FUDGE: Socrates Club

Introduction

This select club pretends to be one of the few mixed clubs in all New Europe, specialized in ancient greek story and philosophy. That's actually a very well set masquerade. Gathering people from all around the world, it's actually a club of what we ought to call "victorian superheroes".

Founded in London in 1863 by Lord Wittmore, a british nobleman of an ancient family, the other two co-founders came from very different places but all had the same goal in common: many dangers are waiting the right moment to strike and bring chaos and anarchy to the world. Few organizations work at these levels; the governments work hard to maintain the status quo and avoid wars as much as they try to expand their spheres of influence; the secret societies work against each other to advance their agendas, and even when many of them seek the common good they often ignore the common citizen, who is less important than the society at large. Evil organizations seek their own parcels of power, extending their corrupted tentacles everywhere. Mad scientists unleash their abominations to bring havoc and fear... and the ones who could fight all those evil doers are busy playing the great game of intrigue of the late 1800s...

The Socrates Club tries to oppose those forces, striving to do what it's right but not at the expense of innocents. Since their creation, they've fought shaddy plots of many nations aimed to break the balance of power with the probable cost of thousand of lives. They've fought side by side and sometimes against secret organizations like the Illuminated Brotherhood of Bayern and the Mystic Lodge of the Temple of Ra when their private wars were causing harm to innocents. They've opposed the World Crime Brotherhood anytime they've found information of their activities, etc, etc...

Sadly they are no army. In many cases they've failed. Many wars have been fought despite their efforts. Many innocents have been abused and / or killed. But the difference is that no matter how many times they fall, they get up and stand again, ready for more. They never give up.

Lord Wittmore's co-founders and friends were John Maison, an ex-freemason sorcerer and Arcananthrax, an ancient dragon.

Maison was dissapointed with how the orders of sorcery worked to achieve their goals, often with random casualties they didn't seem to worry about. And had begun to think that the end doesn't justify the means, that secrecy to lead society to a better state was producing exactly the contrary. Perhaps, he thought, the more difficult path was the one worth trying?

Arcananthrax, even for a dragon, was worried for humanity, as many relations of his were also half humans, and theirs mothers fully humans. For too long on his many human lifetimes he had seen how good ends were perverted and caused more harm than they were trying to fix.

After many sleepless nights in which they debated what was wrong in that era, Wittmore decided to use his extraordinary economic resources and gather a team of people who could do something about it, and fight fire with fire. And so they decided to create a club, to fight for the right, and used Socrates (who was made drink poison to kill himself) as their emblem as they were sacrificing themselves for the common and particular good of others.

Thus, as a special sigil, each time they finish a mission, they leave a poker card-like with a beautiful drawing of poison hemlock flowers.

The Gathering

Soon after the club was created they started looking for gifted people who would join them and bring special skills or powers with them, in a nutshell valuable like minded persons. Using their large net of contacts, the three founders managed to bring a few special persons and beings all over New Europe and beyond.

Many of them have risen in rank inside this secret organization and now are trusted members of the club. Others, less experienced recruits (like for example the PCs as they join the club) are trusted with less important works till they prove themselves and their abilities.

Some of the members the club has seen since 1863 till 1879 are:

