Section One: What does the ICIO Union Universe look like?
Let's start with the basics. The ICIO Union is an organisation (within the fictional environment of the wiki) that focuses on the containment, investigation, destruction and concealment of entities, phenomena and other types of anomalous entities. It is an out-of-jurisdiction body formed long before there were even the basic laws we all know, with a rich history of centuries of doing its job and being in conflict with the rest of the world.
Why are we telling you this? To give you the basic concept on which the universe of the ICIO Union revolves. The world of this organisation is divided in two, separated by a metaphorical "curtain". That translates into the governments of the world hiding things and an organisation, the ICIO Union, taking care of manipulating the media by infiltrating false information, liquidating suspects that could give away the work of the organisation, among other actions you could imagine, such as having an infiltrated police force and so on. That metaphorical curtain separates two realities in one world.
As you can see, the way in which these two are separated is by means of cooperative actions, not only by a government, but also by the government allowing and ceding means for the organisation to act and maintain its anonymous status. At the same time we can intuit that they have higher contacts, be it in politics, the international market, additional or "front" corporations to have secret meeting places, their own private headquarters, a network of informants, access to internet security, the ability to disrupt the media, etc. With all this said, people on the civilised side away from danger live in disbelief, a status quo, within their own sphere of scientific knowledge that has been perfect for advancing humanity without it getting stuck while in the background there is a group of people keeping the real danger at bay.
And why? Well, imagine that tomorrow it comes out in the news that aliens do exist, and even the government itself shows evidence of it all on national TV channels and even international ones like CNN. And they themselves confess that they have been hiding this secret for some years. Wouldn't there be a shock? Wouldn't they receive criticism? Wouldn't people start to question more things about life? Most likely it would be a half-hearted reaction, but still, there would be the likelihood that the shock would be much greater. Think about it, we are not alone in the universe at the end of it all, that means the bible is all a lie and we are not the only intelligent, conscious animal created by God in the universe.
Wouldn't it be shocking if it really came out that they have been hiding all that? It would have an impact on the media, on people's belief, on the reputation of a country and most likely on science as well. And that could bring tragic consequences like, an increase of people turning against the authorities, people attacking religion or people really wanting to bring more things to light and cause even more chaos and uncertainty. Wouldn't this be a threat to take into account? Clearly, yes, and it would not be governments to blame, but information itself, because information can be a double-edged sword and is extremely powerful, either to ratify a scientific fact or to defraud a person.
For that very reason, it is more than obvious that an organization having such a great burden as to hide entities beyond the ordinary understanding of people, would receive so much help and means to fulfill its purpose. For to know of them would not only be dangerous, but to know and to know the way in which such an organization (in this case the ICIO Union) acts, would be even worse and catastrophic to the maintenance of order. Now, remembering this, let's look at another question: How is the more esoteric side of this double reality?
I will tell you about it right now. You have seen that there are entities beyond the human conscious, but exactly and what kind? To begin with, this other side also has its own coexistence. It is a world of danger and fantasy, why? Because there is magic.
Magic could be a definition to encompass a lot of arcane and esoteric arts, such as alchemy, spiritualism, shamanism, gleaning, exorcism, demonology, and a long etcetera. All this is real, and it could even be said that there would be many more types of magics, unique to the universe itself. Now let's turn the tables and see that all these things are real. Things that seem so absurd and middle age, are very true things with real power.
It is the very antithesis of the science that we humans have developed and sought for centuries. Don't think of it as a force that contradicts the laws of physics or anything else, but as a kind of force that can break them, use the elements and manipulate them to generate things that are extraordinary and unexplained, but that have some kind of logic within this own totally unique and unthinkable energy of the universe.
Knowing this, we could see fantastical things like lost or underground cities, hidden cults in sparsely populated regions or where there is little civilization, places that generate unique phenomena, forces beyond the planet that generate phenomena in space or some even guide them to earth, ancient and lost artifacts, even the most bizarre and dangerous.
Like a government project (not necessarily one born in our contemporary eras) that has gotten out of control, a group of humans who learned to manipulate these things, a gap in reality that expelled something from another dimension, creatures that can contact astral planes, ghosts of the dead bringing doom and disease to a place out of pure revenge, a very dangerous weapon of war coveted by an army, angels coming down from heaven, among many other things you could imagine that could appear.
