The IPTO

## **Overview**

TThe **International Peacekeeping Treaty Organization**, or IPTO for short, is an organization chartered by the United Nations with the backing of the Precursor Baba Yaga. Though touted by some as an international police force, it avoids interfering with local conflicts between heroes and villains, focusing mainly on the long-term survival of the human race and events of major consequence on an international scale. The organization is made up of some of the strongest, smartest, and most capable humans and Metahumans from across the world, and the resources at their disposal are second to none..

## **Objectives:**

The IPTO has two stated goals, both of equal priority:

* **To protect human civilization against any threat that would bring it low.**
* **To build a lasting peace between the nations of the world.**

The first goal is the most well-known, and is particularly emphasized to the public. Although the IPTO may stand by and watch a city or even a small country be destroyed by a self-contained threat, they will quickly step in to halt any event that might endanger civilization as a whole. To date, nearly a dozen nascent apocalypses have been directly averted by the valiant actions of the IPTO’s famous Elites, and many others have been subtly dealt with before the public ever became aware of them.
The second goal may seem idealistic, but in practice is simple enough: the prevention of any large-scale war involving Metahumans. Such a conflict would be far too destructive to contain, and would leave civilization even more vulnerable to the invasion of the Desolates. Small border skirmishes or internal disputes still flare up every so often, but any sizeable military mobilization against another country will quickly draw the IPTO’s attention. Thus far, the organization has successfully quashed all notable international conflicts since its founding in 1964, mostly through diplomacy rather than forceful intervention. Though the fact isn’t widely known, the IPTO has also employed assassins to remove key figures in the way of their peacekeeping mission.
Outside of their officially listed objectives, the organization also takes an interest in any discoveries or technologies that may help humanity survive in the longer term. Metahumans with abilities deemed valuable to the organization are quietly approached with offers of recruitment, and fragments of Atlantean technology are recovered and studied at every opportunity, in the hopes of advancing the IPTO’s understanding of Metahuman abilities and their origins. There are also rumors that it has laid out preparations for large-scale evacuation and interstellar travel, in the event of an unavoidable planetary disaster.

## **Facilities:**

The IPTO’s primary base is located in **Iceland**, and is widely known as the **Blockhouse**. It ranges over a hundred square miles and contains several fortified buildings, though most of the facilities are hidden underground. The IPTO’s leadership and the bulk of its forces reside here, including the majority of its agents, researchers, negotiators, and Shapers. The Blockhouse is also home to the world’s largest armory of high-end equipment, and some of the most secure defense systems ever created.

Three smaller bases are scattered around the world: **Fort Cliff** in the United States, **Chéngbǎo Base** in China, and the **Storm Hold** in Morocco. These serve as the IPTO’s outposts, mainly housing agents and negotiators protected by lesser yet still formidable defenses. If the main base is cut off or destroyed, then one of these locations will become the new headquarters. Underneath them are the individual **Embassies** located in most countries worldwide, including Lellorium, which for the most part serve as simple monitoring and recruitment centers.

Last but not least, there are three ‘black’ facilities whose locations remain a closely guarded secret. Powerful politicians and criminal masterminds with extensive information networks may have heard of **Kurbjosk**, where dangerous yet incredibly valuable Metahumans are held prisoner, and the **Pill Bunker**, where forbidden technology and Atlantean artifacts are stored away. Fewer still may catch a mention of **Green Hills Farmstead**, though the very purpose of this oddly-named location is classified at the highest level.

## **Manpower**

The IPTO employs around twenty thousand individuals in total, many of whom are involved in its research and diplomacy arms. Outside of these, it also makes use of mercenaries and contractors to bolster its ranks during key operations, and works extensively with local law enforcement and heroes.

IPTO **contractors** and **affiliates** are hired on a temporary basis, typically for just one or two jobs when the organization needs more boots on the ground or expertise in a particular niche. IPTO **agents** are the standard employees, and can be everything from spies to negotiators to scientists to simple secretaries. The **officers** are managers and leaders at various levels on the chain of command, typically overseeing at least a dozen agents in some specific capacity. Lastly, the legendary **IPTO Elites** are some of the mostly highly trained, heavily armed, and outright powerful Metahumans on the face of the planet, deployed only in extreme situations that require overwhelming force to resolve.

