Chaos fiend campaign setting

[Beholder]

I started a Thread in the Hero System discussion section and it almost changed to a campaing setting discussion. Which is fun, but I thought i'd start adding my campaing material here. It will also make it's appeareances on my personal web site soon.

 

I don't know at what speed I will update this section but I will do so at my pace.

 

[i will update this post when I am completely done with the history but I will tell you, in subsequent posts, when I make updates here.]

 

Your feedback will be appreciated be it good or bad. If the history seem cloudy on some aspect, do not hesitate to ask for clarifications. It will help me make sure that all is clean.

 

Other comment: I am not a native english speaking, learned by myself, so if you see strange sentences, tell me.

[Beholder]

Re: Chaos fiends campaign setting

 

Here is the history I have writen up to now and is almost all based on my character's events since 2 or 3 years...

 

HISTORY:

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14000 BC, Atlantis sunk and a female, named Areea, is inserted in an anti magic device that blocks all magic from being used on Earth without a soul gem. The reason for this is that Atlantis was destroyed by magic from beings of the Qliphotic dimension. The Atlanteans wanted to leave this last heritage to the rest of humanity and make sure that Magic would never influence humanity in the future.

 

1890: DEMON founded by a secret leader who had access to a soul gem and was able to use magic. He begins creating Satan worshipping cult all around the world.

 

1961: VIPER founded as normally equipped extremist mercenaries out to take on any mercenary job.

 

2002-02: A group of friends from Montreal, in Quebec, are transported to another dimension by a mysterious dark elf and magically transformed in super powered beings to fight earth invading warlords. They are called Spawn, who merged with an evil spell caster, Mr. Green, who merged with a Troll and Doppelganger.

 

A friend of the transformed group is captured by extremist terrorists in the Middle East, influenced by the mysterious leader of DEMON. The man is later brainwashed and super trained to become the ultimate fighting man, he will be known as Blue eyed bomber. He later destroys the Liberty statue.

 

2002-03: The evil Lord Mul'ghyzon, one of the invading warlords, comes to earth and is quickly pushed back in his home dimension by the group. The Group later fights more warlords that try to have a foothold on Earth. The warlords are; Mul'ghyzon again, the Spider queen and Anton Vissaliovitch the vampire and his cohort. Two more groups also makes their appearance in this period, the alien Antaraans and the ENN (Extropian Neo National) Corporation that suddenly appeared on the world business stage. ENN starts the creation of gigantic buildings, Arcologies they are called, in 6 major cities of the world. The construction will on take 6 months total and they are each capable of holding 2 millions peoples in their dark recesses.

 

The Antaraans makes gifts of technologies to the humans of all nations of the world to help them in their fight against the warlords.

 

2002-04: The supers group is sent to South America to escort a group of mercenaries into investigating a base from which Futura Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of ENN, had lost contact. Following these events, one of the people that were escorted, simply known as Natasha, became friend with an AI computer entity imprisoned in this base and named the Black queen. Following this mission, the group befriended the mercenaries as well as a hacker, which was attached to the mercenaries and employed by Futura, called Edward.

 

2002-05: Another friend of the group is abducted by mysterious aliens, related to the invading warlords, and transformed into a worm filled human with extremely devastating powers. He later joins the group that has been called the Montreal Fiends by several news networks. This new super powered entity is called Worm.

 

2002-06: Following all the combats that happened in the Montreal area, the Canadian government declares martial law and the army comes in, they make a temporary alliance with the fiends to fight the invading warlords.

 

2002-07: The Blue eyed bomber succeeds at capturing one of the Fiends, Spawn, and tortures him to death for no apparent reasons. He was saved barely in time by his friends.

 

2002-08: The AI Black queen and Natasha, now known as the White queen, creates the all female extremist group called the Black widows with technologies derived from those that were developed at Futura Tech. laboratories in South America.

 

UNTIL is founded by the United Nations to fight Supers and invading warlords. They are equipped with Antaraan technologies based weapons and armors.

 

2002-09: The Fiends joins the newly created UNTIL as a super powered division and are named Team A.

 

2002-10: Edward the hacker asks for the Fiends to take him into safety because he feels his life is threatened where he currently works at Futura Technologies.

 

2002-11: Team A of the Black widows kidnaps an important scientist and they come in conflict with UNTIL's Team A. The fiends succeed in capturing 2 Widows, named 1084 and Harpy. The Widows capture Spawn of the Montreal fiends.

 

The Black widow called Circuit infiltrates UNTIL by jumping from Mr. Green's com-unit to UNTIL’s main computer

 

Spawn is once again tortured, by the Black widows this time. He looses his personal soul gem and is then rescued by the Fiends. Spawn later makes a pact with some Devils and regains power to cast spells. Finally, the fiends destroy the Black widow base.

