The Initiative employs a scorched earth policy when it comes to the Contagion. Raze it all to the ground, burn the fields, salt the earth. We destroy all Contagious on sight, as well as anything or anyone that is infected, that could possibly be infected, or that could potentially be a vector. Anything that might give the plague a foothold is a target. “Them” and “us” don’t matter anymore; we abandon all but the direst enmities and most primal urges in favor of our mission. Likewise, pursuits we otherwise treasure fall by the wayside. Prometheans who join the Fire-Bearers inevitably become Centimani if they weren’t already. The Bound round up infected ghosts and dispose of them, abandoning their krewes or twisting them to new purpose. Changelings leave their freeholds to swear Huntsmen and hobgoblins to the cause, borrowing Bridge-Burner philosophies to justify it to themselves. No group draws more of the God-Machine’s own angels than the Crucible Initiative; they claim it’s pure practicality, but some take it as evidence that even the Machine knows fear.
The surgeons also act to preserve what’s not yet infect- ed, by any means necessary. We call it “quarantine” when we apprehend (or abduct) those suspected to be vectors or infected, and we call it “preventative care” when we treat (or kidnap) those in high-risk demographics or those deemed too valuable to the recovery after a post-purge world to leave at large. We confine our prisoners in sterile and isolated safeholds, then poke and prod them until the diagnosis is certain. Once it is, we either immunize their captives through unpleasant occult means to be absolutely certain they’re clean or set them ablaze and dispose of the ashes. Those who turn out not to be infected might need to stay in quarantine indefinitely anyway; if released, they only go back to their risky behaviors and end up infected anyway, so what would be the point of releasing them?
Don’t think that we’re satisfied with using outdated tools, however. We perform research and experiments to find ever-more efficient and effective ways of holding powerful beings in quarantine, destroying them (and the Contagion that infects them) more thoroughly or in larger numbers, and getting more accurate diagnoses. Such ex- periments do occasionally invite the Gentry into the world to take infected humans away to Faerie, prompt angels to Fall, or lead to generative acts that create Prometheans (and Pandorans), and other such outcomes. They also, completely incidentally, often lead to bolstering our lower ranks with loyal clones, spirit-ridden, stigmatics, slashers, and others.
How we organize: We structure ourselves like an interna- tional government program with local divisions or branches, a bloated hierarchy, and many specialists. We offer benefits to our members, which vary in form depending on the nature of the creature in question. Letting an Insatiable live in the basement lab and feeding it Beasts once in a while until we loose it on a bunch of unsuspecting Contagion victims might not count as “employing” the Lamashtu, but it’s on the books regardless.
When we commit to wiping out the Contagion, surgeons hearken back to our origins among the Uratha and hunter angels. We embark on a hunt to destroy a living threat, and do not return until we can bring proof back to show we’ve done the job.
Against the Sworn: The are Sworn a bunch of naïve fools whose work actively contributes to the Contagion’s threat. We raid Sworn headquarters whenever we find them, taking what’s useful and torching the rest. We don’t care about hiding our actions; what difference does it make who takes the blame? It’ll turn into credit later, anyway, when
anyone who might have complained is either dead or the beneficiary of our gift of survival.