Skip to content

Vanguard Unit

AX.GM.07.03 - Vanguard Unit

The Vanguard Unit is a classified special operations element operating under a Defense Intelligence designation that places it outside normal military command structure. Where the BUA investigates, the Vanguard acts. Its mandate is direct: identify, engage, and neutralize supernatural threats assessed as presenting immediate danger to civilian populations, national security assets, or personnel with classified knowledge of the hidden world.

The Vanguard does not make detailed records. It does not cultivate sources or build cases. It receives threat assessments, deploys, and resolves situations. The resolution tends to be terminal.

Within the hidden world, the Vanguard has a specific reputation: it is effective, it is fast, and it does not distinguish well between threats and bystanders once it is on-site. Hidden-world communities that have had Vanguard contact, most of the older ones have, at some point, maintain the kind of wariness toward the organization that comes from knowing it views them as potentially relevant to a threat assessment rather than as parties with their own standing.

The Vanguard is, by design, not a place for nuance. Operators who develop significant investment in the complexity of the hidden world tend to leave or to become problems for their command structure.

History

The Vanguard was assembled in the mid-1980s as the government's understanding of the hidden world's more dangerous elements exceeded what federal law enforcement, specifically the BUA, was designed to handle. The founding cases are classified, but the pattern of incidents in the late 1970s that preceded the Vanguard's establishment included several events where BUA investigators were killed by entities they were attempting to document rather than neutralize.

The early Vanguard was a small experimental element within a classified special operations program. It drew on existing special forces training and added what its first commanders called "threat-specific protocol development", field-tested approaches to entities that did not respond to conventional engagement methods. The early operators learned what worked through experience that was expensive in personnel.

Current doctrine is more developed. The Vanguard has accumulated sixty years of operational data on threat categories, engagement approaches, and the specific material and technique requirements for permanent resolution. It does not share this doctrine freely, but elements of it have leaked into hunter community practice over decades.

The Vanguard's current size and organizational structure are classified. What is known to outside parties is that it exists, that it responds to threat designations, and that its operational tempo has increased significantly over the past decade.

Structure

The Vanguard operates in teams, small, specialized units designed for specific threat categories. Teams are not publicly identified; operators use designation numbers rather than names in official communications.

Team Structure: - Team Lead, senior operator; tactical authority in-field; answers to command only - Operators, four to six per team; cross-trained in threat-specific engagement - Specialist, attached per mission; tradition access or specific technical capacity - Support, logistics, medical, exfil; not combat-rated but field-experienced

Command Structure: - Program Director, political/military appointee; strategic oversight, not operational - Operations Chief, manages team deployment and threat assessment intake - Intelligence Cell, receives threat assessments from BUA and other sources; produces targeting packages - Doctrine Section, updates engagement protocols based on operational feedback

The Vanguard does not have a public-facing structure, a congressional oversight relationship, or a budget line that appears in any document accessible through normal channels.

Operations

Vanguard operations follow a targeting-and-deployment model: threat assessment comes in (from the BUA, from internal intelligence, or from other sources), operations staff evaluates and generates a targeting package, a team is assigned and briefed, the team deploys and resolves.

Engagement doctrine: Vanguard operators are trained for lethal engagement with nonhuman threats. The doctrine prioritizes rapid resolution over documentation. Evidence is collected when practical and eliminated when documentation presents a security risk. Civilian witnesses are managed through a dedicated support function that has more in common with BUA procedure than operators generally acknowledge.

Threat-specific material: The Vanguard maintains stockpiles of materials that don't appear in standard military logistics: silver-core ammunition in several calibers, blessed ordnance, cold iron-edged close combat weapons, salt canisters in dispersal-round and hand-charge configurations, consecrated items from several religious traditions. Specialists with tradition access are attached to teams as tactical assets for engagements where material approaches are insufficient.

Extraction and cleanup: The Vanguard has a dedicated support element whose job is to make sure there is no verifiable record of what happened at an engagement site. This element has a significant degree of operational latitude and is not always in sync with what the field team determined actually needed to happen. Operators who have worked with the cleanup element develop opinions about institutional priorities.

Relations

Bureau of Unusual Affairs: The institutional relationship is formally cooperative and practically adversarial. The BUA wants cases documented; the Vanguard wants cases resolved. When both agencies respond to the same incident, jurisdiction is the first fight and methodology is the ongoing argument. Individual operators and agents sometimes work well together. The organizations do not.