 

2002-12: Edward and Circuit have a cyber fight in UNTIL’s computer system and Circuit wins, she releases 1084 from custody.

 

2003-01: The Fiends leave UNTIL violently after murdering some humans at the Great Canyon Park. UNTIL leaders are very surprised by these violent actions that seem unexplainable. They suspect that the Fiends are under some kind of super powered influence or were simply spies. In reality, the Fiends discovered that they were bugged with sub skin locators by UNTIL and they instantly rejected any alliance with them for this example of mistrust. The killing started after one of the fiends was deeply insulted by a normal and he finally let go of his inner rage and all the others followed him.

 

The Fiends have an encounter with Black hole of recently created UNTIL Team B. He states that he might be interested in leaving UNTIL because of the intrusive policy of UNTIL to introduce locator under the skin of agents.

 

The Chaos fiends are attacked by a group of would be heroes called Excelsiors. 10 seconds into combat and 2 of the Excelsior are already dead beyond any chance of survival. One of them is captured and brought to the secret hideout of the mercenary friends of the Fiends and 2 others survive free.

 

2003-02: The Antaraans destroys the UNTIL high command in the Great Canyons after having been warned by the Fiends that they were using their newly earned Antaraan technology to spy on allies and agents. The Antaraans seems to feel that this is a policy that is unacceptable and destroys the base with almost no casualties. Edward the hacker is released from UNTIL by the Antaraans and given to the, now named, Chaos fiends after this event. The Antaraans also gives gifts of cosmic gems to the Fiends in return for their promises in helping them finding something for them in the future.

 

A strange cloud vortex appears above the Chaos fiends, attracted to the cosmic gems the Chaos fiends possess. Later, high tech rocketeer Nazi troopers appear and attack the Chaos fiends, after the vortex leaves, all bodies and equipments left by the Nazi troopers disappear as if they were never there. The destruction brought by this combat was still there.

 

2003-03: The chaos fiends fights the Patriots, a new group of American super heroes, in Los Angeles and the psionic leader of the Patriots is killed.

 

After the Antaraan debacle UNTIL are issued the international space station and they press on to complete and upgrade it with Antaraan technology.

 

A second vortex appears and the Chaos Fiends needs to fight Quake like warriors. Once again, after the vortex leaves the bodies of the warriors disappear.

 

2003-04: The Chaos fiends help the Antaraans and go in the depth of the Atlantic Ocean to find a large cosmic gem that the Antaraans needs and is supposed to be located in the Atlantean ruins. They find it and, at the same time, awaken an Atlantean woman called Areea from the apparatus to which she was attached. They then warn the Antaraans that they found the crystal they needed. The aliens teleport to their location and leave with the crystal. They soon after leave the solar system following that event. The removal of Areea from the apparatus also released magic back on Earth. The magic seemed to have been held at bay by the machine to which the Atlantean woman was attached to.

 

2003-05: DEMON is “officially†formed, by an unknown individual, after the leader in question noticed that the magic flow was back. The organization is formed from countless little cells the mysterious leader had dispersed as Satan worshipping cult all around the world. DEMON also officially enlist a large criminal underground mercenary group and call them the Infernal Vipers to serve as the armed part of DEMON.

 

A newly formed US secret agency, called OMEGA section, hires the Chaos fiends to destroy a Japanese high tech base. The base in question was researching space shuttle technology that could be used to go to the moon and plunder the Antaraan base built there and abandoned. They surprisingly fought strong robots and a cyber entity called Cold steel.

 

A powerful angel, called Angel Gabriel, comes to earth to fight the super powered beings that causes evil and destruction by preying on normals.

 

The Chaos fiends, for no apparent reasons, destroy Mount Rushmore as a simple statement against the governments that are trying to capture or kill them.

 

2003-06: After some deliberations and discussions, the Patriots join the Chaos fiends. The Fiends succeeded in convincing them that they were mind controlled into being heroes by the US government, which is true. The humans that now formed the Patriots had been secretly altered by ENN and forced to work as super heroes in the US territory. They had indeed been forced to be loyal to the US, as long as this law did not interfere with the law that prevented them from attacking any ENN interests.

 

2003-07: The Chaos fiends destroy a mutant research facility in a Wyoming mountain complex. The complex might have information regarding the Patriots and the fact that they might be bugged or have some mental instructions. This fight attracts the attention of a pair of supers, Paladin and Priest. Spawn is nearly killed by Paladin.

 

2003-08: A world spanning vortex appears and many super powered beings from multiple dimensions, and video games, are brought to earth, to the great annoyance of world leaders and ENN. One of the groups of supers Trans located to our dimensions is called the Champions and is based in Los Angeles. Another group, called UNITY, which worked for an alternate dimension UNTIL, are also brought here and quickly joins with this world’s security force incarnation.

