“Scire vera natura” (“To know true nature”)
– Motto of The Equinox Institute

The Equinox Institute, (also known as ‘The Institute’ or simply Equinox), is a clandestine United Kingdom government organisation tasked with protecting the United Kingdom from occult, alien and supernatural threats (together known as the “paranatural”).
Purpose and Goals
Equinox is tasked by the UK government with:
- Identifying and investigating paranatural phenomena in order to determine its origin and nature;
- Determining whether paranatural phenomena should be contained, utilised, destroyed or left alone; and
- Ensuring the UK and its allies are protected from the threat posed by the paranatural, which includes ensuring the existence of the paranatural is kept hidden from the general public.
While Equinox is guided by government strategy, given the secretive nature of its work, it often has greater autonomy than other government agencies to ensure that it fulfils its objectives. While its jurisdiction is limited solely to the United Kingdom, Equinox does work closely with other equivalent international agencies to ensure that paranatural phenomena are managed and secrecy surrounding its existence is maintained.
Organisational Structure

At its heart, Equinox is an intelligence agency and sits alongside MI5, MI6 and GCHQ as part of the United Kingdom’s intelligence community. Due to the nature of its work, Equinox is accountable to two ministers: the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary.
The Court
Internally Equinox is led by “The Court” – the name of which derives from the Institute’s Elizabethan origins as the group known as “The School of Night”. The Court has five members, each of which uses a pseudonym to protect their original identity and to denote their role in the organisation. These names are taken after Equinox’s founding members who were once part of the ‘School of Night’.
The roles within the Court include:
- Tudor (Previously Elizabeth/James) – This role serves as the head of The Equinox Institute and is appointed by way of a vote by fellow members of The Court.
The head of the organisation has overall responsibility for the actions taken by The Institute and answers directly to the government for any operations undertaken. It is for this reason that, once they have taken on the role, the individual is never allowed to come into contact with paranatural phenomena of any kind. Contact between the head of Equinox and other members of the Court is carefully controlled to prevent this from taking place.
The head of the organisation’s name has varied over the years depending on individual preference. The most common to have appeared are Elizabeth (after Queen Elizabeth I) and James (after King James I) but the most recent incumbent has taken the title of “Tudor” after the House of Tudor.
- Raleigh – This is the individual within Equinox who has responsibility for managing field agents and the security of Equinox facilities and employees. Raleigh is also responsible for the organisation and set-up of various Equinox cells across the country including coordination of groups to deal with threats to Equinox and the United Kingdom. Raleigh therefore is considered the main point of contact between Equinox and other groups of interest with whom Equinox is allied. This role is named after Sir Walter Raleigh.
- Chapman – This role is responsible for coordinating Equinox’s various investigations and for collecting and sharing intelligence between cells. Chapman also has responsibility for Equinox’s finances and for the day to day management of the organisation including the recruitment of exceptional individuals or groups into Equinox. Most player characters will have been recruited into Equinox by Chapman or one of their closest staff members. This role is named after George Chapman.
- Harriot – Harriot coordinates researchers across Equinox to identify paranatural phenomena and better understand the rules in which it operates. Once an initial analysis has been carried out, it is up to Harriot to determine whether the phenomena should be contained, destroyed or left alone. Finally Harriot has executive responsibility over Equinox’s archive of information and paranatural phenomena. Harriot’s role is so all encompassing that this is all they are expected to do as part of the Court. This role is named after Thomas Harriot and is designed to be the individual who had responsibility for Researcher characters.
- Roydon – Finally Roydon is responsible for the wellbeing of Equinox’s employees and staff members. The reasoning for this is that, if employees are happy in their role, then they are less likely to leave and share Equinox’s secrets. Roydon works closely with cells to ensure that employees receive suitable remuneration for their work as well as appropriate healthcare and counselling should individuals be hurt in the line of duty. Roydon’s more secretive function is that they are responsible for upholding the secret surrounding the paranatural and are responsible for providing ethical guidance and advice to other Court members in respect of this mission. This role is named after Mathew Roydon.
Cells
While Equinox is led by the Court at an organisation level, the rest of the organisation is made up of different ‘cells’ – groups of Equinox members who are based out of a city or region and whose responsibility is to identify, research and deal with paranatural phenomena which may have arisen in their immediate area.
Cells can only be created by the Court and upon their creation, each is given a region over which they are responsible and a number by which they are to be identified. Most cells then adopt these as their identifier going forward – for example, “Equinox London” or “Equinox 1”. Once a cell has been founded, they can be subject to an internal audit from the Court at any time.
