Agent HQ

Because Agents possess a nebulous jurisdiction over virtually all human authorities, they often choose to use military-controlled buildings as their bases of operation. The buildings can be exceedingly difficult to infiltrate, either by force or by stealth. Even so, situations sometimes arise where Free Minds have no choice but to attempt such missions.

Resistance fighters can expect thorough authorization checks and tight security check-points at all entrances. In most cases, no admittance is granted without an appointment. Metal detectors and X-rays are used extensively. Guards are armed, usually alert, and in nearly constant communication with back-up units deeper inside the building.

Even inside, trespassers will have to contend with security cameras, magnetically locked doors, and additional security checkpoints in particularly sensitive areas. Staff include regular guards, military personnel, administrators, secretaries, and janitors... any of which could become an Agent at a moment's notice.

The Happy Hunting Grounds

In the machines' fight against the Resistance, the Matrix has always exhibited one primary weakness and one great strength. On a remote section of the Matrix, the machines are experimenting with a new environment designed to eliminate the former and exploit the latter.

The Matrix's weakness is that Free Minds can easily fade into vast seas of anonymous human beings, blending into the faceless crowds to conduct their guerilla war. This new Matrix thins out the population by using a pre-colonial, North American landscape rather than a circa 1999 urban landscape. Humans exist in isolated, tribal groups... and strangers stick out like sore thumbs.

The Matrix's greatest strength is that, to most humans, its pleasant illusion is far more appealing than the harsh realities of the Real World. By making humans even more dependent on the system, even more invested in it, the machines can create a populace that is highly resistant to Free Mind influence. Ideally, such populations would actually police themselves, making Agents all but unnecessary. Ironically, the Free Minds were themselves the inspiration for how the Hunting Grounds could exploit this strength. The Zen powers exhibited by Free Minds are a benefit of the Matrix that the Real World cannot possibly provide. By giving enslaved humans some measure of these abilities, the machines make them far more dependent on the system.

To accomplish this, the Hunting Grounds use a mythological metaphor instead of the Information Age metaphor of the current Matrix. Totems and religious symbology can be used to enhance physical prowess (Zen 1-2), perform shamanic "magic" (Zen 3), and communicate over distances (like phone lines). All communication is done via invisible "ley lines" that crisscross the Hunting Grounds. Places where these lines intersect are imbued with "magical power;" they are also the only places that Operators can set-up exits (ie, Hardlines). Of course, cell phones don't work here, so Free Minds will have to find some other way to contact their Operator. (A shaman could do it, or perhaps there is a way to hook a cell phone up to a totem...)