• Hercules, a greek athlete, who uses a special potion which gives him Legendary strength and resilience. Not surprisingly the potion is called Hercules Potion. As an athlete of the 1800s he wears gymnastic clothes which barely hide his bulging muscles, and a Zorro-like mask hiding most of his face.
• The Edge, an spanish duelist of a noble family (he's a landless count), with extraordinary swordmanship and ambidextery. Very skilled with anything sharpened. He dresses quite as a archetypical swordman vigilante, all black silk, leather gloves and black mask.
• Marsksman, an austrian firearm specialist, of exceptional skill with guns but also with bigger firearms. He wears long gloves and tall boots, a target in the center of his chest, and leather mask with crystal goggles.
• Clockwork, a french ex-captain of engineers who got severely mutilated in the war and has used ever since clockwork prosthetics of his own design. As strong as Hercules and partially plated, he's neverteless slow and clumsy and needs rewinding often to keep moving. He also doubles as the tinkerer who's built most of the gadgets his colleagues use. As Clockwork he wears a metal mask with crystal goggles, plating intertwined with his prosthetics, leather and straps keeping all in a piece.
• Nightwing, a young female dragon niece of the dragon co-founder of the club, courted by many male dragons and a sensation at formal dinners (she enjoys the human males' attentions as if pets, to enjoy and discard liberally). As dragon she only carries a dragon-sized mask, on her human form she wears green leather clothes, a mask, gloves and a cape.
• Spark, a seelie sprite who is exceptionally good at infiltration (due mainly to an etherality skill which enables Spark to walk through even solid steel). It's not clear if Spark is a he or a she, though. It is too bright to be sure!
• Bender, a daonie sidhe of the seelie court with an extraordinary skill at dominating people with his faerie powers. He dresses masked as if in carnival, complete with cape and fine clothes. He's also a warrior of great skill with his sword of faerie silver.
• Chi, an ancient martial artist of incredible skill, able to fight many foes bare handed despite his old age. He wears formal, standard chinese clothes of black silk, and a mask hides his face.

The Details

An important detail of the club is their severe secrecy. To avoid being discovered and destroyed, each member swears an oath of secrecy so they'd commit suicide if captured and / or threatened to reveal information about the club. To be able to succeed quickly to this grim goal, they all carry a hidden small vial of concentrated poison hemlock essence (usually in a boot), pressured and with an hipodermic needle ready to deliver its lethal content if needed.

Two years after the creation of the club, and after a few great successes, Lord Wittmore became haunted with the desire of revealing his organization to the Queen, to who he, as a nobleman, felt very attached by loyalty. Nevertheless he also knew he couldn't do it, so he felt quite like as if breaking in half.

Then one morning he woke up and found he had left his body behind. He had died while sleeping but found he couldn't leave till his work wasn't finished or alternatively till he could reveal his secrets to the Crown. "Noblesse Oblige" he thought, and carried on without revealing his dead state to anyone except Maison, Arcananthrax and his aide. Now he's rarely seen by the newer members of the club (as he can project an life-like image of himself only for short periods of time), can't leave the headquarters of the club (he's spiritually chained there) and most of the day to day interactions with the physical world are done through his loyal-to-death aide, Alfred (who is as cold as an iceberg, and even more efficient than he is cold).

The club works almost exclusively in London, though they've often travelled far away to fulfill special missions.

To help them in their missions the club members use a lot of gadgets developed by Clockwork. Amongst them we can find classical items like small smoke grenades, minute climbing hooks with ultrastrong wires, modified weapons like very accurate rifles or small explosive rounds of ammunition, etc. Besides those items Clockwork has also worked on steam automotives (he refuses calling them Hemlockmobiles) which are one step beyond what most vehicles of this age can do, short range ornithopters which are in fact incredible machines, etc.

Foes and Opponents

Besides evil organizations and government agencies when they work against law and order, the club has many recurrent foes:

• Standard crime, wherever the path leads the club members
• The World Crime Brotherhood by obvious reasons
• Bismark because his war plans are an obvious menace to the world stability
• The Steam Lords by the same reason, though they're more focused on the british islands only
• The Unseelie Court because they've always tried to destroy humanity
• The mad Doctor Moreau, who years ago offered his services to the Crown but when rejected chose to work against it instead; with the help of the World Crime Brotherhood is rumored to be creating a whole army of animal-like creatures
• The mentally unstable Doctor Frankestein, whose works may be well intentioned but whose creations always go mad and bring havoc to the innocents
• Vampiric and werewolf activity whenever it arises (its more common is some places than in others)