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The Databook
Your databook is made from specially made, polycarbon flexi-steel. It's designed to withstand abuse from both the elements and from the wear and tear of daily use. When closed, it folds neatly into about the size of a map, making for handy storage. When unfolded, the material snaps into place to form a seamless screen capable of connecting to any network not specially encrypted while remaining completely undetectable itself.
Your book can be tracked remotely using another databook if needed. If your databook falls into the wrong hands, each book contains a special pocket of chemicals that can be released remotely in order to destroy the book, protecting both the technology and the data within.
The Map & Card
Your new agent kit also comes with a physical paper map of the Omphalos, as well as Sanctuary. For some paper is easier than digital, and it never hurts to have a copy. With the map should be a personal funds debit card connected to the Omphalos's mainframe. Many of our agents are from Earth’s America, ranging from the years 1980 to 2030, so the default currency found on your card is the American dollar. Your funds can be exchanged at any of the terminals near the Gates for any alternative currency needed, as long as the Omphalos has it in stock.
You will receive $2000 each week in personal funds that you may spend as you like, so long as you are following the universal guidelines for the locations you're visiting. Further funds than this may be earned on your own time, or may be granted on a case by case basis with caution exercised, so as not to disturb the economies of the cultures we are visiting.
Your Quarters
Should you decide to stay on the Omphalos instead of commuting from elsewhere, you will be provided with your own furnished apartment. Each apartment comes with a bedroom per person, a full bathroom, and a living area. All double rooms come with their own kitchens, but not all single rooms have them. Furnishings are utilitarian, so feel free to provide your own as well as personalization such as decorations and paint. You are responsible for the care and upkeep of your own space outside of general repairs and expected maintenance. If special environmental requirements are needed, they may be requested.
Minors are housed in dorms of three or four others their age, as well as an adult chaperone until the agents reach the age of majority for their species. Single accommodations may also be requested for special circumstances. Youth dorms come in units of four bedrooms, a shared kitchen and living space, and one large bathroom. The chaperone's apartment is located at the end of every dorm cluster and is a private single apartment with a kitchen.
Minors are expected to listen to their chaperone if they wish to remain with the Omphalos as agents.
Field Supplies
Some supplies are only issued to agents on special missions. Many of these are in limited supply and must be returned once they've served their purpose. Most gear can be checked out for loan in the temporal hub, or outfitted in the technology hangar. Some more advanced agents, like special operatives may have their own personal versions rather than gear they must return post mission.
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Temporal Needles
Used to describe function rather than form, Temporal Needles are used to 'sew up' Rifts that have opened. They're actually quite bulky, and if used the wrong way, can tear open a rift wider rather than closing it again, and so they must be used carefully. The battery pack for the needle is fairly large and heavy, and is worn around the chest or over the back. The gun that is attached to it pulls out when needed, and fires a long, thin beam, the color of which tends to fluctuate wildly, particularly when coming into contact with a Rift. It's quite the light show, and extremely dangerous in the wrong hands.
P.I.E. Gear
The Rifts are intense, and working with them isn't for the faint of heart. While Walkers like Krepta have some natural immunity to their strange effects, normal people aren't so lucky. And so every agent who goes up against these mutating tears in time and space need to grab some P.I.E.: Protection against Interdimensional Energy.
P.I.E. takes on a couple of different forms, but the most important are the helmets. These helmets filter out harmful sensory input and allow agents to hear, see, and speak without suffering from psychic damage from the Rifts, or having their speech come out mangled and garbled. There are also gloves, as touching objects or living creatures who have been recently mutated by the Rifts can sometimes cause secondary mutations if one is extremely unlucky. These hand me down mutations aren't common, but no one wants to take that chance.
Artifact Containment Gear
Artifacts of the less powerful variety can often be temporary contained if wrapped in a length of raw silk, but more powerful artifacts may require more serious containment. The AotM supplies special containment boxes ranging from the size of a ring box to human sized. Anything bigger than this needs special equipment built or a containment circle. Experienced magic users may have some luck in containing the energies of artifacts, but this can be hit or miss, and using a containment box, or enhancing one's own magic with Walker blood is a safer bet. Artifacts can be crafty.
