In the absence of light, darkness prevails. These are the founding words of the most experienced
occult organisation in history. It is tasked with confronting the many forces beyond human
understanding or the monsters that bend the laws of reality. Its agents are drawn from the best
across two worlds, imbued with the authority of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence.
The BPRD was founded in 1944 under orders by President Roosevelt as a direct counter to the
growing international web of Nazi occultism. In desperation, the German Reich was working
to contact ancient, darker, elder powers, with the potential to unleash armageddon.
The Bureau saw its first major engagement later that very year, deploying the majority of its
personnel to a remote island off the coast of Scotland. Here a group of Nazi occultists
were attempting to summon demonic forces to shift the tide of the Second World War.
Lead by a young Professor Bruttenholm, the later director of the Bureau and its first true field
agent, the strike team managed to interrupt the ritual, killing the cultists and their leaders,
the mystically-enhanced Ober-sturm-bann-füh-rerr Kroenen and his occult master, Grigori Rasputin.
This assault was the first step in what would become known as the Occult Wars, a
covert international effort to pick apart the Nazi supernatural apparatus. This clandestine conflict
saw the Bureau expand from a US based federal agency derived from the Department of War into an
internationally supported organisation. It enjoyed the unequivocal support of the United Nations,
with the freedom to act across the world even during the height of the Cold War.
Only the People’s Republic of China and the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency
took exception to the Bureau’s activities, though precisely why has never been revealed.
In the case of the CIA however, certain classified files hinted
at a conflict of interests during the CIA’s own infamous MK Ultra project.
As the Occult Wars came to an end in 1958 with the death of Adolf Hitler,
the Bureau took on a range of wider responsibilities.
Today it is the world’s foremost organisation dedicated to studying and combating paranormal
threats, ranging from the few remaining Nazi occultists, to supernatural creatures
such as Goblins and Elves, and all manner of demonic beasts from beyond the veil of reality.
Ironically, many of the Bureau's agents come from the very worlds that the organization is dedicated
to defeating. Chief among these, is a demonic creature known as Hellboy. The sole eldritch
survivor of the Bureau's 1944 Operation, he was adopted by Professor Bruttenholm and raised in
his care, eventually entering the service of the Bureau and becoming its top operative. Originating
from a distant plane of existence that could only be described as Hell, Hellboy came to possess
supernatural strength, stamina and constitution. As its prize operative and most arduously kept
secret, Hellboy has been a pivotal factor over the past 60 years in saving the human race.
Alongside Hellboy the Bureau can deploy a wide range of operatives to carry out its duties.
A range of human psychics give the organisation a particular edge in fieldwork,
including the powerful pyrokinetic Elizabeth Sherman, whose potential
in a firefight was the equivalent of a localised artillery barrage.
The Icthyo-Sapien empath Abe Sapien is a singular asset in intelligence gathering,
able to feel the passage of events and use residual psychic impressions to gaze back in
time. Alongside them stand individuals like Johann Krauss, a human psychic whose physical form had
been reduced to a gaseous ectoplasm after a disastrously mis-guided seance. His ability
to commune with the dead, as well as his later capacity as Director of the Bureau, were more than
enough to justify the cost of the environmentally sealed suit he was forced to exist in.
Together with these supernatural assets stand a range of field agents, poached from the FBI
and various special forces groups. Foremost amongst these operatives was Professor Bruttenholm
himself. Its first true occult expert, he was both the Director of the Bureau for much of
its existence as well as a father-figure to both Hellboy and the institution itself. He
guided the Bureau from a specialist division of the US military to the foremost international
organisation for combating the occult, all whilst raising the demonic child to become the world’s
most adept paranormal agent. He was killed in 2004 by a returned Rasputin and a resurrected Kroenen,
leaving the organisation bereft of his knowledge and experience.
In 2008 the masquerade would eventually break and the existence of the Bureau, along with Hellboy
and the occult in general, was revealed to the world. Hellboy himself was responsible for this
revelation, having finally lost his patience with the self-destructive and violent world he
had spent decades hiding from. After a gruelling effort to defeat the genocidal Elf Prince Nuada,
preventing the end of the human race at the hands of the mechanical Golden Army, Hellboy would leave
the Bureau along with its top agents and Director Krauss. Devoid of some of its greatest assets,
losing its Director, and now facing exposure to the world, the Bureau was thrown into chaos.
With the knowledge of demonic forces and occult power now widespread, the number of
occult incidents is sure to rise. Certainly these outbreaks will prove to be too much for local
law or military forces to contain: without the expertise of individuals like Professor
Bruttenholm, no organisation will be within its depth. Whether or not Hellboy and the others
will ever find their way back to the BPRD, it is certain that these threats will not go unanswered.
Lacking its expert leaders and supernatural assets, the Bureau for Paranormal Research
and Defence will nevertheless make its stand against the worst horrors from beyond the world.
For, in the words of its founder; “There are things that go bump in the night,
and we are the ones that bump back.”