Federal Bureau of Control

Formed	Pre-1954
Headquarters	Oldest House Manhattan, New York, NY, U.S.
Motto	Invenio, Investigatio, Imperium (Find, Research, Control)
Goals	To contain, research, and control paranatural phenomena.
Director	Jesse Faden

Our mission is to expand the limits of human understanding and contain those elements we cannot yet control.Zachariah Trench

The Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), or simply the Bureau, is a clandestine United States government agency tasked with the containment, study, and control of paranatural phenomena. Operating on a national scale and completely hidden from the public, the FBC investigates bizarre events and objects which violate the scientific laws of nature, with the goal of understanding and controlling these otherworldly forces. The Bureau's headquarters is a mysterious Brutalist skyscraper in New York City known as the Oldest House, which exists outside of ordinary reality.

The FBC is responsible for both the scientific study of paranatural elements and the protection of the nation (and humanity as a whole) from these forces. Among the phenomena studied by the FBC are Altered World Events (AWEs), Altered Items, Objects of Power, Places of Power, Paranatural entities, and other realms and dimensions. The Oldest House, itself a paranatural location, serves as a containment and study facility for these types of phenomena.

The leadership of the FBC is determined by the Board (a mysterious and otherworld group of entities known to inhabit the Astral Plane) through the Service Weapon Object of Power. The current Director of the FBC is Jesse Faden, having succeeded the late Zachariah Trench after his death during the Hiss invasion in October 2019.

Purpose and Goals

The FBC is the U.S. government agency responsible for investigating "paranatural" phenomena - objects, places, or elements which violate the known laws of reality and exist outside of conventional scientific understanding. The existence of said phenomena is not publicly known, as the FBC engages in elaborate cover-ups to prevent knowledge of said phenomena from spreading. The FBC's ostensible objective is to protect the United States and the world from paranatural forces via containment, study, and ultimately control. To these ends, the FBC also enforces various regulations such as the Ash Act and prosecutes individuals and groups who take illegal advantage of the paranatural world.

The FBC's jurisdiction appears to extend beyond U.S. borders; various files show that the FBC has acted beyond U.S. borders, including Altered Item investigations in Korea, Canada, and Cuba, as well as criminal investigations in the Czech Republic. The FBC also maintains field offices around the world, including one in Islamabad. As per their primary goal, the FBC seeks out paranatural phenomena across the country and the world, studying them and attempting to contain them to the best of their abilities. Among the phenomena investigated by the FBC are Altered World Events (AWEs), wherein the laws of reality are violated by forces seemingly originating from alternate dimensions. Ordinary objects can be affected by paranatural forces, and are referred to as Altered Items and contained by the FBC. Certain Altered Items called Objects of Power are capable of causing AWEs and are connected to the Astral Plane.

In addition to being a federal investigative agency, The FBC is also a scientific organization that seeks an understanding of paranatural phenomena through objective, empirical research and experimentation. However, these methodologies may not always apply, as paranatural phenomena seem to gravitate to the human mind and thus tend to be highly subjective and ambiguous. Additionally, the nature of the paranatural to defy physics and even logic suggests these forces may not be comprehensible or controllable. Nonetheless, the FBC focuses its efforts on control of these forces, developing rituals and studying the paranatural world with the intent of learning to control it. The Director of the Federal Bureau of Control is selected specifically due to their ability to control Objects of Power.

While the Bureau's goals are noble, not all of its methods are moral. Past errors, such as the exploitation of paranatural resources and personnel, have led to the creation of ethics legislation such as the Ash Act, to be enforced by the Bureau's Investigations Sector. This has not stopped classified projects such as the Prime Candidate Program, which has involved the abduction and attempted indoctrination of potential parautilitarians.

Paranatural entities contained by the Bureau are often kept and studied under inhumane conditions, though there is little official consensus on whether they as non-human entities would warrant "humane" treatment.

History

Origins

The Oldest House, headquarters of the FBC.

