The Facility is a megadungeon that contains a wide variety of anomalous artefacts and player characters. At approximately the start of the campaign, an incident occurs and reliable containment can no longer be guaranteed. Once lowly assistants, security guards, maintenance workers, and test subjects, the player characters must explore, salvage, improvise, negotiate, and kill to survive until rescue arrives.

Artefact Classification Identifier (ACID)

The Organization likes to think it takes paperwork seriously. Within the Facility, artefacts are assigned an identifier based on their Mode, Status, and a unique two-part numerical designation (for example: Oρ0255.018, LΔ0023.001, Eτ0994.999). This identifier is listed on all associated paperwork, both the outside and inside of the artefact's containment cell, as well as label stickers on all samples, byproducts, and research team files regarding the artefact in question.

Mode

The Mode is a Latin letter that describes the artefact’s scope and mobility. The Organization currently recognizes five Modes
O: Object
The most common classification. Some objects can be left in a properly secured box (consider: radioactive waste); some objects are world-ending threats (consider: a dinosaur-killer asteroid). Most are somewhere in between.

E: Entity
Anomalous creatures, swarms, people, ghosts, etc. When there’s debate between what’s considered an Entity or an Object, Research considers its nutritional requirements, mobility, and stimulus responses. For the GM: if you’d stat it up as a monster, it’s an Entity. If not, it’s an Object.

L: Location
A physical space with anomalous properties. Some are very small and can be cordoned off without much trouble; larger locations require extensive Public Relations disinformation campaigns and/or the construction of specialized Facilities. While alternate dimensions are Locations; their entry points are sometimes classified as Objects, Phenomena, or even Entities.

P: Phenomenon
Anomalous events occur that are not related to specific Objects, Entities, or Locations. A spontaneous anomalous gathering, a UFO sighting, a memory hole, a disease with no known vector but anomalous symptoms, an unnatural weather pattern — these are all different Phenomenon artefacts. Correctly identified and unfairly lambasted as a wastebasket taxon.

C: CLARAA (CLAssification Requires Additional Analysis)
Correctly identified and fairly skewered as a wastebasket taxon, but one that fulfills an essential function: a placeholder in the Mode field on forms while no one knows what they’re dealing with.

Optimistic researchers regularly submit proposals to reclassify the Organization’s entire artefact catalogue into a novel series of ostensibly-more-rational Modes. These proposals are regularly rejected by tired administrative staff.

Status

The Status is a Greek letter that corresponds to the artefact’s current containment requirements. I have listed ten, which leaves 13 more for enterprising GMs to fill out. Status does not directly correlate to danger. The combination of uppercase and lowercase is intended to maximize the difference between Greek and Latin shapes given the choice of letters.

π Pi
Reliably contained with passive countermeasures. It’s in a box — maybe a big one, but not one that anyone has to check on unless something goes wrong.

ρ Rho
Reliably contained with active countermeasures. Active guard rotations watching a portal, entities that need to be regularly fed and watered.

λ Lambda
Temporarily contained; research into reliable containment underway. Lambda labs are the throbbing heart of most Facilities.

τ Tau
In active use by the Organization. Locations converted into Facilities, artefacts critical to the containment of other artefacts, entities on payroll.

Δ Delta
Containment efforts are ongoing; situation subject to rapid change. Field agents handle Delta artefacts until they’re handed off to a Lambda team. During a containment breach, all artefacts on site are subject to Delta procedures until a Research Lead signs off on paperwork confirming successful recontainment.

Κ Kappa
Cannot be safely contained, monitored, or left alone. Disposal is necessary. Heavy weapons are authorized.

β Beta
Contained by another Organization. Secondary classifications are occasionally awarded to Beta artefacts, but due to significant political and ideological conflicts between Organizations, data is usually insufficient.

Ψ Psi
Externally monitored, uncontained, further containment efforts unnecessary. UFOs are Psi until they crash or start abducting people.

