EBSI field agent quick guide

 

(Need a quick catch up after a long leave or need some pep for your first field assignment? This is for you! Please note that while this guide assumes the field mission is a long-term investigation, this guide also applies to retrieval, post-investigation debriefing interviews, site cleanup, etc.)

 

After assignment but BEFORE departure:

 

Before leaving on any field mission, make sure you double check all equipment, documents, licenses, artifact permissions, updated warrant listings, etc. to ensure no unnecessary deliveries to the investigation site are needed. The relay delivery team is fast but enemies and abnormalities can often be faster to act on an opportunity to your disadvantage. You are required to keep some form of pocket or satchel on you during the investigation, not bringing some form of carrying tool will almost always make the investigation harder and will result in disciplinary action and possible removal from fieldwork for a time.

 

Avoid overpacking or overpurchasing- while you’ll want to procure any necessary items to the investigation, you will still be placing the majority of your items in your Place of Rest, and carrying the rest with you as you work. Allowing yourself to be overburdened can place you in a position of disadvantage and slow you down, as well as make moving your PoR to a different location a miserable experience. Plan ahead to ensure your operational budget can purchase local goods to avoid an unnecessary load at the start of your travel. If stationed in a more remote local, you may set up caches to ensure item availability.

 

During Departure (Unless traveling by hoof/flight):

 

Please take the time to review relevant documents for the case, as this will allow you to know who to talk to, what to see, and what to ask about at the start of your investigation. Very rarely will any agent be sent into the field blind, so please ensure you utilize the information in your hooves ahead of time.

 

After Arrival:

 

The following list is one of priority, not of chronological order to complete;

 

Secure a Place of Rest (PoR); This will be where you sleep, recover, and make plans. Whenever it is a EBSI safehouse, a motel room, a campsite, a flying ship, or otherwise, you will have one room or otherwise enclosed space to function as a safe room in all occasions, good and bad. Once you’ve identified the room you desire (if able to choose), apply a Warding Postage to the inner side of any doorways that can enter or exit the room, on each wall, and on all windows. Please note that while current versions of the EBSI Warding Postages will deter most abnormalities and dark magic effects from following you into the PoR or attempts to break in, they are not able to fully prevent a determined assailant from breaking through with enough force and time. Always check entryways and windows to ensure you are not accidentally trapped if only a singular means of entry or exit remain. If the need arises, prepare to move your PoR by tearing down the postages to the best of your ability and move all personal inventory to a secondary location fitting to create a new PoR. In the event that a Warding Postage is left behind at a scene or prior PoR, inform your supervisor of the incident to ensure the next set of postages are changed to prevent any potential enemies of the EBSI from studying a means to bypass the warding system. Check every warding postage every day to ensure they have not been tampered with or emptied of magical battery.

 

Secure any loaned or found Artifacts and hide their presence; For any artifacts under EBSI control that were taken for an investigation, please be diligent in ensuring both security and discretion for the artifact; the general public should not be made aware of an artifacts existence if possible, and even temporary misplacement of what seems like a benign artifact can have extreme consequences. Always ensure that an artifact is with you, a partner, or a secured PoR- allowing an artifact in any other setting is not permitted except in exceptional circumstances as they may occur. Any found artifacts while in the field should be secured and cataloged, and either brought back with you at the end of the investigation or request the artifact to be picked up ASAP by the relay delivery team if keeping it on site is not safe. Allowing the general population to achieve knowledge of an artifacts existence (assuming it was unknown to them before) can jeopardize not only the current investigation but future field missions such as retrieval and civilian debriefing. Knowingly allowing an artifact to become known outside of immediate need situations will result in disciplinary action.

 

Keep an updated and detailed note log on you; being able to write down crucial information to review later is critical to almost all investigations, and is expected of all EBSI agents to practice.

 

Ensure all collected evidence is kept in a clean and secure location; knowingly allowing evidence to be damaged or destroyed due to poor location conditions or poor security after arriving to the investigation site is not acceptable. All relevant evidence need to be brought back to the EBSI for processing after the investigation travel window has concluded. Any signs of tampering will be investigated by internal matters to the fullest extent. Please avoid using unknown artifacts in the field unless no alternative option is viable; they often will have unpredictable effects and consequences that are best discovered in a controlled environment with direct supervision of the research department.

 

Maintain your physical and mental health; it is crucial to take breaks from the investigation to rest, sleep, and heal. As tempting as it may be to neglect sleep or put off tending to a minor wound to pursue a lead, allowing yourself to get worn down places you in a dangerous position and will harm your ability to continue the investigation with haste and/or logic. Check on yourself regularly and ensure the heath of yourself and any potential partner is not below an acceptable level; a slow investigation is greatly preferred to one forcibly ended with an agents death or mental break.

 

Act as an extension of the EBSI; As an EBSI agent, your badge gives you both access and prestige, but your actions will directly reflect on the entire bureau whenever you are interacting with or seen by others. Please act in a professional and hasty manner as much as possible when in the public eye, and avoid committing actions that may harm public opinion of the bureau; if not possible to avoid doing such an action, then you must take great care in not being caught.

 

Separate normal magic from abnormal effects; At times you may have investigation sites that have remnant pony magic, or the magic of other creatures, whenever by accident, by the nature of the area, or a remnant of an ancient burst of magic. Almost all low level magic cast by a creature or passively spread by one can be identified by either specific tools or identification spell craft. Be aware that higher tiers of spellcraft or the magical signatures of artifacts can sometimes seem similar to an unfamiliar agent, but the majority of observed abnormalities have no magical trace unless in the arcane abnormality category; these will often have mixed or chaotic signatures, and the utmost caution should be used once identified as such.

