Threshold fluff?

[Connectamabob]

Is there any? I realize it's not really important in gameplay terms (thus I will likely get several "don't worry about it" replies), however I'm looking for it for sculpting/art reasons. I have a few ideas that would relate directly to the organization as an organization, and I want it to be consistent with whatever's already out there in case the results becomes marketable.

So, is there any info on the group's history, internal structure, backers, resources, relationship to government(s) or nations? Do they have a canon logo? A motto?

*EDIT*If the answer is "there isn't any", would anyone be interested if I tried to make some?

[Mr. Peabody]

There is great content about Threshold all through the various SA books...

Is it all U.Mike's work, or have some other talents been involved? Dunno, but it's mighty good...

[Connectamabob]

Thanks. I don't have the books yet, so I wasn't sure if they spent any time on that or not.

[abdul666lw]

The barebone basics are on the SA web site: 1920, September 1: A few months after being injured in a failed assassination attempt by members of the Cult Of The Black Goat, Woodrow Wilson forms an elite governmental taskforce codenamed Threshold.

Since the game is (as usual with 'Lovecraftian' ones) set in the 'Pulp era' (1920-1930) the 'official' fluff probably covers this period. Yet you are free to invent the background of 'Threshold before Threshold' -there must have been one, since the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods, with their minions, were here before humankind and raised cults as soon as humans were brainy enough to be manipulated. You can develop it in the synthetic 'Wold Newton' fashion:  no IP infringement as long as you publish your ideas only on blogs / forums.

In a similar vein the organization that received (secretly) an official status as Torchwood (after having used the Diogenes Club as a cover) may have appeared centuries earlier as an informal network of scholars gathered around John Dee (known in Lovecraftian circles for his translation of the Necronomicon), and initially known by its members as 'Bookworm' (because of the time they spent perusing 'many a quaint and curious volume of a forgotten lore'). Later suspected leaders include Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton (who let leak references to 'our Secret College). Now, Bookworm was basically a club of 'natural philosophers', esotericists and churchmen, most of them neither fit not inclined to 'active field work', so they relied on more adventurous characters (such as, in the mid-18th C., the members of the 2nd League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, better know as the Lemuel Gulliver Fellowship).

Now 'unusual events' occurred also in the Colonies: for the 18th C. alone some are reported in the literature, most are mentioned only in more obscure sources: sorcerers came with the White Man, Western witches added their nefarious deeds to the threat of native changelings, 'devils' roamed in New Jersey... and some obscure presences there were actually far more ancient; while zombies-rising Voodoo priests were coming from the 'sugar islands' and 'privateers' made very weird encounters in the Caribbean. This led Bookworm to set up a detached branch in the Colonies: the American Revolution momentarily divided it and severed for a time the links between the 'Rebels' and the mother organization; yet the -now independent- 'American' Bookworm survived, and in all likelihood President Wilson used it, or at least its expertise and archives, when he created Threshold.

[Connectamabob]

Thanks for the info! Right now I only have a few very general ideas. I was thinking of making a resin or metal base for my own investigators that was a medallion of the Threshold seal/logo, and so one of the things I was looking for was whether there already was such a seal/logo (or indeed whether it was consistent for the organization to even have one).

If there wasn't one I was looking forward to doing some designs of my own. The height of my drunken arrogance and hope being if people liked it enough, it could be adopted as canon by Mike and the powers that be (hey now, that sounds like a good name for a band). This of course is daft of me if I haven't even bought the books yet.

For the rest, for my part I think I'd be inclined to stick with the idea that since Wilson created it, it didn't exist before. Of course that's not to say that similar organizations didn't at various times, and of course different nations might have their own such organizations. However I personally would prefer to avoid linking them to other famous literary organizations/figures, as I'd want to to avoid what I think of as "Jango Fett syndrome".

I'd have no qualms about it existing in the modern day though, provided that doesn't contradict anything set out in the SA books. I seem to be a bit unusual in that I don't see Lovecraft's stuff as inherently 1920's (well... except the racism).