HISTORY

A squad of OSS operatives, led by Jack Reynolds, raids a hidden supply depot in the Austrian Alps. Instead of V2 rockets, they find The Vault—thousands of crates containing Resonated Items collected by the Germans.

The CIA is formed. The contents of The Vault are quietly transported to a black site in the Nevada desert (Site K-1). The project is classified Cosmic Top Secret. The government views these items as potential Cold War assets.

Scientists at Site K-1, led by Dr. Aris Thorne, realize the artifacts are dangerous. They emit The Resonance. Thorne warns the CIA that keeping them all in one place is a ticking time bomb. The CIA ignores him, demanding weaponization results.

A military liaison forces a test on SCP-002 (Secure Contain Protect). The artifact cracks. A black mist floods the B-Wing ventilation. The entire B-Wing staff (60 researchers) die in agony and reanimate minutes later. The CIA orders the A-Wing to seal the doors and let the fire containment system handle it. Dr. Thorne and the surviving scientists watch on monitors as their colleagues are incinerated to cover up the mistake.

Realizing the government will eventually cause an apocalypse, Dr. Thorne and the Site K-1 senior staff execute Protocol Oubliette. They falsify a reactor leak to evacuate the base. They wipe the CIA databanks. They steal the containment transport trucks. By the time the military police arrive, Site K-1 is empty. The Kryto Organization is born. They go deep underground, vowing to protect the world from the government's incompetence.

Operating out of a repurposed, hollowed-out mountain in the Pacific Northwest, Kryto develops a surveillance network not to spy on people, but to spy on energy spikes. They need to find artifacts before the CIA or KGB do.

Instead of weapons, Kryto scientists invent the K-Emitter. It's a device that creates a reality anchor, suppressing the magical energy of artifacts. This allows them to safely move and store items that were previously too volatile.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, thousands of minor artifacts flood the black market. Kryto operatives, posing as wealthy private collectors, buy up 90% of the inventory to take it out of circulation. The remaining 10%—the dangerous ones—are stolen by The Argonauts division in the dead of night.

With the Pacific Northwest headquarters reaching critical capacity after the Black Market Cleanup, the Council initiates the construction of Site K-235. Located in a coordinates-redacted sector of the high desert, the facility is disguised on the surface as an abandoned mining claim. It is the first "Dead Zone" facility—constructed with a massive underground Faraday cage and K-Emitter shielding designed to make the site invisible to both satellite thermal imaging and Resonance-tracking technology. It becomes the primary vault for high-risk anomalies that require total isolation from the outside world.

The artifacts in containment begin to vibrate. The Resonance is getting stronger, overpowering the K-Emitters. Scientists realize the items are calling out to something approaching Earth (or waking up inside it).

Small Pocket Dimensions open in remote areas. The dead rise, but not just zombies—physics start to break down (gravity failing, time loops).

Kryto is stretched thin. They are a secretive, high-tech protective force. They don't start wars; they finish them quietly. They utilize The Argonauts: Teams that enter a zone, neutralize the entities using experimental tech, capture the artifact, and then deploy memory-altering gas or fake news stories to cover it up.