As wonderful as it may sound to have such things in our reality, it would be very obvious that in the short or long run they would be of extreme danger. Humanity would be locked into a fantasy world of real danger, where they become dependent on these unexplained forces in the universe. And if we think about it, we could very well be stuck in a kind of middle age that never ended, because we have not sought reason and we have sunk in a reality of fear, nonsense, rumors and real fantasy, without having the slightest progress in science or reasoning about the universe, because we have locked ourselves with purely the unexplainable and now we are totally dependent on it. With this dystopian future in mind it would not be very out of mind to try to hide those things.
But not only that, but also to be able to look for an explanation or at least investigate if behavior in order to contain them better, even to use that knowledge to do things such as contain other magical anomalies. The church, governments and the judiciary would have no problem in maintaining and helping the Union, since they have a mission that is to protect not only humanity from magic, but also from civilization destroying itself by learning that this kind of thing has existed since the beginning of time.
But even then the organization would still have its problems. Let's say that not only having a lot of support on your side means that your task will be easier or not, because unforeseen events, historical setbacks, people who think differently and lust for power have characterized our history as humans. So let's look at the next section.
Second Section: The Problems of the Organization.
No matter how perfect a human organism working in anonymity may seem, there will always be operations that go wrong, people within our own ranks that we will not know what they think, and even the danger itself may become uncontrollable and out of hand. That is why we can imagine the problems that may occur or those that already exist just by thinking about them.
Starting with global risk. In a situation where the world looks bad economically, it means that when entering in crisis the own huge money aids sent to the Union could be reduced or cut, and with less economic power it has less money to spend on paying its employees, its own front industries could suffer from bankruptcy, lack of manpower for production or cannot cover the demands of a product, cannot afford the purchase of armament to governments, etc.
We could say that the organization receives support from the IMF, the United States, the European Union, the National Reserve, among others, but how much are they willing to spend and lose in the Union at the cost of continuing to have more crises? Here the economic scenario could become unfavorable if a government or entity that manages large amounts of monetary resources, decides to cut investment to the organization. And although it may have companies to obtain more funds, one could easily intuit that they would not be able to live purely by fighting in the international market and selling products. So, a worldwide economic crisis could be quite a big problem scenario.
Another scenario we could encounter is the breakdown of containment. Even though the organization has been around for centuries, it does not possess all the methods to immediately contain anything. The very magic that exists in their world is even with a pattern of how it may come to function, it remains impossible to guess what it may generate or what it will do.
Initial containment on an object can be by isolating the area, observing what the entity is doing and trying to act on what can be known at the time. Then you can expand the protocols and send the object to a secure base, but if that is not possible you can apply containment in the field. But even with all this, they still need to do testing, research, analysis or other things to find out more about the thing they are containing. Interim measures may work, yes, but there is a possibility that the danger and capabilities of that anomaly will far outweigh the precautions taken.
Asia that, a scenario where the containment breaks down either due to non-compliance, lack of information about the anomaly, some failure in the measures, some experiment that goes wrong, among others. So this would be an issue that the ICIO Union would face consistently throughout its existence, but one that we would think would have varying degrees of severity and would not reach the point of apocalypse. But if you have major problems, it can lead to a terrible scenario that may not resemble the end of the world, but may result in something very unfortunate to varying degrees.
One last example (but not the last problem) that can put the Union in adversity. In the of personnel types we can find that human employees are not the only ones, but there are also non-human personnel. We can think of beings just as conscious and intelligent as a human, moreover, they have a kind of their own culture already formed, where they have employees who live fully integrated within the Union but also have people who work for them with their own homes and families.
In such cases, politics itself, the differences between internal organizations, as well as the way in which anomalies can be dealt with can lead to internal problems and even clashes. So these kinds of things are not ruled out at all. However, the Union would look for a way to solve them sooner or later even though they may end up in civil war, in the middle of an economic crisis or trying to stop the apocalypse. Like humans, it is not a perfect entity, it can have failures and successes, but always looking for a solution to these.