χ Chi
Not contained, but containment is not a priority. Cryptids are Chi until they start eating more people than Public Relations can explain away.

Ω Omega
Disposed of, dead, finished, gone. Records are stored in Archives in case it shows up again.

Class

When combined, Mode and Status are referred to as a Class. For example:

Eτ Esoteric Assets are under the purview of Inhuman Resources; this is where anomalous individuals on payroll are siloed — alongside various other useful entities, like the Anti-Radioactive Barnacles and Digit the Numbers Station Dog.
The Organization’s largest containment sectors are warehouses for Oπ artefacts, which require minimal personnel after setup. Some O-Pi artefacts don’t even need bespoke containment cells; they just need to be isolated until they arrive at their temporal origin point, their legitimate owners come to claim them, they finish dissolving into inert mundane chemicals, the Organization figures out how to weaponize them, or the heat death of the universe.
PΩ refers to events and phenomena that have ended and are not expected to recur. After the mandatory 18-month monitoring period (subject to change based on established periodicity), everyone involved is more than happy to shove another case file into the capable hands of Archives Division.
Lρ location artefacts often necessitate the construction of on-site Facilities due to an observed tendency for other artefacts to manifest nearby or within their confines. Some are even reclassified as Lτ if their anomalous properties are useful in further containment efforts.
CΚ artefacts are Research’s worst nightmare. Uncontainable due to their level of danger, unclassifiable due to their uncontainability, handed off to Operations’ ludicrously well-equipped and violent Kappa Teams. Archives has entire bankers’ boxes of CΩ files with incident and cover-up reports that are mostly black marker by volume.

Admin hates the concept of “secondary classifications”. Researchers who insist on marking up new files with meaningless Status strings like τΨρ or χΔ are reprimanded and forced to attend mandatory classes on how to not waste Oversight’s time.

Numerical Identifier

The first part of an artefact’s numerical identifier is a unique four digit number that distinguishes the artefact from others in its class. When an artefact is reclassified, its ID number may have to change to avoid conflicts, and tracking ACIDs across multiple reclassifications (especially if a new artefact fills its previous slot) is a well-known administrative headache.

The second part of an artefact’s numerical identifier is a unique three digit number that tracks the instance of the artefact. For example, if a flock of thirteen anomalous birds is contained, they receive IDs XXXX.001 through XXXX.013. If one lays three eggs, the eggs become instanced as .014 through .016, and retain those designations after hatching. If one of the birds dies, its instance ID is not reused.

Some artefacts end up with more than 999 instances. The paperwork to add additional digits to an identifier requires sign-offs from Archives and IT, and so many artefacts end up with dozens or hundreds of instances sharing 999. Researchers regularly raise the alarm that this will lead to catastrophic breaches, but so far no administrative action has been taken.

Research teams nickname their artefacts, because the ACID is a mouthful intended for databases rather than human speech. There are no formal conventions or best practices for artefact nicknames, which causes all the problems you would expect — nickname duplication, inappropriate names (disciplinary action recommended), fist fights in the sector canteen (disciplinary action taken), and misleading nicknames that have nonetheless stuck (latest casualty report for Eρ0443.001 “Li’l Buppy” is on file in Operations).

Designer Notes

Everyone has tried to come up with a new classification system, or fairly decided that it’s a bad idea. I wrote the ACID with an eye towards gameplay; to provide players with actionable intelligence but leave details to further research. A π artefact is not going to end up on a random encounter table while its containment holds, so players can probably rest near it without incurring additional dangers. An empty containment cell marked “Eρ” lets the players know there’s something on the loose, though they’ll have to do proper legwork (or get jumped by it) to figure out what. Several of the stranger Status classifications raise immediate questions:

Beta — “Whose is this, and how can we contact them to learn more?”
Kappa — “Where is it right now, and how do we get as far away from it as possible?”
Tau — “What were we using it for, and can we get it back under control?”
Omega — “What do the old files say about it, and how do we get to Archives?”