For larger problems, there are also Hemospheres-- which is a polite way of saying a bit of Walker's blood contained in a little metal ball about the size of a ping pong ball. Each Hemosphere has a very tiny, self contained temporal loop, as Walker blood must be fresh to be utilized. Cracking one open gives about ten or fifteen minutes to use it before it loses its energetic potency. Considering the expenses of the materials, and the fact that Krepta has to actively give blood in order to produce them, these spheres are obviously very limited to who they're given out to and what they're used for.
Reclamation Efforts
In the event that the AotM gains a foothold in an already Corrupted world, or a temporary perimeter needs to be created for evacuation, agents have several tools at their disposal. The most important are probably the Beacons. Each beacon is a small cylinder about the size of a Pringles can. They're light and easy to carry, and they repel Corruption for a bubble of about thirty feet in all directions.
Packed into each cylinder is a small sliver of enchanted bone from a dead Walker. Krepta isn't happy about having to grave rob for the resource, but acknowledges that the living are more important. As no one really knows the fate of most of the Walkers, Walker bones are a preciously rare resource, and the AotM only has about two dozen functioning Beacons at the moment. Beacons are only useful if they maintain contact with an area's native earth, so using them as mobile shields is still out, though research is ongoing with that.
The AotM now also has a little help with speeding up the recovery process of an area. Extracted from Earth Elementals and similar is a substance the AotM call Vital. It's mixed with specially purified earth, which can then be sprinkled on soil or fauna to help revert the subject to a pre-corrupted state. This process does take time, but less time than if forced to wait for an area to recover on its own. Unfortunately neither time nor Vital seems to help revert anything considered sapient, as the Corruption seems to purposefully sink its roots deeper into people, but there is hope someday that perhaps it may help.
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Keyslots
The primary purpose of your Key Gauntlet is to allow you to access the Gateways that allow you to step in between worlds and conduct your business as an Agent of the Multiverse. Within each Gauntlet is a small amount of Walker's blood, trapped within a localized time loop. When paired with a key to a specific world and our Gates, or in the case of return trips and emergencies, any mundane door with a key hole, the blood activates a portal between realities, allowing agents to step through.
Your Key Gauntlet can hold up to five keys at any one time, stored within the compartment at the top of the glove. One of these slots is a return key to the Omphalos, and it cannot be removed. You may request keys to any world approved for leisure time, but keys borrowed for missions and restricted worlds must immediately be returned upon your return.
Opening a portal between realities takes an incredible amount of power, and your gauntlets will only have enough charges for four trips before they must be recharged with a new quantum core, which can be found at the mission terminals near the gates. If you do not remember to recharge your gauntlet before departing through a gate, you may find yourself stranded.
It should also be advised that unless you are sufficiently experienced and have been specifically instructed to do so, you should not attempt to open a Gate without a key. The results are often both unpredictable and dangerous.
An Agent's Swiss Army Knife
Beyond its ability to open gates, an agent's Key Gauntlet is their lifeline. It connects them to their team and HQ with its built-in comlink, takes atmospheric readings, monitors vital signs, and has a universal translator capable of decoding most sound or sight based languages when fed enough ambient data-- translating both ways seamlessly in real time. If an agent is downed and cannot respond, its locator beacon allows their team to find them and mount a rescue, saving lives.
The Walker blood within the gauntlet is also drawn to rifts and corruption with a range of up to a mile in any direction. Potential problems are displayed on its radar, and though its accuracy improves greatly the closer one gets, it's still far better than using just guesswork to find one's way.
The gauntlets are also equipped with chronometers, which have an average accuracy of within five to ten years.
Personalization
Your gauntlet may look like it's made out of leather, but it's actually crafted with a kind of smart skin inspired by the skin of animals like cuttlefish. This means that in low-tech worlds, you can blend in much more easily without having to leave your gear behind. It also means that when blending in is not a requirement, that you can program your Key Gauntlet to look any way you'd like. And since each Key Gauntlet is programmed to the specific temporal signature of its agent, you can rest assured that theft would be no easy feat.
As an added layer of camouflage, both for the Key Gauntlet and its wearer, the Gauntlet possess an image inducer, which is a device that projects a convincing hologram over its user, rendering the gauntlet invisible when needed, or changing its wearer’s appearance to be less alarming to locals. It should be noted that the hologram projected is a soft hologram though, and that the illusion does not extend to the other senses, like touch.
