Well., this escalated. I had originally expected this chapter to be about 85% shameless plagiarism of chapter 1 of the orginal book, to the point where I'd have to ask Bob if he wanted writing credit, and then... this happened.
I still think it's missing something, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Anyway, here's Appendix A: IST 101
We’ve covered the history of Earth-1, seen how we got from there to here, but this still begs an important question: what is the IST anyway? We’ve seen where it came from and how it developed, but we still don’t have a huge insight into the organization as a whole. How do the International Super Teams work, as an entity?
Well, sure. I’ve got nothing better to do, so let’s get into some details on the star of our show.
To recap: the International Super Teams (IST) were established in 1982 by the United Nations in order to be the proverbial biggest stick in a world where the great powers seemed intent on playing a game of nuclear-tipped chicken while various Forces of Evil[tm] plotted in the background. Its history is long and exciting and we have spent pages and pages and pages explaining it all so we’re not going to go back over it again. The IST is the world’s largest superteam and has been since at least the early 2000s.
This is (more or less) how it works.
IST Today – By the Numbers
Today, as stated, is January 3, 2024. As of this morning the IST consists of roughly 200,000 active-duty personnel. This is slightly less than the entire active-duty military of France, and it’s responsible for looking after the entire planet. Of these, around 2,500 to 3,000 personnel are metahuman field agents, and another 5,000 or so are mundane peacekeepers in powered armor. Everybody else is support personnel; the people who maintain the embassies, run tech support for everything from the wifi connection to the hidden stun blaster emplacements, work on generic office duties, provide high-end legal and diplomatic services, trainers, cooks and all the many thousands of people necessary to ensure that the IST can keep the field agents and the power-armor backup in the field doing their jobs.
These 200,000-or-so people are scattered across {$num1} embassies located in {$num2} countries, as well as specialist facilities around the world, in Earth orbit, on the Moon, the one embassy established around Epsilon Eridani and the IST Consulates established as part of the Interworld Treaty. While 200,000 people is a lot of humans, it’s a vanishingly small number compared to the eight billion currently shaking Earth-1 this morning, as well as the billions on Earth-2, Earth-3 and the rest of the ITO worlds.
It’s honestly a tribute to the unshakable ethics of superheroism that the IST does as well as it does, if you think about it.
Who’s In Charge Here?
At the absolute top of the pyramid, the International Super Teams are overseen by the UN Security Council (UNSC), which is essentially where the buck stops for everything in the United Nations; while the Secretary-General is the administrative leader of the UN, there honestly is very little that they or the General Assembly can do without the majority approval of the UNSC. The Council is the only UN organ that has the power under the Charter to make enforceable decisions and then enforce them; everybody else in the UN can only make recommendations, no matter how forceful those recommendations might be. (This is something that various reform-minded parties within the UN would like to alter to some extent, and likely will in the next decade, but that’s far outside the scope of this document in particular.) Moving on, as of 2024 the Security Council is made up of seven permanent members and ten non-permanent members, the latter rotating through the General Assembly every 2-3 years on average. The permanent members are Great Britain, the Sovereign Union, China, France, India, Japan and the United States, while the current slate of non-permanent members is Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Somalia and South Korea.
Beneath the Security Council is the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the semi-parliamentary body consisting of ambassadors from all {$num2} member states. The UNGA’s primary duties are drafting the UN budget, appointing the Secretary-General and non-permanent members of the UNSC, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the International Court of Justice, as well as the admission of new members and issuing non-compulsory resolutions. It’s the main part of the UN where everybody has a vote; it was here in 1980 that Resolution 35/17, the resolution that would eventually become the root of the Edicts, was first drafted and voted on.
In practical terms neither the UNGA nor the UNSC have a whole lot to do with day-to-day IST operations. UNSC can enact a hard override on anything IST is up to should they choose to do so, but this has rarely been exercised – if only because it takes time to muster the Council and often a situation resolves before they can meet. That said, the commander of all IST forces can be and frequently is called to the Security Council to brief the Council on whatever the hell went wrong this week, and what IST did or is doing to make it right.
The Committee on Permanent Peacekeeping Forces
The UNSC, like every other part of the UN, has the right to establish its own secondary groups. Over the course of 78+ years the UNSC has generated an absurd number of subcommittees for all sorts of issues. Included in this roster is the Committee on Permanent Peacekeeping Forces (COPPF).
COPPF originated in the late 1970s, when the global situation seemed like it was sailing completely out of control towards a nuclear-tipped conclusion. It descended from the Committee on the Current Crisis (CCC or C3) which was set up in 1978. Ostensibly CCC was set up to investigate the breakdown in diplomacy between the Soviets and the US that led to near-miss fiascoes like the Fernando Po incident, or the rise in nihilist supervillains willing to destroy everything to rule the ashes like the late and unlamented Karl Stromberg.
The truth is a bit more complex and the sort of thing that conspiracy theorists have dined out on for almost half a century now. Given the severe nature of the crisis of the 1970s the UNSC gave the Secretariat very wide latitude in who they pulled in to staff the committee. With plenty of lead in hand, the brave souls of the Secretariat went perhaps further afield than the Council expected, reaching out to not just political scientists and diplomats but also unaffiliated supers like the elusive Amerocommunist heroine Columbia, international teams like Honor Guard and underground philosophers like George Dorn. This eclectic gang of PCs team of researchers were the ones who drafted the State of the World 80 report that was the rationale for both Resolution 35/17 and the contracting of private superteams for UN service. In 1982 when the resolution cleared the UNSC and became the Edicts, CCC was reorganized as COPPF and set up as the administrative oversight for the newborn International Super Teams.
The Committee is composed of one representative from each UNSC member state; as with the higher council the presidency rotates monthly, going alphabetically (in the Latin alphabet) through the list until it returns to the top. The purpose of COPPF is the high-level management of the IST as an organization: it writes the operating budgets, oversees public relations, juggles logistics for the {$num1} embassies currently active on Earth-1 as well as the consulates on Myrr and on other Earths, and the upkeep of UNET, the UN/IST global intranet. This takes up quite a bit of real estate in the UN’s headquarters facilities: before Amerexit COPPF took up a full two floors in the New York Secretariat building, afterwards the Committee occupied most of the south wing in the Geneva campus for the next two decades.
If asked, most IST personnel don’t have especially kind words for COPPF: the general opinion among the rank and file (particularly field agents) is that the Committee are usually composed of bureaucrats that are more interested in covering the asses of whichever member nation they belong to over doing the right thing. This is intermittently true. The Committee is a tool of the UNSC, and at least for the moment the UNSC is bound by the demands of the member states. Even in the modern IST this can result in situations where politics end up conflicting with the IST’s standing orders. It hasn’t happened in a while, but older IST agents definitely remember the old days when IST was rubbing against the simmering Cold War conflicts between the superpowers.
IST team administrators are sourced, hired and placed by the Committee’s staff; all administrators are required to submit weekly status reports and, while they generally have little voice in tactical or strategic matters – those are left to field commanders – in all other regards team administrators are meant to be the senior commander in any IST embassy.
For operational convenience, the embassies are organized by continent. Each continental division is supervised by a Regional Director who reports directly to COPPF and is jointly in control of the teams under their purview with IST Command. Team administrators submit their reports and evaluations to the Regional Director, who then pass them on onto the Committee. During a mobilization (such as a natural disaster, a potential war or a Crisis Event) IST Command is given operational command over the affected region.
IST Command
“Good luck, Commander.” —X-COM (2012)
Between the Committee and the individual IST is IST Command. Command is more or less the top of the chain for the average IST agent and administrator; only in the most extreme circumstances is anybody going to communicate directly with the Committee or the UNSC. This is also the point in the chain of command where things shift from civilian to paramilitary.
While there is an overall commander of all IST forces and their support staff, Command on a regular basis follows the Committee’s lead in dividing normal operations into continental districts. The regional districts answer to the Commander and their staff, and are directly under the Commander’s control in the event of an emergency, but in normal operations regional commanders are jointly responsible to Command and the COPPF Regional Directors.
IST Command is not especially active in normal operations. The point of Command is to be the central organization in an emergency that can move faster and more efficiently than waiting for COPPF or the UNSC to meet, deliberate and vote on a response. The Commander has extremely broad, if time-limited, power in an emergency and it’s their discretion as to what qualifies as “an emergency.” If the Commander declares an emergency, they have 24 hours in which their orders to any and all ISTs on Earth-1, orbit or any of the parallel consulates cannot be overridden. If the Commander so chooses they can unify every IST into a single army and deploy them as they see fit. If the UNSC ratifies the Commander’s decision after the first 24 hours, then the Commander gains total command of all available UN forces and resources, including the ISTs. At this point it’s likely that national militaries will be pulled in, and the Commander will also be Supreme Allied Commander. Once this bell is rung, COPPF cannot countermand Command’s authority; only when the Commander or the UNSC determine the emergency has ended does the Commander’s status shift back to normal operating procedure.
So far, this level of emergency command has been used four times: the first was the Millennium Crisis of 2000-03, which was the first declared Crisis Event and saw IST Command take full control of five out of six district commands over its course. The second was the Cultivator Wars; when the xianxia struck at Vladivostok the situation was escalated to a regional-level crisis, with the Commander assuming direct control of the Asian District for the duration. The December 2012 Crisis and the Draka Crisis also saw Command exerting full authority, though this time the measures also included military and metahuman forces from Earth-2 and Earth-3 under the terms of the Interworld Treaty.
The IST Commander is also the field leader of the UNHQ branch of IST. From 1982-97 this was IST New York, from 1997-2017 this was IST Geneva and then post-Amereturn (2017-current) the flagship embassy returned to IST New York. This ensures the Commander is close to UNHQ most of the time and can be consulted by COPPF and UNSC as they need to be.
SIDEBOX: IST Commanders
Originally there was no set term for IST Commander; whoever took the job was expected to serve until they saw fit to retire. This was something of an oversight on the part of COPPF, but one that was corrected during the 1990s. Since 1998 the IST Commander has served fixed ten-year terms. To date IST has had four Commanders:
1) Argurous Astraph (1982-1998): Dimitra Poulis was the first person tapped to run IST by the then-current COPPF research staff. Former commanding officer of the Knights of Europa, Poulis was a multi-decade veteran of the hero business and at the time, one of the most powerful beings on the planet.
2) Witchwind (1998-2008): Elena Falk was a former East German national who defected when she was young and rose in the ranks of the Knights to become Astraph’s most trusted lieutenant. When Astraph retired Witchwind was her only real choice as successor.
3) Paragon (2008-2018): Akachi Okafor was the first non-European hero to be named IST Commander. A veteran of the Nigerian super scene prior to joining IST and one of the teams’ best powerhouses, Paragon’s skill as a fighter and as a strategist saw him rise to command of Australasia District before Witchwind tapped him as her successor.
4) Pouka (2018-2028 pending): Brigit Dunsmuir has one of the weirder arcs of a high-level IST officer: sent to the IST in lieu of jailtime for teenage mischief, Pouka became one of IST’s top celebrities in the mid-80s New York. Her penchant for pranks belied a terrifying tactical and strategic mind, which she showed off in the 2012 Crisis and earned her spot on the shortlist to succeed Paragon.
The IST Agenda
As defined by the Edicts and reinforced by the UNSC and COPPF, the official agenda for the IST is composed of seven basic standing orders, in order of priority, that all IST members are required to obey:
1) Enforce the ban on nuclear weapons.
2) Enforce the ban on military superteams.
3) Support global human rights.
4) Protect civilians.
5) Discourage armed conflict between nations.
6) Combat international drug trafficking.
7) Provide a visible presence of the UN in member nations and maintain a positive public image.
These standing orders were established by the UNSC in 1982 and their substance hasn’t changed in the years since. Their priorities on the other hand have been: the original form of the agenda had drug trafficking much higher on the list, as it was perceived to be a much greater problem in general. Likewise, supporting human rights was a lower priority overall given the global situation at the time the Edicts passed.
But times change. Over the course of the last forty-odd years the urgency with which drug traffic was considered a problem has dropped remarkably: narcotics haven’t vanished by any stretch of the imagination, but large-scale rehabilitative and decriminalization efforts (particularly in the West) have clipped the wings of the groups that relied on that trade. It isn’t gone, but it has been diminished to the point where it’s not as great a priority for IST operations as it was in, say, 1985. On the opposite side of that coin, there has been a significant uptick in the awareness of human rights abuses on Earth-1 and elsewhere in the multiverse. What might have been carefully ignored or only lightly touched by the UN in the past due to realpolitik is now something that the people of Earth-1 (if not always the leadership) are demanding action on.
The result of this was a shuffling of priorities in the IST’s standing orders. While some things are likely to never change – the nuclear weapons ban and the military superteam ban are the foundation of the Edicts – as the 21st century continues to stagger along it’s a strong probability that the IST’s agenda is going to shift, and that it’s going to shift more towards the defense of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Interventionism in the Modern IST
The single thorniest question in today’s IST is the question of interventionism. The UN’s primary policy (and therefore also IST’s primary policy) is non-intervention – if it doesn’t cross national borders, the UN won’t get involved. By rights the UN can’t get involved: Chapter I, Article 2 Section 7 of the Charter literally says “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter.” There are some (narrow) cutouts that allow for the UN to intervene under Chapter VII of the Charter, but for the most part the UN can only go so far before risking the organization’s integrity.
After all, the United Nations isn’t a world government, no matter what its detractors (and some of its supporters) may claim or wish.
In the early years, this led to some fairly inventive rule-bending in the event of IST personnel facing conflicts between duty and conscience. During the Tienanmen crisis of 1989, the members of IST Beijing, Nanjing, and Wuhan were directly ordered by the Asian regional command to not intervene, because the situation was an internal Chinese matter. When word began to spread that the People’s Liberation Army was mobilizing to clear Tienanmen Square by all means necessary, multiple supers most of the Chinese embassies “took leave” on effectively weekend passes – because what an IST agent does on their day off isn’t under the jurisdiction of the United Nations. While the crisis would ultimately remain internal when the Revolutionary Guard stared down the PLA, that IST Command was willing to look the other way suggests the incredibly fine line the group as a whole had to walk at the time.
This all changed in 1994. The Rwanda intervention was and remains the most controversial move in IST history. Regardless of what happened and the amount of good accomplished, the facts of the matter were simple: IST Kigali was not authorized to assist the UNAMIR forces to the level they did. Likewise the adjacent embassies in Burundi, Zimbabwe and Tanzania had no right to enter the country. That all four embassies acted on the personal request of the UNAMIR commander was a gross dereliction of duty.
But at the same time, because those embassies moved to support UNAMIR against the rules of engagement they saved perhaps upwards of a million people. We’ve gone over the geopolitical ramifications of Rwanda in the chapter on the Long ‘90s, so go look that up if you want the details. But for our purposes here it’s important to remember that this is where the UN’s outlook on interventionism really starts to change at an institutional level. While it remains official standing policy that IST will never get directly involved in a country’s affairs unless that country jumps the border, the fact that the UNSC never really repudiated the IST field commanders or the administrators responsible for Rwanda has stuck in the minds of people all over the world.
It reminds them that, no matter what the UNSC says, there are lines and those lines are to be crossed at great peril.
Inter-Agency Cooperation
IST is an international organization, as one might expect from something under the UN banner. In order to facilitate its goals and the overall goals of the United Nations, it is expected that the IST will cooperate with any number of groups, agencies, organizations etc. at both a team and an institutional level. Cooperation can mean any number of things from the sharing of information to active team-ups with local superteams; it really depends on the nature of the other agency and what the collaboration is.
UN Peacekeeping Forces (UNPF)
The most obvious connection to IST is of course the famous Blue Helmets of the UNPF. The Peacekeepers and IST have been joined at the hip since 1982; most of the paramilitary training for IST agents and the ranks of IST’s famed powered infantry squads are sourced from the military forces assigned to UNPF duty. The two groups are connected at the highest level: the authority for IST’s existence stems from the same parts of the Charter that authorize the UNSC to send Peacekeepers in to trouble spots, and COPPF is specifically meant to govern permanent peacekeeping forces.
In the majority of UN deployments UNPF commanders have seniority. After all, they’re trained military and are presumed to know what they’re doing in a normal, mundane peacekeeping operation. In the event that something super-related happens – villain attack, surprise metahuman activation, the Blue Demon shows up etc. – the Peacekeepers have learned that in these cases the best move is to second themselves to the IST field commander and back up their team until the metahuman or supernatural threat is neutralized.
Other UN Agencies
Outside of UNPF most internal IST collaborations are arranged via ECOSOC. The Economic and Social Council’s job is to balance and manage all of the UN’s many and varied specialist organizations, all of which would love to have IST support at any given moment. While these groups can (and regularly do) hire metahumans of their own in permanent support positions, the cultural cachet of the IST can be very useful in a public relations context. Likewise, COPPF and Command understand that seeing IST agents doing things that aren’t just punching supervillains or disaster relief is useful for IST’s own PR game. Thus, ECOSOC and IST have developed a symbiotic relationship where they will happily work on each other’s projects at need.
UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
UNESCO’s expansive portfolio of cultural and scientific studies makes it a frequent collaborator with IST agents. Inventions, discoveries and confiscated supervillain hardware often ends up in UNESCO-affiliated labs and programs, and the ongoing study of the hows of metahuman powers relies heavily on a rotation of IST supers undergoing routine power testing.
Perhaps the most lasting partnership between UNESCO and IST is the IST Academy: UNESCO provides not just the curriculum for the secondary education track, but also is a key part of sourcing the educational talent necessary for teaching the next generation of UN supers.
UN Environmental Program (UNEP)
While the UNEP is generally more focused on advocating for environmental regulations and public outreach, it can and will call on IST support when necessary. Security is occasionally requested for UNEP special projects – the Pleistocene Project in particular – but for the most part UNEP/IST collaborations are more directly tied to the two agencies’ public relations. In the event of a nuclear-related incident UNEP will request the assistance of an IST super with a radiation-absorbing power, or call on speedsters to work on a replanting project for the media cameras. Events like this are considered a popular light duty among IST agents, a way to show off with their powers while also doing some good in the world outside normal activities.
