Backup
When you work for the Technocracy, other people work for you. If everything goes to Hell, you've got a team of un-Enlightened agents to help you out. Each Convention has its own name for these grunts like sympathizers, associates, students, marines or Kamrads. They're among the most essential agents in the Technocracy's crusades...and the the most expendable. In honor of their contributions, many agents regard them with familial affection, calling them brethren, sisters or cousins. Less-affectionate agents refer to them as cannon fodder and proles.
This Background represents a number of low-level operatives that an amalgam has at its disposal. Unlike Allies, such personnel are largely nameless, faceless and expendable; unlike Spies, they're not particularly connected, although they might be able to score you some advance intelligence. Although Enlightened Technocrats can and sometimes do engage these in conversation, camaraderie and the occasional affair, they sense that these people are their inferiors. Supervisors move Backup teams around at seemingly random intervals...especially if some Enlightened op establishes personal bonds with a prole. Harsh as it may seem, these people are little more than tools of the Technocratic high command.
"Backup" usually takes the form of last-minute assault squads; if an op is in danger, a team of gun-wielding sympathizers can provide enough cover to let him finish his mission. But the Background reflects other support-teams, too -- laboratory technicians, media personnel, co-pilots, drivers, wait staff, office staff, personal servants and even prostitutes. As the ops take care of the important stuff, the Backup personnel handle the mundane details, from conveying information to cleaning up dead bodies.
The available Backup depends on the Convention (or even the Methodology) of the agent of group that requests it. A Man in Black can call up some spies, thugs or reporters, but he'd have a hard time calling in Iteration X Kamrads or Progenitor constructs unless he was working with a member of those Conventions. Typically, an agent or team pools it's Backup rating at the beginning of each mission and defines the kind of Backup it may need:
- All: Students, drivers, secretaries, couriers, lab techs, political activists, emergency medics, simple things.
