Current relationship with Equinox: Neutral
A multinational, multimedia enterprise which churns out childlike wonder, nostalgia and ‘happily ever afters’ to the masses, the Jessie Avery Company was founded in the 1920s and over the course of a century has grown from a small animation studio to a gargantuan mega-corporation with over 250,000 employees based across hundreds of offices around the world. Diversifying to include television networks, cable channels, production and distribution companies, theme parks and merchandise – there are very few fields that the Jessie Avery Company doesn’t have a stake in. That, unfortunately, includes the paranatural…
Both the Institute and the Bureau are aware that the Jessie Avery Company first branched out into the paranatural in the mid-1960s, shortly before the death of their founder Jessie Avery (“Jessie”) in December 1966. A legendary, larger than life personality, there are very few consistent details on just who Jessie was – including whether they (or a member of their staff) knew of the existence of the paranatural. It is a lingering mystery that continues to thwart both organisations to this day.
Still in the decades that followed Jessie’s death, it was noted that various paranatural objects on the black market were being picked up for surprisingly large sums of money by anonymous purchasers. These agents had been paid a fee through various shell corporations who, upon closer inspection, all led back to the same source – the Jessie Avery Company. Attempts by the Bureau to infiltrate and investigate the company were met with resistance and lawsuits, all of which were served with an unnervingly friendly smile.
Relations cooled between the groups in the late 1990s, when the Jessie Avery Company invited representatives from both Equinox and the Bureau to a private meeting where they offered to sell several paranatural objects within their possession. When asked as to their reasoning for the meeting, the company’s agent reluctantly informed the representatives that they felt the paranatural phenomena in their possession were left with organisations experienced with managing more dangerous paranatural phenomena, rather than their “usual clientele”. Concerned they were being cut out of the growing paranatural market, the organisations cut a deal which saw Equinox and the Bureau invited to bid on future sales in return for a cessation of their investigations into the company’s paranatural business. That agreement remains in place to this day.
In recent years however the Jessie Avery Company has grown from strength to strength while both the Bureau and Equinox have changed significantly. Equinox, poorer than when it was at the turn of the Millenium, finds itself struggling to compete with other purchasers for Jessie’s paranatural object. Meanwhile, despite having the funds, the Bureau’s stance on the paranatural has changed from complacency to hatred and a refusal to make deals with the Jessie Avery Company where the source of their paranatural objects is unknown. Relations between the Bureau and Jessie Avery have therefore soured, with communication between the two now handled entirely through Equinox. It’s an arrangement which, for now, Equinox is willing to fight to retain.
References and Inspiration:
The Jessie Avery Company is inspired by the Walt Disney Company and are, for all intents and purposes, its expy in the setting of The Equinox Institute LARP. To a lesser extent they are also inspired by Marshall, Carter and Dark Ltd from the SCP-Wiki and the Cheiron Group from Hunter: The Vigil, insofar as they are an international business organisation using the paranatural seemingly to turn a profit towards an unknown goal.