With this clarified about the universe, how the organization works and the problems it can face, this section on the "Universe" is finished.
Section One: What is a FAR?
Let's start at the beginning. A FAR is an acronym that stands for "Recorded Anomalous Phenomena", which refers to a type of file that contains a series of documents and information about phenomena of various kinds that surpass the understanding of the world and of the common human mind. The FAR is an item that is presented as the way to globally catalog recorded magical phenomena, acquired or under investigation of their possible existence, that the ICIO Union has encountered and attempted to maintain. The heading of the format is a table of information followed by a description of by a first descriptive section that tells about the primary information to know about the anomaly in question.
Starting with the procedures by which the phenomenon is kept safe in Union facilities and preventing it from escaping, or at the very least making sure it does not cause harm to a civilized environment. The next vital part of these documents is the physical description and abnormal capabilities. The former explains under the words and terms of the tone of these papers what the anomaly looks like to the human eye or what it has been able to pick up of its form, be it something physical or incorporeal. Whereas the anomalous capabilities detail the things that the phenomenon does.
That is, if it is observed flying, attacking, the damage it causes when attacking, what it generates or causes it to attack, the effects its extranatural capabilities have on the environment, the people or the respective target it is affecting, what things activate its extranatural properties, etc. Finally, there is the discovery part. In this section, it is explained how, under what circumstances, processes and place the anomaly was found.
Then there is the secondary information section. In this section the division of the format is diversified and does not follow any particular order, but is complemented by documents or files that contain revealing or useful information about the anomaly information. This information, although it may be arranged in such a way that it appears that everything has been completed in a few moments, think of the secondary information part as the raw work one does when one is sent to investigate something.
It is written as we go along, it may contradict with the other previous parts, more and more information is revealed, as well as events that happen as the investigation progresses. This section of secondary information can be represented in a reliable way with; annexes with information about new things discovered concerning the anomaly in question, records of interviews with people involved with that phenomenon (or facts to the anomaly itself in case it can be communicated), records of experimentation with the intention of discovering the way the object acts against something in particular, even records of incidents that give us a view into the past and the background of the phenomenon under investigation. This would be only a small part with which the division of secondary information can be complemented, so the rest would be left to the imagination of the writer and how he/she wants to fill that section.
To conclude, these documents are the modern versions of the ICIO Union format, from the year 1918. So if you want to do a FAR article that touches on the canon and history of the organization, go no further back than that date. Think of the first section of relevant information, it is made so that all personnel who get to work with this magical object know how to protect themselves from it and how to deal with it. Like the safety requirements and a description of what it looks like and what it does and what makes it so dangerous. While the secondary information section is the division between the section of common importance and what people within the Union are doing to understand, explain, contain and describe in a better way this anomaly and in turn tells what is happening with it.
Second Section: Tone
Tone is something particular within a FAR article. Before writing a FAR, we must first think about how to even describe the security, description, and discovery protocol sections. Let's start with the words we will use. These documents are written by a person who is a professional, so imagine that you are an investigator describing something for not only your peers, but for anyone who wants to learn about the anomaly.
You should describe in detail and concisely, but make sure that all the words together can fit together. Use metrics, what each part of the anomaly looks like and looks like, describe the actions it commits its anomalous abilities, use references to something that can approximate what it looks like and supplement it with more details, and so on. But make those words you used to simulate a professional tone, make sense at the end and readers can get a clear idea of what they are reading. Here are some examples:
Bad |
Good |
FAR-XXX is an animal-eating wolf, totally black and with its red eyes it instills terror in those who observe it. |
FAR-XXX is a lycanthrope with a diet based on any type of animal, with a completely black coat of fur and eyeballs that, when they make eye contact with a human subject, instill a sense of disturbance and fear in that person. |
FAR-XXX is a human-like thing made entirely out of metal, with wires and lots of electrical stuff inside. Other than that it has a giant machine gun that it has in the middle of one of its arms. |
FAR-XXX is a fully intelligent and conscious android model. It has an outer armor made of Corten steel plates, which protect its internal electrical and artificial intelligence systems. The anomaly is armed with an M61 Vulcan heavy machine gun, which replaces its left forearm. FAR-XXX has shown no negative effects from the weight of the weapon or difficulties maneuvering it. |
One of the things the entity can do is to release a magical burst of energy in the form of huge blades that cut everything in their path and do not disappear until an hour later. |
Among the abilities possessed by the anomaly, the most remarkable is the following: It can expel a magical attack by concentrating a significant amount of its life energy to transmute it into one or more objects with the ability to cut through any material and surface, with a shape similar to that of a green tree leaf. It can maneuver them at will using specific movements with its fingers and hands, while requiring total mental concentration on the part of the entity. The cutting elements will not cease their activity until after one hour of handling, at which time they completely disintegrate. |
Third Section: Errors
We don't want to impose a great creative constraint, but there are certain things that you may get wrong when writing a FAR or that we simply won't be able to accept from you. So, here are the things to avoid and some tips on how to avoid them.