## **Key Personnel**

* **The High Council:** A group of five people holding the highest level of command within the IPTO. It is known that the council consists of one Precursor (Baba Yaga) along with two humans and two Metahumans whose identities are kept carefully concealed.
* **Baba Yaga:** The founder of the organization, who remains one of its leaders to this day. An ancient Precursor and arguably the single most powerful person on the planet, both in terms of authority and raw combat potential.
* **Mareike Holtzmann:** The public face and chief spokesperson of the IPTO. Rumored to be quite high up in the organization and even a member of the Council itself, but none of this has been confirmed. Regardless, she’s well-known internationally as a competent and eloquent speaker and negotiator.
* **Zach Armstrong:** An IPTO Metahuman who was nearly killed in an operation in 1998, which succeeded at the cost of his identity being revealed to the public. With his disability preventing him from being an effective agent and his identity no longer secure, the IPTO decided to make him a figurehead, someone whose name they could use as soft propaganda to improve their image worldwide. Though he only occasionally makes public appearances, he’s revered among the world’s top heroes (the 1998 operation saved millions of lives), and frequently appears in books, films, and video games depicting sensationalized and often outright fictional accounts of his exploits. In reality, the IPTO mostly uses him to head recruitment efforts, relying on his charisma and well-known face to help reel in individuals they consider useful.
* **Asmaa Rafiq:** A well-known researcher who vanished from the public eye in 2018, and was later confirmed to have been recruited by the IPTO. A rare genius in her field, people originally thought she was a Metahuman until genetic analysis revealed her intelligence to be entirely natural.

## **Anchors**

Anchors are a powerful technology used exclusively by the IPTO. Three types of Anchors exist, and each is exceptionally powerful.

* **Noxtis Anchor:** a 6 inch cylinder that applies a **Noxtis Threshold** to any predefined space, with a limit of 10 square feet at most.
* **Terrain Anchor:** a 5 foot cylinder that can cover up to 1 square mile, any and all damage to the terrain or anything within range (excluding humans and animals) will gradually be undone over the span of 1 minute to 12 hours.
* **Reality Anchor:** the largest of them all, this 10 foot cylinder will lock any 30 square feet in reality forever. Neither time nor space will affect anything in range, effectively isolating all but magnetic and electrical impulses from the interior. Anything inside will be unable to move or function, but even a slight EMP pulse will irreparably ruin the entire machine.

## **History:**

The IPTO was created in 1966 under the banner of the United Nations. Though the U.N. would provide most of its initial funding, the organization was largely started up by an independent council of human researchers and metahuman heroes who were concerned with the growing number of threats to life on Earth. The catalyst for this gathering is generally believed to be the appearance of the first Desolate in 1963, which made it brutally clear that humanity was ill-equipped to deal with this newfound threat to its existence.

Within months, the construction of its first headquarters in Iceland was complete, and by then its many geniuses and superhumans had already gotten to work. Their activities attracted a great deal of media attention in the early days, but as the months dragged on and nothing of consequence seemed to happen, both the public and the world’s leaders lost interest, ignoring the IPTO in favor of more immediate and interesting affairs.

In 1967, a rogue Tinker wiped out all functioning technology across a third of China. When heroes moved to capture the culprit, however, they found their target’s workshop had been raided and stripped bare, with no sign of the Tinker herself. An IPTO representative would contact them shortly afterwards, saying the incident had been handled.

In 1968, a long-forgotten Precursor emerged and began amassing an army to conquer the entirety of North America. Within a month, he had vanished, leaving his forces in disarray. The IPTO soon announced to the public that the incident had been handled.

In 1975, a nuclear missile was launched from a Soviet submarine, an action that was believed to be the result of a hostile infiltrator. The missile was destroyed within ten seconds of launch, and the IPTO subsequently deployed a swarm of diplomats to both the U.S. and U.S.S.R., smoothing over all aggression that had arisen between the two powers over the incident.

This pattern continued over the years: impending disasters would quietly resolve themselves, Desolates would suddenly and unexpectedly go dormant, and teams of shrewd negotiators would broker ceasefires wherever necessary, even with hostile dictatorships commanded by godlike Precursors. Some notable politicians spoke out against the IPTO, decrying it for either doing too much or not enough, but the IPTO simply did not care: it had become what it needed to be, a power not beholden to anyone and equipped with both the means and motivation to see humankind through future centuries… No matter the sacrifices it had to make along the way.