The IPTO

Overview
The International Peacekeeping Treaty Organization, or IPTO for short, is an organization chartered by the United Nations and founded by a gathering of the most capable humans and metahumans the world had ever seen.

Though touted by some as an international police force, it tends to ignore the internal goings-on of most countries, focusing mainly on the long-term survival of the humans race and intervening only in events of worldwide consequence. The organization is relatively small in terms of manpower, but its agents are a cut above even the best of conventional heroes and villains.

Objectives:
The IPTO has three stated goals, ranked from highest to lowest priority:

The first goal is the most well-known, and is particularly emphasized to the public. Although the IPTO may stand by and see a city or even a country destroyed without lifting a finger, they will quickly step in to halt any event with significant odds of threatening civilization as a whole. To date, nearly a dozen nascent apocalypses have been directly averted by the valiant actions of the IPTO’s finest teams, and many others have been subtly dealt with before the public ever became aware of them.
 * To ensure the survival of human civilization as we know it.
 * To maintain peaceable relations between the nations of the world.
 * To maintain and extend the capabilities of the IPTO, so that it may continue to carry out the above tasks over future generations.

The second goal may seem idealistic, but in practice is simple enough: the prevention of a large-scale metahuman war. Small border skirmishes or internal disputes will generally pass by without notice, but any notable military mobilization against another country will quickly draw the IPTO’s attention. Thus far they have successfully quashed all notable international conflicts since its founding in 1966, mostly through diplomacy rather than decisive intervention. Though it’s not widely known, assassins have also been employed to remove key figures where necessary.

Lastly, the organization also takes an interest in any discoveries or technologies that may help humanity survive in the long term. Metahumans with abilities deemed valuable to the organization are often quietly approached with offers of recruitment, and phenomena such as Desolate cores are contained and studied wherever possible, in the hopes of advancing the IPTO’s understanding of metahuman abilities and the state of the universe at large. There are also rumors that the organization has been making preparations for large-scale evacuation and interstellar travel, in the event of an unavoidable planetary disaster.

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

Three smaller bases are scattered around the world: Fort Cliff in the United States, Chéngbǎo Base in China, and the Storm Hold in Morocco. These serve as the IPTO’s outposts, mainly housing agents and negotiators and protected by lesser yet still formidable defenses. If the main base is cut off or destroyed, then one of these locations will become the new headquarters.

Lastly, there are three ‘black’ facilities whose locations remain a closely guarded secret. Powerful politicians or criminal masterminds with extensive information networks may have heard of Kurbjosk, where dangerous yet incredibly valuable metahumans are held prisoner, of the Pill Bunker, where forbidden technology and artifacts are stored away, and perhaps even of Green Hills Farmstead, the oddly-named location whose very purpose is classified at the highest level.

Notable Individuals:
The High Council: A group of five individuals holding the highest level of command within the IPTO. It is known that the council consists of one Precursor, two humans, and two metahumans, but otherwise their identities are carefully hidden.

Mareike Holtzmann:
The public face of the IPTO, and its chief spokesperson. Rumored to be quite high up in the organization and even a member of the Council itself, but none of this has been confirmed. Regardless, she’s well-known internationally as a competent and eloquent speaker and negotiator.

Zach Armstrong:
IPTO metahuman who was nearly killed in an operation in 1998, which succeeded at the cost of his identity being revealed to the public. With his disability preventing him from being an effective agent, and his identity no longer secure, the IPTO decided to make him a figurehead, someone whose name they could use as soft propaganda to improve their image worldwide. Though he only occasionally makes public appearances, he’s revered among the world’s top heroes (the 1998 operation saved millions of lives), and frequently appears in books, films, and video games depicting sensationalized and often outright fictional accounts of the IPTO’s exploits. In reality, though, the IPTO mostly uses him to head recruitment efforts, relying on his charisma and well-known face to help reel in individuals they consider useful.

Asmaa Rafiq:
A well-known researcher who vanished from the public eye in 2018, and was confirmed to have been recruited by the IPTO. A rare individual, she was originally believed to be a Tinker or Thinker until genetic analysis revealed her intelligence to be entirely natural.

Neo-Amaterasu:
A Precursor in the employ of the IPTO. Possesses vast powers over fire, heat, and light.

Baba Yaga:
A Precursor in the employ of the IPTO. A Tinker of sorts, whose creations exist mostly outside of the three dimensions of space.

Manpower, Equipment, and Methodology:
The IPTO employs around ten thousand individuals in total, many of whom are involved in its research and diplomacy arms. The former maintains occasional contact with the scientific community around the world, and the latter maintains ambassadors in every country around the world. Each is full of the most capable individuals available in their respective fields.

Other than its leadership, the remainder of the IPTO’s personnel are agents, deployed in secret to carry out espionage and paramilitary actions wherever necessary. This ground consists almost entirely of metahumans, most of whom carry a total rating of 15 or more and are equipped with several varieties of powerful Tinkertech. There are few who can challenge these trained individuals directly, though fortunately they are rarely deployed in squads of more than five. Agents will typically aim to carry out their tasks with a minimum of fuss, getting in, doing what needs doing, and then getting out before the locals ever catch wind of their presence.

For more heavy-duty tasks, such as directly confronting Desolate entities, the IPTO employs at least two Precursors, each of whom is backed up by their own support squad of powerful metahumans. The organization also has access to massive amounts of conventional and Tinkertech firepower. The IPTO rarely needs to bring the hammer down full-force, but on the rare occasions it does, it is perhaps the most formidable power one could possibly go up against.

Fortunately for metahuman criminals the world over, the IPTO barely takes an interest in most of their dealings. Unless an even threatens to spiral out of control and undermine civilization as a whole, or spark international conflict between major powers, then chances are the organization will ignore it outside of basic information-gathering.

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

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

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

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

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

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