BUREAU 13: Judgment Night

Praise for
JUDGMENT NIGHT

"Great!"
-DRAGON MAGAZINE

"Very funny."
-Locus

"High adventure, highly recommended."
-Science Fiction Chronicle

"A wonderful read. Extremely humorous."
-Moscow Times

"This is the X-Files meets the Marx Brothers!"
-Raymond's Reviews

INTRODUCTION

While demons committed unspeakable acts of horror, I sat laughing amid a thousand people screaming in raw terror.

Sound like something from a Bureau 13 novel? Almost. That was me back in 1973, watching 'The Exorcist' in a movie theatre. Oh, I started out gasping and scared, but then my companion started giggling, then guffawing, and finally roaring in laughter. Naturally, I soon followed suit.

Why was he doing this? Easy. My buddy, Wolf (real name Richard Anderson. Sound familiar? Thought so. Read on.) was working as a clerk at the same bookstore I was, and as the resident weirdoes we naturally struck up a friendship. However, while I wanted to be an author, Wolf fashioned himself a paranormal investigator, and often went away for long weekends to research supposedly supernatural events. Since the occurrences were sometimes purely human in origin, along with a cross, an ankh, and a Mogen David, he also carried a Colt .45 automatic pistol. Sure came in handy when he discovered a Hells Angels motorcycle gang in the old Bell Telephone pavilion at the abandoned 1965 World's Fair in New York. Nothing ghostly, or demonic was happening, just some whacked-out biker perverts killing homeless people and stealing their heads.

Anyway, while we were watching 'The Exorcist" he keep telling me how the producers got this wrong, or that incorrect, it doesn't work that way, and why did they make that up when the real version was so much scarier?

As the population of America howled in fear, Wolf laughed, and soon I stopped watching the movie and started watching him, my mind already spinning along the lines of a novel about a supernatural investigation team. Yeah, I'd call it "The Wolf Pack". Good title.

Once I got back home, I started amassing notes and soon roughed out a plot and the main characters. The hero would be Richard 'Wolf' Anderson, a self-made wizard grimly determined to battle with the forces of evil and thus learn more magic.

His muscle would be, hmm, Mindy Jennings, a petite, but deadly, martial artist who was bored with contests and tournaments. She wanted to actually test her skills, and fighting demons sounded just fine to her. The team would need financial aid for equipment, silver bullets and such, so their backer for this endeavor was, George d'Renault, a bored millionaire who flipped a coin and

decided to back a paranormal research team rather than to buy the Dallas Cowboys football team. George became their gunbunny, a rank amateur now carrying a M60 machine gun.

But months slipped by and I just could not seem to get the background for the characters to gel. Something was missing, something basic, yet very important. But what could it be?

To rest my beleaguered brain, I went over a friend's house for some war gaming and was introduced to the RPG (role-playing game for those who don't know) 'Bureau 13' from TriTac Games. (although at the time it was called 'Stalking The Night Fantastic'.) As I read the box, all of the little pieces fell into place. Hey, the Wolf Pack could be team of FBI agents! Nobody has ever done that before! (remember, this was almost a decade before the X-Files) And this covert branch of the FBI fought supernatural criminals, but not all supernaturals. Case in point, it is not illegal to be a vampire.