A moderate issue that continues to crop up is the ongoing feud between UNEP’s climate scientists and the International Weather Organization over the efficacy and long-term impact of IWO’s storm diversion and dissipation programs. As IST is on good terms with both agencies there is a tendency for high-ranking agents and field commanders to get caught in the middle. It can get messy.
International Weather Organization (IWO)
As the second-largest employer of metahumans in the UN system, IWO is a frequent collaborator with IST during the peak of storm season. Most weather manipulators end up getting seconded to IWO on a semi-permanent basis from IST, but when it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation anybody with large-scale telekinesis may be temporarily drafted to aid in storm containment duties.
UN Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)
UNOOSA’s remit is to maintain the peaceful development of outer space; this became a more difficult task in the years after First Contact and the subsequent boom in orbital construction. UNOOSA’s main collaboration with IST has been related almost entirely to building and maintaining the infrastructure for the IST orbital and lunar embassies, as well as the complicated infrastructure of Odysseus Yard and the handful of stardrive ships the UN uses to maintain contact with the Meeranon.
While it’s not true that UNOOSA has first dibs on any metahuman who demonstrates an ability to operate in space unaided, any super who passes through the IST system with those traits is far more likely to end up at IST Lunagrad than, say, the Minneapolis embassy.
UN Interworld Office (UNIWO)
Interworld has almost as close a relationship with IST as the UNPF. Given the extreme sensitivity of parachronic operations, UNIWO has had direct support from IST since it’s establishment, with IST St. John’s being stood up specifically to provide metahuman security for the International Parachronic Laboratory and the initial portal generator on Newfoundland. With the expansion of the Interworld Treaty UNIWO/IST relationships remain close, as the St. John’s embassy and the consulates on the ITO worldlines are supervised by UNIWO personnel as well as the usual round of IST metahuman and unpowered staff.
Member State Agencies
Interactions with the organs of member states tend to happen at the level of individual embassies. This falls into the realm of law enforcement: most cities with an IST embassy will establish a reciprocal agreement with the embassy’s administrator to deputize IST agents either as police directly or under the relevant vigilante super laws in that nation. With an agreement in place IST agents are allowed to operate as heroes within the jurisdiction outlined in that agreement, showing the UN flag and being good citizens as per part 7 of the IST’s standing orders.
While it isn’t impossible for IST embassies to get caught up in more regional operations, it is fairly rare. The UN would much rather embassies and agents operate on a local level whenever possible, not just for the obvious PR value but also because wider operations run the risk of butting against the UN’s non-intervention policies. IST assistance for larger efforts than local crimebusting or disaster relief can be had, but it’s either going to be a situation that escalated rapidly out of control (like the Outcasts spree in 1990) or something that started as a direct request to COPPF or the UNSC asking for aid.
Non-Governmental Agencies
The UN maintains cooperation agreements with other organizations that are not, strictly speaking, part of the United Nations corporate structure. As “related organizations” (in UN-speak) these entities have similar access to IST personnel and resources as UN agencies.
Of the related organizations IST works the closest with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as their work on nuclear disarmament is an important part of the IST’s central goal of enforcing the nuclear ban. IST embassies are expected to provide all possible assistance to IAEA inspectors whenever asked.
Outside of the related organizations IST attempts to maintain good relations with independent superteams. This can be a difficult task given IST’s nature as the enforcement arm of the UN, and many independent teams are at best skeptical of the UN’s nature and goals. However, the nature of superteam operations means that IST and these groups are more likely than not to work together multiple times, and in the interests of the common good they have proven an ability to cooperate with each other in emergency circumstances. Just don’t ask them to come to the embassy barbecue afterwards.
Becoming Part of the Team
Joining IST is... okay, it’s a bit complex and it depends on where you live. First off, each member nation is required to send at least some of their supers to IST. Not all of them by any measure – IST would run out of room to put them pretty quickly – but generally IST asks the member states for a dozen or so supers per each year in order to maintain replacement rates. This is all covered under Article 43 Section 1 of the Charter, the same article that allows the UN to maintain the Peacekeepers.
Officially, IST membership is entirely voluntary. If you are a metahuman you are allowed to walk/fly/galumph up to the nearest UN office and request to join the organization. Likewise, if one is unpowered and wants to join the administrative side of IST then all you have to is submit a resume like any other job application and hope for the best. Every now and then an IST agent will cross paths with a civilian metahuman or freelance super who seems like they might make for a good addition to the organization, and in these situations IST field commanders are encouraged to try and recruit them. This is how it’s supposed to work, and in fact how it does work in many countries.
But there are qualifications to that. For example, while openly military or paramilitary superteams are forbidden under the Edicts, there are quite a few “public service groups” that are under direct government control and operate by the time-honored tradition of the draft. Again, these are not military superteams – those would be illegal don’t you know? – but if you tilt your head just right you can see how drafting superheroes might look a little like a military organization. Just a touch. In countries like this IST is allowed to look through the profiles of recent draftees and take their pick from the current crop.
This raises some eyebrows in some places, even within Command. But the UN is not a world government and there are still lines that it won’t cross except at great need, and inducting draftees isn’t so bad a thing that even a plurality has actual qualms about it.
Anyway. Once a poor bloody fool prospective super has accepted the UN’s shilling, the next step will be a small mountain of paperwork to register them with COPPF. (If the draftees have any edge in this, it’s that their paperwork is already done by the time the IST gets hold of them.) From there, the Committee schedules the prospect super to attend IST boot camp, and when the time comes ship them off to boot.
Once the recruit emerges from twelve weeks of boot they’re assigned to their official embassy. If an embassy specifically headhunted a recruit they have right of first refusal on that super’s assignment. If they decline the recruit’s services – usually this is because the embassy is already close to overstaffed – then they fall into the rest of the pool. Command will then assign supers to embassies based on their powers, skills and training.
IST service is not a lifetime commitment; if you sign up for the IST you’re not stuck there forever. The basic tour of duty for IST agents is three to five years, depending on equivalent commitments in your member state of origin. Signing back up is encouraged of course; the IST wants to avoid brain-drain as much as it possibly can. That said, life as a professional superhero can be a lot and it’s not for everyone. Many recruits end up leaving after their first hitch, or after their mandated draft period is complete, and Command is perfectly happy to let them go. Those who do end up staying with IST are liable to end up with a 20+ year career, shifting into the IST Reserve.
IST Basic Training
IST run multiple training camps around the world for new and old IST members alike. The original IST boot camps were placed in regions of the world specifically chosen for their environmental hostility, with some of the meanest drill instructors that the world’s armies were willing to part ways with. This changed in the late ‘90s, in particular due to a growing awareness that a) while IST qualifies as a paramilitary group there ought to be greater emphasis on the para over the military given IST’s role in the world, and b) that casual cruelty for the sake of “hardening” just doesn’t make great soldiers, and definitely doesn’t make good heroes.
The modern IST boot camps can be harsh – they are training people to deal with some pretty extreme things after all – but they’re not vicious in the way they used to be back in the bad old days. The twelve-week course instills some degree of military discipline as well as basic tactics and how to work within a team of supers. As powers can vary wildly, each rookie super is given extensive testing to figure out what the super knows about their powers, what they don’t know about their powers and how they can use that in the field. Depending on the power, this can take up almost as much time as field training.
IST Academy
Established in the same wave of institutional changes that brought an end to Full Metal Jacket-style boot camps, the IST Academy was set up as a training ground for young metahumans whose powers were just kicking in and had an interest in maybe potentially joining the IST when they reached the age where it’s legal to sign up to maybe go get killed in a distant land. (Usually 18, which is the official IST cutoff.)
The academy system was based on the Xavier Academies founded in the 1970s during the first big “mutant boom.” (In fact, IST had suggested setting up an ROTC-like program with XA as far back as 1984, but the relentlessly pacifist Professor Xavier refused to even think about the idea.) Much like the XA system, the IST Academy provides a comprehensive secondary education for children 13-18, with additional programs for the precocious in intellect or power development. While IST Academy doesn’t require students to join IST upon graduation, most students who do make the decision to join decide around the age of 16-17.
Once students graduate from the secondary education track, those who decided against joining the IST are free to pursue higher education as they see fit; the level of education (overseen by some of UNESCO’s best and brightest) means these students can go basically anywhere they want to. Those who are pursuing a career in the world’s largest superteam enter the Academy’s agent training track: for the next four years they learn tactics, strategy, IST rules and regulations and the ins and outs of international law in a much more military-style learning environment. Once graduated these supers are inducted into the IST as fully-fledged agents.
IST Academy operates six campuses, one for each regional district: Warsaw, Seoul, Caracas, Mexico City, Lagos and Wellington. Each campus generally has between 500 to 1,000 metahuman students of variable power, including dependents of active and former IST agents. Of these students about 100 per campus graduate every year into IST service.
Ranks and Clearances
For a paramilitary organization the IST is remarkably flat when it comes to rank. This lends the IST something of a more egalitarian vibe than your traditional military or paramilitary, though this is itself a bit of an illusion.
The base rank for all IST field operatives is Agent. Any super cleared for field duty, whether they arrived from boot camp, graduated the Academy or just dropped out of a hole in the world is an IST Agent. This was a deliberate choice by the original creators of the IST org chart: at the time of founding, the group was made of dozens of supers, many of whom had been part of their home country’s military forces, each one with a different rank, a different way of corresponding that rank to the unpowered bits of their military, and with varying levels of seniority. Trying to untangle this in any meaningful way would’ve taken years – the creators having seen the eternal snafu that was the NATO comparative org chart – and in their infinite wisdom they decided to cut the Gordian knot. By flattening the chart they encouraged the individual supers to mingle and figure out how to organize themselves.
And it worked! Mostly. Enough. It worked enough. The elegantly egalitarian solution to the rank problem the creators had hoped for never quite materialized, but the passing of time gave the IST (and Command) a chance to sort things out. While there were only four main ranks established (Agent, Field Commander, Regional Commander and IST Commander), a series of semi-formalized ranks were developed to slot in between agents and field commanders. Senior Agents were designated for people with years of field experience as de facto non-commissioned officers, and Special Agents recognized those IST supers who worked outside the usual embassy rotations.
From there IST agents divided themselves more or less according to security clearance. IST and its parent orgs developed a ten level clearance system going (low to high) 1-10. With Level 10 occupied by luminaries like the UNSC and the Secretary-General and Level 1 reserved for low-level office workers and the dependents of active-duty personnel, this allowed the agents to figure out a fairly relaxed pecking order based on who was a Level 2 Agent and who was a Level 8 agent.
(For the record, a Level 2 Agent is a fresh face who just got out of training, and a Level 8 Agent is the Regional Commander and/or a metahuman bigwig from another UN agency like UNESCO or UNPF.)
As noted, Level 2 is where most agents start out at, and security clearance tends to be increased either by time-in-grade (i.e. the longer you’re in, the more trustworthy you are) or for reasons that require specific context. (i.e. if L3 Agent Punchhard has a specific power that’s needed to solve a Level 5 problem, then Punchhard can be jumped up the clearance ladder) IST Reservists tend to keep the clearance they retired at for at least the first two years, but afterwards if their clearance is higher than L3 they need to specifically renew their clearance via COPPF.
Clearances are printed on everybody’s identification cards, which has led in the past to a culture of “card-checking” to see who’s allowed to be in tune with what classified gossip. Command tries to discourage this in ways both subtle and gross, but it continues to be a recurring headache as new Level 2s enter the system and start their way up the ladder.
Callsigns and Secret Identities
The IST, on top of their peacekeeping and civic duties, are the public face for world unity in this brave new world. With the role IST embassies play in the great game of public relations, ensuring their agents are easily identifiable has been important since the very beginning of the IST program. To this end, Command encourages the use of super names and popular nicknames.
As stratagems go it’s not bad. Most people around the world would have trouble telling you the name of their UN ambassador, but if they have an IST embassy within three hundred kilometers they’ll know who the heroes are there. Emphasizing public recognition with catchy and exciting names helps spread the popularity of the ISTs, and from there the underlying philosophy of the UN, around the general public.
That said, the UN doesn’t give the secret identity any sort of internal privilege, something that’s come and gone and come again in places like the US and some other nations. All IST members are required to hold a security clearance of some kind (even if it’s low) and therefore need to undergo a background check before they can be formally accepted into the ranks. While this is definitely a turn-off for some supers who might’ve otherwise joined the IST – it certainly kept the most recent Shadow from joining – the UN is quick to emphasize that this is strictly an internal policy. While IST agents are required to disclose their name to COPPF they aren’t required to release it to the general public. If an agent desires, their full identity data will be put into secure storage accessible only by their immediate commander/administrator and the Committee.
The rise of modern social media has blunted the whole secret identity thing for the UN. To an extent. The most recent generation of supers joining IST, particularly those from the US and China, are perfectly happy to use their real names and their callsigns interchangeably when interacting with the public. They also have a tendency to broadcast their doings – at least off-duty, or during low-security events – on public streaming services. Some of them have even started vlogs as a side gig. This whole thing is giving the dinosaurs in the Committee’s PR department absolute fits, but so far it’s doing as good a job of getting the UN’s image out there with The Youths in a positive way as the old ways, so nobody thinks of trying to strain against the tide.
IST Standard Costume Policy
The official UN policy regarding costumes is about as liberal as their policy on callsigns: so long as it conforms (or can be made to conform) to the host country’s standards of propriety then anything goes. The costume should also have the space necessary to bear all appropriate insignia as long as it’s possible to add them without damaging any special properties of the costume. So, like, a mage whose costume is covered in runes and magic circles would be allowed an emblem exemption because it runs the risk of making their power dangerously ineffective.
For its first two decades IST had no insignia of its own; the UN symbol was used, with the letters “IST” block-printed underneath. The modern insignia design was adopted in 2002 and went into widespread usage in the tail end of the Millennium Crisis. This insignia is meant to be worn on the upper left arm, near the shoulder, though it can be used as a chest or cape symbol for those so inclined. A bar for embassy assignment and squad assignment (if any) goes on the upper right arm.
While Command doesn’t insist on a standardized color scheme for their agents, the unofficial custom since the Four-Hour War has been to adopt UN blue as an accent color somewhere on an agent’s costume. Usually this takes the form of a stripe or slash on bodysuits, or an accessory such as a scarf, hat, tie, gloves, etc. on a streetwear-style costume.
(As an example: Telcontar, a decorated heroine and one of the modern IST’s rising young stars, prefers a streetwear costume that befits her powers and joint duties with UNIWO. To signify her position as an IST agent she wears a UN blue kerchief to tie back her hair as her “accent” piece. Her costume varies on where the IST shield is placed, though it’s usually a both a shoulder patch and a stylized painted version on the back of her jacket.)
For those supers without innate fashion sense (a much more common problem than you’d think) Command maintains a crack staff of skilled designers, tailors and seamstresses. If a super wishes, the “costume brigade” can create a full outfit for them with as much or as little input as they want to give. Pretty much every material in the book – and a few that aren’t – can be used for a design. IST membership automatically includes three costumes plus one replacement costume every six months. If necessary, additional replacements will be deducted from the agent’s salary.
The UN will also provide special-purpose uniforms for specific assignments. This typically involves extreme-conditions or hazardous environment suits for arctic conditions or spacesuits. For those with streetwear costumes who want something a little fancier for formal occasions the UN has developed a pretty nice little dress uniform based vaguely on the French military style, complete with the snazzy blue beret.
IST Agent Salaries
We almost forgot an important part – how much do these guys get paid? That’s may bad; I got wrapped up in thinking neat things about costumes. I spend too much time around cosplayers. Anyway.
Upon exiting training and joining an embassy, the starting IST Agent earns about $120,000 (in OTL 2025 US dollars as of mid-June 2025) a year. Naturally, this is subject to taxes in the agent’s home country, though most nations have pretty generous tax rebates for active-duty IST heroes. The salary increases by 20% as rank increases through to Level 7 clearance – if you’re still in the system at Level 7 then you’re clearly not doing this for the money.
Team members have all living expenses, health care etc. paid for by the United Nations as a matter of course. The majority of IST agents prefer to live onsite at their embassy, but the UN will make accommodations for those with dependents and wish to live off-site. Agents are encouraged to continue their educations, and tuition reimbursement plans are available and easy to sign off on.
IST Courts-Martial
Now that we’ve covered money, let’s talk about the other thing attached to money: crime!
IST is a paramilitary body and as such, members who violate its regulations of the laws of the host country are subject to court-martial. The accused is brought before three IST agents of Level 7 rank or higher, one being the agent’s field commander (or the regional commander, if the field commander is the one accused) and the other two come from other embassies, usually ones a couple countries away. The accused has the right to legal counsel – which can be the legal attache of their embassy but doesn’t have to be. A prosecutor is assigned from IST Command, usually from available COPPF legal staff.
The procedure isn’t anything to write home about: evidence, witnesses, cross-examination, you’ve seen enough legal dramas in your life, you know the drill. If desired or necessary the trial can take place with telepathic examination, using the US/UK Three Telepath standard for impartiality. Penalites vary given the severity of the crime, but never exceed life imprisonment. If the court-martial was for breaking local law, the penalty may be to turn the guilty over to civil authorities for further trial and sentencing – though this wouldn’t be done if the civil crime is a capital one!
IST courts-martial are fairly rare. A few IST agents have been tried for manslaughter (two found guilty, three found innocent), and one was tried for espionage against the UN early on in the IST’s existence. (That particular agent was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.) Crimes and violations of the regulations less significant than gross negligence are handled on a case-by-case basis by the local administrator, field commander and legal attache at each embassy.
IST Operations
Once a super gets through all of the rigmarole and is assigned to an embassy as a brand-new IST agent, what is it that they actually do? Well, the IST is the world’s largest superteam and it’s made up of superheroes, so they go do superhero things. There, question answered, next chapter.
... That’s not enough? You want more?! Fine then, just be glad I don’t turn the car around and go home.
