Shadow Wars

The ‘Shadow Wars’ as they have come to be known, now that details of them have reached the surface, is the accepted term for the clandestine military use of magically-talented people during World War III. It is also theorized that there was a similar conflict during and before World War II, but no documentation or first-hand accounts have been located to prove this. These conflicts crossed the boundaries of the faction lines during the War.

In one sense, the Shadow Wars was merely another theater in the ongoing conflict, but in another sense it was a conflict among the Allied Forces to determine who would come out as the new global superpower after the war was over. Russia was secretly at war with the EU, the EU was secretly at war with Africa, and China and Japan were at each others’ throats. Meanwhile, the USA was harried by Russia, Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean Confederation – not to mention the NSA (and later the ESA) and other states that seceded from the USA during the war.

Many of the veterans of these clandestine conflicts still find themselves troubled by their actions during the war. Some of them have come forward publicly with reports of what they did, but for the most part the identities of these warriors remain closely-guarded secrets of the Supernatural Defense Agency and their home nations.

Author's Note: Anything listed with this is intended for player knowledge, but not character knowledge. The only way your character would know about these entries is if they participated in them, or have a high enough rank to submit a successful request for information on them. As a further note, any information included below may not be entirely truthful, as I (User:Marty) do like to keep a lid on some things until they are discovered in-game if they are plot-relevant.

Project Brightlight and Operation Dark Extraction

Project Brightlight was a series of covert NSA (and later ESA) operations to rescue POWs from around the globe via teleportation. Originally just a concept study written by a mage nobody had ever heard of and buried in the Grand Lodge of Theurgy’s archives, Brightlight was originally conceived of as a way for mages to covertly use their abilities to aid humanity. Nobody is quite sure who in the NSA first initiated this program, but what is known is that it grew out of the NSA’s efforts to end the illegal detainment of some of it’s officials who had been inside the rest of the USA when the NSA seceded. Brightlight was the first Shadow War operation to be revealed to the public in the post-war environment. Though Project Brightlight in its official incarnation ended once all the detained officials were recovered, it did essentially last throughout the war in the form of Operation Dark Extraction, which was a series of POW rescue operations that the NSA and ESA ran which functioned the same way.

Project Darklight

Project Darklight was a NSA/ESA operation that grew out of the successes of Project Brightlight. With the pre-war success of Brightlight, the program was rebuilt as Darklight in the second half of the War as a means to covertly make preparations inside the USA before the inevitable Allied forces invasion.

E bola Outbreak

A mysterious disease, later determined to be a strain of E bola, erupts in the US, which is declared to be a biological attack. The US Government declares martial law and begins to quarantine infected cities. Spain was blamed (by the USA) for releasing the disease in the USA after it is traced to a Spanish Research Lab. Spain denied the allegations and insisted that the disease release was intentionally released by the USA on its own people.

While this was indeed a biowarfare attack on the US, the allegations that the US government released the pathogen on it’s own people are false. The truth of the matter is that nobody really knows who released this pathogen – but it did indeed originate from a Spanish research lab. Numerous groups have been blamed for this incident, and several madmen have claimed responsibility for it since then. The most likely culprits are: EU Special Forces (in a black op which has no surviving records), any one of several doomsday cults, or someone acting independently in an attempt to push President Abraham to invade Europe. This incident is classified under the Shadow Wars not only because of the unknown nature of the perpetrator, but post-war analysis of surviving samples of the E bola strain used in the attacks indicated that they had been altered to be unable to infect people with innate magical talent. A new theory that has arisen is that this attack was actually the first wave of what would later be classified as spirit beast attacks, and that it was angry spirits attempting to wreak havoc upon humanity.

Sydney Mystery

‘Something’ happened in Sydney, Australia on October 13^th, 2015. Nobody is quite sure what exactly happened, and nobody has ever managed to gain definitive evidence to blame a specific faction for what happened – but the long and short of it is that after October 13th, 2015, Sydney is no longer habitable. Gamma radiation counts began to rise steadily in the early morning of the 13th, but with no discernible cause. Most of the citizens are evacuated, but many of them suffer ill effects of their exposure to the radiation. An exclusion zone is set up in a 50-kilometer radius around Sydney, which still stands in 2030. In the early 2020s, some records leak out suggesting that the United States had a hand in what happened.

