Control Lorebook

1. #1Federal Bureau of Control

   Keys: FBC, Federal Bureau of Control, the Bureau

   A secretive U.S. government agency tasked with investigating, containing, and studying paranormal phenomena known as Altered World Events. Headquartered in a shifting, labyrinthine building called the Oldest House in New York City, the Bureau operates largely outside public awareness and outside normal physical law. Staff investigate Altered Items and contain hostile anomalies to maintain the fragile balance that keeps reality stable. The Bureau is led by a Director, chosen through a mysterious ritual, and answers to an enigmatic higher power called the Board.

2. #2The Oldest House

   Keys: Oldest House, the House

   The Bureau's headquarters: a massive brutalist building in New York that does not behave like ordinary architecture. Its interior is far larger than its exterior, rooms shift and rearrange, and it exists partly outside conventional space. Passersby perceive it only vaguely, shielded by a phenomenon that keeps it from ordinary notice. Deep beneath its halls lie ancient stone chambers older than the building itself, hinting the House was built atop something far more primordial than the Bureau understands.

3. #3The Boardconstant

   Keys: The Board

   A group of otherworldly entities that oversee the Federal Bureau of Control from beyond ordinary reality, manifesting as floating, antler-like geometric shapes that communicate through abstract, riddling language. Their motives and true nature remain opaque even to the Bureau's own Director, who must interpret their cryptic pronouncements as guidance or command. The Board's authority over the Bureau is treated as absolute, though how much genuine control they exert over events is left deliberately ambiguous.

4. #4Jesse Faden

   Keys: Jesse, Jesse Faden

   A woman who arrives at the Oldest House searching for her missing brother, Dylan, and is unexpectedly named the new Director of the Federal Bureau of Control after the previous director's death. Jesse has carried a psychic hitchhiker in her mind since childhood, a presence that offers her guidance and unusual power. As a child, she witnessed an Altered World Event in her hometown that led to Bureau agents taking her brother into custody, a wound that still drives her.

5. #5Dylan Faden

   Keys: Dylan, Dylan Faden

   Jesse's younger brother, taken by the Federal Bureau of Control as a child after the Altered World Event in their hometown revealed unusual paranormal sensitivity in him. Raised and studied within the Bureau's research wing for years, Dylan eventually becomes possessed by the Hiss, the hostile entity plaguing the Oldest House, turning him into one of the central threats Jesse must confront on her search for him.

6. #6Zachariah Trench

   Keys: Zachariah Trench, Director Trench, Trench

   The Director of the Federal Bureau of Control prior to Jesse Faden. Trench led the Bureau for years before dying under circumstances tied to the Hiss incursion, leaving the Service Weapon behind for his successor to claim. His earlier research and decisions, including the original investigation into Jesse's hometown, quietly shape much of the Bureau's history and the crisis Jesse now inherits.

7. #7Ahti

   Keys: Ahti, the janitor

   A Finnish night janitor employed by the Bureau, whose mundane demeanor belies deep, unexplained connections to the building's stranger workings. He offers Jesse cryptic advice, hums old folk tunes, and moves through the Oldest House with an ease no ordinary employee should have, suggesting he understands far more about the building's true nature than he lets on.

8. #8The Hissconstant

   Keys: Hiss, The Hiss

   A malevolent, otherworldly force that arrives through radio-like resonance and corrupts anyone it infects, turning Bureau staff into hostile, chanting vessels bound to its will. Hiss-possessed individuals speak in overlapping, discordant voices and move erratically, no longer themselves. The Hiss's invasion of the Oldest House is the central crisis threatening to overwhelm the Bureau's control over reality itself.

9. #9Altered World Events

   Keys: Altered World Event, AWE

   Localized paranormal incidents where the normal rules of reality break down, often centered on an object, location, or phenomenon that defies explanation. AWEs are the Bureau's core mandate to investigate and contain; left unchecked, they can spread and destabilize their surroundings indefinitely. Notable past AWEs have shaped decades of Bureau research and form the basis of much of its institutional knowledge.

10. #10Altered Items

    Keys: Altered Items, Object of Power, Altered Item

    Ordinary objects that have become imbued with paranormal properties, ranging from a rubber duck said to bestow apparent invincibility to a payphone that connects to the dead. The Bureau collects and studies Altered Items in restricted vaults, since their effects are often as dangerous as they are useful, requiring careful containment procedures to prevent unpredictable side effects.

11. #11Polaris

    Keys: Polaris

    A benevolent, light-based presence that has been with Jesse since childhood, acting as her guide and source of supernatural ability inside the Oldest House. Unlike the corrupting influence of the Hiss, Polaris seems to offer protection and clarity, though its true nature and origin are never fully explained, leaving its relationship to Jesse partly mysterious even to her.

12. #12The Ordinary / Black Rock Quarry

    Keys: hometown, Ordinary, Black Rock Quarry

    The site of the childhood Altered World Event that first drew the Bureau into Jesse and Dylan's lives: a research operation and quarry town where a mysterious door led to strange, unexplained occurrences. The Bureau's containment operation there ended badly, culminating in Dylan's abduction and lasting trauma for Jesse, and remains a lingering, unresolved thread in the Bureau's history.

13. #13Threshold Kids

    Keys: Threshold Kids

    A defunct children's educational program produced internally by the Bureau, ostensibly meant to explain paranormal concepts to young minds housed within the Oldest House. Its unsettling, glitching video segments hint at deeper secrets the Bureau conceals even from its own personnel, blurring the line between education and psychological conditioning.

14. #14Central Executive, Panopticon & Research Sector

    Keys: Panopticon, Central Executive, Research Sector

    Major sectors within the sprawling Oldest House, each dedicated to a different Bureau function: administrative command, security observation, and paranormal research respectively. Moving between sectors reveals how compartmentalized and secretive the Bureau's internal operations are, with departments often unaware of what others are doing behind closed doors.

15. #15The Directorship

    Keys: Director, become Director, Directorship

    The Bureau's highest office, filled not through normal appointment but through a mysterious process in which the Service Weapon, a shapeshifting sidearm, seems to choose its wielder. Holding the position grants unusual authority and connects the Director directly to the Board's cryptic guidance, but the role carries significant personal risk, as past Directors have discovered to their cost.

16. #16Service Weapon

    Keys: Service Weapon

    A strange, shapeshifting firearm bound to whoever holds the office of Director, able to transform between multiple configurations for different purposes. Its origin predates the Bureau itself, and it appears to possess a will of its own, selecting its bearer rather than being merely issued. Within the Bureau it is treated as a symbol of office as much as a tool.

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