On this page you can read about Dept 57, Pure Wildfire, and the paranormal world behind the series. Cristos writes to Talents, Vampires, Shape-shifters, Anthros, Sorcerers and other Talents are described, together with their enemies.

A letter from Cristos, the head of Department Fifty-Seven

To all Talents;
My name is Cristos, and I work for the CIA, or more precisely, I run a research department called Department 57.

Or at least, that's what the world thinks.

But since I know I'm talking to the initiated, I can tell you that Department 57 is devoted to Talents.

Vampires, shape-shifters, anthros, Sorcerers and anyone else who feels different, Talented, this department is where you should be. We stay very deep undercover, since the Company doesn't yet feel it can acknowledge us, and we're linked to other departments worldwide.

We're looking for the enemies of our kind. Since our enemies have turned to violence, the struggle has become more difficult.

If you're missing a friend, if you can't find out where he or she has gone, one of these organizations might have taken them. We need to know. Contact us, any way you can. We have websites. Vampires, you know the network you have. You can reach us through that. Shape-shifters, I know you prefer to keep to your own kind, but this isn't the time to stay aloof. We need you, all of you, to fight the growing menace of hatred and ignorance.

Most Talents don't work as fully fledged agents, they work on a temporary basis as consultants. We know most of you have your own lives, and you can't devote all your time to us, but if we're to win this struggle, we need your help. The very survival of differently Talented humans is at stake. These people want to destroy us. Fear, ignorance, or the human urge to dominate - who knows their reasons?
While we can't yet show ourselves, some people in authority know, and they're helping us. Some are not. If we're to win the war - and don't kid yourselves, this is a war - we have to fight back.

LooseId is releasing a series of case studies, detailing individual fights against our would-be destroyers. They will be disguised as fiction, but don't be fooled - each story is real, each experience happened. If you don't believe the threat we're facing, believe that.

Buy the books, follow the clues and find us. Help us.

Now. Before it's too late.

Deputy Director of the CIA, Cristos is the key to the Department, the reason it exists and the conduit between the Talents there, and the rest of the CIA. Because of Cristos, the CIA and the Government doesn't quite know what it has, and he Talents have access to the official records that they need in order to keep their gifts secret.

So here is the story of Cristos, and how the Department came into being.

In the 1970's, a CIA operative who prefers to be called Cristos brought accounts of a secret department of the KGB back home. The department was looking into Psi abilities like telepathy and telekinesis with the idea of equipping its agents in the field with the superior weapons mental abilities could provide.
The US government decided that what the KGB had, the CIA had to have, too. So they put Cristos in charge of the new department, known as Department Fifty-Seven, because it was housed in an unused office in Fifty-Seventh Street in New York, well away from CIA headquarters in Virginia. No way did the CIA want to advertise its new experiments and be exposed as cranks. But they wanted to know and they wanted to keep up with the Soviets.
Cristos conducted a number of experiments which didn't seem to work very well. When he discovered people with abilities, they were unreliable, sometimes depending on particular conditions to work properly. The CIA concluded that Psi abilities, if they even existed, weren't useful as weapons in the Cold War. However, Cristos was also running a department developing sophisticated communication devices. It was hoped that Psi abilities could be enhanced by subcutaneous devices, and experiments on this, and other, more mundane but very useful devices, were ongoing.
At least, that was what the world outside the Department thought.
In reality, Cristos used the Department as cover. Very few people knew that the experiments resulted not only in success, but in the development of very special operatives.
Known in the Department as Talents, these people seemed perfectly ordinary agents and consultants, but they were far from that. Sorcerers, shapeshifters, vampires and anthros all had lives out of the ordinary, some living for many more years than the human lifespan. They had long ago decided to live anonymously in human society, and to pass unnoticed in the modern world, they needed papers, authentic records of life after life. Some kept it in the family, inventing fictitious children for the time when they would have to move on to another life. Some moved from life to life, leaving nothing behind them. In order to do this smoothly, they needed records, as official as possible. The Department provided them, and in return, the Talents provided their unique abilities for specific assignments.
Sadly, there were people who, once they had become aware of the existence of beings that were different, decided to either eliminate them or experiment on them.
After several brutal killings of citizens, US and overseas, the FBI and CIA were forced to take action. While the authorities assumed the PHR was a fanatical organization and their targets were 'ordinary' people, Cristos knew better. So did the Talents. He made it his business to track and counter the organization, and recruited Talents to help him.
Most Talents have consistently refused to become agents. They have their own agenda. Through many centuries they have refused to 'come out' but the modern era, with its surveillance equipment and lengthy paperwork has its own challenges. While Talents try to be law abiding citizens, they do have another loyalty; to their families and their communities, and to protect each other. They will co-operate with Cristos, the CIA and the other security organizations, but only up to a point.