**Safety protocols are a critical part of understanding how employees deal with the anomaly without getting hurt or the anomaly getting away. And even if the organization has an almost unlimited amount of resources, you must also know that these cannot be wasted, just like that. Make these protocols as simple as you can, but at the same time with security measures that, in terms of the word "security" itself, are more in line with how to protect people and prevent the thing from escaping.
If you're going to do an extremely dangerous anomaly, also remember this: protecting something dangerous doesn't necessarily mean you have to spend an immense amount of resources to do it. And if you are going to do it, apply a clear and compelling justification for why that expenditure should be made, not just because the anomaly is capable of causing the apocalypse means you have to spend an indulgent amount of resources to keep it under containment.
The Apocalypse: The end of the world, 2012, doomsday, pandemonium, the last day on earth, the second coming of Jesus Christ, the third world war, etc. We all know or have heard of what would supposedly be the end of our times, an idea mainly driven by religion and that later served to create lots of very popular movies. The problem with generating an end of the world scenario is to make it interesting.
Also, this wiki has a centralized and linear story, so we could not accept an article, story or hub that deals with the end of the world, since that would be the end of the plot of the site itself. However, you can use this resource as a way to portray an anomaly or some catastrophic event that if interspersed with major ones would have ended the existence of many. You can make these scenarios have happened, but at some point a way will be found to stop it. The ICIO Union is not going to stand idly by while the whole world falls apart.
It was all the Politicians' Fault: The ICIO Union has an extremely long history, thus international politics influences within it. However, if you want to bring some politics into your FAR article, you are free to do so. But consider the following; do it in the context of the Union world. If you are going to add capitalist, communist, fascist, conservative, etc. propaganda, do so within the confines of the literary and fictional world. You can use political events such as assassinations, scandals, defections, among others, to make your article take shape and focus.
However, do not do it to make a political message to the reader. What you should do is to get that political message across through the literary world whether it be between characters, anomalies, the investigations, etc. If the idea of the article is shaped into a message that "we must fight fascism" and not to one more focused on the fiction that "the Union concludes that it must confront fascism," then your article will not be accepted. Finally, if you wish to touch on very strong and controversial topics such as concentration camps, we suggest that you inform yourself very well about that sensitive and warning topic in our Discord community or by the forums, in order to receive suggestions or full help.
Literary descriptions: We must also maintain the language at all times. Remember that you are using technical language, while "the crimson red of the liquid dripping from the hand of that being must be contained in the gleaming vessel of a silvery hue" sounds good, a technical description should lack flourishes and figures of speech. Therefore, we should say "the blood emanating from his wrists must be stored in the metal pot". The grace of the clinical tone is not to leave gaps, doubts or discrepancies of what is being told or described (obviously you can add mystery, but within these conjectures).
The grace of these explanations is that with the technical methodologies the ideas, events and concepts that each part describes are given to understand. It does not stop being fanciful, but it has its rules, the main one is not to skimp on vague explanations. As a suggestion, you can add some document (that in your FAR is captured as a sheet with a message, a scroll, symbols on a wall, etc.) that has been discovered by the Union. In that case, you can add as much literary language as you wish, as long as you respect the context of that document and who the messenger/owner/creator/etc. is supposed to be.
