Playbook: The Flake
Pronoun: he/him
Age: Late 20’s

Background: Mickey Adams was a tinkerer his whole life. He grew up fixing all sorts of electronics in his parents video store. He got his first jacket at the age of 13 after watching the movie, The Matrix. Desperately wants to be Neo when he grows up.

Playbook: The Searcher
Pronoun: she/her
Age: Late 30’s Early 40’s I think

Background: Scully used to work in the DoD’s forensics. During that time she had a strange encounter with the supernatural. The body was far too decomposed, and she lost time while collecting evidence. Because of this, she’s been preparing for moving into the field and taking on a motherly role. 

Playbook: The Wronged
Pronoun: “Whatever the **** you want” / “Fonzie” (added by Jo)
Age: 42

Background: Maxwell used to be quite innocent, allowing his family to look after (some might say mollycoddle) him. This was until the age of 17 when his notably-hippy sister, Elyanna, was kidnapped and killed by cultists, worshiping some kind of demon. Having been with her moments beforehand, even seeing her be dragged away while she was on hallucinogens (okay, she wasn’t the best role model), Maxwell blames himself for being too weak to save her. If only this; If only that; Maxwell has dedicated his life since then to tracking down the cult and demon responsible for his loss, and any others he can find along the way. In fact, until recently, Maxwell had reached several dead ends to the point of giving up searching for his specific entity, instead taking a more attrition-like approach of working through them all, one by one. This crusade has led him to team up with Nina from time to time, but he otherwise prefers to disconnect himself from possible attachments, in fear of causing any more pain.

That said, recent events have shown him that working with the DoD has its advantages; namely the resources to finally find those responsible for what happened to his sister. “What happened” as it turns out, being a little more complicated than death. Maxwell’s first encounter with Agent Blakesly had him learn that Elyanna in fact ‘survived’ as some sort of Faceless Ghost and had been fighting monsters in that form for some time (often alongside Jo)… only to die again at the hands of a Grandma Spider, about a month ago.

Needless to say, Maxwell is processing (or failing to process) a lot of information right now.

Playbook: The Chosen
Pronoun: she/her
Age: 40

Background: Jo is 40 and she’s already widowed, and been divorced–twice. She’s been killing monsters for a while now, with her green dragon glass bastard sword but she thinks she’s getting too old for this shit. Oh and she’s cursed. It happened before she joined the D.o.D. and if the person responsible doesn’t fix it soon, he’s going to have a problem keeping his insides in.

Playbook: The Gumshoe
Pronoun: he/him
Age: 35

Background: Gary was born to Linda and Johnny Kolchek in West Hollywood, California. His father was a moderately successful child actor whose most notable role was one of Mark’s friends in Sid and Marty Kroft’s Lidsville. Gary grew up with little focus, taking odd jobs to supplement his party lifestyle. While working as an “actor” in the adult entertainment industry under the pseudonym Jiminy Rhinestone, he met Tina Tender. She was also in “the industry,” but was studying to become a private investigator. This caught Kolchek’s attention and he became obsessed with the idea of becoming a PI. Personalities such as Magnum PI and Fletch thrilled his more dramatic side, and he discovered he had a knack and a drive for discovering hidden truths beneath the veil of lies. Furthermore, his diverse employment experiences gave him endless contacts he had no problem calling upon. “The solution to most mysteries is just a phone call away,” he would often say.

Sadly, there’s a dark secret haunting Kolchek. While in a drug-induced stupor, he discovered that he could connect with his past lives. Most of these lives were benign, and like any other contact, he quickly learned to take advantage of them for his new job as a private investigator. However, he soon discovered that many of his past lives shared a hideous fate. Each were the victim of an identical ritual in which they were murdered by a hooded figure with an arcane trephine.

Playbook: The Spell-Slinger
Pronoun: she/her
Age: 22

Background: Though she was born in Detroit, Nina comes from a long line of Slavic sorcerers dating back to before the year 900 (time and lineages get difficult to confirm before then). For generations, her family has slight magical knowledge and defends the world from the things that go bump in the night, although the many witch purges throughout the centuries indicate that humanity isn’t very thankful for their sacrifice. They collect and study the texts of ancient sorcerers (or “gods” as they were known back then) and seek to recreate their lost magicks. To invoke those powers, Nina uses the symbols and Old Slavic words associated with those gods, such as Perun’s Acorn. 

Over the years her line has dwindled, and Nina now stands as the last of her kind, since her estranged brother has sworn off magic. She is a reluctant DoD member, seeing the agency as more of a way to follow her family’s legacy of protecting humanity rather than believing in the agency’s causes. She’s been known to be rash, foul-mouthed, and less than tactful.

Playbook: The Hex
Pronoun: he/him
Age: 49

Background: August was born and raised as a 12th-generation Witch, an 8th-generation Wizard, and 2nd-generation Sorcerer, the middle child in a long line of magicians. He was the least talented among his siblings, but he still tried his damndest to meet his parents’ expectations. 

So, when his parents died under mysterious circumstances, with their bodies and inheritable magical powers lost, August was the only one of his siblings who stayed to inherit the family estate. 
To keep up with more Marked mages, August would need to gather more exotic and powerful materials for spells, so he took to hunting and butchering the supernatural and magical creatures that produce the more precious spell components. 

It’s been three decades since then, and he’s expanded his mystical repertoire quite a lot.