The Neighborhood Watch

“Someone has to protect the block.”

A small, low-level volunteer agency made up of civilians, off-duty workers, retirees, and a handful of underqualified enthusiasts, the Neighborhood Watch exists to monitor minor anomalies, suspicious activity, and low-threat Warp disturbances that larger factions ignore. They lack formal authority, advanced equipment, and often common sense, but make up for it with stubborn determination and surprising bravery.

Founded by a middle-aged office worker and father who refused to feel powerless in a changing world, the group began as a literal neighborhood patrol. Over time, it grew into a loose network of community defenders armed with improvised gear, dime store weapons, and handwritten field manuals. They coordinate through message boards, group chats, and a rotating garage headquarters.

Most major factions consider them harmless amateurs. Civilians, however, often trust them more than distant institutions.

History

The Neighborhood Watch was founded by Martin Bannon, a quiet accounts manager whose life was upended by the Great Break. Watching heroes and operatives reshape the world while he remained behind a desk gnawed at him, but what finally pushed him into action was hearing his son idolize The Paladins striker, Damon Bloodcurse.

Determined to become someone his family could look up to, Martin began training obsessively after work: jogging at night, studying anomaly reports, and teaching himself basic survival tactics. What started as a personal mission turned communal when neighbors began joining him.

They now operate as a local investigative group, responding to disappearances, strange sightings, and low-tier Warp disturbances before they escalate. While they avoid direct confrontation with major threats, they have successfully contained small incidents through teamwork, creativity, and sheer refusal to back down.

Philosophy

The Watch operates on a simple belief: someone has to show up first. While the great factions debate, mobilize, or wait for authorization, they believe ordinary people cannot afford to wait when reality starts breaking on their doorstep. To them, heroism isn’t about power, it’s about responsibility.

Their unofficial creed is:

“Protect the block.” If it threatens their neighborhood, they respond, no matter how small or strange the incident seems.

“People before protocol.” They prioritize evacuations, containment, and reassurance over investigation or glory.

“If not us, then who?” They fully acknowledge they are undertrained, under-equipped, and outmatched. They choose to act anyway.

They do not pretend to be equals to the Paladins, the Academy, or other major powers. In fact, they see themselves as the ones who hold the line until those forces arrive. Their work is messy, improvised, and often thankless, but deeply human. Where elite agents bring order to chaos, this group brings courage to fear.

Methods

The Watch relies on visibility, familiarity, and community trust. Members patrol on foot or in personal vehicles, maintain anomaly sighting logs, and deploy homemade detection tools built from consumer electronics and salvaged components.

Their approach prioritizes:

• Early reporting

• Evacuation assistance

• Evidence gathering

• Stalling tactics until professionals arrive

In combative emergencies, their founder, Martin Bannon, fights himself, backed by a wide range of self trained porch and rooftop snipers.

They are not heroes. They are people who refused to wait for heroes.

Special Equipment

Most members wear civilian clothing, utility vests, and mismatched protective gear crafted out of repurposed metal. They have no "Special" equipment, only items that can be commonly gotten in stores and a few rifles that they crowdfunded to buy.

Their greatest asset isn’t gear, it’s numbers and local knowledge.

Notable Members

Martin Bannon

Age: 46

Role: Founder, field coordinator, and self-appointed “Chief of Operations”
Reputation: Seen by major factions as either admirable or delusional. Locals call him “the guy who actually does something.”

Overview:
Martin Bannon is an unremarkable man who refused to remain unremarkable when the world stopped making sense. A mid-level accounts manager and single father of one, he lacks formal combat training, talent, or prestigious backing. What he possesses instead is stubborn determination and a refusal to let his community become collateral damage.

He is earnest to a fault, prone to over-preparing for situations he barely understands, and fueled by a competitive insecurity he would never admit out loud, particularly regarding larger-than-life heroes his son idolizes. Martin doesn’t want fame. He wants to be someone his child can point to and say, “My dad helps people.”

History:
Martin’s life was ordinary until Warp incidents began occurring closer and closer to home. Watching emergency broadcasts while waiting for professional responders to arrive, sometimes too late, ignited something in him. The breaking point came when a minor anomaly disrupted power to his neighborhood for days, leaving residents frightened and abandoned while larger agencies focused on more catastrophic zones.

Unable to tolerate the helplessness, Martin began training in basic survival, first aid, evacuation procedures, and improvised containment methods. What started as a one-man effort quickly attracted neighbors, off-duty workers, and retirees who wanted to contribute but didn’t know how. Within months, his informal watch group evolved into a volunteer investigative agency.

Though underfunded and lightly equipped, Martin’s organization has successfully handled minor anomalies, rescued civilians, and provided on-the-ground intelligence to larger factions. Some professionals quietly admit that these early interventions have prevented small incidents from becoming major crises.

