The general public thinks of the Institute as a comforting safety buffer between the Zones and Mankind and there is no real will to interfere with it.
Apart from China, the Institute is thus practically above both national and international laws. The Zones and their surrounding lands are international territories whose security and use are subject to the Institute while the Institute is subject to no one. The soldiers subordinated to the Institute are also subject to the Institute’s own rules and local regulations.
There are rules for how to act in the Zones and the borderlands but the Institute inspector can overrule them with a direct order. In daytime, an intruder can usually be demanded to surrender but during the night the guards shoot first and go looking for survivors only after sunrise. The Insti-tute keeps their prisoners in bases around the Zone perimeter, where the employees have no responsibility for their treatment or interrogation meth-ods. They are just as unscrupulous when chasing stalkers and artefact deal-ers outside the Zone.
With the exception of bribed snitches in the borderlands, the Institute has no spies or assassins of their own. They can purchase such favours from intelligence agencies or even presidents with artefacts and research per-mits. However, the Institute’s influence varies from country to country and especially in Third World countries, where a lot of unauthorized xenological research takes place, public relations are often problematic. The Institute’s level of independence from local authorities also varies. For instance, the USA department is almost a part of Pentagon and the American military in-dustrial complex. On the other hand, the Canada department wields a great deal of power within the entire Institute. While the Canada office is busy with the cooperation of the Institute and local authorities over the entire continent, the USA office merely keeps watch over its own Zone.
In Europe, the Institute keeps a low profile and avoids publicity, using the French state and political organizations as a front. Behind these fronts, the European office’s clients include the research organizations of many EU member states, which in turn are cooperating with multinational corpora-tions favoured by their governments. There is no clearly delineated office, and the Institute exists more as an autonomous, camouflaged part of the European Union’s own massive bureaucracy.
The opposite example is found in China, where the Institute has no direct access to the Zone. Nothing happens without the blessing of the Beijing military industrial complex. The Institute’s role is purely scientific and it must act in compliance with local laws and is subordinate to local authori-ties. The Chinese intelligence services have their own anti-stalker opera-tions that the Institute has no knowledge of. The attitude of China has al-ways been a problem to the rest of the Institute. It is damaging their author-ity in the international arena, and China is not believed to take the treaties that regulate xenological research seriously. For the time being, the Insti-tute has been able to prevent the Chinese model from spreading but if xenological research and its applications make the people see the Zones as a resource instead of a threat, the Institute’s special treatment is history.
The Institute may seem like the villain of the tale but it may just as easily be the hero. Stalkers and artefact dealers do not care who their clients are.
Lethally dangerous artefacts may end up in the hands of terrorists and dan-gerous criminals. Additionally, unsupervised xenological research usually happens with worse equipment and poorly trained personnel, multiplying the already considerable risk of accidents. Even if the client knows what they are doing, the artefact will still travel a long way in hidden compartments of cars and the armoured briefcases of dealers. There have already been bad accidents and a major disaster is only a matter of time.
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THE PLAYERS’ BOOK
“If you come back with swag it’s a miracle; if you come back alive -it’s a success; if the patrol bullets miss you - -it’s a stroke of luck. And as for anything else - that’s fate.”
- ROADSIDE PICNIC Not everybody approves of the Institute’s monopoly on xenological research.
There are many who would pay well for any artefacts and samples from the Zone, no matter how they are gathered. This list includes governments, ma-jor corporations, military and ideological organizations, cults, rich individu-als and so on. When the Institute’s price is too high or the permit is denied for political reasons they will turn to shadowy fixers and organized crime.
Demand creates supply. Preventing artefact smuggling and black market xenology has become one of the Institute’s primary objectives.
Stalkers are modern-day adventurers and outlaws who enter the Zones to look for artefacts and samples to sell to the highest bidder. Many never return but others have been working for years. How the stalkers survive in the Zone so well without the Institute’s support and technology is a mystery.
The usual explanations include sharper senses, better physical condition, special training in certain areas and so on. However, there is no single clearly unifying feature common to all stalkers and they include people like over-weight senior citizens, pizza cooks and even a few who are half blind. Stalkers themselves speak of fate, powers beyond their control and even the will of the Zone itself that not only chose that they become stalkers but will also decide which trip will be their last.
STALKERS
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History
The first stalkers were not looking for artefacts or anomalous samples. They were looking for human valuables left behind in the Zones. Though the first looters that entered right after the Visitation never came back, banks and companies soon started paying all kinds of professional adventurers and rescue workers to retrieve documents from bank vaults or secrets from com-puter hard drives. Back then, the border control around the Zones was non-existent but the Zone has always been its own best guardian. Most of these early intruders perished but a few returned and made new, even longer trips into the Zone, sometimes staying there for days. Behind the scenes, the Insti-tute bought intelligence from them about the environment and conditions deep inside the Zones.
These people were mountain climbers, wilderness guides, extreme sports-men, firefighters, ex-soldiers and so on. The first trip to the Zone became a rite of passage that through death or debilitating injury determined who would become a stalker. At first, many were willing to risk it and accidents were common. There was no real attempt to prevent this activity as all knew the dangers. If someone wanted to try a nearly certain suicide the Institute would let him. In the border towns a subculture of stalkers, wannabe stalk-ers and extreme tourists coming to gawk at the Zone was born.