Right. So. IST has an organizational agenda and a series of standing orders related directly to that agenda (see above). It’s also riding on several tons of tropes, memes, assumptions, concepts and other assorted cultural bric-à-brac regarding the purpose of the superhero, all of which goes back at least a century and in some cases even further – as we have discussed previously.
At it’s most basic the IST exists to ensure world peace, or at the very least act as an omen of doom to ensure that if anybody starts something it doesn’t spill over international borders Or Else. This is IST’s main function at its most paramilitary – a superpowered branch of the Peacekeepers. But here’s the thing, right: for all that the UN does to keep things under control and all the good the UNPF does in the world, soldiers don’t exactly make for good symbols of peace. And as we’ve seen in the history of metahumanity, the idea of the superhero doesn’t take kindly to people trying to hammer it into military submission.
It’s this inherent paradox – the IST is not just the super army but also a collective of heroes – that colors how the organization works on a day-to-day level.
Regular Duty
On any given day when there are no significant global or regional threats looming, duty as an IST agent is not terribly different from what it might be for the average superteam, or even what you might expect for a perfectly mundane fire/rescue squad. There are meetings, briefings, training, doing maintenance, paperwork, maybe some public outreach, etc.
Local Crimefighting
IST as an organization is not specifically tuned towards dealing with bank robbers and mobsters; that’s what the local vigilantes and licensed superteams are there to handle, and in general they’re more likely to know the metaphorical terrain better than IST agents who tend to rotate through embassies faster. That being said, visibility is an important part of IST’s duty and most local or national governments will have reciprocity agreements to act as law enforcement.
What does that mean? Well, the short of it is that most IST embassies, particularly the ones that are at low risk of international conflict, will run patrol schedules alongside local supers. These patrols are generally nothing special: loops around a city to both show the flag and keep an eye out for trouble should something pop up.
Sometimes IST will be asked to provide backup for a heavier operation. Raids and sting operations, particularly against supervillains, frequently get requests for IST support. Especially if the supervillain is known to be personally dangerous or have a lot of goons, and the local embassy has some heavy-hitters. Short of an actual emergency situation this is about as exciting as crimefighting duty gets for IST agents.
Investigatory Work
Crimefighting might be a secondary or even tertiary priority for IST, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely off the radar. Supervillainous activity is an international problem, which means that IST does do long-term work keeping track of supervillainy and related issues like trafficking rings.
While a lot of this investigation work is left to professional detectives from various three- or four-letter agencies around the world, IST maintains its own investigatory apparatus and its own investigations into suspicious supercriminal activity. IST agents with a particular penchant for detection are likely to end up working as investigators tracking down supervillains, sorting out their connections and making a case for IST or local heroes to go in and bust them.
Peacekeeping
In higher-risk regions IST agents have the duty of supporting UNPF operations. Broadly this isn’t terribly different from patrolling for bank robbers in low-risk areas, but it’s the fine details that really trip you up. For one thing, in most deployments like this everybody has guns and is looking for an excuse to start shooting, not just the nominal “bad guys.” This tends to ratchet up the tension.
When an embassy is working with UNPF, the Peacekeepers are the ones in overall command of the situation. It’s their soldiers and their diplomatic staff who are the ones leading the way for the UN here, so that means that the commander of the UN mission can pull rank on every IST agent in the field – unless something super-related happens. Then things move over to IST because weird shenanigans are their territory.
Peacekeeping duty can be nerve-wracking for a super but it some ways it’s slightly less dangerous than fighting crime because there’s very little action involved. IST forces are meant to be the biggest stick in the UN arsenal, a weapon that only needs to be brandished, and that’s really what IST agents on peacekeeping missions do for the most part: they stand between the armies and remind them they’re not the biggest kids on the block. The standing around can be kind of boring, but it’s definitely better than the alternative.
Public Outreach
The United Nations isn’t just an organization; it’s an ideal, a dream of a better world, and IST is the most visible part of that dream. For most IST agents, public affairs work is honestly the best thing they do in any given week. (Some cynics grumble and roll their eyes, but there are few supers who join IST and are not willing to at least put work into being personable.)
Public outreach can be any number of things: speaking engagements, public appearances, autograph signings, etc. Even just showing up at a public park and hanging out in costume qualifies as a positive public interaction. Structured events can be as fancy as a public ceremony or as simple as going to a school to talk about life as a metahuman. The goal is to get the agents out in front of the people in the best possible way, so that they think of IST – and by extension the UN – in the best possible way.
In this strange year of 2024 with its omnipresent Internet and almost every person on Earth-1 glued to high-resolution cameras every moment of every day, public outreach is both easier and more difficult for IST and their battalions of PR people. On the one hand more people have eyes and cameras on their supers than they had at any other point in history, but on the other hand it’s never been easier to catch a super in an unguarded moment which can be... tricky from a PR standpoint. On the gripping hand, the new crop of social media-savvy supers graduating the Academy seem to have figured out how to make this work in their favor.
Emergency Duty
Statistically, it’s actually pretty rare that something is not going wrong somewhere in the world on any given day. Given that IST has embassies pretty much everywhere on the planet and several elsewhere, they’re just as statistically likely to be wrapped up in that something.
Disaster Response
The Universe is an uncaring place and bad things just happen sometimes. When these things happen – earthquakes, volcanoes, severe weather events, etc. – IST will often be called on to lend a hand. The nature of the hand is going to depend on the nature of the disaster. In the immediate aftermath IST agents are likely to be tasked with search and rescue efforts in the affected area, bricks and atlases set to clear rubble to get to trapped individuals or clear paths for relief vehicles, etc. It’s in these situations that outside help like the Demon-Busters are likely to be called in, just in case the Blue Demon decides to make an appearance.
In the short-to-medium term IST agents will be tasked to a disaster area as high-end law enforcement or peacekeepers. Areas hit hard enough by disasters often have serious problems with general chaos on top of the physical damage done, and in these situations IST (if so called) will be responsible for maintaining the safety of the afflicted until otherwise relieved of the duty. This is in many ways a supercharged version of the local anti-crime patrols undertaken in normal duty, only there’s a reasonable chance that IST is the only working law enforcement within a hundred kilometers.
If an IST embassy is directly within the belly of the beast, it’s standard operating procedure that all facilities are to be opened up for use as emergency shelters. Given that IST embassies are built to be as indestructible as possible (see below) this makes them very handy islands of stability in the midst of a chaotic situation.
Anti-Supervillain Operations
Supervillains are a constant issue in the modern world. While your world conquerors tend to be fairly thin on the ground, there’s enough people out there who’re willing to restrain themselves to just one country, or maybe even a city or three, to make life exciting for the rest of us.
As the world’s largest superteam IST’s most regular business on busy days is the corralling and neutralization of supervillains. This sometimes comes as a request from a UN member nation, which can be lumped into regular crimefighting duties, but as often as not anti-supervillain operations are directed by internal-to-IST investigations. And to be fair, not every supervillain gets the full IST treatment; anybody who can be taken down by the Tackleford Mystery Club can safely be left to those luminaries. IST targets are generally the ones who already have sizable international networks of goons at their disposal and probably a superweapon or three.
In ideal situations an IST embassy, or a small group of embassies, has the necessary tactical skill and firepower to neutralize a supervillainous threat with minimal risk. Ideal situations are not nearly as common as they could be. In the plurality of cases when a supervillan is rumbled they go loud – whether that’s to try and go out in a blaze of glory or to distract IST with their minions while they make a quick exit out the side door. It’s in situations like these, where there’s an active Doom Fortress with a live doomsday device, that IST’s specialist training in handling absurd situations really comes to the fore.
If IST is initiating an anti-supervillain operation they prefer to keep it as in-house as possible for security reasons. Unaffiliated teams can be pulled in for assistance if the situation looks like it’s going to spiral, but this also can lead to ruffled feathers between COPPF and the host nation (which is the unofficial reason the Committee would prefer anti-villain ops stay in-house) but at the end of the day it’s up to the regional commander to make the call.
Peacemaking
Sometimes even the best of efforts will not succeed.
Armed conflict breaking out between UN member states (or UN member states and unaffiliated nations, or UN member states and rogue nations) is not nearly as rare as it ought to be, even with the IST hanging like a particularly annoyed Sword of Damocles over the offending parties. In times like this, when hostilities break out and armies are crossing borders, is when IST’s military core really shines the brightest.
Active peacemaking operations are different from peacekeeping; the latter is more about keeping whatever factions involved in a situation away from each other and talking. The former is very much about going in and taking their toys away until such time as they’re willing to come to the table. Full-scale operations like this are honestly rarer than the situations that look like they require them, because a full formal peacemaking op requires not just the approval of COPPF but also a majority vote of the Security Council.
Given that oftentimes the belligerents in these cases either are or are sponsored by the UNSC permanent members, that can make getting a vote difficult.
IST’s saving grace in these situations is the 24-hour cutout granted to embassy field commanders. If things start to go sufficiently sideways that the field commander determines that it might escalate into a serious incident they can at their initiative activate the team to deal with it. The catch is that the team administrator and Command have to review the decision and the action within 24 hours, and if they disagree they can cancel the operation. Or they can approve it, which gives the team leave to keep going until embassy leadership, Command or the Committee tell them to stop. 24 hours is not a very long time in the grand scheme of things, but to badly paraphrase Lenin, you can fit a lot of time into 24 hours. Even the simple act of deploying IST agents to halt a convoy and give them a disapproving look can be enough to get the people in charge to second-guess their genius plans and maybe let the UN diplomats back in to do their thing.
To date the UNSC has only approved one peacemaking operation before it happened: Operation Gilgamesh, also known as the Four-Hour War. They’ve retroactively approved a whole bunch of actions by IST embassies working separately or in concert on their own initiative – including Rwanda, which came as a bit of a shock all told.
And then there’s the last category...
SIDEBOX: Isekai Rescue
This one requires a little bit of setup: in 2018 there was a multiversal convergence event focused on East Asia, mainly in Japan with some incursions into Korea and China. The convergence was largely harmless, but it did weaken the dimensional barriers between this region and a minor infinity of worldlines known collectively as the “Dragon Quest worlds.” The first time anybody knew about this was in the fall of 2018 when a classroom of Japanese high school students were magically transported from their homeroom to a fantasy world, where they were lauded as “heroes” and sent off to fight “the Demon Lord.”
Needless to say, the Japanese government had unkind words to say about these sorts of shenanigans, and a UNIWO specialist from IST St. John’s was dispatched to retrieve the students, after a 20-hour (for Earth-1; it was closer to a full year for the students and the specialist, multiversal time can be funny like that) ordeal. And then it happened again, and again, and again at which point the Japanese government and IST agreed to set up a sub-branch task force to handle these situations to the best of their ability.
The “Isekai Rescue” force, as the Japanese public quickly dubbed it, have spent the years since 2018 on the lookout for multiversal summoning events, and whenever they happen have done their best to retrieve whichever poor souls have been sucked into another world to do somebody’s dirty work for them. Isekai Rescue’s public work has made them some of the more popular heroes in Japan, with fanclubs and even an official anime series.
Crisis Events
A crisis event is what happens when everything everywhere goes wrong all at the same time. Whether this is an alien invasion, demonic invasion, an invasion by Time Nazis, a major kaiju outbreak, the fabric of space-time starting to erode, spontaneous uprisings by three dozen Class A supervillains... the exact nature of the crisis isn’t wholly relevant. The crux of the thing is that it’s a global event and is tying up most or all of IST’s available resources.
In situations like these the UNSC can formally declare a crisis event, which mobilizes the entirety of IST, alongside every UNPF soldier and as much of the member state militaries as can be mobilized. The IST Commander effectively becomes Supreme Allied Commander, with deployment authority over the full weight of Earth-1’s military. Formal agreements with national and independent superteams also place authority in IST Command’s hands until the conclusion of the crisis event.
Regional crisis events can be declared by COPPF with slightly less doomsday energy, if a situation has escalated to the point where three or more member states are under direct threat. In a regional crisis the continental regional commander assumes similar levels of authority over IST and national/independent superteams, but doesn’t have the same level of control over member state militaries as IST Command has in the event of a global crisis.
This is a very scary assumption of power by IST in an emergency, and it’s a tribute to the strength of character of IST commanders – and the power of superhero memes – that nobody’s tried to take advantage of it. Even so, the UNSC does their level best to not declare a crisis because it has such potential for abuse. Only two global crises have been called since the process for declaring a Crisis Event was determined in 2003, one in 2012 and one in 2020.
The Basic IST Embassy
Now that we’ve covered the organization as a whole, let’s take a look at the individual IST embassy. Embassy superteams number between 8 and 20 people depending on the region and the need for supers. In order to maintain an international profile, no more than two people per team are actually natives of the country they’re stationed in. If a team has more than ten people in it, they’re usually divided into squads of three to five people each; the squads are referred to by Greek letters (Alpha, Beta, Gamma etc.).
Squads are usually drilled in specialized functions. For example, IST New York Alpha Squad is trained in anti-terrorism tactics to be used on the grounds of UNHQ. Individual squads are also liable to develop their own custom combat maneuvers with funny names like “the fastball special” or “the Iggy (also known as the Office).” Don’t ask where that last one came from; it’s very funny but only if you’re like part of the IST Dallas team circa 1995. If the team composition allows, field commanders can cluster similar powers together for a special squad, like people with powers suited for infiltration or tanking damage. This is fairly common behavior across most IST embassies. At the end of the day squad composition and training is up to the field commander.
Command Structure
Within the team there are a number of important posts that COPPF requires for every embassy. Although one person can wear more than one hat (inadvisable; these are all full-time jobs in their own right but it does happen, especially in recently-establishes embassies) all of these positions must be filled in order for the embassy to qualify as operational.
Team Administrator
The team administrator is the formal commander of the team. They are the main connection the embassy has to COPPF, and the conduit through which decisions from On High are transmitted. Their role is also that of the station’s chief diplomat, as they are also the primary connection the embassy has to the nation in which it resides. As an official UN Ambassador, the administrator must be a firm and dedicated representative of the United Nations, capable of navigating the rough waters of international diplomacy.
This is not an easy job, nor is is an enviable one most of the time. Even nations that are staunch UN allies prefer to think of the UN as an “over there” thing, not something they have to deal with on a daily basis, and the administrator’s job flies in the face of that.
The administrator is usually the first one to catch flak whenever a team member goes too far, and one of the few perks of the job is being able to pass that particular hot potato right back to whoever screwed up. This is the other major function of the administrator job; disciplining unruly IST agents. They have the power and the duty to enforce IST regulations and standards from members of the team up to and including starting court-martial proceedings if necessary. This does not endear many agents to the administrator, but that is sort of the point.
It is a long-standing tradition that team administrators are unpowered. Partly this is due to the fact that the job requires a fair bit of skill and training and very few professional supers have the necessary background in diplomacy and administration to handle it. There are IST field commanders with sufficient international experience to handle both jobs, but these are few and far between and generally get promoted to posts in Command pretty quickly regardless.
Field Commander
The IST field commander is the one most people will call the team leader, regardless of what the actual administrative situation back at the embassy is. It’s not untrue: during an emergency or combat situation the field commander is the one fully in charge of the field team. But in all other situations (i.e. 95% of the time) the field commander shares command of their team with the administrator.
The field commander’s duties outside of combat are focused on fitness and preparedness. They’re in charge of training and organization, ensuring that the team is capable of doing their job at any point under any conditions – which can get pretty hairy given that superpowers are a thing. When it comes to the paramilitary use of the team and its members, the field commander has final say and not the administrator, though Command may override them if they disagree.
In emergency situations the field commander is obligated to activate their team and place them at the disposal of civil authorities. That said, the embassy is not required to cater to every whim of a civil authority; field commanders are authorized to refuse any request that they feel are unsafe, unreasonable or violate UN policy or regulations. Dictator McGee can’t just declare an emergency and sic IST Dunroman on a nearby group of protesters or minorities; that’s the sort of thing that results in another Rwanda incident.
Most teams are small enough that only one field commander is required for most operations. In the event that an embassy has a large number of supers the field commander can appoint an executive officer to spread out the responsibility. If necessary, the executive officer will be breveted to the same clearance level as the field commander and given access to all relevant briefing documents. If the field commander gets taken out without a second in command, leadership automatically goes to the most senior team member, subject to approval by the team administrator.
Field commanders are just as much diplomats as the team administrators, and in what’s often a more demanding realm as well: by the nature of the job the field commander is in the field and has to deal with the general public far more often than a team administrator. Basic military skills are not enough to hack it as an IST field commander; if one wants the job one must have (or be willing to learn) the ability to interact with people outside of IST and present the team in the best possible light.
As might be expected, field commanders are majority metahuman, though many super-normals remain in the position even in 2024. Most are veterans; while the metas who served in the superarmies have now largely retired or moved onto posts in Command, IST field commanders have at least 5-7 years experience with the organization and were often recruited after several years in a national or independent superteam. A field commander may not necessarily be the most powerful individual in the world or even on the team, but they are the person with the right experience and skillset to lead a team into battle against the world’s worst and come out on top.
(Some people will scoff at this, but consider: the current IST Commander is Pouka. Pouka cannot bench-press supertankers or melt stone with a mean look; her power is invisibility, intangibility and a minor alchemical touch. But she has honed those powers to a monomolecular edge over her 30+ years in IST, and in the process gained an understanding of tactics and strategy that would impress Eisenhower and Zhukov. Raw power does not equal leadership potential.)
Public Relations Officer
For all that the UN has achieved financial independence via the gift of nuclear fusion, it still runs mainly on the goodwill of the people of the world. And their governments. Especially their governments.
The Edicts were accepted by the member nations in their time, but they still caused quite a bit of a stir in many governments. And while the member states agreed to form the IST and place the embassies this was yet another strain in the system. All the old conspiracy theorist ranting about “one world government” looked a lot less funny and a lot more prophetic as the embassies went up and the individuals teams were placed. Between 1982 and 1994 the UN tread a very careful line to keep from seriously offending any of the member states; its power depends on the voluntary participation of its members. Rwanda and Amerexit threw some pretty large spanners into this of course, but the system managed to hold together regardless.