Upon their formation, each cell is expected to pick someone to act as its spokesperson who answers directly to members of the Court. How each cell is governed is ultimately down to the members of that cell. Some cells have very traditional management structures with their spokesperson acting as a leader while others are more democratic in their approach.
The size of cells varies dramatically from small outposts and shopfronts consisting of one or two individuals to large complexes with hundreds of staff. The largest of these cells is Equinox London (also known as ‘Equinox 1”) where approximately 35% of Equinox’s members are located.
Communication between cells is heavily controlled and is managed by Raleigh. While on occasions, two or more cells may work together, this is only in dire circumstances. An event which brings multiple cells across Equinox together would need to be special indeed…
But why use cells rather than a more traditional organisational structure? Well, Equinox makes use of cells for three reasons:
- Autonomy – Cells often understand their region of responsibility better than anyone else. Similarly, paranatural phenomena can often be unpredictable and volatile in nature. To that end, the Court recognises it is not always in the best interests of Equinox to micromanage all of its member or for a group in the field to ‘wait’ for authorisation to deal with an imminent threat. To that end, it allows cells to manage their own affairs while reporting back to the Court and Equinox on its work.
- Secrecy – Given one of Equinox’s objectives is to ensure that the paranatural does not come to the attention of the public, it is perhaps unsurprising that Equinox prefers to use cells. Paranatural phenomena discovered by a cell are often only known to the cell’s membership and the members of Equinox who they report to. If this information was shared amongst wider groups, the chance of it being released to anyone outside Equinox increases which exposes the organisation to potential threats from other groups who would undermine it. To that end, Equinox rarely allows cells to communicate or work with one another unless this has been expressly organised or agreed by the Court.
- Security – Equinox always remains at risk of destruction. Many of the paranatural phenomena its members interact with can have insidious effects on the mind and body which are not always readily apparent – spreading like a virus among its members. Sometimes cells, disagreeing with Equinox’s approach to the paranatural, rebel and go off grid. In both circumstances, Equinox is able to isolate these groups from the wider membership and arrange for them to be quarantined or dealt with as appropriate. This is all done so as to stop dangerous paranatural effects or rhetoric from spreading through Equinox’s ranks and keep it from achieving its goals.
Summary
The Equinox Institute, as an organisation, is:
- Pragmatic – Equinox does not act irrationally in dealing with the paranatural. It knows in order to maintain secrecy and protect unnecessary loss of life, detailed research and investigation must be carried out before any action is taken. It also knows sometimes it must choose between the lesser of two evils in order to achieve its goals.
- Relentlessly utilitarian – Equinox believes its actions are right in so far as it protects the majority of people from paranatural threats. It will, within reason, do anything to achieve these aims.
- Cold not cruel – while Equinox sometimes has to make difficult decisions to achieve its goals, it will try to reduce the suffering of all affected parties as much as possible.
- Ambivalent to the paranatural – The Equinox Institute recognises that the existence of the paranatural can be both beneficial and detrimental to human life. To that end, it is not against using paranatural objects, phenomena and people so long as they contribute towards its goals.
- Understaffed and Under-funded – despite support from the UK government, Equinox understands that due to the secrecy of its work, it does not have unlimited financial support. It also does not have enough staff to cover every paranatural incident which is brought to its attention and, even if it could, the specialist nature of the work makes it difficult for the organisation to hire new or replacement staff.
The Equinox Institute is not:
- Authoritarian – Given the strange and varied nature of the paranatural, Equinox’s leadership and various cells have autonomy on how to handle these and how they govern themselves, so long as they regularly report back to the individuals above them. So long as they are truthful and act in the best interests of Equinox, people can expect to receive support accordingly.
- Bigoted – While there are a few individuals in Equinox who would see the paranatural destroyed entirely, the majority accept that some paranatural phenomena are harmless and in, rare cases, even helpful for Equinox and its cause.
- Unaccountable – Equinox does not have free reign to do anything that it wants. It answers to the British Government and is held accountable for its actions by them. Individuals and cells are required to keep the Court regularly updated regarding their actions. Outside the organisation, it is watched closely by other groups who are aligned with the paranatural and who may also take action against the Institute where appropriate.
- Nationalistic – while it works for the British government, Equinox understands that the challenges it faces forego national boundaries and that people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures all contribute to managing the threat posed by the paranatural disaster. Due to various coups and conflicts in its past, it has a zero-tolerance approach towards nationalistic, imperialistic or fascist behaviour.
References and Inspiration
The Equinox Institute is inspired by Torchwood from Doctor Who and the spin-off of the same name, VASCU from Hunter the Vigil and The SCP Foundation (on a good day) from the SCP Wiki.