The exact beginnings of the agency that became the FBC are unknown. The agency is stated to have been "young" in the year 1954, during which it held only three Altered Items. By 1958, four years later, it had responded to three Altered World Events. Originally headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Bureau was founded as a federal agency and as such fell under the jurisdiction of the federal government. In 1964, it officially became the Federal Bureau of Control, with the cover story that it was intended to be part of an initiative to strengthen government relations.

The Director of the Federal Bureau of Control directly prior to 1964 was Theodore Ash, Sr. Ash's son, Dr. Theodore Ash, Jr., acted as the Bureau's Head of Research, while Broderick Northmoor was one of Director Ash's leading agents. Director Ash, as a firm believer in an "esoteric world", dedicated the Bureau to searching for paranatural locations, though while the Bureau recovered many such objects (later coined Altered Items), no significant discoveries of Places of Power were made until after Director Ash's death. Under Ash's directorship, the Bureau's outlook was much more arcane, treating the paranatural world as ritualistic rather than scientific.

Directorship under Northmoor

Ash Sr. died in September 1964, and Broderick Northmoor was named acting director by the federal government. Just a week prior, the Federal Bureau of Control investigated a suspected Altered World Event in the subway tunnels of New York City. On August 4, 1964, the FBC discovered an entrance to what would later be called "the Oldest House," an enormous skyscraper and Place of Power, imperceptible to public eyes, with seemingly infinite, shifting interior space.

Ash Jr. and Broderick Northmoor both considered this to be the most significant discovery in the Bureau's history. Exploring the Oldest House, they eventually discovered an area known as the Foundation, which Ash discovered was the conflux of the Oldest House's "leylines," essentially the building's "heart." At the core of the Foundation was an object which was named "the Nail" which was later found to link the Oldest House to an alternate dimension known as the Astral Plane.

During the investigation of the Foundation, an incident occurred in which a black pistol suddenly appeared in front of the Nail, which was picked up by Northmoor. At that moment, Northmoor came in contact with an extradimensional being (or group of beings) known as the Board, and was somehow given thermal powers. From this point onward, Northmoor became increasingly deluded and obsessed with power; he insisted that The Board had chosen him as the new Director of the Bureau through the pistol, and that the FBC were their "guests" in the Oldest House, which belonged to the Board.

The Board then became the informal leaders of the Bureau, directing its actions from the shadows, while the Bureau began intensive investigation of the Astral Plane and related phenomena. The Bureau moved its headquarters from Washington D.C. into the Oldest House, and by virtue of the House's innate nature, the Bureau also became invisible to the public eye. From then on, the Bureau was a federal agency in name only, operating with only nominal oversight from the federal government.

Ash, meanwhile, rejected the Board, concluding from his studies in the Foundation that they were invaders who had unjustly taken over the Oldest House. Refusing to let the Board use humanity for its own purposes, Ash directed his efforts into keeping the Bureau free of its influence, leaving his research for future administrations to discover the truth.

Beginning with Northmoor's pistol - known as the Service Weapon - the Bureau began to discover other powerful Altered Items capable of granting paranatural abilities, all of which possessed an apparent connection to the Board. These "Objects of Power" (OoPs) became central to the Bureau's research, particularly of the Astral Plane, as the OoPs could transport certain individuals to the Astral Plane in voyages known as "astral dives."

Meanwhile, Northmoor's parautilitarian powers continued to spiral out of control, until he ultimately could no longer handle his own abilities. Deputy Chief Zachariah Trench eventually convinced a reluctant Northmoor to imprison himself within a huge machine, the Northmoor Sarcophagus Container, and serve as a power source for the entire Oldest House.

Directorship under Trench

Shortly following Northmoor's "retirement," Deputy Chief Trench, "almost on a dare," picked up the Service Weapon and was named the new Director by the Board. The Bureau underwent significant changes under Trench's tenure, including the addition of the Panopticon and the Dead Letters Archive and a revision of Bureau policies. One major addition, the Prime Candidate Program, was started by Trench in order to ensure a line of succession for his role.

