Rook

American Checquy outpost, the best Pawn was sent.
    I can only imagine his frustration as he wandered about in his hat with a buckle and glumly toted his blunderbuss. A man who used to be a dandy, a favorite of the London whores, a gentleman who’d slithered through the dining rooms of society and the sewers beneath it with equal ease, condemned to a tedious backwater populated entirely by religious fanatics whose idea of fun was not having any.
    If it had not been for his overwhelming loyalty to the Checquy, Swansea would have stood aside and welcomed any roving monsters into the town of Plymouth. Hell, he probably would have provided them with detailed maps and then cheered as they devoured the Pilgrims.
    I gather that his only release was the extended expeditions he took into the wilderness, where he became good friends with the natives. He did his best to warn them of the dangers that his countrymen posed and urged the tribes to move away. The natives nodded kindly, showed him the secrets of their land, and ignored his warnings completely. He watched the outcome with sadness but without any real surprise.
    For the next hundred and seven years, Swansea set about creating a resilient operation, one that maintained its close ties to the parent organization. This American Checquy, which became known as the Croatoan, spread out over the colonies. In many ways, the members faced an unimaginable challenge. Technically, they were charged with recording all supernatural entities and goings-on in the New World. If there was a threat, they were encouragedto suppress it and, if possible, ship it back alive to England for examination. They tried to follow this mandate, but resources and necessity often dictated that they simply terminate any menaces. Each colony was a tiny outpost; the entire enterprise was a thin archipelago spread out before an ocean of wilderness.
    Every colony had its Croatoan office, but don’t think of the organization as more than it was. It lacked the massive population resources that the Checquy could draw on, so the Croatoan’s forces consisted of a mishmash of troops, any powered individual its members could get their hands on. Swansea approached the tribes for recruits and explained the situation; he had noticed that the natives had a far higher incidence of powered births. They politely declined. Apparently, they felt that thousands of years of experience had left them well equipped to deal with any danger their homeland could muster up. But they wished him the very best of luck.
    Swansea faced major problems. The religious and independent nature of the colonies meant that the Croatoan could not rely on governmental authority to acquire children. If the colonists resented paying taxes on tea, they were going to be even less excited at the prospect of handing over their progeny. And no one knew better than Swansea the danger of bringing up the supernatural around Puritans. It set them to thinking about nooses. Thus, he was pushed to adopt extraordinary measures to build a force that could protect the populace.
    Children were acquired. Those children whose families were willing to apprentice them to prominent local “tradesmen” became operatives with relatively little fuss. Children with less flexible parents were, well, seized. Swansea and his operatives snatched those likely children off the streets or silently grabbed them from their beds and sent them off to another colony. There, they were given new identities and taught the importance of the Checquy mission as embodied by the Croatoan. They received an education, learned a trade, and protected their community.
    Adults were lured. Periodically, the Checquy would send out reinforcements, who were welcomed ecstatically. Otherwise, Swansea did what he could. In an ironic twist, sailors were press-ganged off their ships. Any adult manifesting powers had a better than average chance of being executed by the community (although it is worth noting that Swansea never found anymanifestations, adult or child, in the village of Salem). In any case, the Croatoan rescued a number of these “witches” and reeducated them. Swansea’s charisma and dedication helped a great deal in converting these late bloomers. Slaves were rigorously screened and purchased. Upon their integration into the Croatoan, they were granted their freedom. Some operatives spoke out indignantly at the prospect of freeing slaves and letting them operate as equals. These