SKUL

SKUL: HISTORY, MISSION, COMMAND AND OPERATIONAL STRUCTURE

ACTIVATED: April 26, 1975
MISSION: Prevent loss of life by eliminating the werewolf insurgency.
MOTTO: Per tenebras venimus tamquam lux – Through the darkness we come as light.

In early 1975, four scientists who were leaders in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, and archeology were shown top-secret video footage that could only be described as the harbinger to the end of the human race.

No...They had not just viewed footage of nuclear fallout centered in a major U.S. metropolis; however, the grainy footage revealed a force that each man realized could be just as cataclysmic.  The footage revealed the bloody and grizzled aftermath of a demolished Native American village located on an island in the Aleutian Chain off the mainland of Alaska.

The footage, compliments of the Coast Guard who had been alerted by the village elder in a desperate attempt to get help before it was too late, was also accompanied by a series of still photos.   Those photos, taken by a free-lance photo journalist moments before her own death, depicted an enormous beast with blood dripping from his maw onto a broad chest of thick, matted, gray fur.  Viscera hung from a massive, claw-tipped paw, and its eyes were glowing yellow, hunger-filled orbs of sickness and hate.

Neither bear nor wolf, the scientists were looking into the eyes of what they would come to recognize as the most powerful force on the planet – a werewolf.

Designated Advanced Research Group 223 this small think-tank of experts worked uninhibited, hidden deep within an obscure Department of Defense contract.  They were given top-secret security clearance, a bottomless budget and endless amount of resources, no red tape to fight through, and six months to come up with answers for eliminating the threat before it found its way to the mainland.    Pragmatic men, the four scientists’ first order of business was to visit the annihilated village, lay eyes on the destruction, and meet the handful of helpless villagers who had been away hunting at the time of the werewolf’s visit.  Seeing they were there for answers and to help, the villagers shared the legend of the Saumen Kars.  The Saumen Kars were demonic man-beasts of unfathomable power that, to the scientists’ ears at least, were being described in much the same way Bigfoot might be.  This legend planted the initial seeds of worry that the problem was much, much larger than initially thought.  From there, the scientists visited various tribes in the Southwest where they heard the legends of the Skin Walkers.  The elders described the Skin Walkers as demonic beings with the ability to change their appearance, steal their victims’ faces, and read human thoughts. 

They were also said to feed off of human flesh.

Lastly, they interviewed elders from tribes historically found along the Great Lakes.  They spoke of an ancient demon known as the Wendigo.  To those tribes, the Wendigo were crazed, half-beast, half-man creatures that craved human flesh and brought wintry winds, plaques and famines upon the tribes.

Reviewing their information, the four scientists purged the unrelated nuances of each legend and boiled them down to their similarities:

• Ancient races with similar folklore
• Half-men, half-beast demons that preyed on human flesh and blood
• Beasts that were capable of great destruction, fearing nothing save one thing…silver 

They were forced to wonder what the odds were that three distinct areas of the country – inhabited by ancient cultures of differing ideology and separated by thousands of miles – could possibly develop such similar folklore.  As fear threatened to overwhelm them, the scientists began pouring over the details of hundreds of unsolved murders across the country, finding more times they any sane person could wish, reports of mauled bodies with huge gouges of flesh ripped away.  Marks that could only have been made by an animal.  A very, very large animal.

It didn’t take long for the collective of intellectuals to realize their problem was much larger than a random attack on a remote Alaskan village.  With terror raking their minds, the scientists faced a startling fact.  The werewolves were already on the mainland, entrenched in nearly every major metropolis in the country, and had been so for an incredibly long time.

Realizing they were in a race against time, the scientists took their findings and theories to the men they reported to within in the Department of Defense.  They requested arms and equipment of silver along with enough men to handle what they referred to as a potential disaster of apocalyptic proportions. 

They requested platoon-strength numbers – at minimum.

In a nauseating show of bureaucracy, they got five men.