All of that guff is meant to explain why every IST embassy has a dedicated public relations office with attached PR officer. Their purpose is to promote a positive public image for their embassy in particular and the UN in general with the people of their host city and country. IST regulations forbid the use of deliberate manipulation of events – that’s for supervillains – but the public relations officer can organize public appearances, goodwill tours and cooperative events with local superteams or other UN agencies.
For a while the public relations officer was required to be an IST agent. At the time COPPF and Command wanted to discourage hiring PR officers who resembled the stereotypical slick PR flack that was so common in places like Hollywood. However, around the turn of the century Command realized that while these sorts of people were obnoxious they existed for a reason: requiring IST agents to handle their team’s publicity worked but only to an extent, and even given a proper support staff it was contributing to high levels of burnout and turnover among agents. In the end Command relented and began hiring professional public relations people to handle PR actions for the embassies; these folks would end up as some of the most heavily-vetted employees of the entire IST for ethical reasons!
Legal Attache
Every IST embassy requires somebody to advise the team on international and local law, as well as act as counsel in case of the worst coming to pass. Unless a qualified lawyer is onboard as an IST agent already (uncommon, but not as strange as you might think), this position will be filled by somebody pulled from the Secretariat’s bottomless Rolodex and assigned to that specific embassy.
Security Officer
Generally the security officer will be somebody seconded from UNPF or directly part of Command. Effectively the third-in-command after the team administrator and the field commander, the security officer’s job is maintaining the internal security of the embassy. This entails things like distributing clearances, declaring which parts of the embassy are off-limits at whatever clearance, etc. They also are in command of a security team who maintain the electronic/mystic passive security systems and also aid the powered infantry in patrolling the embassy grounds.
Command and COPPF are remarkably hands-off when it comes to detailing security within an embassy. The only thing mandated by regulation is the embassy fusion plant, which requires Level 3 clearance to access. Other than that, embassy personnel are free to organize their security as they see fit. The security officer, in conjunction with team administration and the field commander, is the one to determine the security arrangements of their embassy and ensure it’s set up within the system.
Support Staff
Once all of that is covered, an IST embassy will have generally 1-200 more people in it any any given point as support staff. Most of these are responsible for training, medical situations (every IST embassy has a first-class medical facility with the tools necessary to handle anything weird), embassy upkeep and the administrative workers that any large diplomatic building requires.
Powered Infantry
Besides the superhero complement, every IST embassy maintains a squad (generally 10-15) of UNPF infantry trained in the use of IST-standard powered armor. The exact number of people in a squad, as well as the number of available squads, varies from nation to nation. Housed within the embassy compound, their primary duty is to act as embassy security.
In the event of an emergency, the powered infantry can be activated by the embassy’s field commander and used outside the embassy. The same restrictions as the activation of super forces (the 24 hour confirmation limit) apply to the powered infantry. Previous uses of the infantry outside the embassy tend to involve crowd control, additional hands in disaster relief (powered armor can lift a fair bit!) and interdicting forces against larger gangs of henchmen.
SIDEBOX: Embassy Placements
As of January 2024 there are {$num1} embassies currently operating on Earth-1. Per the Edicts, every UN member state has an embassy in their capital city. Additional embassies are assigned by population: one extra embassy is provided for every 45 million people. The following is a list of UN member states with more than one embassy, and their locations:
Algeria: Algiers, Ain Salah
Argentina: Buenos Aires, Córdoba
Bangladesh: Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Rangpur
Brazil: Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Manaus, Belem, Salvador
China: Beijing, Jinan, Qingdao, Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Kunming, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’An, Lanzhou, Yinchuan, Shenyang, Harbin, Qiqihar, Hulunbuir, Dalian, Suzhou, Chifeng, Haikou, Changsha, Xinyang, Lhasa, Ürümqi, Fuzhou, Yichang, Nanning, Zhangzhou, Changsha, Haikou, Daqing, Hotan
Colombia: Bogota, Barranquilla
Dem. Rep of Congo: Kinshasa, Kisangani, Kolwezi
Egypt: Cairo, Aswan, Luxor
Ethiopia: Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa, Mek'ele
France: Paris, Marseilles
Germany: Berlin, Bonn
India: New Delhi, Bengaluru, Surat, Nagpur, Imphal, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Madurai, Meerut, Nagpur, Patna, Pune, Rajkot, Visakhapatman, Agra, Bhubaneshwar, Hubli-Dharwad, Nellore, Raipur, Ranchi, Thiruvananthapuram, Tiruchirappali, Surat
Indonesia: Nusantara†, Jakarta, Banjarmasin, Medan, Makassar, Jayapura, Surabaya, Manado
Iran: Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad
Iraq: Baghdad, Mosul
Italy: Rome, Milan
Japan: Tokyo, Osaka, Sapporo
Kenya: Nairobi, Marsabit
Mexico: Mexico City, Monterrey, Mazatlán
Myanmar: Yangon, Mandalay
Nigeria: Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Onitsha, Sokoto, Maiduguri
Pakistan: Islamabad, Karachi, Quetta, Bahawalpur, Lahore, Hyderabad
Philippines: Manila, Davao, Cebu
South Korea: Seoul, Busan
Sovereign Union: Moscow, Leningrad, Yekaterinburg, Yakutsk, Irkutsk, Almaty
Spain: Madrid, Barcelona
Sudan: Khartoum, Al Fashir
Tanzania: Dar es Salaam, Mwanza
Thailand: Bangkok, Ranong
Türkiye: Ankara, Malatya
Uganda: Kampala, Gulu
United Republics: Kiyv, Minsk
United Kingdom: London, Edinburgh
United States: Washington, Anchorage, Dallas, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis, Seattle
Vietnam: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang
† The new Indonesian capital city of Nusantara is currently under construction, and the embassy is expected to be operational by October 2025 at which point the Jakarta embassy will likely be mothballed.
SIDEBOX: Specialist Embassies
There are other IST installations that are considered part of the embassy system (and are registered as embassies) that aren’t part of the international mandate of the Edicts. The following is a list of IST embassies that were established for other reasons:
IST Hiroshima: honor guard for the nuclear memorial.
IST Nagasaki: honor guard for the nuclear memorial.
IST McMurdo: support for Antarctic activities / emergency services.
IST Perth: support for eastern Indian Ocean emergency services.
IST Murmansk: support for eastern Arctic emergency services.
IST Whitehorse: support for western Arctic emergency services 1998-current.
IST Geneva: flagship team for UNHQ 1998-2017.
IST Lunagrad: support for lunar activities / emergency services.
IST Sagan Station: support for Martian activities / emergency services.
IST St. John’s: support for UN interworld operations.
An Embassy for the People
Establishing an IST embassy can be complex. Once the initial approvals for an embassy are made, the host nation gives its blessing and the whole thing has been run through the COPPF filter several times to appease the celestial bureaucracy work can begin on the physical establishment of the embassy. But this is only the beginning.
Exterior Design and Construction
A normal embassy, one designed primarily for the use of diplomats doing diplomatic things, is a pretty straightforward thing to set up: one buys (or is gifted) a building in the capital city of the nation one wishes to build an embassy in, and then one hires a large staff of renovators, preferably ones who’ve been vetted for security purposes, who clean out the interior of the building and turn it into whatever you want it to be. After a certain amount of time and money, the embassy is complete and ready to be staffed.
IST embassies are not quite so straightforward. They are active superteam headquarters facilities, which means they have requirements that most buildings simply don’t have. Requirements like the ability to tank at least one clean hit from an atlas-class bruiser, or several shots from high-energy artillery. You know, the little things. This makes just straight up buying or accepting a gift structure difficult because very few ordinary human buildings are designed to handle the sort of abuse an IST embassy is expected to handle under normal conditions, much less worst-case scenarios. Worse still, a gifted building is likely to be something with historic value to it; the house of a former leader or extremely wealthy person who managed to leave behind a positive reputation, or it’s just something that’s been there for 300 years and people like it. Historical buildings have been used in the past for IST embassies – IST London occupies a Georgian row house on St. James’s Square – but in general they aren’t worth the trouble to reconfigure to IST standards because you have to gut them down to the exterior walls and in those circumstances the historical societies come out to play.
When it comes to siting a new embassy, it’s preferable to either find and reconfigure a modern, non-historic building or find a spot where building something entirely new is okay. This is where the design process comes in. UN policy is to try and maintain a low profile when it comes to UN facilities on other people’s land, all the better to minimize the cries of imperialism. It is also policy that UN buildings ought to at least look like they fit into the rest of the surrounding neighborhood: a twenty-story Brutalist skyscraper right across the street from the Louvre is right out. Once a given parcel of land has been cleared for construction or renovation, IST-approved architects will move in and design something that is unobtrusive and at least has a facade that fits in well with the area.
For construction COPPF relies on a set of vetted companies with experience in both architecture and superscience. These international firms have decades of experience working for independent superteams like Honor Guard and high-end superscience firms like VenTech and know how to build things that are going to have a lot of metahumans in them, what that entails and how best to keep things standing. They are perfectly capable of renovating preexisting buildings as building new, whatever the preference of Command and the host nation.
Starting off, an embassy’s foundations (including all underground levels) are set on heavy isolation bearings. Along with giving the embassy some protection against superstrength attacks, this also makes the building more or less quakeproof. Once the foundations and the bearings have been set, the building is either raised or refit to IST specifications. No matter the origin, the embassy’s walls are built or rebuilt for maximum protection. A minimum of 1 meter of steel-reinforced concrete with a decorative facing is used for external walls whenever possible. (The sheer mass involved also tends to limit the height of IST embassies: they’re generally not much more than ten to fifteen stories tall.) If the building doesn’t cover the entire lot walls of this thickness (or thicker!) will be erected at the perimeter. It’s entirely down to the skill of the architects and the engineers that an IST embassy doesn’t come off looking like a fortress squatting in the middle of a city – even though that’s what it basically is.
Interior Design – Public
An embassy may be built like a fortress, but it’s also a symbol of the United Nations. For many it might be the only UN thing they ever see that isn’t on the news somewhere, so ever since the Edicts it’s been important for embassies to put their best possible foot forwards. It sort of goes without saying that the international organization dedicated to peace and universal human rights is not well-represented by a grim, armored bastion squatting in a country’s capital, ready to disgorge costumed warriors at any moment.
That may be what it feels like at some embassies, but trust me; that’s not how it’s supposed to go.
The baseline IST embassy is designed to button up like Cheyenne Mountain in case of an emergency, true. But for 95% of the time the doors will be open and much of the embassy compound will be accessible to the general public. Every embassy is different due to location, footprint, total area etc. but as a rule the ground floor and (generally) the floors immediately above and below will be open for public access. Of the public areas the front lobby is the most traveled part of the embassy, and this is where the lion’s share of work will go. This is where the team will have their tasteful decorations and plenty of UN flags and posters out so everybody who stops by can see all the cool things the IST has done for them recently.
What a team chooses to display is up to their discretion. IST New York quite famously has the International Museum of Metahumanity dominating the first three floors of their skyscraper HQ. IST Caracas hosts a series of rotating art exhibits in their public spaces, featuring metahuman art from across South America. IST Tokyo’s entrance hall is dominated by a massive mural showing the team from 1982 onwards done by some of the greatest commercial artists of 20th and 21st century Japan. Many embassies like to emphasize their connection to the host city and country: IST Cairo’s lobby is designed to feel like a large home in the city’s old quarter, with plenty of displays about the history of metahumans in Egypt. Much of IST Los Angeles was designed around an open-air courtyard that takes up around half the embassy’s public space, taking advantage of the California sun.
And then of course there’s the trophy room. Any superteam that survives its first couple of years will inevitably collect all sorts of stuff over the course of their adventures, and with stuff comes the desire to show it off. Every embassy will place somewhere in the public-access part of the embassy a display of the most interesting (qualified with “and also least-dangerous”) items they’ve collected over the years. Trophy rooms also have historic rosters of the team, memorials to retired or fallen heroes, all sorts of pictures, merchandise examples, you name it. If the main lobby of the embassy is to reinforce that the IST as a whole is part of the community, then the trophy room is meant to show off the team in specific.
Interior Design – Non-Public
So that’s the public spaces, designed to make the IST look cool to any random tourist who wanders in and promote the values of the United Nations. The non-public spaces aren’t as flashy; it’s a working paramilitary base and they’re all built more-or-less to a generic plan, so the space is fairly impersonal. It’s not (deliberately) an alienating liminal hell or anything, but it’s definitely not as heavily individualized as an embassy’s public front.
Again, every embassy is different but there are commonalities. The three main things an embassy will have in terms of operations spaces are the physical plant, a command center and a training room.
IST embassy-standard physical plants consist of a fusion reactor capable of running the entire building independently of the local grid, on-site water storage and purification facilities, HVAC and as closed-loop a waste reclamation system as possible. Most of this hardware will occupy the lowest levels of an embassy, and is a critical part of the design. Embassies are planned with worst-case scenarios in mind, and one of the worst scenarios is a team cut off from external aid. Therefore, in an emergency an embassy has to be able to hold out for at least six to nine weeks based entirely on what’s on site, and the physical plant is overbuilt to an almost absurd degree in order to cover that requirement.
The command center is the center of an embassy, where the team administrator, security officer and other unpowered or unfielded staff monitor ongoing operations. This is where an embassy has its main hookup to UNET and central computer. (In the past this used to be a hulking supercomputer, but the modern UNET hub is several server racks full of hardware that would make a cryptobro swoon but is being tasked to useful purpose.) Command centers are all built to exactly the same plan – the idea being to reduce stress on staff as they rotate around embassies – and consist of a briefing room for the field team and an ops room with multiple rows of workstations facing a master display. From here the operations team can communicate with the field team, coordinate backup from local authorities or other embassies, do detailed information lookups for supers in the field, and do their best to keep a field situation from devolving into chaos.
If the command center is the brain of the embassy, then the training room is the heart. All IST agents are required to maintain physical fitness, so every embassy is equipped with a well-appointed gym and weight room. But that’s basic stay-in-shape stuff; the real fun part of IST training rooms is the Combat Simulation Chamber (CSC). How the CSC works is a proprietary secret held by the three mad science firms that first developed the technology for Honor Guard in the 1970s, but the gist of it is this: it’s a shielded chamber that uses highly advanced robotics to simulate just about any kind of combat scenario possible. An embassy’s CSC is one of the few places that all but the most absurdly powerful of metahumans can actually cut loose without risking collateral damage. This makes the chamber very popular among IST agents. Given the training requirements, most agents will spend about half of their off-duty time in the gym or the CSC sparring with the automated systems or each other, figuring out how to leverage their powers better and work as a team.
Embassies have quarters available for team members personnel who are expected to be on site and/on on-call most of the time, and crash rooms for staff members to use during developing situations, but the accommodations are… let’s say limited. The standard agent quarters are fairly spartan, more like a reasonably-appointed (and certainly cleaner!) college dorm or hotel room than actually homey. The majority of embassy staff (sometimes even the field team, depending on the embassy in question) will live offsite and use the on site quarters only in emergency situations.
Let’s see, what else is there… oh! Right! Embassies will have a portion of space set aside as laboratories and workshops. Having on-call scientists is admittedly rare but there are enough superscientists and gadgeteers acting as IST agents or consultants that having the space for them to operate is a necessity for any embassy. The embassy infirmary isn’t the size of a modern Western hospital but it has roughly the same quality gear along with specialist hardware for dealing with metahumans with exotic biology. IST operations have a high chance of capturing supervillains, so most embassies have a small number of detention cells designed to hold badly-behaving metahumans. These aren’t meant for long-term use; usually at most a week or two until a transport to a hypermax facility can be arranged.
Last but not least, there’s the security system. In addition to features like the armored walls and suchlike, embassy security is electronic and constantly monitored both by the system computer but by operators in the command center. The surveillance system includes visible light, IR, motion sensors, vibration detectors, RIFD tag monitors and a fascinating little technomagic gizmo that can detect the noncorporeal. In the event of an emergency, the command center can direct UNPF security and on site agents while also using a variety of exciting non-lethal concealed weaponry to keep intruders busy. (Lethal weaponry is available but is considered a last resort.)
SIDEBOX: The IST Consulate
The consulate system is a recent evolution of the embassies, stemming from the drafting of the Interworld Treaty, though it has roots going back to the Earth-Myrr Agreement of 1987.
To make a long story short, the various worldlines who’ve signed on to the treaty are intrigued by Earth-1’s superhero system and would like to learn more about it, but embassies are only allowed to be placed in United Nations member states and nobody on Earth-2, Earth-3 etc. wants to join Earth-1’s UN for obvious reasons. This was resolved by the development of the IST consulate.
The first IST consulate was set up well before the Parachronic Revolution; in the mid-90s when humans first arrived on the Meeranon homeworld to establish a Terran embassy, a small contingent of supers came along to establish a consulate for security purposes. This was the only consulate for most of a decade, until the Interworld Treaty revived interest in the concept.
Unlike embassies, which are their own fully built-out structures with complete extraterritorial control, consulates are a much more stripped-down affair, often housed in rented facilities that aren’t built to IST specifications. A consulate team will be no more than three active agents, though supers can rotate through as consultants as necessary, as well as a consul-general who acts as administrative lead and chief diplomat assigned to that worldline.
There are around a dozen consulates operating across several worldlines currently, including both ITO member worlds and those where the UN has a sustained diplomatic presence but are not treaty signatories. The next planned consulate is for Earth-73 sometime in the late spring of 2024.
I still think it's missing something, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Anyway, here's Appendix A: IST 101
We’ve covered the history of Earth-1, seen how we got from there to here, but this still begs an important question: what is the IST anyway? We’ve seen where it came from and how it developed, but we still don’t have a huge insight into the organization as a whole. How do the International Super Teams work, as an entity?
Well, sure. I’ve got nothing better to do, so let’s get into some details on the star of our show.