Trench, understanding the need for assistance despite his tendency to work alone, also formed an official administrative team out of the Bureau's department heads to support him.

As implied by the Tennyson Report, Trench, as well as Dr. Ash's successor, Dr. Casper Darling, refocused the Bureau towards a more scientific understanding of paranatural phenomena, which included the renaming of known paranatural events and objects to suit an objective bureaucracy. This resulted in some schism in the Bureau, with some individuals challenging this new leadership, but Trench silenced most of these voices. Nevertheless, rituals and superstitions retained some degree of importance in Bureau operations, especially in Frederick Langston's supervision of the Panopticon.

In 2002, Trench and Darling investigated an AWE in Ordinary, Maine involving a Slide Projector Object of Power capable of opening doorways to other dimensions. The Bureau apprehended the Slide Projector along with parautilitarian Dylan Faden at this time, who was made a part of the Prime Candidate Program.

In the following years, Trench and Darling repeatedly explored Slidescape-36, the only surviving slide dimension, after Jesse Faden (Dylan's sister) destroyed the other slides. During this time, they discovered an entity known as Hedron, which Darling brought back to the Oldest House. Meanwhile, Trench claimed to be exposed to a different entity, which went undetected by all others alongside him, including Darling. This would prove to be the beginning of Trench's decline and the buildup to the worst disaster in the Bureau's history.

Unknown to anyone else, Trench had been infected by an entity later known as the Hiss, a natural enemy to Hedron and the Board. Meanwhile, Darling became convinced of Hedron's importance and increasingly prioritized the study of the entity. He founded the Dimensional Research division, protected by the Ashtray Maze formed by the Ashtray and Cigarette OoP, one of the last times Trench and Darling would cooperate. Trench, growing increasingly paranoid and erratic under Hiss influence, came to see Darling's support of Hedron as a threat. He lashed out at everyone around him, seeing everyone as enemies. Darling, too, retreated into his secret projects, more and more convinced of a present threat.

The worsening situation was not unnoticed. William Kirklund, Head of Investigations, ordered his department to conduct internal investigations into both Trench and Darling for their changes in behavior. However, the escape of a dangerous paranatural entity related to the Bright Falls AWE had left his department severely understaffed, and distrust on all sides left Kirklund's team unable to affect the events to come in the FBC headquarters. (External Investigations units, such as the Bright Falls field team, continued their work.)

In late 2019, things reached a critical point. Darling, convinced that danger was inevitable, began handing out devices called Hedron Resonance Amplifiers to protect Bureau personnel using Hedron's resonance. Trench, believing that Hedron had compromised the Bureau, chose to fight fire with fire. On October 29, 2019, he took the Slide Projector, entered the Nostalgia Department, and opened a portal to let the Hiss into the Oldest House. The Hiss quickly spread across the Bureau, corrupting all unprotected personnel into its hosts and forcing the few HRA-equipped survivors into hiding.

Directorship under Faden

Hiss Invasion

See Hiss invasion.

Shortly after the beginning of the Hiss invasion, Jesse Faden entered the Oldest House, managing to somehow bypass its lockdown, guided by a mysterious entity she called Polaris in search of her brother Dylan. Led to the Director's Office, she found Trench dead in an apparent suicide and was guided to become director through a "field promotion."

Upon becoming director, Faden is guided by the Board, other surviving Bureau personnel, and even echoes of Trench through the Hotline to take down the Hiss alongside her search for Dylan. She fights numerous Hiss, including the now-corrupted Head of Communications Alberto Tommasi and Head of Security Lin Salvador. With her help, the FBC manages to regain a command center in Central Executive, with Emily Pope heading research and Helen Marshall and later Simon Arish running security and logistics. Marshall soon departs for a secret mission: to secure the Foundation of the Oldest House from the Hiss, unknown to the others. During this time, Jesse helps stabilize events in the Oldest House, including repairing the damaged NSC reactor, securing HRA production in the Research Sector, and recovering escaped Objects of Power.