Affiliated Departments

The Department in London is headed by a man called Will Grady. Grady is as mysterious as Cristos, and suspected to be the same kind of Talent, although no one knows exactly what that is. He is built like a bear, tall, powerful, with big hands that can be surprisingly gentle when he wishes. He has jet black hair and the same steely, silver-gray eyes that distinguish Cristos. In London, Department 57 is part of MI6, its headquarters in the central MI6 building on the Thames, disguised as a research library.

In Paris, the Department is affiliated to Interpol, but its headquarters are in a fashion house. Jasper Lebec, the head of the Lebec fashion empire, heads the Department from his head office on the Champs Elysees. Lebec is a fashion designer, but his company also makes perfume, accessories and jewelry. He is known to be fabulously rich and notoriously secretive about his private life. He has long, black hair, usually fastened back, light silver-gray eyes and is taller and leaner than either Cristos or Grady.

Pure Wildfire is a rock band. Set in the same world as Dept 57, Pure Wildfire's members are shape-shifting firebirds. The lead guitarist, Aidan, is the phoenix.
Each member of Pure Wildfire has their own book, apart from the two guitarists Aidan and Corinne, who share a book. Sunfire is their story. The lead singer and lyricist, Ryan's story is told in Icefire, the bassist, Jake Keys, has Moonfire and the drummer, Chris Keys has (what else!) Thunderfire. See the Pure Wildfire section for more details.

Talents are people with enhanced abilities of one kind or another. They can be strong or weak, good or bad, just like anyone else. Being a shapeshifter, for instance, doesn't mean you are good or extra special, it just means you are different.

Talents have just two rules. Transgression of either rule is punishable by death.
Don't tell - Don't Compel.
Telling means telling the human world what they are and what they do. Talents prefer to keep their abilities secret, knowing the human race isn't yet ready to accept them and what they do. In the past, certain Talents were exalted or denigrated, some of them even being made gods, but they don't seek that any more. So the Telling rule was introduced. If a Talent falls in love with a human, or becomes involved with humans, he may tell, but the person he tells must in turn agree to be bound by the law.

Don't Compel. Most Talents have telepathic powers, some stronger than others. It means that they can compel people to do things they might not otherwise choose to do. Persuasion is allowed, such as when a Talent wants to get in to a locked building, but if the Talent then chooses to make the person have sex with him when he or she hasn't made that choice of their own free will, that is Compulsion. Occasionally a Talent used his telepathic ability to make people into slaves, or to do something that they wouldn't ordinarily do, and so all communities agreed to ban Compulsion.

Vampires

Vampires have existed for centuries, but have succeeded in keeping their existence secret. Some of the legends about vampires were created by the vampires themselves, to put self appointed 'slayers' off the track, deliberately introducing misleading disinformation through books and other literature. So a vampire can walk in the daylight, can see his own reflection, and reacts to a crucifix the same way everyone else does.
A vampire needs blood. A regular transfusion from a living donor. Bottled blood is not adequate. The vampire draws the blood up from his retractable eye-teeth, straight into his system. Although his throat may work while he is taking the blood, he doesn't actually drink much of it, only the stray drops that end up in his mouth. The best donors are human and other Talents, but they can use animals, if they are desperate.
Vampires are either born that way, or converted, but to convert a human or another Talent to a vampire means he has to give up his own life. He draws all the blood out of the donor, then the donor goes into a blood frenzy, and bites his sire, in his turn draining him of blood. The original vampire dies, and the donor takes on all his power and his abilities. Consequently, most vampires avoid converting people.
Vampires may communicate telepathically, and they can transport themselves from one place to another by 'flashing.' They need to have a picture of where they are going in precise detail in their minds, and 'flashing' is a difficult art which needs to be learned. Because they need blood, vampires are immune to most diseases.
In common with other long lived Talents, fertility is infrequent and rare. Enough vampires are born to perpetuate the race, but not many. Most prefer not to use contraception, as they wish to increase the possibility of a child. A vampire can sire a child with a human, but they usually turn out to be human children.

