Unit 871

I swear, by my life and my death, absolute loyalty to the People and the Joint Commission.

I will safeguard its classified information with absolute fidelity.

I will neither speak nor write of the work entrusted to me, save under direct command.

I will carry out the work as it is given, without doubt, without question.

To falter is betrayal. To betray is treason. For the protection of the Coalition and the historical advance of our cause, I bind myself to this duty until my last breath.

Excerpt from the Life-and-Death Loyalty Pledge, signed by all operatives before deployment.

Unit 871 is the JCP’s internal elite branch unit, tasked with reducing the paranormal to material fact that can be explained by science and controlled by the state.

Every anomaly must be studied, weaponised, and sublated into history, and history shows that every mystery can yield to science, and science to state power.

There are many explanations for why Unit 871, the JCP’s branch for paranormal investigation, was founded. Officially, its purpose was simple: 'to remove anything that discredits the scientific community.' So why, then, would Unit 871 be carefully hand-picked if its purpose directly contradicted the Commission? Most members, recruited after 2001 with the establishment of the JCP, are given only one answer: the unit exists because it has always existed.

And perhaps it has—the number 871 carries a shadow, borrowed from a Soviet Ministry of Defense project meant to rival America’s Stargate Program. What began as a Cold War sideshow somehow survived collapse in 1989 and hibernated for over a decade, patiently waiting for its return until the JCP's creation in 2001, when what was once dismissed as pseudoscience resurfaced as the Commission’s deadliest weapon: science must advance faster, and every frontier—even the hidden domains—must be crossed.

Maybe it was decided that the best way to discredit pseudoscience was to master it first.

A tabloid draft pulled minutes before publication, 2010. Survives only in fragments reprinted in SPRHD archives.

Unit 871 is a unit of the Sino-Russian Joint Commission on Pseudoscience, sent to investigate at APERIS alongside the 13th Independent Special Investigations Battalion (Unit 13). Officially, the two units operate as partners. In practice, many within Unit 871 suspect that Unit 13 was assigned to monitor their activities. Unit 871 tends to dismiss Unit 13 as outsiders, regarding themselves as the more authoritative and loyal branch of the state.

Unit 871 considers the US Military's ANCOM and MI6's GRAIL as national rivals to be treated with caution.

Although they are both anomaly investigations departments, Unit 871 opposes the purely documentary Bundesgeheimnissesamt (BGA) for both its more passive methods and its allegiance to NATO.

There are no paranormal phenomena. The West obsesses over them because they are pieces of fear-mongering propaganda designed to destabilise the unity of the Commission. It is a cultural weapon. It is a virus. Belief in spirits and gods is a relic of the old society—the laws of things are not bestowed by some imagined deity, fate, absolute will, or world spirit.

Excerpt from Director Liu Lian’s Lecture Notes at the JCP Training Seminar, titled 'Confucius Did Not Speak of Strange Phenomena’.

Unit 871 does not see itself as a group of occultists. Members are hand-picked for their usefulness from across the Joint Commission of Pseudoscience: be they scientists, ex-military officers, scholars, historians, or archivists. Their files are sealed under the highest classification, and loyalty is ensured through the Life-and-Death Pledge.

Officially, methods such as Daoist alchemy, Feng Shui, or parapsychology are treated by members as labeled sciences, stripped of superstition and repurposed for research.

While personal belief is tolerated, appealing to it in place of proper procedure is strictly prohibited. Even so, reports persist of members carrying tokens of personal 'superstitious' belief while in the field. When this occurs, Liu intervenes as often as needed to restore focus to principle.

Every member of Unit 871 answers to Director Liu Lian. Should a mistake or breach occur, it is she who must answer before the Commission—and it is from her hand that consequences will follow.