Eventually, Dylan is found to have been infected by the Hiss, and he hints that the Slide Projector from Ordinary is connected to the Hiss. Jesse's investigation of this leads her to Hedron in Dimensional Research, but Hedron is soon killed by the Hiss despite Jesse's efforts, and the loss of her resonance temporarily causes a total Hiss takeover of the Oldest House, while Jesse is trapped in a nightmare. However, Jesse manages to regain control and banish the Hiss from her mind (with seeming help from Darling, who has apparently "ascended into a higher dimension"), finding herself to be a new source for Polaris. She goes on to confront the Hiss and Dylan in the Astral Plane, who are attempting to corrupt the Board, cleansing Dylan and shutting off the Slide Projector, ending the source of the Hiss incursion. However, Dylan is rendered comatose in the aftermath, and the Oldest House remains under lockdown due to the Hiss entities still present in the building.

Foundation Crisis

See The Foundation.

Later, Jesse is led by the Board to the Foundation of the Oldest House, which has become unstable and threatens to destroy reality through the forceful leaking of the Astral Plane, while finding echoes of Marshall. She manages to repair the Nail, a large structure binding the Oldest House to the Astral Plane, but only with the help of Former, an entity that seemingly tries to warn her against the Board. By the end, she finds that Marshall is dead, corrupted by the Hiss after destroying the Nail as a measure against both the Board and the Hiss, with the Board implied to have retaliated by destroying her HRA. Jesse kills Hiss-corrupted Marshall to stop the Hiss from corrupting the Nail.

Unsealing Investigations

See AWE.

During these events, Jesse is also guided into the sealed Investigations Sector by visions of Alan Wake, a missing author deeply involved with the 2010 Bright Falls AWE, over the Hotline. She manages to defeat the lurking Third Thing, an amalgamation of the Dark Presence and the Hiss in the body of Emil Hartman, preventing it from threatening the rest of the FBC, and is warned about a future AWE in the town of Bright Falls.

The Future

As of 2023, the situation within the Oldest House is still unclear to the rest of the Bureau outside the headquarters, who still believe Zachariah Trench to be director due to the information blackout. Bureau assets outside the Oldest House are still active, from remote research facilities to mobile investigations units, such as the Lake House and Investigations Unit Beta under Kiran Estevez. Estevez notes that contact has been lost with headquarters for a significant amount of time, which has negatively impacted her unit's ability to operate. It is left unclear in Alan Wake 2 what specifically is keeping headquarters under lockdown, but the plot of FBC: Firebreak suggests that this is because the Hiss invasion is still ongoing.

Emails in the Lake House indicate that without the Bureau's executive management, the organization's logistics and legal enforcement are both in chaos; the Lake House no longer has access to a supply of Black Rock for its experiments, and the chaos has allowed the Marmonts to proceed with inhumane experiments on living subjects in full violation of the Ash Act. At least two acting management teams appear to have been created to fill in for the missing executives, one in Dallas and one in Kansas, both of which are similarly disorganized due to lack of personnel. Meanwhile, an FBC facility in Boston is said to be currently attempting to analyze the signals coming from the Oldest House.

Sectors, Departments, and Locations

• Executive Sector
  • Office of the Director
  • Communications Department (formerly the Department of Public Knowledge and Diversions)
  • Accounting Department
  • Human Resources Department
  • Dead Letters Archive
  • Nostalgia Department

• Maintenance Sector
  • NSC Power Plant Management
  • Janitorial Department
  • Cartography Department
  • Black Rock Mining
    • Black Rock Processing
    • Black Rock Lab

• Research Sector
  • Dimensional Research
  • Parapsychology
    • Hypnosis Lab
    • Extrasensory Lab
  • Parakinesiology
  • Ritual Division
    • Protective Studies
    • HRA Lab
    • Synchronicity Lab
    • Luck & Probability
  • Astral Plane Research

