Factions & Intel

Two smaller types do the connective tissue: factions give the world a who, and intel gives the crew a how do we know.

Factions

A faction is a goal held by people who are willing to go a certain distance for it. Those three things — goals, methods, status — are the whole silhouette. Goals in their own terms (a signed plea bargain tells you who they think they are). Methods is how far they will go, and it is where horror justifies itself: a 935-style faction starts at "improving the human condition" and the methods field is the ledger of what that cost. Status (ascendant, operating, fractured, hunted, collapsed, extinct) is a state play moves, and active era keeps it honest about when it exists.

The type's real power is in its links. Leader and notable members point at characters; holdings points at locations; rivals points at other factions. Those four references are a conspiracy web the GM can pull on: follow the leader, seize a holding, betray a rival. A faction is only as good as the characters and places you can reach by turning it over.

Faction type (research, military, corporate, cult, government, survivors, otherworldly, other) sets its genre. Secrets are the GM-side truth the world does not know — the same rule as everywhere: keep the player-facing goals clean and the truth on the file.

Intel

Intel is a markdown file, and its job is to be findable and quotable. It is the reward for Pore Over Intel and Scavenge — the thing a briefing, an open mystery, or a character's known-intel list points at. The chain is what matters: a piece of intel found at a location feeds a mystery in the world state, and the crew's known intel on their sheets is the record of what they have actually read. That through-line is how a campaign accumulates understanding instead of just loot.

Write intel the way the world would have written it — a radio transcript, a page from a notebook, a wall scrawled by someone insane — because a piece of intel that reads like a dev note breaks the spell, and one that reads like a found document is the best world-building per word the project has.

The through-line

Factions and intel exist to make the other types talk to each other. The faction's methods explain the location's secret; the intel at that location explains the wonder weapon's origin; the crew's known-intel list explains what they can act on. Build the chain, not the individual entries. If a faction has no holdings and no members, and no intel anywhere points at it, you have written a paragraph, not a faction — either connect it into the web or leave it for later.