Eighth Direction

The Napravleniye Pyat'-Vosem' (GRU-N58 for short, or even just N58, pronounced N-five-eight), more commonly referred to in English as the Eighth Direction, is an elite military intelligence unit dedicated to keeping Russia free from vampiric influence.

History[]

As of the 1970s, the Red Army foreign military intelligence arm known as the Main Intelligence DIrectorate (GRU) was effectively subservient to the state security ministry of the KGB, despite the two agencies being completely separate on paper. To that end, General Ieronim Arkhipov, commander of the GRU Fifth Directorate responsible for operational military intelligence, set up a covert office to identify and isolate KGB influence within the Red Army. That office, the Eighth Direction (восьмое управление/Vos'moe Upravleniye), eventually realized that a ring of immortal conspirators all but ran critical sectors of the Soviet Union in secret and merely used the KGB as their primary tool of enforcement.

To what degree, if at all, the Eighth Direction played a part in the fall of the Communist Party, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the Baba Yaga disinformation campaign remains unknown outside of the agency itself. Certainly the GRU has no incentive to reveal its possible role in dismantling its own government. And it has much yet to fear from its new masters. Brujah influence remains pervasive at the highest levels of the Kremlin, as former KGB colonels with archives full of secrets become oligarchs and Mafiya lords with billions to spend on bribes.

Certainly someone close to Putin engineered the abrupt 2009 resignation of GRU head Valentin Korabelnikov, who had been General Arkhipov’s protégé. Without Korabelnikov’s support and protection, the Eighth Direction — which had eagerly joined the Second Inquisition in 2004 — was forced to scale back its efforts.

Starting in the early 2020s, In coordination with the Akritai, the N58 has begun to leak information to the Vatican and a few other partners in hopes of undermining their confidence in the US/UK lobe of the Coalition, most notably an extended XScope video of drone strikes carried out under FIRSTLIGHT operational direction that actually targeted mortal insurgents in Colombia. N58 has also penetrated the UK’s JTRG Chalkboard program and have come to the chilling conclusion that it is a political hit list with very few vampires on it.

Operations[]

The Eighth Direction is infamous for being far more subtle than many of its counterparts within the Coalition, preferring kidnapping, extortion, and false flag operations to the typical "Shake and Bake" tactics employed by other members. To date, their strike teams are considered on par with the Vatican's Entity Special Operations Group in terms of effectiveness. They even maintain their own storehouses of artifacts and occult knowledge through a long-standing alliance with the Akritai.

Because of this emphasis on subtlety and self-reliance, N58 does not play well with others - particularly its American affiliates within FIRSTLIGHT and the IAO. The main point of contention ultimately stems from their belief that - apart from the Vatican - the other allied agencies are focused on individual geopolitical goals rather than the actual supernatural threat they all face.

On the ground, N58 prefers to use surgical violence. The overwhelming force doctrine exemplified by FIRSTLIGHT and the UK’s SO13 is seen as counterproductive to the Russians who see themselves as professionals who are always keeping an eye on the long game. Small N58 UTR squads of well-coordinated (and fully briefed) Spetsnaz troopers destroy or capture their targets, then often plant captured paraphernalia from a rival blankbody faction. (To preserve plausibility, N58 often strikes just before dawn.) False flag operations are a specialty of the GRU, and N58 have even been known to disguise themselves as local paramilitary or foreign troops when on mission.

References[]

• VTM: Second Inquisition (book), p. 125-127
• VTM: Camarilla (book), p. 78