, but to the agents, including special
agents, they are all simply Commander. It's fairly clear, though, that
SA handlers are senior somehow.
SA's do not de jure outrank agents, but de facto they do.
SAs are
often assigned as team leaders (a position, as opposed to Team Commanders
which is a sort of rank). In general, though, an agent is likely to take
orders from and follow an SA, if only because any situation involving an
SA is likely to be one that needs their talents.
Most, if not all, IPAC operatives have a military rank as well as their
position in the IPAC hierarchy.
Last Updated 18 June 2003
