#setting information

Anora

Orpheus was founded in the late 19th century, around 1890, and this is also where the timeline and art and culture of the Metamorpheus universe starts to strongly diverge from our own universe (plus a lot of it is more sexually open and progressive due to metahuman influence) to the extent that none of the literature, music, films, etc are the same as ours.

(although there is a film studio called Morpheus Films that produces movies that are like feverdream filtered knock-offs of movies from our world. Morpheus Films is staffed mostly by eldritch metahumans who can remember details of movies/media from alternate universes and sometimes even agree on enough to cobble together a script and production of a film)

The reason why it starts diverging at that point is that although a small number of metahumans and metahuman artefacts existed throughout human history, it was limited for a long time by the factions not having enough power or attention to spare to influence goings-on on earth. Up until this point, all four of them (eldritch, fae, angelic and demonic) were engaged in a cosmic struggle against a fifth otherworldly faction or being that wanted to devour/destroy the earth and its inhabitants entirely and leave nothing behind.

The entities which make up the factions, being rather fond of humans even if they do ultimately wish to transform all of them into beings like themselves, were allied in fighting off this mystery threat. Once they won that battle, though, it was back to being rivals in trying to seduce and transform humanity. The original entities rarely interact with earth directly, preferring to create objects imbued with their power (artefacts) and influence individuals from afar (metahumans) to advance their goal.

All the factions feed off of/get energy from transforming humans and from their desires and from the desires that metahumans continue to have, without using that up. If they ever manage to transform all of the adult population of earth, they'll still get energy from the metahumans of their factions.

Anyway here's some information about the colour associations for the different factions (plus Orpheus)

Eldritch has green (and to some extent black because, latex and eldritch goop) Fae has purple Angelic has gold (and white) Demonic has red (and sometimes black)

Orpheus has blue plus silver accents

The metahuman faction colours aren't a hard rule, since metahumans do whatever they want, but angelic metahumans tend to stick more strongly to the white and gold aesthetic, and demonic metahumans are more likely to enjoy an edgy look. Hybrid metahumans mix the associated colours or throw the palette out the window altogether.

Orpheus has blue plus silver details in the uniform for agents, and it's encouraged to wear blue and silver but not actually a rule for researchers and admin staff.

Generally speaking a lot of the early sites are grand old buildings located in scenic countryside areas because they're modelled somewhat after Sanatoria, in that the idea of having them somewhere calm and beautiful and away from society would be good for the "patients'" nerves and that would hopefully help them overcome their mysterious malady. This goes back to the motivations of the original founder of Orpheus, who set the organisation up near the end of the 19th century while hoping for a cure. The founder was French, which is why the first 5 sites are in various locations in France. (I will share more info on the founder's story in a separate post at some point.)

As mentioned here, Omicron-1 is the original founder's former house and now an archive relating to the organisation's history. Rho-1 and Phi-1 have accounting and administrative functions. (Rho-1 and Phi-1 used to be containment sites but no longer are.) Epsilon-1 is the main English-speaking containment site in France. Upsilon-1 is a French-language site, I imagine there's a long rivalry between the two because Epsilon-1 is slightly older and it's a little annoying to Upsilon-1's staff that the oldest currently running containment site in France is English speaking. Site directors and more senior staff in other countries are strongly encouraged to learn French or English or both to facilitate communication, since both languages are used as official languages in the organisation. Orpheus aim to have at least one site in every country in the world, which now that I think of it means there's more than 200 sites and at least 35 sets of 6 sites each (I said sets of 6 because of the naming scheme.)

Orpheus branches are named after one of the letters from the greek for Orpheus - ΟΡΦΕΥΣ - and a number. Omicron, Rho, Phi, Epsilon, Upsilon, Sigma The lower (closer to 1) the number + letter combo the older the site is.

Omicron-1 is the "Founder's House" for example. (first letter + first number). Omicron-1 is the founder's house/organisation archives/a small museum of items that have been kept from the time Orpheus was founded around the end of the 19th century.

Eon's site was Epsilon-1 so they actually had a fairly "prestigious" position (I imagine -1 sites are generally assigned to directors who have shown exemplary performance).

Rho-1 and Phi-1 have some special uses in terms of administration, the ethical oversight committee, and the accounting department which are kept far away from potential metahuman exposure, but aside from that the -1 numbers are just Status nonsense, and don't have particular significance other than everyone knowing the directors have to have done a good job to get assigned there. The head office for the accounting/finance department is responsible for looking after the money bequeathed in the founder's will over a century ago and making sure that it's invested well, allocating day to day running expenses/the budgets for the sites, and signing off on the money needed to set up new sites or to acquire equipment that goes beyond normal day to day expenses. Individual sites each have smaller accounting and finance departments that look after the budget of their own sites.

The prestige of -1 sites is also part of why Epsilon-1 falling is a particular blow to the organisation, along with it being the only site that's "fallen" in the decades since working containment procedures were properly put in place.

Phi-2, Conall's site, is a pretty decent one to be posted to. It's relatively old so there's some pieces of vintage furniture around the place in the offices, and it had an old manual locks for the rooms before everything was upgraded to a remote locking system (along with several of the other older sites). Despite Conall's stress levels he's been doing a good enough job that when he requested funding for setting up something as ostentatious as a site orchestra, the accounting department signed off on it. A lot of other sites have sports clubs or gyms or other social activities.

One thing Orpheus as an organisation has learned pretty well over the years is that if the employees aren't happy, they're more easily tempted by the metahumans they're supposed to be containing, so employee wellbeing is fairly important. The employees' union in Orpheus are quick to remind management of that whenever there's a dispute.

There are a few other sites that have been discussed with my cocreators but don't have a lot of detail to them yet.

Upsilon-3, aka Ups-3, also called "Upsie" by the staff there, is known as the Dollhouse. That's where metahumans who have had inanimate transformations are contained, and "containment" looks a lot different there than on other sites, since a lot of inanimate metahumans will be inert/unmoving so long as their desires or purpose in being transformed continues to be fulfilled. I'll explain more about Ups-3 another time.

Rho-5 is a research campus that's part of Orpheus, it's not a containment site. Researchers can live onsite and it's pretty modern. Research is being done into things like how metahuman artefacts work. It's set up somewhat like a university.

Omicron-5 is the Vault/long-term storage for metahuman artefacts. Sites used to have long-term artefact storage but a dedicated location was set up as part of modernising things (at around the same time as Rho-5), also ensuring that all sites don't just have a huge quantity of transformative artefacts lying around. Sites will get new artefacts and study them somewhat before sending them to long-term storage in Omicron-5.

Omicron-5 and Rho-5 are located at a decent enough distance from each other that Orpheus could have its own courier to ship artefacts from storage to be researched and then back again.