Unusual Cargo Hub

The Foundation is not an ancient institution.

Before its formation, there were many different groups which protected and secured anomalous artifacts. The most well-documented among them is The Commission on Unusual Cargo.

In 1623, a merchant officer of the East India Company named Othaniel Trower was appointed to lead a Commission for the purpose of containing and protecting peculiar cargo under the East India Flag, and to keep both the cargo and the East India Company safe from theft. The Commission and its initial regents took this task to heart, and collected a number of objects and entities, retaining Cargo Manifests to describe both the contents of the cargo and how to store it.

A Difference of Opinion

In 1649, The East India Company, who was at war with several large bands of privateers, demanded that the Commission use its stockpile of Unusual Cargo to defeat the East India Company's enemies. Trower, not wishing to see the Cargo utilized to give any one group political power, withdrew from the East India Company and the Commission disappeared, all of its members becoming outcasts of the East India Company overnight.

Othaniel Trower, Commissioner

Othaniel Trower, Commissioner

The Right Honourable Sir Othaniel David Richard Trower (b. 1590) was, at the time of the Commission merging into the Foundation in 1917, the leader of the Commission on Unusual Cargo. The cause of his unusually long lifespan has not been determined. One prevailing theory is that the name of Othaniel Trower has such significant influence over the operations of the East India company that each Commissioner since the original Trower has adopted the name as an alias. The painting at right dated 1705 purports to be of Trower, but this has not been conclusively proven.

The Commissioner was the executive of the Board of Regents, under whose seal and signature the Commission performed its duties. The Commissioner managed the day-to-day operation of the Commission, and provided leadership and guidance. The Commissioner served at the pleasure of the Board of Regents but, so far as records indicate, was never removed from his position by them.

The Board of Regents

The Board of Regents was comprised of the Commissioner and eight Regents. To be a Regent was a lifetime appointment, made by secret ballot of the remaining Regents in the event of a vacancy.

The Regents acted as an oversight committee, an appeals committee, an ethics committee, and financial trustees all at once. The requirement to be eligible for Regency was:

A person of great sense of right and wrong, in whom great trust may be reposed to uphold standards of conduct for the treatment of Unusual Cargo, and whose expertise in the field has been proven through acts of loyalty.

All members of the Board of Regents, including the Commissioner, were styled Right Honourable.

Wardens

In the time of the Commission, the use of anomalous objects in order to secure and contain other anomalous objects was far more common than it is today. However, it became necessary to only allow highly skilled and trained individuals to be allowed to utilize the Cargo in such a fashion; as such they created a title of esteem called the Regents' Ward. Those who were granted this exceedingly rare privilege, called Wardens, were respected and feared by their peers. If a Warden was sent in to aid in the Commission's duties, it was a sign that other avenues of containment had been tried and failed, or that the consequences of failure were too great.

Also of note was an edict issued in 1734 that no person could serve as a Regent of the Commission if they were previously a Regents' Ward. The reason for this change is currently unknown.

The Wardens, collectively and individually, were styled The Honourable.

Curators

Each piece of Unusual Cargo had a manifest, describing it in detail. Each object would have a single person who took responsibility for the Cargo's security and safekeeping. That person was called a Curator, the precursor of the modern HMCL.

The responsibility of the Curator would vary, but in general their job was to maintain the documentation and day-to-day oversight of the Cargo in their care. They were considered to be the subject matter expert on that Cargo, and Commission agents receiving orders from a Curator were obliged to follow them regardless of rank.

A notable power of a Curator was the principle of Noli me tangere (a biblical phrase which translates to "Do not touch me"). In the event that a Curator's superior was putting the security of a piece of Cargo at risk, they could invoke the principle, overriding the decision. This principle, notably, extended even to the Board of Regents, who could only override it it with a unanimous vote.

Agents of the Commission

The remaining members of the Commission served in many capacities. Some of the more common titles included:

Merchants: Who procured new Unusual Cargo through financial means or otherwise.
Stewards: Directors of groups of Commission Agents at Commission facilities Such as LRs (below) or large ports of operation.
Yardsmen: Not officially members of the Commission, but who performed specialized tasks for them under their banner on contract.

The theme may be found here.

The Format of Manifests can take many forms. The commonality of Unusual Cargo pages is the link to history and the inclusion of documentation, such as letters or reports, that substantiate a story. There are often pieces missing in this story, as with the real process of uncovering the past.

The containment of Cargo occurs both on land and at sea. Some ways Cargo was contained included:

Navire de commerce: A Commission sailing vessel whose sole purpose was to hold anomalous objects. These ships would spend their entire time at sea, sailing routes unlikely to encounter other ships, and being restocked by rendezvousing with Commission vessels. It is therefore ironically termed "Trade boat".
Lieu de rendez-vous: These "Meeting places" exist on land, near small ports. Each is designated with a number, such as LR-14, and are the precursor to modern Foundation Sites. Some LRs housed only one or two pieces of cargo; others held many. Each LR would be manned by a Steward (above).
Libre Circulacion: Some Cargo which had difficulty being contained but which was deemed not necessarily dangerous to the populous could be designated "Free Movement", which indicated that the Cargo was to be monitored from afar. The use of this designation was halted suddenly in 1865 for reasons presently unknown.

Writing about the Commission

In general, the Commission is viewed from the perspective of a Foundation agent reviewing the file. As such, the article may reference contemporary Foundation matters through footnotes labeled "Foundation Historian's Note". Also, you may wish to add further notes from the Historian at the end, which could provide additional context, such as in Manifest 803.