Order of the Warden's Flame: The Vanguard has contracted with the Order for specialist support on engagements involving Shadow entities. The relationship is transactional and managed with care, the Order has its own operational standards and will not participate in engagements it assesses as disproportionate. The Vanguard finds this constraint frustrating. The Order finds the Vanguard's casualty tolerance for hidden-world bystanders troubling.

Obsidian Solutions: The Vanguard uses Obsidian for threat assessment intelligence and occasionally for logistics support in areas where federal infrastructure is impractical. Obsidian knows the Vanguard's capabilities well enough to be a useful partner and uncomfortable if it chooses to be. The relationship is maintained carefully from both sides.

The Bloodline Courts, The Hollow Market: The Vanguard has a file on both. Neither is currently a primary threat designation, but both are classified as organizationally monitored. Members of either organization who find themselves in proximity to a Vanguard operation should consider what their threat profile looks like from an external assessment.

The Compact of Lines, The Threshold Society, The Sovereign Circle: The Vanguard has files on all three. The Compact is monitored as the primary governance structure for a lineage the Vanguard regularly deploys against and alongside, its Skinchanger operator population makes the Compact's politics operationally relevant. The Threshold Society is monitored as an inter-faction arbitration body whose reach into Vanguard-relevant conflicts the program has not fully mapped. The Sovereign Circle is monitored with particular attention: an organized community of Shadow-Bound Marked practitioners whose relationship with their compact sources is managed rather than reactive presents a different operational variable than isolated Marked individuals. None of the three is currently a primary threat designation.

Secrets

The Vanguard's doctrine section maintains engagement protocols for every significant threat category in its operational history. It also maintains protocols for several categories that have not been activated, threat types assessed as possible future concerns. One of those protocols covers organized Dhampir political structures. Another covers what happens when a Light-Bound Marked entity is assessed as a threat.

The Vanguard has lost operators to hidden-world recruitment. Not many, the screening is designed to prevent it, but some. Operators who go native, as it is internally described, are not pursued aggressively unless they take classified knowledge with them. The ones who left quietly are left quiet.

The current Operations Chief has a personal assessment, not part of any official document, that the Vanguard's operational tempo increase over the past decade is not evidence of a worsening threat environment. It is evidence of something else. The assessment is four pages, written by hand, and kept in a location that is not accessible through normal Vanguard records systems.

Professions

Operator

The briefing tells you what the target is. The doctrine tells you what the target can do. The experience tells you that both of those things are approximations and the situation will develop its own opinions.

Favored Save: Speed Save (+1D to Speed + Acrobatics rolls)

Power Access: Hollow Pact, Sacred Fire, or Pact-Shifting (if Lineage-eligible). The Vanguard does not recruit based on tradition access, but operators who bring lineage-native capabilities to the role are assigned to team positions that use those capabilities. An operator with Hollow Pact access and a Shadow-Bound background is a specialist asset. The Vanguard's position on the ethics of the underlying compact is that this is not operationally relevant.

Starting Resources: Military-issue sidearm and primary weapon (automatic rifle or shotgun, operator's choice), tactical gear (vest, radio, NVGs), access to Vanguard threat-specific materials inventory (sign-out required), and a classified security clearance that will not survive scrutiny from anyone with access to actual classification records.

Lineage Affinity: Skinchanger, Marked (Shadow-Bound and Light-Bound). Human operators form the operational majority. Dhampir operators exist in small numbers in specific team roles. Faeborn operators are rare and generate internal discussion when they occur.

Progression Track: Operator

Stage 1 (10 XP), Field Qualified
  The operator has completed threat-specific training and proven they can
  function under engagement conditions.
  - Doctrine Application: The operator has internalized the Vanguard's
    threat-category protocols. Once per scene, they may identify a target's
    category and recall the relevant engagement doctrine, weakness, effective
    materials, destruction method, with a Wit + Lore roll vs Threshold 2.
    Success means the operator knows the relevant protocol. Failure means the
    doctrine section hadn't updated for this specific variant.
  - Threat-Specific Loadout: The operator has standing authorization to draw
    from the Vanguard's specialized materials inventory before a deployment.
    They carry silver or blessed ammunition as standard rather than having
    to requisition it.

