Celeste west

Things we know so far:
The date is shortly after the American Civil War.
Remnants of Southern troops continue to operate as hold-out guerilla fighters, though they are typically characterised as bandits. Perhaps accurately.
The US government maintains a secret service, of which we are members (possibly).
During the war the US government engaged in secret weapons development. This gave rise to a number of steampunk technologies. There is no general evidence yet that these technologies are in common use. That is: while we found a ray weapon, the suggestion was that this was a specific instance rather than anything generally available. During the adventure we destroyed the device, and it may be that the specific role of this organisation is to snuff out this technology and prevent a shift from the technology as it existed historically. Or not. We don’t know yet.
Austria is active in the US secret intelligence business.
There was significant evidence of sophisticated double-dealing between the intelligence agencies of the US and the former CSA.