To recap: the International Super Teams (IST) were established in 1982 by the United Nations in order to be the proverbial biggest stick in a world where the great powers seemed intent on playing a game of nuclear-tipped chicken while various Forces of Evil[tm] plotted in the background. Its history is long and exciting and we have spent pages and pages and pages explaining it all so we’re not going to go back over it again. The IST is the world’s largest superteam and has been since at least the early 2000s.
This is (more or less) how it works.
IST Today – By the Numbers
Today, as stated, is January 3, 2024. As of this morning the IST consists of roughly 200,000 active-duty personnel. This is slightly less than the entire active-duty military of France, and it’s responsible for looking after the entire planet. Of these, around 2,500 to 3,000 personnel are metahuman field agents, and another 5,000 or so are mundane peacekeepers in powered armor. Everybody else is support personnel; the people who maintain the embassies, run tech support for everything from the wifi connection to the hidden stun blaster emplacements, work on generic office duties, provide high-end legal and diplomatic services, trainers, cooks and all the many thousands of people necessary to ensure that the IST can keep the field agents and the power-armor backup in the field doing their jobs.
These 200,000-or-so people are scattered across {$num1} embassies located in {$num2} countries, as well as specialist facilities around the world, in Earth orbit, on the Moon, the one embassy established around Epsilon Eridani and the IST Consulates established as part of the Interworld Treaty. While 200,000 people is a lot of humans, it’s a vanishingly small number compared to the eight billion currently shaking Earth-1 this morning, as well as the billions on Earth-2, Earth-3 and the rest of the ITO worlds.
It’s honestly a tribute to the unshakable ethics of superheroism that the IST does as well as it does, if you think about it.
Who’s In Charge Here?
At the absolute top of the pyramid, the International Super Teams are overseen by the UN Security Council (UNSC), which is essentially where the buck stops for everything in the United Nations; while the Secretary-General is the administrative leader of the UN, there honestly is very little that they or the General Assembly can do without the majority approval of the UNSC. The Council is the only UN organ that has the power under the Charter to make enforceable decisions and then enforce them; everybody else in the UN can only make recommendations, no matter how forceful those recommendations might be. (This is something that various reform-minded parties within the UN would like to alter to some extent, and likely will in the next decade, but that’s far outside the scope of this document in particular.) Moving on, as of 2024 the Security Council is made up of seven permanent members and ten non-permanent members, the latter rotating through the General Assembly every 2-3 years on average. The permanent members are Great Britain, the Sovereign Union, China, France, India, Japan and the United States, while the current slate of non-permanent members is Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Somalia and South Korea.
Beneath the Security Council is the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the semi-parliamentary body consisting of ambassadors from all {$num2} member states. The UNGA’s primary duties are drafting the UN budget, appointing the Secretary-General and non-permanent members of the UNSC, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the International Court of Justice, as well as the admission of new members and issuing non-compulsory resolutions. It’s the main part of the UN where everybody has a vote; it was here in 1980 that Resolution 35/17, the resolution that would eventually become the root of the Edicts, was first drafted and voted on.
In practical terms neither the UNGA nor the UNSC have a whole lot to do with day-to-day IST operations. UNSC can enact a hard override on anything IST is up to should they choose to do so, but this has rarely been exercised – if only because it takes time to muster the Council and often a situation resolves before they can meet. That said, the commander of all IST forces can be and frequently is called to the Security Council to brief the Council on whatever the hell went wrong this week, and what IST did or is doing to make it right.
The Committee on Permanent Peacekeeping Forces
The UNSC, like every other part of the UN, has the right to establish its own secondary groups. Over the course of 78+ years the UNSC has generated an absurd number of subcommittees for all sorts of issues. Included in this roster is the Committee on Permanent Peacekeeping Forces (COPPF).
COPPF originated in the late 1970s, when the global situation seemed like it was sailing completely out of control towards a nuclear-tipped conclusion. It descended from the Committee on the Current Crisis (CCC or C3) which was set up in 1978. Ostensibly CCC was set up to investigate the breakdown in diplomacy between the Soviets and the US that led to near-miss fiascoes like the Fernando Po incident, or the rise in nihilist supervillains willing to destroy everything to rule the ashes like the late and unlamented Karl Stromberg.
The truth is a bit more complex and the sort of thing that conspiracy theorists have dined out on for almost half a century now. Given the severe nature of the crisis of the 1970s the UNSC gave the Secretariat very wide latitude in who they pulled in to staff the committee. With plenty of lead in hand, the brave souls of the Secretariat went perhaps further afield than the Council expected, reaching out to not just political scientists and diplomats but also unaffiliated supers like the elusive Amerocommunist heroine Columbia, international teams like Honor Guard and underground philosophers like George Dorn. This eclectic gang of PCs team of researchers were the ones who drafted the State of the World 80 report that was the rationale for both Resolution 35/17 and the contracting of private superteams for UN service. In 1982 when the resolution cleared the UNSC and became the Edicts, CCC was reorganized as COPPF and set up as the administrative oversight for the newborn International Super Teams.
The Committee is composed of one representative from each UNSC member state; as with the higher council the presidency rotates monthly, going alphabetically (in the Latin alphabet) through the list until it returns to the top. The purpose of COPPF is the high-level management of the IST as an organization: it writes the operating budgets, oversees public relations, juggles logistics for the {$num1} embassies currently active on Earth-1 as well as the consulates on Myrr and on other Earths, and the upkeep of UNET, the UN/IST global intranet. This takes up quite a bit of real estate in the UN’s headquarters facilities: before Amerexit COPPF took up a full two floors in the New York Secretariat building, afterwards the Committee occupied most of the south wing in the Geneva campus for the next two decades.
If asked, most IST personnel don’t have especially kind words for COPPF: the general opinion among the rank and file (particularly field agents) is that the Committee are usually composed of bureaucrats that are more interested in covering the asses of whichever member nation they belong to over doing the right thing. This is intermittently true. The Committee is a tool of the UNSC, and at least for the moment the UNSC is bound by the demands of the member states. Even in the modern IST this can result in situations where politics end up conflicting with the IST’s standing orders. It hasn’t happened in a while, but older IST agents definitely remember the old days when IST was rubbing against the simmering Cold War conflicts between the superpowers.
IST team administrators are sourced, hired and placed by the Committee’s staff; all administrators are required to submit weekly status reports and, while they generally have little voice in tactical or strategic matters – those are left to field commanders – in all other regards team administrators are meant to be the senior commander in any IST embassy.
For operational convenience, the embassies are organized by continent. Each continental division is supervised by a Regional Director who reports directly to COPPF and is jointly in control of the teams under their purview with IST Command. Team administrators submit their reports and evaluations to the Regional Director, who then pass them on onto the Committee. During a mobilization (such as a natural disaster, a potential war or a Crisis Event) IST Command is given operational command over the affected region.
IST Command
“Good luck, Commander.” —X-COM (2012)
Between the Committee and the individual IST is IST Command. Command is more or less the top of the chain for the average IST agent and administrator; only in the most extreme circumstances is anybody going to communicate directly with the Committee or the UNSC. This is also the point in the chain of command where things shift from civilian to paramilitary.
While there is an overall commander of all IST forces and their support staff, Command on a regular basis follows the Committee’s lead in dividing normal operations into continental districts. The regional districts answer to the Commander and their staff, and are directly under the Commander’s control in the event of an emergency, but in normal operations regional commanders are jointly responsible to Command and the COPPF Regional Directors.
IST Command is not especially active in normal operations. The point of Command is to be the central organization in an emergency that can move faster and more efficiently than waiting for COPPF or the UNSC to meet, deliberate and vote on a response. The Commander has extremely broad, if time-limited, power in an emergency and it’s their discretion as to what qualifies as “an emergency.” If the Commander declares an emergency, they have 24 hours in which their orders to any and all ISTs on Earth-1, orbit or any of the parallel consulates cannot be overridden. If the Commander so chooses they can unify every IST into a single army and deploy them as they see fit. If the UNSC ratifies the Commander’s decision after the first 24 hours, then the Commander gains total command of all available UN forces and resources, including the ISTs. At this point it’s likely that national militaries will be pulled in, and the Commander will also be Supreme Allied Commander. Once this bell is rung, COPPF cannot countermand Command’s authority; only when the Commander or the UNSC determine the emergency has ended does the Commander’s status shift back to normal operating procedure.
So far, this level of emergency command has been used four times: the first was the Millennium Crisis of 2000-03, which was the first declared Crisis Event and saw IST Command take full control of five out of six district commands over its course. The second was the Cultivator Wars; when the xianxia struck at Vladivostok the situation was escalated to a regional-level crisis, with the Commander assuming direct control of the Asian District for the duration. The December 2012 Crisis and the Draka Crisis also saw Command exerting full authority, though this time the measures also included military and metahuman forces from Earth-2 and Earth-3 under the terms of the Interworld Treaty.
The IST Commander is also the field leader of the UNHQ branch of IST. From 1982-97 this was IST New York, from 1997-2017 this was IST Geneva and then post-Amereturn (2017-current) the flagship embassy returned to IST New York. This ensures the Commander is close to UNHQ most of the time and can be consulted by COPPF and UNSC as they need to be.
SIDEBOX: IST Commanders
Originally there was no set term for IST Commander; whoever took the job was expected to serve until they saw fit to retire. This was something of an oversight on the part of COPPF, but one that was corrected during the 1990s. Since 1998 the IST Commander has served fixed ten-year terms. To date IST has had four Commanders:
1) Argurous Astraph (1982-1998): Dimitra Poulis was the first person tapped to run IST by the then-current COPPF research staff. Former commanding officer of the Knights of Europa, Poulis was a multi-decade veteran of the hero business and at the time, one of the most powerful beings on the planet.
2) Witchwind (1998-2008): Elena Falk was a former East German national who defected when she was young and rose in the ranks of the Knights to become Astraph’s most trusted lieutenant. When Astraph retired Witchwind was her only real choice as successor.
3) Paragon (2008-2018): Akachi Okafor was the first non-European hero to be named IST Commander. A veteran of the Nigerian super scene prior to joining IST and one of the teams’ best powerhouses, Paragon’s skill as a fighter and as a strategist saw him rise to command of Australasia District before Witchwind tapped him as her successor.
4) Pouka (2018-2028 pending): Brigit Dunsmuir has one of the weirder arcs of a high-level IST officer: sent to the IST in lieu of jailtime for teenage mischief, Pouka became one of IST’s top celebrities in the mid-80s New York. Her penchant for pranks belied a terrifying tactical and strategic mind, which she showed off in the 2012 Crisis and earned her spot on the shortlist to succeed Paragon.
The IST Agenda
As defined by the Edicts and reinforced by the UNSC and COPPF, the official agenda for the IST is composed of seven basic standing orders, in order of priority, that all IST members are required to obey:
1) Enforce the ban on nuclear weapons.
2) Enforce the ban on military superteams.
3) Support global human rights.
4) Protect civilians.
5) Discourage armed conflict between nations.
6) Combat international drug trafficking.
7) Provide a visible presence of the UN in member nations and maintain a positive public image.
These standing orders were established by the UNSC in 1982 and their substance hasn’t changed in the years since. Their priorities on the other hand have been: the original form of the agenda had drug trafficking much higher on the list, as it was perceived to be a much greater problem in general. Likewise, supporting human rights was a lower priority overall given the global situation at the time the Edicts passed.
But times change. Over the course of the last forty-odd years the urgency with which drug traffic was considered a problem has dropped remarkably: narcotics haven’t vanished by any stretch of the imagination, but large-scale rehabilitative and decriminalization efforts (particularly in the West) have clipped the wings of the groups that relied on that trade. It isn’t gone, but it has been diminished to the point where it’s not as great a priority for IST operations as it was in, say, 1985. On the opposite side of that coin, there has been a significant uptick in the awareness of human rights abuses on Earth-1 and elsewhere in the multiverse. What might have been carefully ignored or only lightly touched by the UN in the past due to realpolitik is now something that the people of Earth-1 (if not always the leadership) are demanding action on.
The result of this was a shuffling of priorities in the IST’s standing orders. While some things are likely to never change – the nuclear weapons ban and the military superteam ban are the foundation of the Edicts – as the 21st century continues to stagger along it’s a strong probability that the IST’s agenda is going to shift, and that it’s going to shift more towards the defense of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Interventionism in the Modern IST
The single thorniest question in today’s IST is the question of interventionism. The UN’s primary policy (and therefore also IST’s primary policy) is non-intervention – if it doesn’t cross national borders, the UN won’t get involved. By rights the UN can’t get involved: Chapter I, Article 2 Section 7 of the Charter literally says “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter.” There are some (narrow) cutouts that allow for the UN to intervene under Chapter VII of the Charter, but for the most part the UN can only go so far before risking the organization’s integrity.
After all, the United Nations isn’t a world government, no matter what its detractors (and some of its supporters) may claim or wish.
In the early years, this led to some fairly inventive rule-bending in the event of IST personnel facing conflicts between duty and conscience. During the Tienanmen crisis of 1989, the members of IST Beijing, Nanjing, and Wuhan were directly ordered by the Asian regional command to not intervene, because the situation was an internal Chinese matter. When word began to spread that the People’s Liberation Army was mobilizing to clear Tienanmen Square by all means necessary, multiple supers most of the Chinese embassies “took leave” on effectively weekend passes – because what an IST agent does on their day off isn’t under the jurisdiction of the United Nations. While the crisis would ultimately remain internal when the Revolutionary Guard stared down the PLA, that IST Command was willing to look the other way suggests the incredibly fine line the group as a whole had to walk at the time.
This all changed in 1994. The Rwanda intervention was and remains the most controversial move in IST history. Regardless of what happened and the amount of good accomplished, the facts of the matter were simple: IST Kigali was not authorized to assist the UNAMIR forces to the level they did. Likewise the adjacent embassies in Burundi, Zimbabwe and Tanzania had no right to enter the country. That all four embassies acted on the personal request of the UNAMIR commander was a gross dereliction of duty.
But at the same time, because those embassies moved to support UNAMIR against the rules of engagement they saved perhaps upwards of a million people. We’ve gone over the geopolitical ramifications of Rwanda in the chapter on the Long ‘90s, so go look that up if you want the details. But for our purposes here it’s important to remember that this is where the UN’s outlook on interventionism really starts to change at an institutional level. While it remains official standing policy that IST will never get directly involved in a country’s affairs unless that country jumps the border, the fact that the UNSC never really repudiated the IST field commanders or the administrators responsible for Rwanda has stuck in the minds of people all over the world.
It reminds them that, no matter what the UNSC says, there are lines and those lines are to be crossed at great peril.
Inter-Agency Cooperation
IST is an international organization, as one might expect from something under the UN banner. In order to facilitate its goals and the overall goals of the United Nations, it is expected that the IST will cooperate with any number of groups, agencies, organizations etc. at both a team and an institutional level. Cooperation can mean any number of things from the sharing of information to active team-ups with local superteams; it really depends on the nature of the other agency and what the collaboration is.
UN Peacekeeping Forces (UNPF)
The most obvious connection to IST is of course the famous Blue Helmets of the UNPF. The Peacekeepers and IST have been joined at the hip since 1982; most of the paramilitary training for IST agents and the ranks of IST’s famed powered infantry squads are sourced from the military forces assigned to UNPF duty. The two groups are connected at the highest level: the authority for IST’s existence stems from the same parts of the Charter that authorize the UNSC to send Peacekeepers in to trouble spots, and COPPF is specifically meant to govern permanent peacekeeping forces.
In the majority of UN deployments UNPF commanders have seniority. After all, they’re trained military and are presumed to know what they’re doing in a normal, mundane peacekeeping operation. In the event that something super-related happens – villain attack, surprise metahuman activation, the Blue Demon shows up etc. – the Peacekeepers have learned that in these cases the best move is to second themselves to the IST field commander and back up their team until the metahuman or supernatural threat is neutralized.
Other UN Agencies
Outside of UNPF most internal IST collaborations are arranged via ECOSOC. The Economic and Social Council’s job is to balance and manage all of the UN’s many and varied specialist organizations, all of which would love to have IST support at any given moment. While these groups can (and regularly do) hire metahumans of their own in permanent support positions, the cultural cachet of the IST can be very useful in a public relations context. Likewise, COPPF and Command understand that seeing IST agents doing things that aren’t just punching supervillains or disaster relief is useful for IST’s own PR game. Thus, ECOSOC and IST have developed a symbiotic relationship where they will happily work on each other’s projects at need.
UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
UNESCO’s expansive portfolio of cultural and scientific studies makes it a frequent collaborator with IST agents. Inventions, discoveries and confiscated supervillain hardware often ends up in UNESCO-affiliated labs and programs, and the ongoing study of the hows of metahuman powers relies heavily on a rotation of IST supers undergoing routine power testing.
Perhaps the most lasting partnership between UNESCO and IST is the IST Academy: UNESCO provides not just the curriculum for the secondary education track, but also is a key part of sourcing the educational talent necessary for teaching the next generation of UN supers.
UN Environmental Program (UNEP)
While the UNEP is generally more focused on advocating for environmental regulations and public outreach, it can and will call on IST support when necessary. Security is occasionally requested for UNEP special projects – the Pleistocene Project in particular – but for the most part UNEP/IST collaborations are more directly tied to the two agencies’ public relations. In the event of a nuclear-related incident UNEP will request the assistance of an IST super with a radiation-absorbing power, or call on speedsters to work on a replanting project for the media cameras. Events like this are considered a popular light duty among IST agents, a way to show off with their powers while also doing some good in the world outside normal activities.
A moderate issue that continues to crop up is the ongoing feud between UNEP’s climate scientists and the International Weather Organization over the efficacy and long-term impact of IWO’s storm diversion and dissipation programs. As IST is on good terms with both agencies there is a tendency for high-ranking agents and field commanders to get caught in the middle. It can get messy.
International Weather Organization (IWO)
As the second-largest employer of metahumans in the UN system, IWO is a frequent collaborator with IST during the peak of storm season. Most weather manipulators end up getting seconded to IWO on a semi-permanent basis from IST, but when it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation anybody with large-scale telekinesis may be temporarily drafted to aid in storm containment duties.
