Pentex

Pentex is a multi-national conglomerate, one of the largest in the world.

Originally an oil and mining company, Pentex is now a holding company with a host of subsidiaries covering every industry. Pentex operates covertly through these subsidiaries.

Technocratic Union companies are used to control and monitor. Pentex companies are used to enrage, pollute and destroy. Neither truly care about profit.

Seattle is home to the western branch office of Pentex in the United States.

First team

True nature

Pentex has near limitless supernatural resources as well, employing Banes, Black Spiral Dancers, Fomori and, if the rumors are true, even a few Kindred in upper management positions. But while the corporation is certainly tainted, many of its operations further the Wyrm's goals without supernatural assistance through the standard practices of big business. Such schemes are perpetrated by normal humans who are "just doing their jobs," corrupted by nothing more than apathy and despair.

Its main agenda is the spiritual, moral, and environmental corruption of the planet.

Pentex wants to flush the world itself down the toilet. They aren't just bad, they aren't just greedy, they aren't just "evil", they are direct servants of the Wyrm & thus the enemies of all of existence itself. When they "win" the lights get turned off & everyone goes home. Everyone. That's it, kaput, no more anything. Thank you for playing. A loser is you!

To this end they specifically make products that hasten the end of the world. Not just weapons of war, not just things that harm the environment, but products that are specifically designed to corrupt the users very soul to hate the world & bring about the end time.

Corporate zombie supersoldiers, cybernetic killing machines, & questionable consumer goods that harm the environment is just another Wednesday with the Technocrats - Progenitors, Iteration X, & Syndicate respectively while NWO typically handles marketing. Demonic powered self-loathing fomori who seek the absolute total destruction of all of existence including themselves, a viral marketing ad campaign to get kids to eat candy colored Tidal laundry pods, & a graphics card arms race designed to paperclip the universe into oblivion while making you loath your fellow man? Now that's the Pentex Guarantee!

History

Pentex began its existence as Premium Oil, under a man named Jeremiah Lassater, in 1865. He was a ruthless bastard, imitating contemporaries such as Rockefeller, Morgan, and Reynolds. While personally inspecting a drilling site where several accidents had occurred, Lassater became trapped in an excavated tunnel. Years before, the Uktena had imprisoned a tremendous Bane there; now, the thing engaged Lassater in a psychic battle of wills. While the Wyrm-creature couldn't dominate Lassater, it was capable of killing him. Lassater bargained for his life, promising that the Wyrm minion could work through him to influence the development of Premium Oil. The creature agreed, and the company began its long, dark descent.

Lassater shaped Premium into a powerful and wealthy corporation, capable of giving even Rockefeller's monolithic Standard Oil competition. But the old man couldn't maintain control over the giant he'd spawned. Gradually, Lassater cut himself off from the company, and after contracting syphilis, committed suicide. He left the reins of command to his son Jacob, an incompetent playboy. Apparently, the forces above weren't pleased; Jacob died in a yachting accident soon after. Colin Jenner, a major shareholder, followed Jacob as company president in 1913. He convinced other top shareholders to form a board of five directors to oversee the company. Jenner was himself influenced by the same Wyrm creature that had corrupted Lassater; he was mildly surprised to discover that several of the other board members also had dealings with the Wyrm.

Jenner only lasted until 1917 when he died in a tragic, fiery automobile accident. Board member Fulton Clark replaced him; soon after, a pack of Black Spiral Dancers approached Clark about an alliance, explaining that he was Kinfolk and should help them out. Clark was no fool; he saw the advantage of such allies and gladly let several of the Spirals take over key positions. A similar partnership ensued with certain elements within the Sabbat in 1947, again at the behest of Clark, an act that put Harold Zettler on the board of directors. This was Clark's last action; he died in an oil fire while touring drilling sites in the Mediterranean. Peter Culliford was elected the new chairman, a position he still holds today.

Subsidiaries

Projects

  • Project Deepwater: A project of the Void Engineers financed by Pentex
  • Project Odyssey (OD): Recruit Psychics. Led by Kiro Yamazaki, a servant of the Karnala, Urge of Desire.
  • Project Iliad (IL): Responsible for Genesis (Fomorach). They kidnap those seeking adventures and excitement to transform them into Fomori. They use Howling Insanities banes.
  • Project Lycaon: Create Mockery Breeds. Overtaken by Frederick Appleton, a Yeren himself.
  • Section 12: They try to cure/spread Lycanthropy.
  • Project Aeneid: Combine Iliad and Odyssey.

Give them nice generic names. The name of a corporation, in many ways, tells you the age of a corporation:

Old old corporations (19th century) have names, as in, are named after the actual founder of the company: Wells-Fargo. Krupp. Roth.

Old corporations (early 20th century) have names that are generic but descriptive. General Electric. Universal Lever. International Business Machines.

Mid-20th century corporations have names that are obsure but with meaning. Raytheon (light of the gods). Chevron (shield).