Shape-shifters

Shape-shifters are long-lived beings who have two forms. They may choose which form they prefer to live in for most of the time, but once a month they must change to the other form, at the time of the new moon. The rest of the time they may transform at will. They can vary their shape, if they want to be smaller or larger.
The only substance that a shapeshifter can use to prevent the monthly transformation is a drug called Cephalox. This is the shapeshifter's opiate, useful in certain clinical situations (not a good idea to shapeshift on the operating table, for instance!) but dangerous to the health and addictive if taken long term. Cephalox addicts exist.
There are no werewolves, or were-panthers, or were-anything. All shapeshifters are legendary beasts. So dragons, griffins, firebirds, basilisks and the rest exist, but are mainly hidden.
When they breed, the offspring appear in the form in which they were conceived. Their mother may shapeshift in the first trimester, but after that, she has to remain in the form in which the baby was conceived until the child is born.
Shapeshifters attain the ability to transform at puberty, which comes at around age 13. Until then, they remain in their birth form.
A shapeshifter has the ability to convert one human or other Talent to their form. They may even convert another shapeshifter into their form. It is believed that this is how rare shapeshifters mated. But once they have done this once, the ability leaves them. The converted one has no such gift, only the born shapeshifter can do this.
They are immune to most human diseases. They have to strip to transform, unless they want to destroy their clothes, so nudity in the shapeshifter world is not a big deal.
Shapeshifter women usually become infertile after they have borne two offspring to term.

Anthros

Anthro is short for anthropomorph. A creature that is half and half. Centaurs, merpeople and the like. They spend most of their time in human form, but can transform at will. They are breeds of shapeshifters, and abide by many of the same laws. Cephalox is very dangerous to them, and only used in dire emergencies. They are subject to the phases of the moon.

Sorcerers

Sorcerers are humans with human lifestyles, but their Psi abilities surpass any other being. Every human being has Psi abilities, but most develop a shield in their first week of life, one that is difficult or impossible to breach later. The Sorcerer is born without the shield and has to work to develop one.
Therefore Sorcerer children are extremely sensitive, and until they develop their mental shields, are kept apart from the world, in quiet enclaves and large houses, with adults to help them maintain their protection. Otherwise it is too painful for them.
A Sorcerer can teleport, communicate with anyone telepathically, break or penetrate most mental shields, and have telekinetic abilities. They are descended from a Hungarian family called the Nadasdys, which produced kings and murderesses in its time. The genes run true in a few special beings, who have very strong powers, and are almost invincible because of that. However, the special ones have to remain virgin. Losing their virginity means losing their powers. Most can be relearned, but there is no guarantee of this. It is a risk all of the special ones have to take if they fall in love and decide to commit to a relationship with someone else. Some never regain their abilities, some regain very weak powers, and some can regain almost their full strength, but will never be as powerful as their previous, virginal, selves.
Sorcerers tend to have greater than average strength, and live slightly longer lifespans, although never as long as other Talents, who may live for several hundred years, even thousands in a few rare cases. They do have some immunity against disease, but not as completely as other beings. Sorcerers can become vampires, through conversion, or shapeshifters.

The heroes have their say! Click here to meet the heroes of the Dept 57 books!

Click here to read about the backlist - books not currently available but coming soon

Sometimes enemies come from everywhere, but in general, three main places are responsible for most of the attacks on Talents.

The PHR

The society calling itself the Perfect Human Race (the PHR). This is a collection of humans who believe that they are the only possible permutation of the species homo sapiens. Any deviation from the pattern they have set is not desirable. The reasons vary from religious to plain jealousy, but they want to wipe out every Talent from the face of the earth. They only capture Talents in order to lead them to other Talents. Recently they switched from protests and political pressure to direct violence. They have organized themselves into cells, terrorist style, groups of 6 or so people, only one of which has a contact to the rest of the PHR, so if caught, the information they can give is limited. Now the PHR has turned to violence, the CIA is forced to take action, but since it can’t operate within its own borders, only consultants, not agents, can officially take action. Because of recent developments, Cristos has been talking to the FBI, and the Department might actually become that thing so rare, it leads to sharp intakes of breath all over the Pentagon, a combined unit of FBI agents and CIA operatives.

The Corporation

Scientists who discover the existence of Talents are fascinated by the possibilities they seem to offer. Their immunity to disease and their longevity are the biggest draws. Research labs tend to treat Talents like objects, creatures to be examined and experimented on. Talents are funding their own research projects, but without the cruelty. They are suspected to be linked to each other by a shadowy organisation. Research is ongoing.

Other Talents

Occasionally, rogue Talents try to take control, by using their gifts. While individual Talents are high achievers, some try to go further and exploit their fellows for their own good, or occasionally to gain control and power over a country or other entity. Most Talents are against this, as it often means the rogues are using Compulsion. Coexistence is the common goal, not one race dominating others.

A Old Threat Returned

Those of you who rememember the prequel, Season of Storms, will remember a group of Talents who wanted world domination, because they thought it was their right.

There have been rumors recently that they have returned in a new guise. Watch for the Titans, and their renewed threat to humanity. They truly believe that the world would be better if they regained control - it couldn't be worse. Or could it?

On this page you can read about Dept 57, Pure Wildfire, and the paranormal world behind the series. Cristos writes to Talents, Vampires, Shape-shifters, Anthros, Sorcerers and other Talents are described, together with their enemies.

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