UN Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)
UNOOSA’s remit is to maintain the peaceful development of outer space; this became a more difficult task in the years after First Contact and the subsequent boom in orbital construction. UNOOSA’s main collaboration with IST has been related almost entirely to building and maintaining the infrastructure for the IST orbital and lunar embassies, as well as the complicated infrastructure of Odysseus Yard and the handful of stardrive ships the UN uses to maintain contact with the Meeranon.
While it’s not true that UNOOSA has first dibs on any metahuman who demonstrates an ability to operate in space unaided, any super who passes through the IST system with those traits is far more likely to end up at IST Lunagrad than, say, the Minneapolis embassy.
UN Interworld Office (UNIWO)
Interworld has almost as close a relationship with IST as the UNPF. Given the extreme sensitivity of parachronic operations, UNIWO has had direct support from IST since it’s establishment, with IST St. John’s being stood up specifically to provide metahuman security for the International Parachronic Laboratory and the initial portal generator on Newfoundland. With the expansion of the Interworld Treaty UNIWO/IST relationships remain close, as the St. John’s embassy and the consulates on the ITO worldlines are supervised by UNIWO personnel as well as the usual round of IST metahuman and unpowered staff.
Member State Agencies
Interactions with the organs of member states tend to happen at the level of individual embassies. This falls into the realm of law enforcement: most cities with an IST embassy will establish a reciprocal agreement with the embassy’s administrator to deputize IST agents either as police directly or under the relevant vigilante super laws in that nation. With an agreement in place IST agents are allowed to operate as heroes within the jurisdiction outlined in that agreement, showing the UN flag and being good citizens as per part 7 of the IST’s standing orders.
While it isn’t impossible for IST embassies to get caught up in more regional operations, it is fairly rare. The UN would much rather embassies and agents operate on a local level whenever possible, not just for the obvious PR value but also because wider operations run the risk of butting against the UN’s non-intervention policies. IST assistance for larger efforts than local crimebusting or disaster relief can be had, but it’s either going to be a situation that escalated rapidly out of control (like the Outcasts spree in 1990) or something that started as a direct request to COPPF or the UNSC asking for aid.
Non-Governmental Agencies
The UN maintains cooperation agreements with other organizations that are not, strictly speaking, part of the United Nations corporate structure. As “related organizations” (in UN-speak) these entities have similar access to IST personnel and resources as UN agencies.
Of the related organizations IST works the closest with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as their work on nuclear disarmament is an important part of the IST’s central goal of enforcing the nuclear ban. IST embassies are expected to provide all possible assistance to IAEA inspectors whenever asked.
Outside of the related organizations IST attempts to maintain good relations with independent superteams. This can be a difficult task given IST’s nature as the enforcement arm of the UN, and many independent teams are at best skeptical of the UN’s nature and goals. However, the nature of superteam operations means that IST and these groups are more likely than not to work together multiple times, and in the interests of the common good they have proven an ability to cooperate with each other in emergency circumstances. Just don’t ask them to come to the embassy barbecue afterwards.
Becoming Part of the Team
Joining IST is... okay, it’s a bit complex and it depends on where you live. First off, each member nation is required to send at least some of their supers to IST. Not all of them by any measure – IST would run out of room to put them pretty quickly – but generally IST asks the member states for a dozen or so supers per each year in order to maintain replacement rates. This is all covered under Article 43 Section 1 of the Charter, the same article that allows the UN to maintain the Peacekeepers.
Officially, IST membership is entirely voluntary. If you are a metahuman you are allowed to walk/fly/galumph up to the nearest UN office and request to join the organization. Likewise, if one is unpowered and wants to join the administrative side of IST then all you have to is submit a resume like any other job application and hope for the best. Every now and then an IST agent will cross paths with a civilian metahuman or freelance super who seems like they might make for a good addition to the organization, and in these situations IST field commanders are encouraged to try and recruit them. This is how it’s supposed to work, and in fact how it does work in many countries.
But there are qualifications to that. For example, while openly military or paramilitary superteams are forbidden under the Edicts, there are quite a few “public service groups” that are under direct government control and operate by the time-honored tradition of the draft. Again, these are not military superteams – those would be illegal don’t you know? – but if you tilt your head just right you can see how drafting superheroes might look a little like a military organization. Just a touch. In countries like this IST is allowed to look through the profiles of recent draftees and take their pick from the current crop.
This raises some eyebrows in some places, even within Command. But the UN is not a world government and there are still lines that it won’t cross except at great need, and inducting draftees isn’t so bad a thing that even a plurality has actual qualms about it.
Anyway. Once a poor bloody fool prospective super has accepted the UN’s shilling, the next step will be a small mountain of paperwork to register them with COPPF. (If the draftees have any edge in this, it’s that their paperwork is already done by the time the IST gets hold of them.) From there, the Committee schedules the prospect super to attend IST boot camp, and when the time comes ship them off to boot.
Once the recruit emerges from twelve weeks of boot they’re assigned to their official embassy. If an embassy specifically headhunted a recruit they have right of first refusal on that super’s assignment. If they decline the recruit’s services – usually this is because the embassy is already close to overstaffed – then they fall into the rest of the pool. Command will then assign supers to embassies based on their powers, skills and training.
IST service is not a lifetime commitment; if you sign up for the IST you’re not stuck there forever. The basic tour of duty for IST agents is three to five years, depending on equivalent commitments in your member state of origin. Signing back up is encouraged of course; the IST wants to avoid brain-drain as much as it possibly can. That said, life as a professional superhero can be a lot and it’s not for everyone. Many recruits end up leaving after their first hitch, or after their mandated draft period is complete, and Command is perfectly happy to let them go. Those who do end up staying with IST are liable to end up with a 20+ year career, shifting into the IST Reserve.
IST Basic Training
IST run multiple training camps around the world for new and old IST members alike. The original IST boot camps were placed in regions of the world specifically chosen for their environmental hostility, with some of the meanest drill instructors that the world’s armies were willing to part ways with. This changed in the late ‘90s, in particular due to a growing awareness that a) while IST qualifies as a paramilitary group there ought to be greater emphasis on the para over the military given IST’s role in the world, and b) that casual cruelty for the sake of “hardening” just doesn’t make great soldiers, and definitely doesn’t make good heroes.
The modern IST boot camps can be harsh – they are training people to deal with some pretty extreme things after all – but they’re not vicious in the way they used to be back in the bad old days. The twelve-week course instills some degree of military discipline as well as basic tactics and how to work within a team of supers. As powers can vary wildly, each rookie super is given extensive testing to figure out what the super knows about their powers, what they don’t know about their powers and how they can use that in the field. Depending on the power, this can take up almost as much time as field training.
IST Academy
Established in the same wave of institutional changes that brought an end to Full Metal Jacket-style boot camps, the IST Academy was set up as a training ground for young metahumans whose powers were just kicking in and had an interest in maybe potentially joining the IST when they reached the age where it’s legal to sign up to maybe go get killed in a distant land. (Usually 18, which is the official IST cutoff.)
The academy system was based on the Xavier Academies founded in the 1970s during the first big “mutant boom.” (In fact, IST had suggested setting up an ROTC-like program with XA as far back as 1984, but the relentlessly pacifist Professor Xavier refused to even think about the idea.) Much like the XA system, the IST Academy provides a comprehensive secondary education for children 13-18, with additional programs for the precocious in intellect or power development. While IST Academy doesn’t require students to join IST upon graduation, most students who do make the decision to join decide around the age of 16-17.
Once students graduate from the secondary education track, those who decided against joining the IST are free to pursue higher education as they see fit; the level of education (overseen by some of UNESCO’s best and brightest) means these students can go basically anywhere they want to. Those who are pursuing a career in the world’s largest superteam enter the Academy’s agent training track: for the next four years they learn tactics, strategy, IST rules and regulations and the ins and outs of international law in a much more military-style learning environment. Once graduated these supers are inducted into the IST as fully-fledged agents.
IST Academy operates six campuses, one for each regional district: Warsaw, Seoul, Caracas, Mexico City, Lagos and Wellington. Each campus generally has between 500 to 1,000 metahuman students of variable power, including dependents of active and former IST agents. Of these students about 100 per campus graduate every year into IST service.
Ranks and Clearances
For a paramilitary organization the IST is remarkably flat when it comes to rank. This lends the IST something of a more egalitarian vibe than your traditional military or paramilitary, though this is itself a bit of an illusion.
The base rank for all IST field operatives is Agent. Any super cleared for field duty, whether they arrived from boot camp, graduated the Academy or just dropped out of a hole in the world is an IST Agent. This was a deliberate choice by the original creators of the IST org chart: at the time of founding, the group was made of dozens of supers, many of whom had been part of their home country’s military forces, each one with a different rank, a different way of corresponding that rank to the unpowered bits of their military, and with varying levels of seniority. Trying to untangle this in any meaningful way would’ve taken years – the creators having seen the eternal snafu that was the NATO comparative org chart – and in their infinite wisdom they decided to cut the Gordian knot. By flattening the chart they encouraged the individual supers to mingle and figure out how to organize themselves.
And it worked! Mostly. Enough. It worked enough. The elegantly egalitarian solution to the rank problem the creators had hoped for never quite materialized, but the passing of time gave the IST (and Command) a chance to sort things out. While there were only four main ranks established (Agent, Field Commander, Regional Commander and IST Commander), a series of semi-formalized ranks were developed to slot in between agents and field commanders. Senior Agents were designated for people with years of field experience as de facto non-commissioned officers, and Special Agents recognized those IST supers who worked outside the usual embassy rotations.
From there IST agents divided themselves more or less according to security clearance. IST and its parent orgs developed a ten level clearance system going (low to high) 1-10. With Level 10 occupied by luminaries like the UNSC and the Secretary-General and Level 1 reserved for low-level office workers and the dependents of active-duty personnel, this allowed the agents to figure out a fairly relaxed pecking order based on who was a Level 2 Agent and who was a Level 8 agent.
(For the record, a Level 2 Agent is a fresh face who just got out of training, and a Level 8 Agent is the Regional Commander and/or a metahuman bigwig from another UN agency like UNESCO or UNPF.)
As noted, Level 2 is where most agents start out at, and security clearance tends to be increased either by time-in-grade (i.e. the longer you’re in, the more trustworthy you are) or for reasons that require specific context. (i.e. if L3 Agent Punchhard has a specific power that’s needed to solve a Level 5 problem, then Punchhard can be jumped up the clearance ladder) IST Reservists tend to keep the clearance they retired at for at least the first two years, but afterwards if their clearance is higher than L3 they need to specifically renew their clearance via COPPF.
Clearances are printed on everybody’s identification cards, which has led in the past to a culture of “card-checking” to see who’s allowed to be in tune with what classified gossip. Command tries to discourage this in ways both subtle and gross, but it continues to be a recurring headache as new Level 2s enter the system and start their way up the ladder.
Callsigns and Secret Identities
The IST, on top of their peacekeeping and civic duties, are the public face for world unity in this brave new world. With the role IST embassies play in the great game of public relations, ensuring their agents are easily identifiable has been important since the very beginning of the IST program. To this end, Command encourages the use of super names and popular nicknames.
As stratagems go it’s not bad. Most people around the world would have trouble telling you the name of their UN ambassador, but if they have an IST embassy within three hundred kilometers they’ll know who the heroes are there. Emphasizing public recognition with catchy and exciting names helps spread the popularity of the ISTs, and from there the underlying philosophy of the UN, around the general public.
That said, the UN doesn’t give the secret identity any sort of internal privilege, something that’s come and gone and come again in places like the US and some other nations. All IST members are required to hold a security clearance of some kind (even if it’s low) and therefore need to undergo a background check before they can be formally accepted into the ranks. While this is definitely a turn-off for some supers who might’ve otherwise joined the IST – it certainly kept the most recent Shadow from joining – the UN is quick to emphasize that this is strictly an internal policy. While IST agents are required to disclose their name to COPPF they aren’t required to release it to the general public. If an agent desires, their full identity data will be put into secure storage accessible only by their immediate commander/administrator and the Committee.
The rise of modern social media has blunted the whole secret identity thing for the UN. To an extent. The most recent generation of supers joining IST, particularly those from the US and China, are perfectly happy to use their real names and their callsigns interchangeably when interacting with the public. They also have a tendency to broadcast their doings – at least off-duty, or during low-security events – on public streaming services. Some of them have even started vlogs as a side gig. This whole thing is giving the dinosaurs in the Committee’s PR department absolute fits, but so far it’s doing as good a job of getting the UN’s image out there with The Youths in a positive way as the old ways, so nobody thinks of trying to strain against the tide.
IST Standard Costume Policy
The official UN policy regarding costumes is about as liberal as their policy on callsigns: so long as it conforms (or can be made to conform) to the host country’s standards of propriety then anything goes. The costume should also have the space necessary to bear all appropriate insignia as long as it’s possible to add them without damaging any special properties of the costume. So, like, a mage whose costume is covered in runes and magic circles would be allowed an emblem exemption because it runs the risk of making their power dangerously ineffective.
For its first two decades IST had no insignia of its own; the UN symbol was used, with the letters “IST” block-printed underneath. The modern insignia design was adopted in 2002 and went into widespread usage in the tail end of the Millennium Crisis. This insignia is meant to be worn on the upper left arm, near the shoulder, though it can be used as a chest or cape symbol for those so inclined. A bar for embassy assignment and squad assignment (if any) goes on the upper right arm.
While Command doesn’t insist on a standardized color scheme for their agents, the unofficial custom since the Four-Hour War has been to adopt UN blue as an accent color somewhere on an agent’s costume. Usually this takes the form of a stripe or slash on bodysuits, or an accessory such as a scarf, hat, tie, gloves, etc. on a streetwear-style costume.
(As an example: Telcontar, a decorated heroine and one of the modern IST’s rising young stars, prefers a streetwear costume that befits her powers and joint duties with UNIWO. To signify her position as an IST agent she wears a UN blue kerchief to tie back her hair as her “accent” piece. Her costume varies on where the IST shield is placed, though it’s usually a both a shoulder patch and a stylized painted version on the back of her jacket.)
For those supers without innate fashion sense (a much more common problem than you’d think) Command maintains a crack staff of skilled designers, tailors and seamstresses. If a super wishes, the “costume brigade” can create a full outfit for them with as much or as little input as they want to give. Pretty much every material in the book – and a few that aren’t – can be used for a design. IST membership automatically includes three costumes plus one replacement costume every six months. If necessary, additional replacements will be deducted from the agent’s salary.
The UN will also provide special-purpose uniforms for specific assignments. This typically involves extreme-conditions or hazardous environment suits for arctic conditions or spacesuits. For those with streetwear costumes who want something a little fancier for formal occasions the UN has developed a pretty nice little dress uniform based vaguely on the French military style, complete with the snazzy blue beret.
IST Agent Salaries
We almost forgot an important part – how much do these guys get paid? That’s may bad; I got wrapped up in thinking neat things about costumes. I spend too much time around cosplayers. Anyway.
Upon exiting training and joining an embassy, the starting IST Agent earns about $120,000 (in OTL 2025 US dollars as of mid-June 2025) a year. Naturally, this is subject to taxes in the agent’s home country, though most nations have pretty generous tax rebates for active-duty IST heroes. The salary increases by 20% as rank increases through to Level 7 clearance – if you’re still in the system at Level 7 then you’re clearly not doing this for the money.
Team members have all living expenses, health care etc. paid for by the United Nations as a matter of course. The majority of IST agents prefer to live onsite at their embassy, but the UN will make accommodations for those with dependents and wish to live off-site. Agents are encouraged to continue their educations, and tuition reimbursement plans are available and easy to sign off on.
IST Courts-Martial
Now that we’ve covered money, let’s talk about the other thing attached to money: crime!
IST is a paramilitary body and as such, members who violate its regulations of the laws of the host country are subject to court-martial. The accused is brought before three IST agents of Level 7 rank or higher, one being the agent’s field commander (or the regional commander, if the field commander is the one accused) and the other two come from other embassies, usually ones a couple countries away. The accused has the right to legal counsel – which can be the legal attache of their embassy but doesn’t have to be. A prosecutor is assigned from IST Command, usually from available COPPF legal staff.
The procedure isn’t anything to write home about: evidence, witnesses, cross-examination, you’ve seen enough legal dramas in your life, you know the drill. If desired or necessary the trial can take place with telepathic examination, using the US/UK Three Telepath standard for impartiality. Penalites vary given the severity of the crime, but never exceed life imprisonment. If the court-martial was for breaking local law, the penalty may be to turn the guilty over to civil authorities for further trial and sentencing – though this wouldn’t be done if the civil crime is a capital one!
IST courts-martial are fairly rare. A few IST agents have been tried for manslaughter (two found guilty, three found innocent), and one was tried for espionage against the UN early on in the IST’s existence. (That particular agent was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.) Crimes and violations of the regulations less significant than gross negligence are handled on a case-by-case basis by the local administrator, field commander and legal attache at each embassy.
IST Operations
Once a super gets through all of the rigmarole and is assigned to an embassy as a brand-new IST agent, what is it that they actually do? Well, the IST is the world’s largest superteam and it’s made up of superheroes, so they go do superhero things. There, question answered, next chapter.
... That’s not enough? You want more?! Fine then, just be glad I don’t turn the car around and go home.
Right. So. IST has an organizational agenda and a series of standing orders related directly to that agenda (see above). It’s also riding on several tons of tropes, memes, assumptions, concepts and other assorted cultural bric-à-brac regarding the purpose of the superhero, all of which goes back at least a century and in some cases even further – as we have discussed previously.
At it’s most basic the IST exists to ensure world peace, or at the very least act as an omen of doom to ensure that if anybody starts something it doesn’t spill over international borders Or Else. This is IST’s main function at its most paramilitary – a superpowered branch of the Peacekeepers. But here’s the thing, right: for all that the UN does to keep things under control and all the good the UNPF does in the world, soldiers don’t exactly make for good symbols of peace. And as we’ve seen in the history of metahumanity, the idea of the superhero doesn’t take kindly to people trying to hammer it into military submission.
