The Aversion Bureau

Characters of The Aversion Bureau:

1. Max Martin
Taken under the wing of the Aversion Bureau after a fateful day at the beach, Max is a loyal and gullible person with a heart of gold. He’s also a bit of a wuss, but beneath his unimposing demeanor beats the heart of a true hero. And on top of that one beats the heart of desperate and paranoid young man that will take a pass at anything even resembling a woman.

2. Director Thomas Bilge
Thomas Bilge is the founder of the Aversion Bureau, a secret organization that endeavors to thwart any and all apocalyptic threats to the world. Bilge’s history is shrouded in mystery (whose isn’t?) and very little is known about this eccentric older gentleman… That is until you get a drink into his hand.

Bilge has a problem with booze.

3. Agent Stone
A calculating and articulate woman who ranks highly within the bureau, a personal favourite of the director. Agent Stone is a natural leader and ass-kicker, she excels in hand to hand combat and having to take care of literally everything for everyone all the time. Stone finds it exhausting dealing with the buffoonery of others and the more eccentric aspects of Bilge’s personality, but she holds it all together nonetheless and is a rallying point of reason for the entire team.

4. Dick Davison
Dick Davison is a total bro. He is competitive, pugnacious and a violently sore loser. But having said that it must also be clear that agent Davison is an incredibly loyal, although headstrong, companion who is un-deniably combat-effective. Deep-down, everybody loves Dick.

5. Wade Andersen
Wade Andersen is a man of few words. He is head of the science, research and technology departments within the bureau and boasts a sizeable lab with which to work. Andersen is rarely seen outside of his lab and when he is you can be sure it has to do with something… Sciencey . People try to talk to Wade sometimes, though it is questionable whether he recognizes that they exist in the same space at the same time. He has this problem with most people.

——

That’s cool, but where does it all take place?

Founded in secret by the mysterious and eccentric Thomas Bilge, deep in the Northerly regions of North America stands the headquarters of the Aversion Bureau. The Aversion Bureau operates out of the top 31, windowless floors built totally inconspicuously on top of an otherwise run-of-the-mill insurance company. Armed with an unreasonable amount of space, questionable management and effective budgeting, the crack team of dedicated men and women under the Aversion Bureau are ready to combat any threat to the world, whether it be man, machine, or interstellar crustacean WarGod.

The building itself is a 51-storey building sitting (again, totally inconspicuously) just on the outskirts of the very same town we began our adventure in. Max’s hometown in Northerly North America. The 51st floor is the office of director Bilge and the rooftop is home to multiple satellite dishes and antennae as well as a helicopter pad. The interior of the headquarters has facilities such as an armoury, lab, panic room, gym, interrogations office, barracks, server room, firing range, infirmary, winery, ice cream truck and bean-bag chair room, among many others. Bilge admits that he may have gone over-board when first designing the place.

While the Bureau runs with barely a dozen agents and a skeleton crew of lab technicians and security, the first 20 floors of the building play host to a fully-autonomous insurance company. RGI, or Really Good Insurance (Seriously, It’s great. ™) is the name of the insurance company that operates below the Aversion Bureau. While it is still owned by director Thomas Bilge, it has its own management and runs entirely without his involvement. They sell any and all insurance to any and all clients, and any or all of it is totally great and you should really buy some. Seriously though, they do fairly good business. The Aversion Bureau itself is funded jointly by the profits of this company and by Bilge’s own significant personal wealth. All together this comes out to be just enough and with effective budgeting, working in small teams and bringing their lunches from home, they manage to get by.

I certainly am no architect.

——

ADDITIONAL RUBES IN THIS NEVER-ENDING FARCE

Jim the intern:
Jim is a timid, yet competent worker with a bright future in accounting. Or at least he used to be. Jim is the kind of guy who‘s always getting swept up in grandiose schemes and ultimately being corrupted by the residual evil in the power-vacuum created when his dark master falls. You know the type. Jim likes football and playing the castanets. His favourite colour is orange.

Jackie the roommate:
Jackie is the girl who shares her apartment with Max on the condition that he pay rent and never hit on her. Jackie exists solely so that Max has someone to talk to when the story dictates that he should go home for a bit. There, I said it. She owns a cat but the cat seems to think that it’s clothes or something because it’s always attached to her in some way.

Reception Lady:
The ever vigilant keeper of appointments and confirmer of identification. Reception Lady keeps watch at the reception desk at the entrance to the building that houses both RGI and the Aversion Bureau, though she is none the wiser to the latter. Everyone seems to think she’s pretty good looking but we’ve never seen her face so who knows.

Agent Whiskers:

Agent Whiskers is a semi-psychotic investigator type who runs long-term undercover investigations in other cities and prefers to work alone as his methods for interrogation and apprehension often fall into a grey area with the Geneva Convention. I mentioned that there were “barely a dozen agents” working for the bureau and as the main cast only consists of five, that leaves me some space to have fun. Meow.

Warpgoat:

Warpgoat is an inter-dimensional being of immense power, able to move through time and space on a singular goaty whim. It visits and leaves the Bureau of its own free will and nobody knows quite why it likes the place so much. Yet even with the weight of such abilities it retains the sensibilities of snappy dressing, sporting a stylish orange scarf, goggles and flight cap. Warpgoat does, like all goats do, attempt to chew on everything, coupled with the powers of manipulating time space, it can be a real son of a bitch when Warpgoat steals your lunch right out of your hands. A time-honoured tradition of the bureau for new initiates is to attempt to catch the Warpgoat, not that it matters though, Warpgoat has thus far eluded them all.

Rose:

Also sometimes referred to as “that girl Max met in the clubs that one time”, Rose is a very kind, courageous and well put-together young woman with a bright future ahead of her in whatever it is she does. Why she’s interested in Max might require a crack team of anthropologists and psychologists to discern. They went on a date once; it went well, until agent Whiskers interrupted, being chased by loan shark dog-men out for revenge.

I don’t really know how to follow that sentence.

Lieutenant Tobias:

Lieutenant Tobias of the forty-fourth platoon of Father Christmas’s elite-tier elven special forces. The Peppermint Fist.
[REDACTED]
Divorced.
[REDACTED]
Doesn’t like Christmas food. He eats a lot of Christmas food, in the North Pole.
You get sick of it pretty quick.
[REDACTED]
That’s it, they redacted almost all of it. Black-ops. Word.