 

2003-09: The Chaos fiends fights the Champions in Los Angeles

 

2003-10: The Chaos fiends go to Africa to fight Zergs. The creatures were created by an African kid that has the power to create what he wishes and he decided to play a live Star Craft game.

 

2003-11: Edward discovers the Techno sphere with the help of his cosmic gem. He quickly meets Cold steel and is warned not to use the techno sphere for criminal activities or their will be consequences. He also learns that the vortexes that appear around the world might have a link with this parallel dimension. Indeed, the vortexes are created by a mad scientist who is studying dimensional technologies and, when making tests of his devices, opens portals to the techno sphere and other random dimensions.

 

2003-12: The Chaos fiends go to a pacific island prison to rescue Harpy, following a deal made with the Black widows, and some Infernal Viper soldiers. Since the authorities at the island detected the presence of intruding supers on the island and suspected that they were the Chaos fiends, the supers went to Florida, Cape Canaveral and destroyed 6 UNTIL space shuttles, that were being prepped to send material to the UNTIL Gateway space station, as a diversion. At this diversion area, they fought UNTIL’s new Ballistic robots and Angel Gabriel. They then went back to the prison and released the prisoner they were going to help. On their way back from the island, they found the UNTIL command submarine, destroyed it and killed the UNTIL command staff that were hidden on it.

 

2004-01: The Chaos fiends steel 10 nukes from a USA sub that was docked for re-supply, they intended to use those nukes to obliterate the Zergs infestation. The USA goes wild for the blood of the chaos fiends and Mul'ghyzon uses this opportunity to blow Denver with an old soviet nuke and put it on the shoulders of the Chaos fiends. The Chaos fiends then went to Denver to help save innocents and they met with Angel Gabriel and did not fight this time since too many lives were needed to be saved.

 

Edward steels the nukes from the Chaos fiends, through portals opened in the techno sphere, and returns them to the USA to make sure that no more useless destruction is perpetrated.

 

Mul'ghyzon kidnaps the Chaos fiend's families from the US's Omega section, which had previously taken their families to try to enforce the surrender of the Chaos fiends. The Chaos fiends then find him; they free almost all their family members and nearly kill Mul'ghyzon.

 

2004-03: A powerful vortex appears, once again, over the Chaos fiends. Once the portal opens, a powerful demon lord comes through and, in matter of minutes, transforms New York City into a Gothic, evil looking, city and half of the population is transformed in possessed demons by this evil. The Chaos fiends fights all the demons that are in their way until they finally reach the master demon. They fight It, defeat it and once that is done, all the demons that are in the New York area spread out and tries to flee the area. They are mostly contained by the Omega section, Angel Gabriel, Paladin and Priest and the Chaos Fiends. Later the Champions arrive to help.

 

The Chaos fiends learn that since Angel Gabriel was here, the demons had the right to enter Earth to provoke the Armageddon. It was an old mandate, an old rule between heaven and hell. The Chaos fiends face Gabriel with this fact and the Archangel decides to leave for the heavens to make sure that Demons and Devils would no longer use this rule as a permission to destroy Earth. In other words, the angel came to the realization that his presence on Earth was causing exactly what he came to repress.

 

2004-04: Following the events with the demon lord, Spawn and Worms were stripped of their powers by the demons and mentally brought in hell for a single day, which lasted a year for the victims. For that entire effective year, they were tortured as only hell denizens could torture lost souls. They came out of this ordeal with wrecked minds. The only possibility for the victims were for the rest of the chaos fiends to ask help from Areea, that was now one of the 30 leaders of VIPER, to help make mental surgery and remove the entire last year plus many more previous events that could make them remember dangerous events that could bring the mental disorder violently back. This way, they were stripped of their powers.

 

In the next months, Worm made a deal with a small devil that had escaped the last month event and the small devil used the entire next year to show him how to cast elemental magic. Worm was reborn as Element. Spawn, for his case, had to re learn magic with the help of an ancient necromantic book, which Spawn and Acrobat stole from Anton Vissaliovitch, the master vampire from Romania. 6 months later, he changed his name for the Chaos Undertaker.

 

2004-05: Cease fire and non aggression pact with US, Japanese and German governments. The 3 nations invest in the Chaos Island project of the Chaos fiends. This island would regroup many dangerous and hard to contain supers in a small environment where they would be out of the way and possible learn how to contain their powers.

 

2004-06: Construction of Chaos Island begins.

 

Infernal Vipers starts a more aggressive spread of their forces in the world.

 

2004-08: Appearance of more Supers following a global cloud vortex.

