Editing LeviathanTempest:ChapterFive (section)

===The Season Letters===

====History====

It began with little more than a desperate hope and a postage stamp. On a dark, wild night in 1912, Dr. Rupert Season of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote to his good friend Eamon Campbell. Season was an alienist who had been treating a patient so strange, so self-possessed and so haunted, that Season himself felt he was coming close to the edge of the abyss. Campbell, a professor of mythology at Trinity College Dublin, immediately wrote in turn to several friends of his, until one day, a few weeks later, a grim former medical surgeon knocked on Season's door. It was too late: the good doctor had already succumbed to the infectious madness his patient propagated, and was turning into a mindless monster.  Season stalked his visitor throughout the night streets of Providence until he was cut short by a runaway train.

After this tragic experience, Campbell decided to look deeper. He structured his network of epistolary contacts into an intelligence-gathering information and tried to locate Season's original patient. But Campbell was not after revenge; it was curiosity that motivated him so. He finally found the man and, armed with certain precautions suggested by his friends, went to meet him. He survived the experience, and although he was plagued to the end of his life by nightmares, went on to write his most brilliant work.

Over the years, other cases have popped up of similar supernatural cases, and Campbell's group (now known formally as the Season Letters) reported them, corralled them and studied them. Originally mostly made up of academics in the fields of psychology and history, it has expanded into several other fields, including a number of military officers and businessmen. It still works mostly at a distance, with email and postage mail representing most of the work, until it is time to meet the creatures that go bump in the night.

====Members====

Unlike some groups which want to explain the supernatural, the Season Letters take its existence largely for granted. Their members come from accademic backgrounds leaning towards the humanities: History, anthropology, philosophy. They aren't interested in studying how supernatural abilities work, but to learn from the people who are touched by something beyond the norm? What insights on history can be learned from an immortal creature of the depths? What aspects of psychology can be revealed by an inhuman intellect? Can spirits of the hive teach us why humans work together as they do?

Members of the Letters tend to be a cautious sort who use their network to it's fullest extent to learn of any risks and necessary precautions before making organising a meeting with the supernatural. Few are violent, and if they kill it is usually to protect themselves from retaliation. 

====Flocks====

The network is too disorganised for structured factions to emerge. Nevertheless, for people who meet very rarely, reputation is everything, and certain tendencies have been clear for a long time.

You won't find ''''Larks'''' in the field. They're happy to serve as sounding board, to provide advice and analysis, but they never get more involved than that. Most use pseudonyms and are only know to those who have recruited them into the network. Because more proactive elements resent them somewhat, they spend their time currying favor to get feedback on fieldwork.
'''Free speciality:''' Academics (Reviewing)

''''Cuckoos'''' favor deep fieldwork, sometimes going so far undercover that their loyalties shift and they come to obey those they wanted to study. Nevertheless, much of the Letters' most important data has been gathered by them, and they inspire respect as well as fear.
'''Free speciality:''' Subterfuge (Blending In)

''''Starlings'''' are experts on meeting sessions. They routinely travel from location to location, setting up safehouses and wards to assist the local members. They generally stay during the meetings and are rewarded by information as much as money.
'''Free speciality:''' Streetwise (Safehouses)

====Status====

The Letters are a very informal network, but reputations get built and traded on.

0: You have provided information on request by a member, and have been kept appraised of the result of the investigation. You are also starting to work at a distance through contacts. You gain a free Written Word specialty in the Expression or Persuasion skill.

000: You have participated in at least one meeting session, and are well-known for your insight within the network. You have come across dozens of reports from across the world. You gain two dots in the Allies merit.

00000: You are one of the central hubs of the network, and those members that you don't know personally you can probably investigate and discover. You have survived several meetings with creatures, and not all of them have gone well. You gain the benefit of the Encyclopaedic Knowledge merit, if you have the time to ask your contacts in the network and receive their feedback.