In 2030 evidence was uncovered that tied covert actions of the Abraham Administration to the Sydney Mystery. It is unknown exactly what the covert operatives were doing in Sydney, but what is known is that there was an experimental device that involved a bound Destruction spirit that was mishandled and created the radiation field. Accusations that there was some kind of secret experiment going on to align Australia with the Abraham Administration run rampant but no proof has been produced.

In truth, the incident has its cause completely with that covert operations mission. The Abraham Administration sent a secret team to install a device underneath Goat Island which would extend the Jericho Network to cover Sydney and Canberra in an attempt to make an inroads to make Australia an ally of the Abraham Administration. However the military personnel of the covert operations team began to break free from the Jericho Network's influences now that they were extended so far beyond its reach. The team refused to participate in the operation and attempted to stop it, while the administration operative they were escorting continued attempting to activate the device. A fight ensued, and the administration operative activated a weapon he had been given by the Administration's shadowy backers - the device malfunctioned and the Destruction spirit bound within it broke free and created the radiation field. All members of the covert operations team were killed, along with the administration operative, save for the team's leader - who was actually a mage. The mage made a contract with the spirit and survived, but he was unable to stop the radiation field from growing.

Battle of Rome

February 22nd, 2016 - US forces are finally driven out of Rome when an EU strike force arrives in the city and launches a devastating attack against US strongholds. At the time it is unknown what the EU actually used to accomplish this, but post-war records confirm that the EU had a team of powerful elementalists teleported in to attack the US forces. The entire attack was carried out in conjunction with airstrikes, to make it look as if the ground forces were merely spotters for precision-guided munitions. This was a controversial decision by the EU, and the Grand Lodge of Theurgy is still not pleased with the way their members were essentially used as human weapons during this incident.

Attack on Japan

April 19th, 2016 saw one off the most widespread simultaneous uses of magic in the entire conflict. Numerous mages in Japan managed to use their abilities to protect sections of various cities from the incoming attacks.

Disappearance of Oahu

The entire island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii vanishes without a trace in the middle of the night. Nothing is ever discovered about what happened to its inhabitants or the USA Pacific Fleet that was not at sea. Post-war bathymetric surveys reveal a crater-like depression underneath where the island should have been. General Summers, the officer in charge of the previous day’s attack against Japan, vanishes along with the island. The General would later go down in history as the “Butcher of April” for his role in the April 19th attack.

The truth behind this matter remains a closely-guarded secret, even to this day. However, the discovery of the island of Oahu floating in interstellar space 7 light years away suggests that the culprit for this incident utilized a highly powerful form of teleportation – either remote or local – to transport the island and the surrounding water and terrain that 7 light year distance. As for the identity of the culprit, that remains a mystery to this day. The likely suspect – and the one to whom most people point – is Japan, who had just been attacked by a force commanded from Oahu the previous day. While the power required to cast such a teleportation spell boggles the mind of modern mages, it is theoretically plausible that Japan had a sizable portion of it’s magically-capable forces sacrifice themselves to power this spell in a twisted form of ritual revenge spellcasting. While this would explain Japan’s strange shortage of powerful mages in the immediate post-war environment, nobody from Japan is willing to verify this theory.

Nuclear Strike on Boston

Bypassing the normal chain of command, President Abraham orders a nuclear strike on Boston (the ESA capital) to be launched from a SSBN who’s captain he knows is loyal to him. Sources inside Washington, DC leak this information to the ESA, along with the location of the submarine. The ESA publicizes this information to the Allied Nations and reiterates its stance of neutrality, issuing a plea for help. A mutiny takes place onboard the submarine, but two missiles are launched before the sub’s command staff is incapacitated. One missile is successfully intercepted by a French destroyer, while the other missile mysteriously fails to detonate and crashes into the Empire State Building, becoming embedded in its upper levels.

After the war, it is revealed that the malfunction of the second missile was most likely caused by a Wide Area Protect incantation. The caster of this incantation remains a mystery.

Flight of President Abraham

Mexican troops arrive in Alabama and storm President Abraham’s compound, capturing his entire family – but not the President or his staff. It is known that the President has fled, but nobody in the compound seems to know where.

President Abraham flees via teleportation with the aid of his last few remaining Shadow War assets. They later abandon him after his madness becomes obvious in mid-February.