• Containment Sector
  • Panopticon
    • Archives and Records
  • Logistics
  • Security
  • Medical Wing
  • Processes & Protocols (shifted to the Foundation, no surviving staff)
    • Data Entry And Filing
    • Evaluation Hall
    • Morgue
  • Unknown office department (relocated after being overrun by "The Clocks" Threshold)

• Investigations Sector
  • External Surveillance
    • AWE Response
    • AWE Forensics & Analysis
  • Foreign Investigations

• The Foundation
  • Research & Excavation Expedition (operated from August 4 to October 29, 1964)

• Other
  • Armory (mentioned by Arish to have shifted shortly after the Hiss invaded to an unknown location)
  • Department of Unhuman Affairs
  • Entrance Lobby
  • Examination Hall
  • Possessed Object Gallery
  • Operations Department

Policies

As a federal government agency, the Bureau maintains a number of internal and external regulations. These include:

• Ash Act - An ethics regulation detailing treatment of paranatural entities, persons, and items.
• Bureau Codes - The Bureau's offense codes, detailing actions which it constitutes as criminal. The Bureau has at least 91 of these codes.
• NASA/FBC Coordination Agreement of 1972 - A document detailing inter-agency operations between the Bureau and NASA.
• Paracriminal Rights Act - An ethics regulation detailing treatment of paracriminals.
• Building access restrictions - Certain sectors and rooms of the Oldest House are restricted to Bureau personnel with the proper authorization.
• No smoking policy - The Bureau prohibits smoking within the Oldest House.
• Prohibited items policy - Certain items are prohibited from being brought into the Oldest House due to security concerns or the items' potential for adverse paranatural reactions within the building's environment.

Members

Directors

Name	Tenure	Status
Theodore Ash, Sr.	? – July 1964	Deceased
Broderick Northmoor	August 1964 – ?	Alive; contained
Zachariah Trench	? – 10/29/2019	Deceased
Jesse Faden	10/29/2019 – present	Alive

Department Heads

Department Heads
Name	Tenure	Status
Head of Research
Theodore Ash, Jr.	? – 1995	Retired
Casper Darling	1995 – 2019	Missing
Emily Pope	2019 – present	Alive
Head of Communications
William S. Powers*	?	Unknown
Alberto Tommasi	? – 2019	Deceased
Head of Security
Lin Salvador	? – 2019	Deceased
Head of Operations
Helen Marshall	? – 2019	Deceased
Head of Investigations
William Kirklund	? – 2019	Resigned
Remy Denis**	2019 – present	Unknown
Head of The Lake House
Diana Marmont	? - 2023	Deceased
Jules Marmont	? - 2023	Deceased

* Head of the Department of Public Knowledge and Diversions, presumably a precursor to the Communications Dept.
** Interim Head appointed in 2019; status unknown circa the Hiss invasion.

Other Members

Note: Roles using location names are unofficial, based on source context.

