The Merrick Institute is an organization of hunters with the ability to enter the Primordial Dream thanks to an unnamed procedure forced on them by the US government. They use this power to pursue the Begotten.
Overview[]
n January 1987, Epsilon Protocol became Strunk Developments. In July 1987, Strunk Developments became Merrick Research. Just about every six months, this United States government shadow organization changes its name and burns all paper trails. They destroy all unnecessary research notes, move facilities,and salt and burn. Researchers only know the bare minimum they must, and undergo excessive and traumatic debriefings if and when they leave.
This organization changes its name and burns all paper trails. They destroy all unnecessary research notes, move facilities,and salt and burn. Researchers only know the bare minimum they must, and undergo excessive and traumatic debriefings if and when they leave. This organization, Merrick Research we’ll call it even though there’s no record of that name existing, exists to tap into the subconscious power of the human mind. Another international group had similar goals, developing a method called the Wintergreen Process. The Merrick practice, which has no formal name, is far more dangerous, far more damaging, but ultimately far more dramatic in its effects. Successful inductees become able to walk through a parallel world borne of human nightmares.
The inductees quickly found true monsters within this nightmare realm. The monsters devastated many of the inductees’ minds, and left others dead in the real world. Merrick realized that, if harnessed, these nightmare Beasts could be unprecedented, unstoppable weapons in the hand of US military interests. These monsters could turn the tide of war, crippling enemy forces and possibly even heads of state, ensuring United States military supremacy for decades to come. Besides, if they didn’t figure this out, someone more dangerous would first, right?
Merrick “inducts” children who meet certain very rare criteria in standardized tests filtered through the system. When these rare combinations of correct and incorrect results come up, Merrick’s surrogates offer parents lucrative scholarship packages, and “enrollment in an elite school.” On occasion, parents who refuse these advances disappear, their children ending up in Merrick laboratories anyway. The children, usually right on the cusp of adolescence, undergo terrifying chemical, psychological, and physical trials made to force specific and targeted growth inside their brains. These trials often kill the subjects and almost always leave them permanently damaged on a physical or psychological level. Most remain institutionalized for the entirety of their short lives. Some are inducted into military programs.
At least, that was the case until 2013. A group of prodigious Merrick teens developed codes to communicate despite their cells, organized, and overthrew their captors. This group laid waste to the scientists, the guards, and the bureaucrats responsible for their captivity. Only a couple of scientists were left alive, under promise to help the teens survive with their trauma and to help them harness their dream skills. They freed all the other teens but maintained a facility for those in persistent vegetative states thanks to Merrick.
The teens knew the Beasts of nightmare and what terrible things they do to humanity. They swore that despite losing their lives to this travesty, they’d make the most of their circumstances, take responsibility, and destroy these threats. Now, they’ve divided into loosely organized cells all over North America (and at least a couple have snuck abroad), and they scramble from place to place, building and scrapping the technology to support their cause, as they evade the intelligence community’s inevitable approach. They sometimes find new institutions, satellite Merrick groups, and they work to liberate them as well. Now, the group has hundreds of teens and young adults, and a handful of older members, survivors from the first nights of the experiment. Survivors adopted the Merrick name as a way to reclaim their lives. They call themselves the Merrick Institute, despite not being an institute in any formal sense, as a sort of
Purpose[]
Beasts are the Merrick dreamers’ primary target. While they occasionally hunt others thanks to their general level of awareness, their skills are razor-honed to hunt within dreams. Every Merrick dreamer knows at least one peer dead or comatose thanks to these Beasts of legend. Many of the dreamers spent years in a Merrick institution before release, so to say that they’ve had time to build grudges against these monsters is putting it lightly. Most are obsessed, directing vast repressed anger at them, and will do anything to keep others from suffering the same fate.
Sometimes, dreamers run afoul of changelings and other strangeness within dreams. One dreamer found herself abducted by a terrifying, alien entity from beyond her dreams. She eventually escaped but was forever changed. Her flesh bore the words of the stories she remembered to help her escape. She became even better at traveling within dreamscapes.
Organization[]
Reformers believe that while the Merrick institute was objectively wrong, the group could benefit from a more structured organization. They plan to set up new laboratories to further the cause, most likely outside the United States. A few have proposed micro-nations for this plan. So far, the largest contingent of Reformers resides in Canada, where they plan to center a network of laboratories. The single largest Reformer lab is in Australia though, where researchers are making revolutionary strides in cooperation with an aboriginal group.
Firebrands believe dream warriors cannot turn the Merrick Institute into anything more organized than splinter cells sharing information, tactics, and resources. Of course, the truth is that they’re already past that point. But Firebrands believe in tearing down what little formal structure exists within the Conspiracy. They also favor heavily nomadic cell structure. One group has even bombed an established Reformer safe-house and laboratory (in their defense, they used a diversion to empty the place, first). They admit to the crime, saying that it’s for the greater good. While the Conspiracy at large rejects the action, the lack of formal charter or structure prevents any real consequences for the action.
Fleshists openly reject the call to fight nightmares. While they don’t eschew their gifts with dream navigation, they use these powers to fight more immediate threats. Most monsters exist in planes accessible from the nightmare world, so they can even use their gifts for relatively direct attacks. The Fleshists mostly use their talents for information gathering, though, where they learn the nature of monsters and how to best destroy them.
References[]
- HTV: Hunter: Tooth and Nail, p. 34-36