 

2004-09: Manifestation around the world to prevent the Chaos fiend to assemble an Army of supers on their islands. Countless TV shows supporting the Chaos Island

 

2004-10: Minor clashes between villains and regional heroes. Montreal city finally returns to normal

 

2004-11: All major countries, save the US, invests in UNTIL after major UNTIL successful actions

 

The Denver area as been completely cleaned up but is kept off limit to non military. Major reconstruction of the area is under development. The State intends to call the future city: Millennium City. A city constructed from the ground - up to be the finest point of technology and urban engineering.

 

2004-12: The US invests tremendous amount of money in Omega Section. The division is relatively omnipresent now in American day to day life in the form of squads deployed in all police stations as quick intervention teams.

 

New-York as completely been re populated and is now one of the most sought after movie location for the current period due to its mysterious gothic architecture.

 

2005-02: A Russian space shuttle tries to reach the moon and is destroyed in space above their final destination. A rogue Antaraans declares the moon off limit to humans after the Russian space shuttle debacle. A Russian super powered group vows to reach the moon and avenge the destruction of the Space shuttle.

 

2005-03: Zergs are spotted in Argentina after they were removed from Africa by UNITY and UNTIL.

 

2005-05: Iraq becomes the worse economic and military sink hole the US has ever had after extremist Islamic super powered beings, led by blue eyed bomber, intervenes in the area. The United states deploy Omega Section troops in Baghdad to react to this.

 

2005-06 Zergs now control 40% of Argentina but are currently contained by UNTIL. The front has not moved since 3 months

 

2005-08: Completed Creation of Chaos Island

 

2005-08: First gladiatorial combats on Chaos island. This event is televised by ENN, ABC, Fuji television and DW-World.

 

2005-09: Now in the campaign.

[Superskrull]

Re: Chaos fiend campaign setting

 

Man, that's pretty cool. It's full of jump-off points to use in-game, as well. What's the point level you've been running at?

[Beholder]

Re: Chaos fiends campaign setting

 

Started a 250 and the characters are now at 363.

[RDU Neil]

Re: Chaos fiends campaign setting

 

Started a 250 and the characters are now at 363.

 

WHOA! That's cool. To be able to pull of such epic story telling without resorting to 1000 point characters. That ain't easy.

 

Great time line and great background. The over-arching "magic" source of power (from what I read of the list, I haven't made it through the whole thing) has always been one I've wanted to try. Adds a sinister tone to the entire world, and avoids many "And just how does he do that?" superhero questions.

 

I love the fact that you've created a world that changes and advances and doesn't stick to the status quo. That is important for me in any campaign, and I've always thought that typical "Fight the badguy, return things to normal" super stories were pretty lame.

 

How long have you been actually playing in real time? How many sessions? Can you estimate?

 

Great stuff. (Must spread reputation around... durn it!)

 

Thanks for posting.

[Beholder]

Re: Chaos fiend campaign setting

 

Thanks for the kind words RDU Neil.

 

When we started this campaign, we started with DnD rules(hence the monster like merge at the start of the campaign) for 3 sessions I think, than switched to Hero 4. So we made our characters based on 250 pts, and then 3 or 4 games later, switched to Fred, but kept our point total.

 

Sinister? Yes, and what is coming in the next part of the campaign is even more so. I wish to introduce the player to some kind of cold war like situation pitting ENN and their lackeys (US government among others), DEMON (allied with Mul'ghyzon. I use Dr Destroyer's character sheet for him]), VIPER (allied with the player's characters), UN/UNTIL/UNITY and another secret magic based organization. Since my players played a lot with a high profile, I wanted to explore more the Dark Hero style with a secret war undergoing between each of these organizations and their overall goals. Some of my players are already introducing more low profile characters allied with their main one. So espionage and underground activities are on the way for them.

 

For the world that changes, THAT is a major goal I try to always follow. Each time I devise an event, it needs to be explainable with the current state of the world. If I pop a new super, it has to come from somewhere in the main background. In other words, they can be created based on Antaraan technology, created or summoned by demon, created from the technosphere, etc... Not one character in my campaign gets super powers for no reasons, it has to follow the Campaign rules and be logical. As for the evolution of the world, what better satisfaction to a player than to feel that their actions have a major impact on the world, at the place of random useless adventures that never seems to really affect anyone in the world. The majority of the threats to the world will almost always have a reason in the world, save for some rare random events. So, yes, our groups really don't like irrelevant "Fight the bad guy, return things to normal†adventure. It feels to them as if they were rail-roaded to an unimportant event simply because the DM didn't take the time to bind the event into the overall scheme of things

 

We've been playing this campaign for about 3 or 4 years I think with about 20 sessions/year(we play other games as well). It started in 2001, 1 month before the world trade center event, IIRC.