 

Learn from your failures: While on your assignment, wherever that assignment may be, it is good to hope for the best results but know how to work with other outcomes come the worst. Very rarely will mistakes or fumbles occur without something to learn from them; they may not be the result you wanted, but you will often be able to glean other opportunities from them. Not everypony can be a perfect negotiator or strongpony or keen eyed at all hours of the day, not even alicorns. Rely on your partners, and trust yourself as a living creature to get the job done in the end, or else trying to be all those things all the time may put you into the position of a life-ending mistake; seldom do we learn the true value of a life until we are robbed of it.

 

 

The main skills as measured by the Equestrian Bureau of Special Investigations:

 

In your bi-quarterly performance review, there are six areas of aptitude we measure to better understand what strengths and weaknesses an individual agent has to better prepare all case assignments. Understanding these aptitudes in yourself and possible partners will help you to take advantage of noted skill ranges and help prevent any unfortunate delays or fumbles in the investigation work.

 

The combination of Fortitude and Haste can suggest a higher or lower rate of physical health. The combination of Sanity, Perception, Sociability, and Magic Affinity can suggest a higher or lower rate of mental health. Following EBSI self-perception training, any field agent should be able to look themselves over and quantify their health in a mathematical manner to assess both risk and injury.

 

Fortitude: A measure of both a creatures power output and endurance. A lower score suggests a weakness of the body and possible difficulty in a physical altercation, though this very rarely prevents an agent from working on a case with tool or partner assistance and can give more moments of reprieve to refresh the senses. A higher score reflects being able to operate longer without rest, ability to act in a physical altercation, magic resistance, general health, and other such things. An over-reliance on this skill can result in greater vulnerability to sanity risk and lessened haste with prolonged exertion.

 

Sanity: A measure of a creatures mental fortitude and, as a consequence, their theoretical breaking point. A low score may be a sign that the subject is in one way or another vulnerable to dark magic or other negative influences, though such moments can have situational advantages. A high score suggests a better ability to continue operating under pressure, handle encounters with abnormalities successfully, resist info hazards and cognition hazards, persist under low morale scenarios, and other such things. An over-reliance on this skill can result in eventual withdrawal and/or disassociation.

 

Perception: A measure of a creatures senses and how well you can act on that info they provide. A low core suggests a subject who may miss the various things going on around them, even crucial details, though this has the advantage of resistance to info hazards and cognition hazards if the subjects perception fails to acknowledge them. A high score shows in tracking multiple nearby events simultaneously, keen hearing, correctly acting on intuition, parse many threads of seemingly contradictory information into a cohesive hypothesis, and other such things. An over-reliance on this skill can result in sensory overload and greater risk of damage from cognition hazards.

 

Sociability: A measure of a creatures ability to speak and converse in regular conversation, interviews, and negotiations. A low score may suggest antisocial or asocial behaviors, an inability to ask the questions to achieve the desired answers from an interview subject, poor sense of discretion, and poor coping skills for adverse social conditions; these are forgivable and overcome by other skills but not ideal for an agent representing the EBSI to the public. A high score reflects the ability to ask relevant questions in a timely manner, have both interviewees and suspects feel at ease to reveal more information, make friends, remain unbothered by adverse social conditions, notice when information is omitted or falsified, and other such things. An over-reliance on this skill can lead to accidental exposure of classified information, unwanted attention, and over-conformation to social pressure.

 

Haste: A measure of a creatures speed, both in physical action and task completion. A low score suggests a low gallop speed or preference to leisurely trot when moving between areas, a need for more time to complete dexterous actions, poor flight and aerial maneuvering, the inability to keep a firm track of time passing, and a general lack of punctuality; while not ideal for time sensitive cases, this may provide more opportunities to perceive and take in details from the surrounding area or ponder case details while the hooves/talons are occupied. A high score shows in a high gallop speed and a quick trot speed even when not intentionally hurrying, easier and faster completion of dexterous activities, fast and flexible flight in winged creatures and other such things. An over-reliance on this skill can result in missed opportunities to witness or perceive events or passing details, as well as extra exertion on the subjects fortitude and wasteful micromanagement of time.

 

Magic Affinity: A measure of a creatures possible affinity with magic and magical items. It is NOT a measure of whenever the subject can cast magical spells naturally the way most unicorns do, but of how well they can interface with magic and control it when given the means to do so. A low score can show up in being unable to interface with a magical item at all, poor resistance against counter-able spells, and a lack of understanding of how advanced kinds of magical effects work or confusion over whenever an effect is a spell or an abnormality in action. A high score suggests the ability to determine whenever magic was used in a crime scene and what kind of magic it might have been, ability to interface with complex magical objects without triggering traps, recognition of a spell as it is cast and subsequent identification of how to counter it, recognition of effects that are not magical in nature, and other such things. An over-reliance on this skill can result in increased vulnerability to dark magic and sanity damaging effects. Please not that all agents of EBSI are required to report symptoms of MIM (Magic Induced Madness) and EMC (Emergent Magical Corruption) to their supervisors though the emergency line once identified in themselves or their partners, and have regular checkups after missions with excessive magical energy or unidentified abnormalities.

 

It is possible through various events, items, and discovery to improve or dampen these fields of aptitude, so make sure to check yourself over regularly when on a long-term field mission, even if the effects are only temporary.

 

If you have any additional questions, please contact your supervisor before departing for your assignment.

 

Pro pace et iustitia

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