Martin knows they are out of their depth. He also knows that doing nothing would be worse.

Appearance & Presence:
Martin Bannon has the unmistakable presence of a man who was never meant to be a hero and somehow showed up anyway. He’s partially balding with a shiny crown he tries unsuccessfully to hide by combing the remaining hair forward, and his square-framed glasses are a little too big for his face, giving him a perpetually earnest, slightly dorky look.

Instead of sleek tactical equipment, he wears a volunteer coordinator vest over a tucked-in button-down shirt, sensible cargo pants, and well-worn sneakers. Everything is practical, labeled, and faintly uncool. Laminated ID badges, color-coded tabs, a utility belt that holds a flashlight, whistle, multitool, and snacks. He looks less like an agent and more like the organizer of a community safety fair who refused to go home when things got dangerous.

But then he moves. He throws himself between civilians and danger without hesitation, shouts instructions with surprising clarity, and keeps going long after he should be exhausted. There’s something deeply uncynical about him, a stubborn, dad-level bravery that feels out of place in a world of hardened operatives. People walk away confused, quietly impressed, and a little embarrassed to admit it:

He’s lame. He’s absolutely lame.

So why does he feel like the coolest person in the room when it actually matters?

Doris “Auntie” Halpern

Age: 62
Role: Civilian marksman trainer, Watch auxiliary, Martin’s unsolicited advisor
Reputation: To the Watch, she’s a beloved menace. To outsiders, she’s the unsettling realization that the person watching you from the porch absolutely knows how to use that rifle.

Overview:

Doris Halpern looks like she stepped out of a quiet suburban morning and into the wrong genre entirely. Perpetually dressed in a faded pink nightgown, fuzzy slippers, and a halo of plastic hair rollers, she carries herself with the casual confidence of someone who has absolutely nothing to prove and absolutely no fear. A cigarette is almost always dangling from her lips, ash somehow never falling at the wrong moment.

She is sharp-tongued, invasive, and disarmingly warm all at once. Doris treats Warp anomalies, armed operatives, and cosmic horrors with the same energy she uses to shoo raccoons off her porch. She calls everyone “sweetheart,” “hon,” or “idiot,” sometimes in the same sentence.

To Martin, she is both a godsend and a relentless source of embarrassment.

History:

Doris is a retired competitive sharpshooter who once dominated regional marksmanship circuits under a different last name, one she refuses to talk about. After her husband passed, she filled the silence with community involvement, neighborhood watch programs, and an alarming amount of time spent observing things from her front porch.

When Warp disturbances began affecting the neighborhood, Doris noticed something others didn’t: people panicked because they didn’t feel useful or ready to help or protect. So she began teaching.

At first it was just safety lessons. Then sight alignment. Then wind reading. Before long, the Watch’s now-infamous “Porch Snipers” were quietly forming under her guidance, ordinary residents trained to provide overwatch, warning shots, and precision cover fire from second-story windows and lawn chairs.

She joined Martin not because she believed in heroics, but because she believed someone needed to keep the neighborhood from becoming a crater.

Privately, she has also decided that Martin Bannon is “a nice man who just needs a push,” and has taken it upon herself to orchestrate circumstances where he might meet her niece, whether he likes it or not.

Appearance & Presence:

Doris is a stocky older woman with soft features hardened by decades of squinting down sights and judging people silently. Her pink nightgown is always paired with a heavy cardigan regardless of weather, and her slippers are reinforced in ways that suggest she’s modified them herself.

Her hair is perpetually set in rollers, not because she’s preparing for anything, but because she “might want it nice later.” Smoke curls around her like a permanent aura, the scent of cheap cigarettes announcing her before she speaks.

Her rifle is an old, immaculately maintained long gun. It is usually within arm’s reach, propped casually against a railing, a lawn chair, or Martin’s vehicle when he isn’t looking.

When she takes aim, the casual grandmother facade evaporates, replaced by absolute stillness.

Threat Level & Rivalry

The Watch is not openly hostile to other agencies, but their presence creates a different kind of tension:

They prioritize civilians over mission success. If your party is on a joint operation with the Watch, expect delays, detours, and arguments if bystanders are at risk.

They refuse to abandon a scene. Even when professionals call for withdrawal, Watch members may stay behind to evacuate stragglers or hold a perimeter, complicating extraction plans.

They publicly question collateral damage. Agencies that rely on secrecy, expendable assets, or overwhelming force often find the Watch documenting their actions and turning public opinion against them.

If another faction intimidates or mistreats civilians, the Watch will intervene regardless of the power imbalance. They would rather be outgunned than complicit.

In a hostile encounter or factional conflict, the only main combatant is Martin Bannon himself, but with access to the Watch's "porch snipers", he becomes a great threat. Due to their coordination, morale, and refusal to break. They fight defensively, using terrain, improvised tools, and teamwork to stall stronger opponents.