Not all stalkers were out for money. While officials tried to silence the Zones to death and scientists tried to explain the inexplicable, the Zones were an ideological treasure chest for New Age religions, UFO fanatics and conspiracy theorists. The first borderlands communities were not founded by the Refugees but by spiritual leaders. Some of them became stalkers to look for answers to their questions. In addition, there were independent researchers who thought the Zones and their study belonged to the entire world and not just the Institute.
Heroes
In the eyes of the press and the public the first stalk-ers were heroes. Just like the Institute was seen as a protector from the dangers of the Zones, the stalkers were the champions of Humanity that braved the dan-gers of the Zones and tried to reclaim it. The criminal motives of many stalkers was even sexier for the me-dia, making stalkers a crosbreed of Robin Hood and the famed outlaws of the Wild West. After every-thing that had happened, people had a need to believe that the Zones were not invincible.
The stalkers were also invaluable to early xenological research and the Institute purchased information and photographs from the deep Zone from them. There were nonfiction and picture books about stalkers and even Zone documentaries shot with handheld cameras.
The wider audience’s concept of the stalkers and their activities are based on this period. Today, the pro-fession has gone underground and few understand what it is that they really do. The authorities are try-ing to recreate the image of stalkers as a part of or-ganized crime or terrorism. However, the media is now more interested in the Institute and its scandals.
This is neither the first nor the last time that Human-ity has created heroes to make it feel secure and com-forted. The stalkers fulfilled a psychological need while laws and the breaking thereof were but a forma-lity. Nobody went to look for those lost in the Zones, so the stalkers’ activities incurred no cost to society and their crime was victimless. Though it no longer shines quite as bright, stalkers still retain this heroic halo in the eyes of the public.
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THE PLAYERS’ BOOK
Criminals
A decade ago, everything changed: the Refu-gee mutations, the birth of the Changed, ru-mours of the Cursed, the first artefact finds and the realization of their meaning... all this led to a whole new understanding of the threat the Zones posed. It became a pandemic, a world-wide pestilence that might touch anybody, even those who lived far away from the Zone, in other countries and continents. Xenophobia, the fear of the unknown, became a strong theme in politics, entertainment and religious rhetoric.
Behind the scenes, xenological research became top secret and heavily politicized. Progress and setbacks, even individual artefacts, shook the established world order. As different politi-cal and economipoliti-cal interests waged their cold war over the fruits of alien technology, the In-stitute’s power grew. It became what it is now, a state within the state, half science organiza-tion, half geopolitical insider clique that pulls on a myriad of strings to see their will done.
The nations with Zones within their borders still play an important role but the Institute claimed undefined authority on all matters con-cerning the Zone and xenological research.
This change of attitudes suddenly made the stalkers dangerous criminals. Many quit but new stalkers quickly stepped in to fill the ranks because now there was more demand than ever for their services. Everyone and everything was now interested in artefacts and xenology: gov-ernments, militaries, global corporations, or-ganizations, even individual billionaires.
Also, the stalkers’ methods changed. Now, to become a stalker meant step-ping outside the society and abandoning your name and identity. Secret names were no longer a publicity trick but a necessity of survival. Stalkers also started forming alliances and small teams began replacing the lone wolves of the early days. Client relationships became commitments. Artefacts could buy what money could not, such as information, services, technology and protection. Stalkers also formed relationships with the borderland commu-nities, thus securing themselves safehouses and Doors, ways into the Zone previously known only to the border communities.
It is estimated that there are about one thousand active stalkers worldwide.
Roughly half of them work as part of a hundred identified teams and the trend is growing. Stalkers are most active in the Canadian, French and Japa-nese Zones. The American and ChiJapa-nese Zones are too dangerous and Zone Russia is poor in artefacts. Though their numbers are small, stalkers retrieve far more artefacts from the Zones than the Institute does. They are more skilled, take greater risks and can penetrate deeper into the Zone. Veteran stalkers also tend to know more about the artefacts than even the best Insti-tute scientists.
These days, stalkers are considered a part of organized crime. They are the first loop of a long chain that finally ends with governments, corporations, competing groups within the Institute – nearly anyone with money. As they brave the dangers of the Zone, the henchmen of their clients murder one another, masked soldiers raid hidden laboratories and black vans carry away new victims for human experiments. It is only a matter of time before some-one carries aout the first xenoterrorism attack or begins using metaphysical effects to influence world politics or economy. Perhaps it has already hap-pened. Who would or even could notice an attack like that?
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Buzzard
An old stalker from Zone Canada, rumoured to have murdered some companions to keep all the loot himself. Recently retired and working as a middleman for younger stalkers.
Czar
A rare stalker from Zone China. A former Russian special forces soldier, nowadays in the service of military industrial complexes – or so it is believed, at least. Also known to have killed a number of Chinese agents sent after him.Fisherman
A Japanese stalker named after his habit of approaching the Japanese Zone from the sea, camouflaged as a fisherman.
Cricket
A stalker of possibly Indian origin, who makes expeditions into Zone France. Believed to be based in Andorra, where she leads some sort of a cult associated with the Zones.
Red
A stalker from Zone Canada and sometimes rumoured to be working for the Institute. Strictly a lone wolf, Red is widely thought to be one of the greatest stalkers in the world.Author
A stalker active Zone Russia. He does not look for artefacts but sells photographs and tales of his expeditions. For the most part, the Institute seems to leave him alone for some reason.
Metropol
A large stalker team with at least 15 members, capable of mounting two or three simultane-ous expeditions. Active in the Canadian and American Zones. Metropol is thought to be con-nected to the American military-industrial complexes, although these giant corporations are usually allies and staunch supporters of the Institute.