Stage 2 (25 XP), Senior Operator
  The operator has survived enough engagements to have formed opinions about
  the ones that shouldn't have happened the way they did.
  - Breach and Engage: The operator can initiate an engagement faster than
    standard tactical approach allows. Once per scene, they may act in the
    first Turn of an encounter without needing to win Initiative; they move
    and take one action before Initiative is determined.
  - Contingency Protocol: The operator has prepared a personal contingency
    for the threat types they've encountered most. Choose one threat category.
    Against threats of that category, the operator rolls at +1D on attack
    and damage rolls.

Stage 3 (50 XP), Team Lead / Specialist Operator
  The operator has become the kind of person the Vanguard calls when a
  situation has developed its own opinions.
  - Crisis Response: The operator functions under pressure that degrades
    other people. When an operator with this perk is Staggered, they do not
    take the standard penalty to actions, the combat training is deep enough
    to operate through damage states that would slow anyone else.
  - Override Authority: The operator may abort a mission and extract their
    team without authorization from Operations, citing field conditions.
    This authority is real; it is also logged, reviewed, and has career
    implications. The Vanguard gives its senior operators this power
    because the alternative is worse.

Specialist

The team does the work. The specialist makes sure the work takes.

Favored Save: Body Save (+1D to Body + Fortitude rolls), specialists operate in field conditions while managing tradition use; physical resilience is foundational.

Power Access: Mediumship, Glamourist, Blood Sense, Hollow Pact, Sacred Fire, or Pact-Shifting (as appropriate to Lineage). The Specialist role exists specifically for operators with tradition access. Any Lineage that provides Power Access can produce a Specialist. The Vanguard does not prefer one tradition over another; it prefers effective resolution.

Starting Resources: Personal tradition Focus (if applicable), sidearm, field medical kit, threat-specific material for their tradition's relevant applications (blessed water and cold iron for Mediumship specialists; silver residue samples for Blood Sense practitioners, etc.).

Lineage Affinity: Any lineage with tradition access.

Progression Track: Specialist

Stage 1 (10 XP), Tactical Integration
  The specialist has learned to use their tradition under field conditions
  rather than controlled environments.
  - Strain Under Fire: The specialist can use their tradition on the same
    Turn they take damage, without the standard Concentration check (Wit Save
    vs Threshold 2) that damage typically imposes on tradition use.
  - Threat Assessment: Before a mission, the specialist may perform a
    preliminary assessment of a known threat using their tradition. A Governing
    Attribute + Tradition roll vs Threshold 2 surfaces one tactically relevant
    piece of information about the target, weakness, current location, active
    capabilities; that the targeting package did not include.

Stage 2 (25 XP), Senior Specialist
  The specialist has accumulated enough operational experience to have opinions
  about which engagements their tradition is the right tool for.
  - Coordinated Application: Once per scene, the specialist may use their
    tradition to set up an attack or action for another team member. A
    successful tradition application (Threshold 2+) grants the next operator
    to attack the same target +2D on that attack roll.
  - Recovery Protocol: The specialist can clear Veil Strain as a Minor Action
    rather than a Primary Action (Governing Attribute + Resolve vs Threshold 3).
    Field conditions have taught them to do it faster.

Stage 3 (50 XP), Expert Specialist / Asset
  The specialist has become the person the Vanguard calls when the engagement
  requires something beyond standard doctrine.
  - Doctrine Expansion: The specialist's operational history has contributed
    to Vanguard doctrine. Choose one application of their tradition. That
    application's effective Threshold is treated as one lower (minimum 1) for
    all Vanguard-designated threat engagements, the specialist has done it
    enough times in field conditions to have optimized it.
  - Standing Resource: The specialist has access to Vanguard's classified
    tradition-support materials, pre-consecrated items, specialized focus
    components, tradition-research data, as a standing personal resource rather
    than a mission-by-mission allocation.

Plot Hooks

  • A Vanguard team has gone dark on a mission. The Operations Chief wants the situation resolved before anyone outside the program notices. The resolution may require finding out what the team found.
  • An operator has filed an abort report citing "bystander assessment inconsistent with threat designation." The Operations Chief's review of the abort report is currently pending. The operator is not currently assigned to active missions.
  • The Vanguard's doctrine section has flagged an emerging pattern: three separate incidents in the past six months share a signature that matches no existing threat category. The targeting package hasn't been built yet because the category doesn't exist in the system.
  • A retired Vanguard operator has begun providing tactical support to a hidden-world community the Vanguard has classified as organizationally monitored. The operator took classified knowledge with them. The Vanguard has noticed.