It’s this inherent paradox – the IST is not just the super army but also a collective of heroes – that colors how the organization works on a day-to-day level.
Regular Duty
On any given day when there are no significant global or regional threats looming, duty as an IST agent is not terribly different from what it might be for the average superteam, or even what you might expect for a perfectly mundane fire/rescue squad. There are meetings, briefings, training, doing maintenance, paperwork, maybe some public outreach, etc.
Local Crimefighting
IST as an organization is not specifically tuned towards dealing with bank robbers and mobsters; that’s what the local vigilantes and licensed superteams are there to handle, and in general they’re more likely to know the metaphorical terrain better than IST agents who tend to rotate through embassies faster. That being said, visibility is an important part of IST’s duty and most local or national governments will have reciprocity agreements to act as law enforcement.
What does that mean? Well, the short of it is that most IST embassies, particularly the ones that are at low risk of international conflict, will run patrol schedules alongside local supers. These patrols are generally nothing special: loops around a city to both show the flag and keep an eye out for trouble should something pop up.
Sometimes IST will be asked to provide backup for a heavier operation. Raids and sting operations, particularly against supervillains, frequently get requests for IST support. Especially if the supervillain is known to be personally dangerous or have a lot of goons, and the local embassy has some heavy-hitters. Short of an actual emergency situation this is about as exciting as crimefighting duty gets for IST agents.
Investigatory Work
Crimefighting might be a secondary or even tertiary priority for IST, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely off the radar. Supervillainous activity is an international problem, which means that IST does do long-term work keeping track of supervillainy and related issues like trafficking rings.
While a lot of this investigation work is left to professional detectives from various three- or four-letter agencies around the world, IST maintains its own investigatory apparatus and its own investigations into suspicious supercriminal activity. IST agents with a particular penchant for detection are likely to end up working as investigators tracking down supervillains, sorting out their connections and making a case for IST or local heroes to go in and bust them.
Peacekeeping
In higher-risk regions IST agents have the duty of supporting UNPF operations. Broadly this isn’t terribly different from patrolling for bank robbers in low-risk areas, but it’s the fine details that really trip you up. For one thing, in most deployments like this everybody has guns and is looking for an excuse to start shooting, not just the nominal “bad guys.” This tends to ratchet up the tension.
When an embassy is working with UNPF, the Peacekeepers are the ones in overall command of the situation. It’s their soldiers and their diplomatic staff who are the ones leading the way for the UN here, so that means that the commander of the UN mission can pull rank on every IST agent in the field – unless something super-related happens. Then things move over to IST because weird shenanigans are their territory.
Peacekeeping duty can be nerve-wracking for a super but it some ways it’s slightly less dangerous than fighting crime because there’s very little action involved. IST forces are meant to be the biggest stick in the UN arsenal, a weapon that only needs to be brandished, and that’s really what IST agents on peacekeeping missions do for the most part: they stand between the armies and remind them they’re not the biggest kids on the block. The standing around can be kind of boring, but it’s definitely better than the alternative.
Public Outreach
The United Nations isn’t just an organization; it’s an ideal, a dream of a better world, and IST is the most visible part of that dream. For most IST agents, public affairs work is honestly the best thing they do in any given week. (Some cynics grumble and roll their eyes, but there are few supers who join IST and are not willing to at least put work into being personable.)
Public outreach can be any number of things: speaking engagements, public appearances, autograph signings, etc. Even just showing up at a public park and hanging out in costume qualifies as a positive public interaction. Structured events can be as fancy as a public ceremony or as simple as going to a school to talk about life as a metahuman. The goal is to get the agents out in front of the people in the best possible way, so that they think of IST – and by extension the UN – in the best possible way.
In this strange year of 2024 with its omnipresent Internet and almost every person on Earth-1 glued to high-resolution cameras every moment of every day, public outreach is both easier and more difficult for IST and their battalions of PR people. On the one hand more people have eyes and cameras on their supers than they had at any other point in history, but on the other hand it’s never been easier to catch a super in an unguarded moment which can be... tricky from a PR standpoint. On the gripping hand, the new crop of social media-savvy supers graduating the Academy seem to have figured out how to make this work in their favor.
Emergency Duty
Statistically, it’s actually pretty rare that something is not going wrong somewhere in the world on any given day. Given that IST has embassies pretty much everywhere on the planet and several elsewhere, they’re just as statistically likely to be wrapped up in that something.
Disaster Response
The Universe is an uncaring place and bad things just happen sometimes. When these things happen – earthquakes, volcanoes, severe weather events, etc. – IST will often be called on to lend a hand. The nature of the hand is going to depend on the nature of the disaster. In the immediate aftermath IST agents are likely to be tasked with search and rescue efforts in the affected area, bricks and atlases set to clear rubble to get to trapped individuals or clear paths for relief vehicles, etc. It’s in these situations that outside help like the Demon-Busters are likely to be called in, just in case the Blue Demon decides to make an appearance.
In the short-to-medium term IST agents will be tasked to a disaster area as high-end law enforcement or peacekeepers. Areas hit hard enough by disasters often have serious problems with general chaos on top of the physical damage done, and in these situations IST (if so called) will be responsible for maintaining the safety of the afflicted until otherwise relieved of the duty. This is in many ways a supercharged version of the local anti-crime patrols undertaken in normal duty, only there’s a reasonable chance that IST is the only working law enforcement within a hundred kilometers.
If an IST embassy is directly within the belly of the beast, it’s standard operating procedure that all facilities are to be opened up for use as emergency shelters. Given that IST embassies are built to be as indestructible as possible (see below) this makes them very handy islands of stability in the midst of a chaotic situation.
Anti-Supervillain Operations
Supervillains are a constant issue in the modern world. While your world conquerors tend to be fairly thin on the ground, there’s enough people out there who’re willing to restrain themselves to just one country, or maybe even a city or three, to make life exciting for the rest of us.
As the world’s largest superteam IST’s most regular business on busy days is the corralling and neutralization of supervillains. This sometimes comes as a request from a UN member nation, which can be lumped into regular crimefighting duties, but as often as not anti-supervillain operations are directed by internal-to-IST investigations. And to be fair, not every supervillain gets the full IST treatment; anybody who can be taken down by the Tackleford Mystery Club can safely be left to those luminaries. IST targets are generally the ones who already have sizable international networks of goons at their disposal and probably a superweapon or three.
In ideal situations an IST embassy, or a small group of embassies, has the necessary tactical skill and firepower to neutralize a supervillainous threat with minimal risk. Ideal situations are not nearly as common as they could be. In the plurality of cases when a supervillan is rumbled they go loud – whether that’s to try and go out in a blaze of glory or to distract IST with their minions while they make a quick exit out the side door. It’s in situations like these, where there’s an active Doom Fortress with a live doomsday device, that IST’s specialist training in handling absurd situations really comes to the fore.
If IST is initiating an anti-supervillain operation they prefer to keep it as in-house as possible for security reasons. Unaffiliated teams can be pulled in for assistance if the situation looks like it’s going to spiral, but this also can lead to ruffled feathers between COPPF and the host nation (which is the unofficial reason the Committee would prefer anti-villain ops stay in-house) but at the end of the day it’s up to the regional commander to make the call.
Peacemaking
Sometimes even the best of efforts will not succeed.
Armed conflict breaking out between UN member states (or UN member states and unaffiliated nations, or UN member states and rogue nations) is not nearly as rare as it ought to be, even with the IST hanging like a particularly annoyed Sword of Damocles over the offending parties. In times like this, when hostilities break out and armies are crossing borders, is when IST’s military core really shines the brightest.
Active peacemaking operations are different from peacekeeping; the latter is more about keeping whatever factions involved in a situation away from each other and talking. The former is very much about going in and taking their toys away until such time as they’re willing to come to the table. Full-scale operations like this are honestly rarer than the situations that look like they require them, because a full formal peacemaking op requires not just the approval of COPPF but also a majority vote of the Security Council.
Given that oftentimes the belligerents in these cases either are or are sponsored by the UNSC permanent members, that can make getting a vote difficult.
IST’s saving grace in these situations is the 24-hour cutout granted to embassy field commanders. If things start to go sufficiently sideways that the field commander determines that it might escalate into a serious incident they can at their initiative activate the team to deal with it. The catch is that the team administrator and Command have to review the decision and the action within 24 hours, and if they disagree they can cancel the operation. Or they can approve it, which gives the team leave to keep going until embassy leadership, Command or the Committee tell them to stop. 24 hours is not a very long time in the grand scheme of things, but to badly paraphrase Lenin, you can fit a lot of time into 24 hours. Even the simple act of deploying IST agents to halt a convoy and give them a disapproving look can be enough to get the people in charge to second-guess their genius plans and maybe let the UN diplomats back in to do their thing.
To date the UNSC has only approved one peacemaking operation before it happened: Operation Gilgamesh, also known as the Four-Hour War. They’ve retroactively approved a whole bunch of actions by IST embassies working separately or in concert on their own initiative – including Rwanda, which came as a bit of a shock all told.
And then there’s the last category...
SIDEBOX: Isekai Rescue
This one requires a little bit of setup: in 2018 there was a multiversal convergence event focused on East Asia, mainly in Japan with some incursions into Korea and China. The convergence was largely harmless, but it did weaken the dimensional barriers between this region and a minor infinity of worldlines known collectively as the “Dragon Quest worlds.” The first time anybody knew about this was in the fall of 2018 when a classroom of Japanese high school students were magically transported from their homeroom to a fantasy world, where they were lauded as “heroes” and sent off to fight “the Demon Lord.”
Needless to say, the Japanese government had unkind words to say about these sorts of shenanigans, and a UNIWO specialist from IST St. John’s was dispatched to retrieve the students, after a 20-hour (for Earth-1; it was closer to a full year for the students and the specialist, multiversal time can be funny like that) ordeal. And then it happened again, and again, and again at which point the Japanese government and IST agreed to set up a sub-branch task force to handle these situations to the best of their ability.
The “Isekai Rescue” force, as the Japanese public quickly dubbed it, have spent the years since 2018 on the lookout for multiversal summoning events, and whenever they happen have done their best to retrieve whichever poor souls have been sucked into another world to do somebody’s dirty work for them. Isekai Rescue’s public work has made them some of the more popular heroes in Japan, with fanclubs and even an official anime series.
Crisis Events
A crisis event is what happens when everything everywhere goes wrong all at the same time. Whether this is an alien invasion, demonic invasion, an invasion by Time Nazis, a major kaiju outbreak, the fabric of space-time starting to erode, spontaneous uprisings by three dozen Class A supervillains... the exact nature of the crisis isn’t wholly relevant. The crux of the thing is that it’s a global event and is tying up most or all of IST’s available resources.
In situations like these the UNSC can formally declare a crisis event, which mobilizes the entirety of IST, alongside every UNPF soldier and as much of the member state militaries as can be mobilized. The IST Commander effectively becomes Supreme Allied Commander, with deployment authority over the full weight of Earth-1’s military. Formal agreements with national and independent superteams also place authority in IST Command’s hands until the conclusion of the crisis event.
Regional crisis events can be declared by COPPF with slightly less doomsday energy, if a situation has escalated to the point where three or more member states are under direct threat. In a regional crisis the continental regional commander assumes similar levels of authority over IST and national/independent superteams, but doesn’t have the same level of control over member state militaries as IST Command has in the event of a global crisis.
This is a very scary assumption of power by IST in an emergency, and it’s a tribute to the strength of character of IST commanders – and the power of superhero memes – that nobody’s tried to take advantage of it. Even so, the UNSC does their level best to not declare a crisis because it has such potential for abuse. Only two global crises have been called since the process for declaring a Crisis Event was determined in 2003, one in 2012 and one in 2020.
The Basic IST Embassy
Now that we’ve covered the organization as a whole, let’s take a look at the individual IST embassy. Embassy superteams number between 8 and 20 people depending on the region and the need for supers. In order to maintain an international profile, no more than two people per team are actually natives of the country they’re stationed in. If a team has more than ten people in it, they’re usually divided into squads of three to five people each; the squads are referred to by Greek letters (Alpha, Beta, Gamma etc.).
Squads are usually drilled in specialized functions. For example, IST New York Alpha Squad is trained in anti-terrorism tactics to be used on the grounds of UNHQ. Individual squads are also liable to develop their own custom combat maneuvers with funny names like “the fastball special” or “the Iggy (also known as the Office).” Don’t ask where that last one came from; it’s very funny but only if you’re like part of the IST Dallas team circa 1995. If the team composition allows, field commanders can cluster similar powers together for a special squad, like people with powers suited for infiltration or tanking damage. This is fairly common behavior across most IST embassies. At the end of the day squad composition and training is up to the field commander.
Command Structure
Within the team there are a number of important posts that COPPF requires for every embassy. Although one person can wear more than one hat (inadvisable; these are all full-time jobs in their own right but it does happen, especially in recently-establishes embassies) all of these positions must be filled in order for the embassy to qualify as operational.
Team Administrator
The team administrator is the formal commander of the team. They are the main connection the embassy has to COPPF, and the conduit through which decisions from On High are transmitted. Their role is also that of the station’s chief diplomat, as they are also the primary connection the embassy has to the nation in which it resides. As an official UN Ambassador, the administrator must be a firm and dedicated representative of the United Nations, capable of navigating the rough waters of international diplomacy.
This is not an easy job, nor is is an enviable one most of the time. Even nations that are staunch UN allies prefer to think of the UN as an “over there” thing, not something they have to deal with on a daily basis, and the administrator’s job flies in the face of that.
The administrator is usually the first one to catch flak whenever a team member goes too far, and one of the few perks of the job is being able to pass that particular hot potato right back to whoever screwed up. This is the other major function of the administrator job; disciplining unruly IST agents. They have the power and the duty to enforce IST regulations and standards from members of the team up to and including starting court-martial proceedings if necessary. This does not endear many agents to the administrator, but that is sort of the point.
It is a long-standing tradition that team administrators are unpowered. Partly this is due to the fact that the job requires a fair bit of skill and training and very few professional supers have the necessary background in diplomacy and administration to handle it. There are IST field commanders with sufficient international experience to handle both jobs, but these are few and far between and generally get promoted to posts in Command pretty quickly regardless.
Field Commander
The IST field commander is the one most people will call the team leader, regardless of what the actual administrative situation back at the embassy is. It’s not untrue: during an emergency or combat situation the field commander is the one fully in charge of the field team. But in all other situations (i.e. 95% of the time) the field commander shares command of their team with the administrator.
The field commander’s duties outside of combat are focused on fitness and preparedness. They’re in charge of training and organization, ensuring that the team is capable of doing their job at any point under any conditions – which can get pretty hairy given that superpowers are a thing. When it comes to the paramilitary use of the team and its members, the field commander has final say and not the administrator, though Command may override them if they disagree.
In emergency situations the field commander is obligated to activate their team and place them at the disposal of civil authorities. That said, the embassy is not required to cater to every whim of a civil authority; field commanders are authorized to refuse any request that they feel are unsafe, unreasonable or violate UN policy or regulations. Dictator McGee can’t just declare an emergency and sic IST Dunroman on a nearby group of protesters or minorities; that’s the sort of thing that results in another Rwanda incident.
Most teams are small enough that only one field commander is required for most operations. In the event that an embassy has a large number of supers the field commander can appoint an executive officer to spread out the responsibility. If necessary, the executive officer will be breveted to the same clearance level as the field commander and given access to all relevant briefing documents. If the field commander gets taken out without a second in command, leadership automatically goes to the most senior team member, subject to approval by the team administrator.
Field commanders are just as much diplomats as the team administrators, and in what’s often a more demanding realm as well: by the nature of the job the field commander is in the field and has to deal with the general public far more often than a team administrator. Basic military skills are not enough to hack it as an IST field commander; if one wants the job one must have (or be willing to learn) the ability to interact with people outside of IST and present the team in the best possible light.
As might be expected, field commanders are majority metahuman, though many super-normals remain in the position even in 2024. Most are veterans; while the metas who served in the superarmies have now largely retired or moved onto posts in Command, IST field commanders have at least 5-7 years experience with the organization and were often recruited after several years in a national or independent superteam. A field commander may not necessarily be the most powerful individual in the world or even on the team, but they are the person with the right experience and skillset to lead a team into battle against the world’s worst and come out on top.
(Some people will scoff at this, but consider: the current IST Commander is Pouka. Pouka cannot bench-press supertankers or melt stone with a mean look; her power is invisibility, intangibility and a minor alchemical touch. But she has honed those powers to a monomolecular edge over her 30+ years in IST, and in the process gained an understanding of tactics and strategy that would impress Eisenhower and Zhukov. Raw power does not equal leadership potential.)
Public Relations Officer
For all that the UN has achieved financial independence via the gift of nuclear fusion, it still runs mainly on the goodwill of the people of the world. And their governments. Especially their governments.
The Edicts were accepted by the member nations in their time, but they still caused quite a bit of a stir in many governments. And while the member states agreed to form the IST and place the embassies this was yet another strain in the system. All the old conspiracy theorist ranting about “one world government” looked a lot less funny and a lot more prophetic as the embassies went up and the individuals teams were placed. Between 1982 and 1994 the UN tread a very careful line to keep from seriously offending any of the member states; its power depends on the voluntary participation of its members. Rwanda and Amerexit threw some pretty large spanners into this of course, but the system managed to hold together regardless.
All of that guff is meant to explain why every IST embassy has a dedicated public relations office with attached PR officer. Their purpose is to promote a positive public image for their embassy in particular and the UN in general with the people of their host city and country. IST regulations forbid the use of deliberate manipulation of events – that’s for supervillains – but the public relations officer can organize public appearances, goodwill tours and cooperative events with local superteams or other UN agencies.