Magic, Sorcery, Stuff of a Fantasy: Magic as you have seen is a central element within the ICIO Union and its universe, therefore we cannot leave it relegated to the background. To avoid having to resort to inventing combinations of words to refer to some ability, capacity, attack or effect that comes from magic (for example: a book of spells) we give you here something to avoid reducing creativity to an acronym or set of words: invent a name for that magical, spiritual, alchemical, etc. ability.
After creating that name that can sound technical by combining a play on words, using words in other languages, names of an ancient, arcane and/or mystical nature (without necessarily being long) or other means that can be just as creative. Finally, do not limit yourself to saying that your magical ability, alchemical process, spiritual ritual, summoning, exorcism, etc., refers to something common. No. Explain in as much clinical detail how these rituals are done and what they generate, either in a footnote or with an additional paragraph. Do not fail to imitate professional language but do not limit your imagination to only creatures, artifacts, objects, phenomena, among others, that only do one or two things.
If you have any other doubt, concern, question or issue, you can ask in the forum, to a member of the Staff or join our Discord community.
Fourth Section: Some Ideas
Already knowing about the errors, the tone and what is a FAR, we can now present you here some ideas. You can skip this section and move on to the next one, but if you want to try to get some initial ideas here you can find some as a first start. Keep in mind that these are the basic ideas and not complete and fully constructed concepts, that part is up to you with your fingers, keyboard and imagination.
Legends: Myths, tales, fables or epic feats, history is full of both fiction and fact. Your article may monopolize some phenomenon that is of unknown antiquity, with a rich history to be discovered, with some particular and special significance. In these there is everything to involve, from characters to extensive research.
**Monsters are a well-known folklore throughout our existence as conscious beings. You can deal with those already existing in the different cultures of a nation or create an entirely new one. Simple or complex, their backgrounds can be very variable and almost limitless.
Beyond in other dimensions: The subject of things that go in a different dimension than our own can always be embraced in a very diverse way. Whether it is to explore a reality different from earth, a space where extraordinary beings live, spaces with completely different laws of nature, areas of operations beyond the safe confines of earth, etc.
Religions: Both Christian and Eastern religions have a rich historical portion of fantasy, not just their saints and leaders of peace. Exploring both existing and invented religions is a great way to create a good space from which to spin off many other things, not just a single article.
Magister Alchemiae: Alchemy is something that can go further than just searching for the secret of life or doing amazing things with metals. You can imagine unique materials, potions, magnificent medicines, concoctions, weird mechanisms, among many other things.
And as a last great idea, don't be afraid to draw inspiration from the work of others. In any case, nothing today is completely original. But don't let that stop you from trying to stand out.
Very Useful Sites and Tools
behindthename.com: Don't have the slightest idea of how to name your characters? There are plenty of random name generators online, which provide you with first and last names, with their respective origins. This tool is ideal for tertiary characters, but I don't recommend it for main or secondary characters, I prefer to spend some time thinking about their names.
fantasynamegenerators.com: Fantasy Name Generators is a very useful little site. If you like the fantasy genre, you're in luck. This is a generator of names and surnames that are "made up", but share a root and derivation with fantasy creatures and races. Incredibly useful if you're writing something with elves, orcs, or any made-up creature.
seventhsancum.com: Seventh Sanctum is a collection of writing aids generators, that is, websites that create writing aids. It is in English so you will have to use a translator or know English beforehand, but it can be very useful. It has a wide variety of options in its menu, not only for fantasy and science fiction.
WorldReference.com: It is a site where you can find a lot of things about words. Meanings, antonyms, synonyms, etcetera, even in more than one language, not just Spanish. So it can be very useful when it comes to diversify your texts with more words different from the usual ones and avoid redundancies.
Spellboy.com: It is a completely free tool that corrects a text of up to 20,000 characters. And not only can it do it with Spanish, it can also help you with an interesting range of other languages. It marks spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, very long sentences or suggestions to x words to avoid redundancies.
WorldNames.xyz: A simple, easy to understand site from which you can get names of various countries.
Note that these sites are only an aid and not a complete solution to your problems. But they are quite useful when it comes to extra support.