Modern corporations are engaged with a neurolinguistic sorcery, wherein consultants are paid millions to develop some neologism that is the corporation name. Enron. Moderna. Synergia.

Pentex's majority shareholders are Black Rock and Vanguard.

For example, Pentex runs O'Tolleys, which is obviously a rip-off of McDonald's.

Book of the Fallen has Garrick Browne, who Satyros Brucato has stated to be based on Elon Musk.

The problem is, players will metagame, and rigorously shun O'Tolleys or other things that stand out as WoD/ storyteller creations. If the players are given an option between Jack and the Box and O'Tolleys, they'll go to the Jack in the Box.

So what you have to do is what Rage Across the Internet suggests: use all real world brands, but obfuscate it.

So the Pentex fast food chain is going to be Burger King in one game, KFC in the next. The players will never really be quite sure of what's going to be a tainted corporation, and what brand will just be an ordinary capitalist enterprise.. Basically, before any chronicle you should play a certain amount of 'Mega-corporation roulette', such as "this time, Walmart will be a Shinzui subsidiary, Home Depot will be the Pentex front, the Camarilla own Lowe's, and the Syndicate runs Best Buy; but in my next chronicle, Walmart is Pentex, Home Depot Camarilla, Shinzui is Ikea, and Radio Shack is a money making scheme for a cabal of greedy Nocker changelings…."

Another thing that bears mention is that the World of Darkness is darker, more corrupt, more gothic, and more punk than our own.

So in some ways, it's a world where all the urban legends are true: that one woman in Tennessee really did find a finger in her chili (it was proven to be a hoax in our world). Walt Disney actually was cryogenically frozen, and his remains lie hidden beneath the Cinderella Palace in Disney Land, etc., etc.

Backwards or harmful messages, but on bland boy-band / teen pop albums instead of the obvious suspects, like Ozzy or Judas Priest records?

Also: Pentex grows SoundCloud rappers in a vat somewhere and their face tattoos incite madness if you gaze on them too long, like reading the Necronomicon?

I once drew on my knowledge of medicine and had Magadon enter clinical testing for a new formulation of cholinesterase inhibitor (I.e., cognitive sparing drugs for Alzheimer’s and other neurocognitive disorders) that not only restored memories, it created a hive mind. The end goal was, once it was on the market for elderly dementia patients, to use it for former soldiers with combat-related TBIs in order to create hordes of hive minded warriors for First Teams.

Things went wrong, though, so instead, there was a hive mind of rogue brain-eating old folks.

It was my second VTM game and my ST decided to include Pentex as one of the potential allies/antagonists. We eliminated one of their agents and found a phone on their person and it was a super smartphone with an AI in it that basically worked like Alexa, but more intelligent. It also had a bunch of other fun, silly features as well. We regularly worked with Pentex, but everyone else got one of these phones instead of me despite me saying every time "Next time we get one of those phones I call it" and OOC this is what caused me to work to betray the coterie because all the players were dicks and screwed me over for shits and giggles.

I'm building the prologue for my own campaign and I've planned for two new acquisitions on the Wyrm's fold that I feel they would be appropriate: one of them is a bank (its almost a regular bank, but those are incredibly evil as they are) and the second is a streaming platform.

Ok, the obvious one is that James Kiker is a take-off on Rupert Murdoch. And I think Benjamin Rushing may be based upon Jeffrey Epstein. But what about the others? Do you have good fan theories on who are the IRL analogues to the other Pentex leaders?

With some, it's obvious: Pentex has O'Tolleys (McDonalds), and Endron (Exxon).

And Pentex owns…

Coke
Sprint
Verizon
Mastercard
Home Depot
Nike

In 1893, there were a couple power players: Premium Oil Corporation and Proctor House of Boston. Premium started as a petroleum company, and took off after Ford’s great invention hit the big time. (An aside: you’re welcome.) It expanded rapidly, going from a commodity-focused operation into a holding company for a variety of small, rapidly expanding business.

The other side of that coin, Proctor House, was one of the Syndicate’s oldest and most-lucrative American operations. With its investment acumen, it teamed up with Premium to discover and acquire a host of up-and-coming companies in various fields, notably technology and weapons manufacturing.

Premium and Proctor merged, becoming Pentex Incorporated — which I’m sure you’ve heard of. Within the Syndicate, the new corporation merged with our Clearinghouses, which back then focused on refining other Conventions’ tech for the Masses. With that, Special Projects Division was born, and the Syndicate had its own in-house technology and weapons manufacturer.

Normally, that’s the sort of thing that would be held liable to Financiers, since Pentex was about revenue flow. But the deal SPD struck with the Board involved keeping Financiers out of its business. Likewise, Disbursements doesn’t ask questions regarding Pentex’s expenses… partly because Pentex has, since 1893, handled its own fiscal requirements.