Example:

[[collapsible show="Open: Foundation Historian's Addenda" hide="Close"]]
[[table]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="padding:2em border: 1px solid silver; background-color:white"]]
//**Foundation Historian's Addenda:** Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt.//

//Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.//
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[/table]]
(It is recommended to put the "Footnoteblock" tag here.)
[[/collapsible]]

Default Format

There is a sort of "default" format, but it is a guideline rather than a rule. Be aware that as these manifests are written by individual Curators, they are less clinical and far more personal. They may include interspliced opinions and annotations, and may easily be missing pieces.

[[=]]
[[div class="blockquote"]]
++ The R. H. Commission on Unusual Cargo
+++ Authorized by the Board of Regents of said Commission

+++ Manifest # A number, usually 3 digits. The number carries meaning (See below)

Curator: [[span style="font-family: 'Tangerine', cursive; font-size: 1.7em;"]]Curator Name[[/span]]
[[/=]]

++ Storage Instructions:
Treat this section like Secure Containment Procedures.

++ Cargo Description:
Treat this section like an SCP Description.

> ++ Manifest Remarque 1
> June 29, 1672
> Treat these like Addenda. These could be letters, interviews, even simply drawings or images.
> [[span style="font-family: 'Tangerine', cursive; font-size: 1.7em;"]] Curator Initials or Signature[[/span]]
[[/div]]

Paper Block Quotes

Text from inside Commission documents should be either:

> in blockquotes

[[div class="paper"]]
Use the "paper" class
[[/div]]

Each of which produces a different shade of paper. Foundation Historian notes are usually not inside these paper blocks.

The Manifest Number

Thje manifest number ranges from 3 to 6 digits. The exact reasoning behind this system is not known, but it is clear that manifests were not assigned in order. There are therefore many numbers which were never assigned.

The last two digits of a Manifest number have certain meanings:

The number in the TENS digit indicates a level of compliance of the Cargo with being contained. Consider this an analog to Object Class. So willing Cargo, or a Cargo which is very easy to contain (i.e, Safe), would be a 0 or 1, all the way up to uncontainable Cargo at 8. 9 is reserved for cargo which has never been contained.

The number in the ONES digit puts the cargo into a category:

Digit	Description
0	Unusual events, occurrences, concepts, or other nonphysical things
1	Unusual Plants
2	Unusual Animals
3	Unusual Humans
4	Unusual beasts/unnatural creatures
5	Unusual small objects, up to about 1 meter in size
6	Unusual large objects, over 1 meter in size
7	Unusual places
8	Unusual other things which do not fall into the above categories
9	Unusual things, the knowledge about which is dangerous—the equivalent of an infohazard.

There is also a format available for a ship's log, should you feel inclined. It looks like this:

H	K	F	Course	Heading	Remarks for Sunday, Sept 26, 1672
1	6	4	NNW	N	1st day out of port, and all is well. At our current speed, we are set to maintain this heading for 8 hours, then shift our heading more westerly for a few hours before finally shifting again to maintain a more northerly to insure our course.
2	6	4	NNW	N	2nd bell.

There are two primary elements to this. There's a CSS module that will need to be put in at the top of the page.

CSS Module

And then the [[div]] & table itself.

Div & table code

– hide block

[[div class="logbook"]]
[[table style="width: 100%;"]]
[[row]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; width: 5%;"]]
[[size 90%]]**H**[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; width: 5%;"]]
[[size 90%]]**K**[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; width: 5%;"]]
[[size 90%]]**F**[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; width: 10%;"]]
[[size 90%]]**Course**[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; width: 12%;"]]
[[size 90%]]**Heading**[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; text-align: Left width: 63%;"]]
[[size 90%]]**Remarks for Sunday, Sept 26, 1672**[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]

[[row]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; vertical-align: top; width: 5%;"]]
[[size 90%]]1[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; vertical-align: top; width: 5%;"]]
[[size 90%]]6[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; vertical-align: top; width: 5%;"]]
[[size 90%]]4[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 10%;"]]
[[size 90%]]NNW[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 12%;"]]
[[size 90%]]N[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; text-align: Left width: 63%;"]]
1st day out of port, and all is well. At our current speed, we are set to maintain this heading for 8 hours, then shift our heading more westerly for a few hours before finally shifting again to maintain a more northerly to insure our course.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]

[[row]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; vertical-align: top; width: 5%;"]]
[[size 90%]]2[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; vertical-align: top; width: 5%;"]]
[[size 90%]]6[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: center; vertical-align: top; width: 5%;"]]
[[size 90%]]4[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 10%;"]]
[[size 90%]]NNW[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; border-right: 1px solid #666; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 12%;"]]
[[size 90%]]N[[/size]]
[[/cell]]
[[cell style="border-bottom: 1px solid #666; text-align: Left width: 63%;"]]
2nd bell.
[[/cell]]
[[/row]]

[[/table]]
@@ @@
[[/div]]

A quick key on it's use:

H stands for "Hour", and represents the hour of the day. Remember, old ship's logs used 24 hours and marked it by ringing a bell. So this could be B as well.
K stands for "Knots", and represents the speed at which the ship is sailing. Remember, these are merchant sailing vessels. 15 knots is blisteringly fast. Most average 2-5 knots.
F stands for "Fathoms", and represents the depth of the water. A fathom is roughly 1.8m¹
Course is the direction of travel. North, northwest, in this example.
Heading is the direction the ship is actually facing. This matters because the wind is a fickle beast.