For a while the public relations officer was required to be an IST agent. At the time COPPF and Command wanted to discourage hiring PR officers who resembled the stereotypical slick PR flack that was so common in places like Hollywood. However, around the turn of the century Command realized that while these sorts of people were obnoxious they existed for a reason: requiring IST agents to handle their team’s publicity worked but only to an extent, and even given a proper support staff it was contributing to high levels of burnout and turnover among agents. In the end Command relented and began hiring professional public relations people to handle PR actions for the embassies; these folks would end up as some of the most heavily-vetted employees of the entire IST for ethical reasons!
Legal Attache
Every IST embassy requires somebody to advise the team on international and local law, as well as act as counsel in case of the worst coming to pass. Unless a qualified lawyer is onboard as an IST agent already (uncommon, but not as strange as you might think), this position will be filled by somebody pulled from the Secretariat’s bottomless Rolodex and assigned to that specific embassy.
Security Officer
Generally the security officer will be somebody seconded from UNPF or directly part of Command. Effectively the third-in-command after the team administrator and the field commander, the security officer’s job is maintaining the internal security of the embassy. This entails things like distributing clearances, declaring which parts of the embassy are off-limits at whatever clearance, etc. They also are in command of a security team who maintain the electronic/mystic passive security systems and also aid the powered infantry in patrolling the embassy grounds.
Command and COPPF are remarkably hands-off when it comes to detailing security within an embassy. The only thing mandated by regulation is the embassy fusion plant, which requires Level 3 clearance to access. Other than that, embassy personnel are free to organize their security as they see fit. The security officer, in conjunction with team administration and the field commander, is the one to determine the security arrangements of their embassy and ensure it’s set up within the system.
Support Staff
Once all of that is covered, an IST embassy will have generally 1-200 more people in it any any given point as support staff. Most of these are responsible for training, medical situations (every IST embassy has a first-class medical facility with the tools necessary to handle anything weird), embassy upkeep and the administrative workers that any large diplomatic building requires.
Powered Infantry
Besides the superhero complement, every IST embassy maintains a squad (generally 10-15) of UNPF infantry trained in the use of IST-standard powered armor. The exact number of people in a squad, as well as the number of available squads, varies from nation to nation. Housed within the embassy compound, their primary duty is to act as embassy security.
In the event of an emergency, the powered infantry can be activated by the embassy’s field commander and used outside the embassy. The same restrictions as the activation of super forces (the 24 hour confirmation limit) apply to the powered infantry. Previous uses of the infantry outside the embassy tend to involve crowd control, additional hands in disaster relief (powered armor can lift a fair bit!) and interdicting forces against larger gangs of henchmen.
SIDEBOX: Embassy Placements
As of January 2024 there are {$num1} embassies currently operating on Earth-1. Per the Edicts, every UN member state has an embassy in their capital city. Additional embassies are assigned by population: one extra embassy is provided for every 45 million people. The following is a list of UN member states with more than one embassy, and their locations:
Algeria: Algiers, Ain Salah
Argentina: Buenos Aires, Córdoba
Bangladesh: Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Rangpur
Brazil: Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Manaus, Belem, Salvador
China: Beijing, Jinan, Qingdao, Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Kunming, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’An, Lanzhou, Yinchuan, Shenyang, Harbin, Qiqihar, Hulunbuir, Dalian, Suzhou, Chifeng, Haikou, Changsha, Xinyang, Lhasa, Ürümqi, Fuzhou, Yichang, Nanning, Zhangzhou, Changsha, Haikou, Daqing, Hotan
Colombia: Bogota, Barranquilla
Dem. Rep of Congo: Kinshasa, Kisangani, Kolwezi
Egypt: Cairo, Aswan, Luxor
Ethiopia: Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa, Mek'ele
France: Paris, Marseilles
Germany: Berlin, Bonn
India: New Delhi, Bengaluru, Surat, Nagpur, Imphal, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Madurai, Meerut, Nagpur, Patna, Pune, Rajkot, Visakhapatman, Agra, Bhubaneshwar, Hubli-Dharwad, Nellore, Raipur, Ranchi, Thiruvananthapuram, Tiruchirappali, Surat
Indonesia: Nusantara†, Jakarta, Banjarmasin, Medan, Makassar, Jayapura, Surabaya, Manado
Iran: Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad
Iraq: Baghdad, Mosul
Italy: Rome, Milan
Japan: Tokyo, Osaka, Sapporo
Kenya: Nairobi, Marsabit
Mexico: Mexico City, Monterrey, Mazatlán
Myanmar: Yangon, Mandalay
Nigeria: Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Onitsha, Sokoto, Maiduguri
Pakistan: Islamabad, Karachi, Quetta, Bahawalpur, Lahore, Hyderabad
Philippines: Manila, Davao, Cebu
South Korea: Seoul, Busan
Sovereign Union: Moscow, Leningrad, Yekaterinburg, Yakutsk, Irkutsk, Almaty
Spain: Madrid, Barcelona
Sudan: Khartoum, Al Fashir
Tanzania: Dar es Salaam, Mwanza
Thailand: Bangkok, Ranong
Türkiye: Ankara, Malatya
Uganda: Kampala, Gulu
United Republics: Kiyv, Minsk
United Kingdom: London, Edinburgh
United States: Washington, Anchorage, Dallas, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis, Seattle
Vietnam: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang
† The new Indonesian capital city of Nusantara is currently under construction, and the embassy is expected to be operational by October 2025 at which point the Jakarta embassy will likely be mothballed.
SIDEBOX: Specialist Embassies
There are other IST installations that are considered part of the embassy system (and are registered as embassies) that aren’t part of the international mandate of the Edicts. The following is a list of IST embassies that were established for other reasons:
IST Hiroshima: honor guard for the nuclear memorial.
IST Nagasaki: honor guard for the nuclear memorial.
IST McMurdo: support for Antarctic activities / emergency services.
IST Perth: support for eastern Indian Ocean emergency services.
IST Murmansk: support for eastern Arctic emergency services.
IST Whitehorse: support for western Arctic emergency services 1998-current.
IST Geneva: flagship team for UNHQ 1998-2017.
IST Lunagrad: support for lunar activities / emergency services.
IST Sagan Station: support for Martian activities / emergency services.
IST St. John’s: support for UN interworld operations.
An Embassy for the People
Establishing an IST embassy can be complex. Once the initial approvals for an embassy are made, the host nation gives its blessing and the whole thing has been run through the COPPF filter several times to appease the celestial bureaucracy work can begin on the physical establishment of the embassy. But this is only the beginning.
Exterior Design and Construction
A normal embassy, one designed primarily for the use of diplomats doing diplomatic things, is a pretty straightforward thing to set up: one buys (or is gifted) a building in the capital city of the nation one wishes to build an embassy in, and then one hires a large staff of renovators, preferably ones who’ve been vetted for security purposes, who clean out the interior of the building and turn it into whatever you want it to be. After a certain amount of time and money, the embassy is complete and ready to be staffed.
IST embassies are not quite so straightforward. They are active superteam headquarters facilities, which means they have requirements that most buildings simply don’t have. Requirements like the ability to tank at least one clean hit from an atlas-class bruiser, or several shots from high-energy artillery. You know, the little things. This makes just straight up buying or accepting a gift structure difficult because very few ordinary human buildings are designed to handle the sort of abuse an IST embassy is expected to handle under normal conditions, much less worst-case scenarios. Worse still, a gifted building is likely to be something with historic value to it; the house of a former leader or extremely wealthy person who managed to leave behind a positive reputation, or it’s just something that’s been there for 300 years and people like it. Historical buildings have been used in the past for IST embassies – IST London occupies a Georgian row house on St. James’s Square – but in general they aren’t worth the trouble to reconfigure to IST standards because you have to gut them down to the exterior walls and in those circumstances the historical societies come out to play.
When it comes to siting a new embassy, it’s preferable to either find and reconfigure a modern, non-historic building or find a spot where building something entirely new is okay. This is where the design process comes in. UN policy is to try and maintain a low profile when it comes to UN facilities on other people’s land, all the better to minimize the cries of imperialism. It is also policy that UN buildings ought to at least look like they fit into the rest of the surrounding neighborhood: a twenty-story Brutalist skyscraper right across the street from the Louvre is right out. Once a given parcel of land has been cleared for construction or renovation, IST-approved architects will move in and design something that is unobtrusive and at least has a facade that fits in well with the area.
For construction COPPF relies on a set of vetted companies with experience in both architecture and superscience. These international firms have decades of experience working for independent superteams like Honor Guard and high-end superscience firms like VenTech and know how to build things that are going to have a lot of metahumans in them, what that entails and how best to keep things standing. They are perfectly capable of renovating preexisting buildings as building new, whatever the preference of Command and the host nation.
Starting off, an embassy’s foundations (including all underground levels) are set on heavy isolation bearings. Along with giving the embassy some protection against superstrength attacks, this also makes the building more or less quakeproof. Once the foundations and the bearings have been set, the building is either raised or refit to IST specifications. No matter the origin, the embassy’s walls are built or rebuilt for maximum protection. A minimum of 1 meter of steel-reinforced concrete with a decorative facing is used for external walls whenever possible. (The sheer mass involved also tends to limit the height of IST embassies: they’re generally not much more than ten to fifteen stories tall.) If the building doesn’t cover the entire lot walls of this thickness (or thicker!) will be erected at the perimeter. It’s entirely down to the skill of the architects and the engineers that an IST embassy doesn’t come off looking like a fortress squatting in the middle of a city – even though that’s what it basically is.
Interior Design – Public
An embassy may be built like a fortress, but it’s also a symbol of the United Nations. For many it might be the only UN thing they ever see that isn’t on the news somewhere, so ever since the Edicts it’s been important for embassies to put their best possible foot forwards. It sort of goes without saying that the international organization dedicated to peace and universal human rights is not well-represented by a grim, armored bastion squatting in a country’s capital, ready to disgorge costumed warriors at any moment.
That may be what it feels like at some embassies, but trust me; that’s not how it’s supposed to go.
The baseline IST embassy is designed to button up like Cheyenne Mountain in case of an emergency, true. But for 95% of the time the doors will be open and much of the embassy compound will be accessible to the general public. Every embassy is different due to location, footprint, total area etc. but as a rule the ground floor and (generally) the floors immediately above and below will be open for public access. Of the public areas the front lobby is the most traveled part of the embassy, and this is where the lion’s share of work will go. This is where the team will have their tasteful decorations and plenty of UN flags and posters out so everybody who stops by can see all the cool things the IST has done for them recently.
What a team chooses to display is up to their discretion. IST New York quite famously has the International Museum of Metahumanity dominating the first three floors of their skyscraper HQ. IST Caracas hosts a series of rotating art exhibits in their public spaces, featuring metahuman art from across South America. IST Tokyo’s entrance hall is dominated by a massive mural showing the team from 1982 onwards done by some of the greatest commercial artists of 20th and 21st century Japan. Many embassies like to emphasize their connection to the host city and country: IST Cairo’s lobby is designed to feel like a large home in the city’s old quarter, with plenty of displays about the history of metahumans in Egypt. Much of IST Los Angeles was designed around an open-air courtyard that takes up around half the embassy’s public space, taking advantage of the California sun.
And then of course there’s the trophy room. Any superteam that survives its first couple of years will inevitably collect all sorts of stuff over the course of their adventures, and with stuff comes the desire to show it off. Every embassy will place somewhere in the public-access part of the embassy a display of the most interesting (qualified with “and also least-dangerous”) items they’ve collected over the years. Trophy rooms also have historic rosters of the team, memorials to retired or fallen heroes, all sorts of pictures, merchandise examples, you name it. If the main lobby of the embassy is to reinforce that the IST as a whole is part of the community, then the trophy room is meant to show off the team in specific.
Interior Design – Non-Public
So that’s the public spaces, designed to make the IST look cool to any random tourist who wanders in and promote the values of the United Nations. The non-public spaces aren’t as flashy; it’s a working paramilitary base and they’re all built more-or-less to a generic plan, so the space is fairly impersonal. It’s not (deliberately) an alienating liminal hell or anything, but it’s definitely not as heavily individualized as an embassy’s public front.
Again, every embassy is different but there are commonalities. The three main things an embassy will have in terms of operations spaces are the physical plant, a command center and a training room.
IST embassy-standard physical plants consist of a fusion reactor capable of running the entire building independently of the local grid, on-site water storage and purification facilities, HVAC and as closed-loop a waste reclamation system as possible. Most of this hardware will occupy the lowest levels of an embassy, and is a critical part of the design. Embassies are planned with worst-case scenarios in mind, and one of the worst scenarios is a team cut off from external aid. Therefore, in an emergency an embassy has to be able to hold out for at least six to nine weeks based entirely on what’s on site, and the physical plant is overbuilt to an almost absurd degree in order to cover that requirement.
The command center is the center of an embassy, where the team administrator, security officer and other unpowered or unfielded staff monitor ongoing operations. This is where an embassy has its main hookup to UNET and central computer. (In the past this used to be a hulking supercomputer, but the modern UNET hub is several server racks full of hardware that would make a cryptobro swoon but is being tasked to useful purpose.) Command centers are all built to exactly the same plan – the idea being to reduce stress on staff as they rotate around embassies – and consist of a briefing room for the field team and an ops room with multiple rows of workstations facing a master display. From here the operations team can communicate with the field team, coordinate backup from local authorities or other embassies, do detailed information lookups for supers in the field, and do their best to keep a field situation from devolving into chaos.
If the command center is the brain of the embassy, then the training room is the heart. All IST agents are required to maintain physical fitness, so every embassy is equipped with a well-appointed gym and weight room. But that’s basic stay-in-shape stuff; the real fun part of IST training rooms is the Combat Simulation Chamber (CSC). How the CSC works is a proprietary secret held by the three mad science firms that first developed the technology for Honor Guard in the 1970s, but the gist of it is this: it’s a shielded chamber that uses highly advanced robotics to simulate just about any kind of combat scenario possible. An embassy’s CSC is one of the few places that all but the most absurdly powerful of metahumans can actually cut loose without risking collateral damage. This makes the chamber very popular among IST agents. Given the training requirements, most agents will spend about half of their off-duty time in the gym or the CSC sparring with the automated systems or each other, figuring out how to leverage their powers better and work as a team.
Embassies have quarters available for team members personnel who are expected to be on site and/on on-call most of the time, and crash rooms for staff members to use during developing situations, but the accommodations are… let’s say limited. The standard agent quarters are fairly spartan, more like a reasonably-appointed (and certainly cleaner!) college dorm or hotel room than actually homey. The majority of embassy staff (sometimes even the field team, depending on the embassy in question) will live offsite and use the on site quarters only in emergency situations.
Let’s see, what else is there… oh! Right! Embassies will have a portion of space set aside as laboratories and workshops. Having on-call scientists is admittedly rare but there are enough superscientists and gadgeteers acting as IST agents or consultants that having the space for them to operate is a necessity for any embassy. The embassy infirmary isn’t the size of a modern Western hospital but it has roughly the same quality gear along with specialist hardware for dealing with metahumans with exotic biology. IST operations have a high chance of capturing supervillains, so most embassies have a small number of detention cells designed to hold badly-behaving metahumans. These aren’t meant for long-term use; usually at most a week or two until a transport to a hypermax facility can be arranged.
Last but not least, there’s the security system. In addition to features like the armored walls and suchlike, embassy security is electronic and constantly monitored both by the system computer but by operators in the command center. The surveillance system includes visible light, IR, motion sensors, vibration detectors, RIFD tag monitors and a fascinating little technomagic gizmo that can detect the noncorporeal. In the event of an emergency, the command center can direct UNPF security and on site agents while also using a variety of exciting non-lethal concealed weaponry to keep intruders busy. (Lethal weaponry is available but is considered a last resort.)
SIDEBOX: The IST Consulate
The consulate system is a recent evolution of the embassies, stemming from the drafting of the Interworld Treaty, though it has roots going back to the Earth-Myrr Agreement of 1987.
To make a long story short, the various worldlines who’ve signed on to the treaty are intrigued by Earth-1’s superhero system and would like to learn more about it, but embassies are only allowed to be placed in United Nations member states and nobody on Earth-2, Earth-3 etc. wants to join Earth-1’s UN for obvious reasons. This was resolved by the development of the IST consulate.
The first IST consulate was set up well before the Parachronic Revolution; in the mid-90s when humans first arrived on the Meeranon homeworld to establish a Terran embassy, a small contingent of supers came along to establish a consulate for security purposes. This was the only consulate for most of a decade, until the Interworld Treaty revived interest in the concept.
Unlike embassies, which are their own fully built-out structures with complete extraterritorial control, consulates are a much more stripped-down affair, often housed in rented facilities that aren’t built to IST specifications. A consulate team will be no more than three active agents, though supers can rotate through as consultants as necessary, as well as a consul-general who acts as administrative lead and chief diplomat assigned to that worldline.
There are around a dozen consulates operating across several worldlines currently, including both ITO member worlds and those where the UN has a sustained diplomatic presence but are not treaty signatories. The next planned consulate is for Earth-73 sometime in the late spring of 2024.
Mr. Fnord on FFN and Mal3 on AO3 • Conceptual Neighborhood - yet another damned sci-fi blog • The Westerosi (ASoIaF) • The Westerosi II: Subprime Directives: Extradimensional horrors threaten the Seven Kingdoms, and Captain Hasegawa of the Starfleet Rangers has to stop them. If she accidentally conquers Westeros in the process... oops? • Fenspace (shared world)
"It is your job to personify the tyranny of the majority. You must brutally, ruthlessly oppress and persecute the fuck out of the poor misunderstood disruptive creep minority so that the privileged nerd funhaver status quo can be maintained. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Fun Über Alles, all hail the Fun Tyrant, without him our campaign is lost." --SA user Angry Diplomat, on the GM's role.
"It is your job to personify the tyranny of the majority. You must brutally, ruthlessly oppress and persecute the fuck out of the poor misunderstood disruptive creep minority so that the privileged nerd funhaver status quo can be maintained. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Fun Über Alles, all hail the Fun Tyrant, without him our campaign is lost." --SA user Angry Diplomat, on the GM's role.