Those five, however, were war-hardened, mission oriented warriors hailing from various points on the United States Armed Forces compass.

They were led by Lieutenant Shamus Mactavish, a hardboiled member of the Navy’s SEAL team 1, a veteran of three combat deployments to Vietnam.  His second in command or 2IC was Johnny Thompson, a First Lieutenant in the United States Army Special Forces Operational Detachment-Alpha, otherwise known as the Green Berets.  Be Good to his teammates, Thompson recruited Staff Sergeant Danny Tate – call sign, Wombat.  Wombat, a Green Beret from a sister platoon, had worked with Be Good on several occasions, and was a man Thompson knew he could trust to keep a level head under fire.  Tate was subsequently instrumental in the recruitment of Stan Tilley.  Tilley, now a Master Sergeant, had been a mentor to Tate when the then young Specialist was enduring the grueling Ranger training course.  Rounding out the five was a young Sergeant from the United States Marine Corps named Jake Townsend.  Slick, as he was known, had crossed paths with Mactavish in the latter days of the Vietnam War.  So struck by the man’s ethos, integrity, and honor was Shamus that he personally asked Townsend to join their ranks.

Those five men supported by the four original scientists and two case officers on loan from the CIA took to the monumental task of training to do battle with an unknown enemy of immense strength, speed and also questionable mortality.

The training was relentless with the only cessation in the program coming each evening when the group would debrief the day’s training and gathered intelligence over beer.  These bull sessions took on a no-holds-barred approach, and if someone wasn’t pulling their weight, it was pointed out and worked through.  Oftentimes, the debriefings would become heated, but in the end, the team would be better for it.  As legend has it, it was during one of these very heated bull sessions that Tate slammed his beer on the table and yelled, “Well, dammit, I’ve had my ass chewed on just about enough for this outfit, and I don’t even know what to fuckin’ call the damned thing!”

One of the scientists, taken aback by Wombat’s outburst, meekly replied, “Early on we called ourselves the Section of Knowledge and Understanding of Lycans.”  He shrugged and added sheepishly, “Though I guess that’s quite a mouthful.”

The room became quiet for a quick second until Shamus exclaimed in a heavy Bostonian accent, “Now, hold on, doc.”  He scribbled something on a paper napkin, looking quizzically at the words and made another mark on the paper before holding it up.  “First thing you learn in the military is there is an acronym for any and everything, even if it’s not needed."

The others leaned close and slowly nodded their heads, recognizing what he had done.  Shamus had underlined the first letter of every word, taking out the of and replacing it with a hyphen.  It read:

Section of Knowledge and Understanding - Lycan

“Damnations, I like it!” Tilley affirmed proudly.

“SKUL,” Be Good, with a broad, toothy grin on his face, was said to have been the first person to ever utter the word.  "Now that's just some hard soundin' shit right there."

On a hot July night just two weeks later, SKUL commenced its first mission, Operation Full Eclipse, on the streets and in the buildings of New Orleans.

The rest, as they say, is history.

***

With seven operational platoons housed on a retrofitted cruise liner capable of war-fighting, today’s SKUL is light years away from what it was in 1975.  Commanded by Rear Admiral Bartavious Briggs and seconded by Captain Conroy Taggert, SKUL is a force of nearly two hundred and fifty operators with twice the number of intelligence, computer and communications analysts.  At any given time, two platoons of seventy shooters are capable of conducting missions based on actionable intel at a moment’s notice with a third platoon on constant, twenty-four hour recall status.

Each platoon is led by a platoon leader and each team within the platoon, a team leader.  The men operating within the platoons are combat veterans recruited from various special operations units.  Most have multiple deployments under their belt, and all have shown a mature, keen intellect and the ability to use it to make sound decisions.  To a man, the shooters working under SKUL’s shield are mission oriented men who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, have shown an inability to so much as utter the words I quit, cannot fathom the idea of failure, and are collectively, the most accomplished killing force walking the planet today.