Bureau Personnel
Name	Role	Status
Abraham Lewis	Parakinesiology Department Chief	Deceased
Ahti	Janitor	On vacation
Andy	Ranger	Alive
"B"	Black Rock Quarry worker
Barbara Martin	Director's Secretary
Barry	Foundation Expedition Member
Bethany Harrington	Parapsychology Department Chief
Bill Everett	Custodian
Booker	Employee	Deceased
Carla Vaughn	Research Specialist
Carol Bishop	Custodian
Caroline Dempsey	Agent	Deceased
Charles Murray	Agent	Deceased
Cho	Ranger	Deceased
Coleman	Ranger First Class	Deceased
Coleman	Ranger	Deceased
Collins	Ranger	Alive
Coppack	Trooper Second Class	Deceased
D. Rodriguez	Employee
David	Black Rock Quarry worker
David Gleeson	Special Investigator
David Lindquist	Operations Assistant
Delgado	Employee	Deceased
Derek Shah	Agent	Deceased
Donna	Employee
Doug	Employee	Deceased
Edna Pierse	Parakinesiology Department Lead Researcher
Ezra Cruz	Researcher	Deceased
Farrow	Ranger
Fischer	Agent
Francis Bertram	Employee
Frank	Maintenance Worker	Alive
Frank	Ranger	Alive
Frank Breaker	Agent	Retired
Frank Rosen	Physician
Graham Potts	Agent	Deceased
Grayson	Agent
Gruman	Agent	Missing
Gustav Wagner	Lead Physicist
Guthrie	Agent
Guy	Ranger	Deceased
Hank Wilder	Security Chief
Hardy	Agent
Hazzard	Ranger	Deceased
Heptonstall	Ranger	Deceased
Hewitt	Agent
Hooton	Ranger Sergeant	Deceased
Hubert Tan	Research Specialist
Jeanne Gibbs	Containment Process Designer	Deceased
Jerrod Gronson	Synchronicity Department Chief
Jim Bozer	Vice Chief of Staff	Alive
John	Employee	Deceased
Jonathan Conner	Agent	Deceased
Karen Harris	Agent and Radio Producer (America Overnight)	Deceased
Kevin Horowitz	Ranger	Deceased
Kiran Estevez	Investigations Department Field Agent	Alive
L. Heinz	Agent	Alive
L. Samson	Agent	Deceased
Lewis McNairy	Chief Excavation Engineer
Linda	Black Rock Quarry worker
Lindsey Malcolm	Agent
Lisa Keenum	External Investigator
Lopez	Ranger Captain	Deceased
Lorenzo Dunne	Researcher
Malcolm Milosz	Threshold Safety Inspector
Marcus Talbot	Senior Cartographer
Mark Gibson	Astralnaut	Deceased
Mike Hill	Employee	Deceased
Morales	Agent	Missing
Mulder	Agent
Nadine	Employee
Nicolay	Employee	Deceased
Ollie	Ranger	Deceased
O'Neil	Ranger	Deceased
Patricia Lewis	Special Agent
Paul Warren	Astralnaut First Class
Paula Bronte	Researcher
Penny Bartwell	Head Archivist (Dead Letters)
Phillip Philson	Junior Agent	Missing
Pinelli	Ranger
Pryce	Ranger
Ramsay	Ranger Captain	Deceased
Randall Polaski	Ranger Second Class	Deceased
Raya Underhill	Contract Threshold Specialist	Alive
Remus	Ranger	Deceased
Robert Ricardo	Special Consultant
Roberts	Agent	Deceased
Rowley	Agent	Alive
Rupert Wells	Ranger	Alive
Saba	Researcher	Alive
Samuel Turnbull	Supervisory Agent
Sarah	Employee	Deceased
Simon Arish	Maintenance Security Chief	Alive
Smith	Employee	Deceased
Steve	Ranger	Alive
Strobridge	Trooper First Class	Deceased
Stu	Employee
Susan	Employee	Deceased
Suvi Patton	Coroner
Ted
Tim Spalder	Special Agent
Thomson	Ranger	Deceased
Tom	Foundation Expedition Member
Tom	Employee
Werner	Researcher
Willett	Trooper Captain	Deceased

Gallery

Black and white logo

Trivia

• The Federal Bureau of Control as well as the general premise of the game is heavily inspired by the SCP Foundation, a fictional organization from an eponymous online collaborative fiction project. Like the FBC, the SCP Foundation is a morally ambiguous and secretive global organization responsible for containing and studying various paranormal/supernatural entities, objects, and phenomena, which often tries to hide from the public. The format of the FBC's containment files for Altered Items is directly based on the SCP Foundation's SCP containment files, beginning with an item's classification number followed by "containment procedures" and then a description of the object and its supernatural effect.
• An Easter egg in the video game Quantum Break (a previous title by Control developer Remedy Entertainment) mentions a "Bureau of Altered World Events." This organization is said to have had ties with Monarch Solutions, the antagonist organization of Quantum Break.