Sunday, September 16, 2012

First Defense

In my previous post, I mentioned that First Defense was a campaign concept I once created for the Alternity science fiction roleplaying game. The concept has been completely reworked and made part of a more detailed campaign concept for Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition that I call the Guardian Chronicles. First Defense is the Third Chronicle; each chronicle is its own heroic era set in the campaign's long timeline. Here are the basic of Chronicle Three:

The Basics
Many Chronicle Three heroes (but not all) are part of an elite military unit known as First Defense created by the World Union Alliance, which replaced the United Nations in 2100. First Defense is responsible for the defense of the WUA and its holding throughout the solar system. First Defense is the military division of Department 7, a black ops agency that was created by the WUA in 2125 after the worlds’ leaders discovered the existence of Watchdog Station built by the First Guardian who had died defending the Earth from an alien interloper in the late 1990s.

This First Guardian, who had called himself Darkstar, recorded a message detailing the existence of the evil force known throughout the universe for its destructive influence and incorporeal nature. The Darkness, as Darkstar called it, enslaved entire species, bending them to its awful will. The alien interloper had been a member of one of these servant species. Darkstar told them of the great gift (and curse) that had been passed to him through the will of a conclave of dying aliens who had been the previous species to wear the mantle of Guardians of Creation, who he called the Predecessors.

The Predecessors had not only passed to him the Energy but also the technical knowledge of the all the previous Guardian species. He built Watchdog Station to store as much of this information as he could and created a powerful AI to run the station after his death, which he had known would happen. The AI, called Watchdog, contained part of the First Guardian’s knowledge and experiences. It stood to defend the Earth from the Darkness and was able to build sophisticated prototypes of highly advanced technology beyond even what man had accomplished by 2125.

The First Guardian's message suggested the formation of First Defense and that such a force would be needed within 100 to 200 years, minimum. The creation of First Defense only came about after a heated debate as to whether or not the First Guardian had spoken the truth or if it was a trick by some unknown alien force. (Darkstar hadn't been popular with the world leaders of the late 20th Century.) It took nearly 75 years to bring the countries of the world together to form First Defense and another 75 years to decipher the key knowledge required to create the process of genetic manipulation.

Department 7 was given control of Watchdog Station and the organization has uncovered that agents of the Darkness have already found their way to Earth and sow the seeds of dissent into the WUA and civilian organizations around the world and throughout the solar system. The colonies on Mars are particularly hard pressed, as are the mining facilities orbiting Jupiter and Saturn. Clandestine raiders attack convoys and patrols out of the asteroid field, although not all of them are under the sway of the Darkness. Spies, saboteurs, assassins, and super powered minions are causing problems from one end of the solar system to the other.

The year is 2275.

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