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Clive Barkers Jericho - Story info Part 3
AL-KHALI - A CITY SLICED THROUGH TIME- Modern Day
At the US Army Chaplaincy Training School in South Carolina, a small collection of dilapidate barracks serves as the secret headquarters to the most powerful and clandestine special forces unit in the world: The Department of Occult Warfare. Founded during World War II, The DOW maintains a network of listening stations across the world and its agents have been involved in every major conflict and Cold War operation of the last sixty years. Currently the most important of these listening stations is Outpost Vigil,sited on the outskirts of Al-Khali after extraordinary levels of paranormal activity were recorded there. The ancient city is also home to the ‘Legend of the Firstborn’. Legend has it that before Adam, before Eve, there was an abortive attempt at creating the soul of Man. The Firstborn was cast into the Abyss to make way for mankind, but its evil would not be contained. At the very place of its conception it has attempted to escape its ethereal prison and lay waste to humanity. It has made various previous attempts. With each appearance The Firstborn taints a larger piece of earth
which must be sealed in with it lest the infection spread. Each time, brave warriors skilled in the arcane arts have sacrificed themselves to seal it off from the mortal world. To capture the beast, one must seal himself in with it.
This morning Agent Muriel Green, lead paranormal investigator at Outpost Vigil, filed a report detailing an attack by an armed group of the Brotherhood of Dark Rapture, a death sect led by Arnold Leach, a former DOW operative turned rogue. This was the DOW’s last contact with Outpost Vigil. Shortly after, at 04:00 AM GMT, U.S. Army satellites monitoring oil pipelines in the Rub Al-Khali desert detected a shockwave of immense thermo-kinetic energy. Two US Navy F-18 fighters scrambled from the Red Sea flew in into the resulting sand storm to recon the area. Neither plane has returned or made contact since. Since the shockwave, DOW psychic operatives across the world have been reporting an intense power that passed through their bodies. By 09:00 GMT, an urgent message was sent to U.S. Special Operations Command and the Department of Occult Warfare: Code Jericho. Jericho is the combat arm of the Department of Occult Warfare. Each team is comprised of seven Special Forces operatives, each one an expert in parapsychology, psionics or the occult arts. No one on the team knows how many
Jericho teams are in existence or how many have come before them. They know others exist yet none of them have ever met. Each team is designated by a number and nothing more. Their role is to advise and provide intelligence to the US intelligence community through the use of psionics and other occult means, defend the United States and its Allies from threats classified as paranormal, extraterrestrial or beyond the scope of perceived reality and remain on constant 24 hour alert in the event of OPERATION: GODSEAL: a top-secret, ‘need-to-know’ project. The alert has been raised. Al-Khali is the eye of the storm. OPERATION: GODSEAL is in play. The fate of the world rests in Jericho 23’s hands.
Al-KHALI - A CITY SLICED THROUGH TIME - World War II
World War II began the era of industrialised, global, modern combat. Millions died. This war, unprecedented in global reach and casualties, was only ended through the deployment of nuclear bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in two devastating strikes.Recent Department of Occult Warfare paranormal excavations revealed concentrated levels of activity at Al-Khali during the War. The roots of the activity stretch back further. In the 1930s reports reached the UK Security Service that a German occult society, deeply entwined with the Nazi hierarchy, was investigating paranormal warfare. Initially these documents were dismissed and filed. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War changed everything. Field reports spoke of strange phenomena during bombardments, projectiles that seemed to change their path in mid-flight to reach hidden positions, interrogation led by unidentified collaborators that obtained information without a word being uttered, and sudden deaths in inexplicable conditions (heart attacks, spontaneous combustion) of high Republican commanders inside their underground refuges. Covert operations revealed that a new German corps established by the German Occultists, the Geheimnisvoll Abwehrmacht, were operating on the Spanish northern front, camouflaged as logistical and intelligence support for the Condor Legion.
The Spanish Civil War was a training ground for the new corps. Extensive research was carried out by the German Occultists to establish how the paranormal could further their war effort. As their new fighting force carried operations in Spain, psychic operatives identified Al-Khali of critical strategic potential. As soon as WW II broke out, German forces invaded Al-Khali. Local men, women and children were enslaved to carry out excavations. Hundreds died of exhaustion and starvation. After uniformed German forces led and supervised the excavations, the Geheimnisvoll Abwehrmacht, commanded by their finest psychic squadron leader Hanne Lechtermact, was dispatched to Al-Khali to take over the site. In response, a British commando unit was sent to Al-Khali under the command of Major Pat Buckland. The unit, known as Blackwatch, was established by the Office of Strategic Services under the supervision of famed British Occultist Alleister Crowley. The squad was comprised of veterans hardened on the battlefronts of almost all the wars in the early 20th century. People touched by luck,
clairvoyants, occultists and experts in demolition and infiltration. They were the Allies best hope of response as they played catch-up against their German counterparts. Despite the huge levels of paranormal activity recorded at Al-Khali, what actually occurred there during the war remained a mystery. All contact with the British commando unit was lost soon after their arrival. There are no official known records of Gehimisvoll Abwermacht activity although it is believed they never returned from the desert. The physical excavations at Al-Khali and any discoveries made at the site were lost.
Posted By: Robert Cram
Date: 2007-10-12
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