If it sounds like maybe SPD and Pentex are one and the same, and maybe they’re separate, then you understand the relationship about as well as most Syndicate agents. It’s best to think of them like a married couple: technically two separate entities, but every-thing’s all intertwined.

Special Projects handled all sorts of technology and products meant for both Enlightened operations and use for the Masses: weapons, home entertainment, books and magazines, household appliances, computer systems, and so on. It didn’t have a chance to get into the smartphone market, but SPD’s efforts would likely have made NWO’s Q Division look like last years’ model.

"Here’s the funny thing: Pentex kept sending its quarterly dividends to the Syndicate. So, whatever process was in place to make sure the Syndicate’s cash flow wasn’t interrupted still worked, even if there wasn’t anyone around to deal with it. It still does today, a decade later. From that perspective, Pentex operates exactly as it did before the Anomaly, at least as far as the world’s concerned. However, it hasn’t delivered any hypertech since it went silent."

-Syndicate Revised

Officially speaking, Pentex still pays into the Syndicate, even if they have no control over Pentex.

Ardus Industries (waste management)
Avalon Incorporated (analogue/expy of Hasbro or Mattel)
Circinus Brands (tobacco/cigarettes- analogue of Camel) Consolidex Funds (investment/stock brokers- analogue of Cerberus Group/Parnassus)
Endron International (oil company- analogue of Exxon/Enron)
Atlas International (nuclear power company)
Easton Exploratory Energies (alternative energy research) Falcon Motors (electric cars)
Full Force Solutions (personal weapons/police equipment- analogue to Axon) Gaia Research Company (PR/ostensible non-profit 'biome research' foundation) Good House International (paper/lumber- analogue of Georgia Pacific)
Harold and Harold Mining (mining- analogue/expy of Anglo American)
Hallahan Fishing (fishing) Captain Bill's (seafood restaurants- analogue/expy of Long John Silver's)
Ichibashi (sushi restaurant chain)
Herculean Firearms (guns- analogue/expy of Taurus International)
Koch (guns- analogue of Heckler & Koch GmBh)
Herrick's (retail/groceries- analogue of Kroger)
Homogeneity Incorporated (gay therapy/ conversion camps)
Incognito (web forum- analogue/expy of 4Chan/8Chan)
King Breweries- (alcohol- analogue/expy of Anheuser Busch/InBev)
Blue Stripe Beer (analogue/expy of Pabst Blue Ribbon) Woody Creek Bourbon (analogue/expy of Knob Creek) Ruskaiya vodka (analogue/expy of Stolichnya)
Dragon Valley Wines (analogue/expy of Gallo Brothers/Stella Rosa)
Magadon (pharmaceuticals- analogue/expy of Merck/Pfizer)
Autumn Health Management Systems (senior/hospice care)
Aesop Research Company (cosmetic and product testing)
General Health and Nutrition (vitamin/supplement stores- analogue of GNC)
Nastrum Enterprises (defense contractor/weapon systems- analogue of Northrop/Raytheon)
Mars Electronics (defense electronics/ avionics) NikNak (smartphones/ mobile games- analogue to Electronic Arts)
Omni Television (TV- analogues to Fox/Fox News Corporation)
O'Tolleys (fast food- analogue to McDonalds)
PCP (computer games- analogue to Paradox Interactive)
Black Dog Game Factory (role-playing games- analogue to White Wolf)
Death Lord Games (role-playing games- analogue to Necromancer Games)
Rainbow Incorporated (plastics- analogue to Union Carbide/Dow Chemical)
RED Network (TV- analogue to the One America Network)
Shade, Inc. (Private investigators/intelligence)
Siren Cosmetics (cosmetics- analogue of Avon)
Tellus Enterprises (electronics/computers- analogue of Sony)
Sunburst Computers (computers/mobile phones- analogue of Apple)
Vesuvius Incorporated (publishing- analogue of Penguin/Random House)
Young and Smith (food and personal care products- analogue of Proctor & Gamble/ Johnson & Johnson)

So think about that: in the World of Darkness, Apple, Fox, InBev, Exxon, Raytheon, Merck, Kroger's, Avon, and McDonald's are all ultimately subsidiaries of the same mega-corporation. That's how big and omnipresent Pentex is.

O'Tolley's is definitely a McDonald's expy. The Revised corebook has a picture of a Bone Gnawer with a burger and soda takeout.

Endron isn't Exxon. Endron is Enron, which went out of business around 2000 due to accounting scandals.

Pentax is essentially a massive worm cult. The CEOs are the head worshipers and the black spiral dancers are the priests. Pentax relies on the dancers to treat with spirits for their connection to the worm. Pentax employees are beholden to the dancers for Direction. There is a strange symbiotic relationship between the two. Whatever the dancers say goes Pentax has to agree. It is more appropriate to think of Pentax as a religion of the worm more than an organization of the worm.

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page revision: 15, last edited: 03 Mar 2023 03:14
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