Champions Game Setting

Champions Terra III Campaign Setting
(Overview)

September 23, 2002

Introduction:

The campaign begins in the year 2015. Since the advent of the new millennium, there have been many radical changes in the world as we know it. For the most part, Earth is still isolated, or at least ignorant of the existence of other worlds and alternate dimensions. There are many authorities who know of their existence, but there is no day-to-day interaction with these exotic places. Technology has advanced greatly in the recent past and over the last decade has found its place in applications both humane and diabolical. The energy force known as ‘magic’ is still vastly unknown. Practitioners of the arcane arts have kept their secrets hidden and out of the general population’s attention. The world’s governments have begun to coalesce into larger cooperatives from the necessity of survival. The world is not dark and sinister, nor the idyllic utopia of past optimistic futurists. Its population exists in a society where technological advances have evolved at a slightly higher rate than its culture.

Governments:

The major superpowers consist of the United States, China, Japan and the European Union.
The United States is still the most predominant ‘peacekeeping’ force in the world and often intercedes with feuding nations to resolve conflict.
The former autonomous countries of Europe have formed a union of states similar to the United States with an overall governing senate of representatives. Japan has strengthened its world position with technology. Once a contender for foreign market shares, Japan realized that its greatest asset was its own cultural work ethic and stable social strata. It began investing in technological advancement and profiting from a flow of new discoveries.
China has always been a country of defiance, yet its great size and population have allowed it to thrive. The necessities of such a large society have refined a national sense of efficiency to rival even Japan. With the recent fall of the communistic regimes, China has begun openly trading with the rest of the world and collaborative advances have been remarkable.
In 1998, when the young Prince Erick took the throne of England, the monarchy enjoyed a new optimism. Then, with the surprise announcement of the new King’s emerging mutant powers, the entire European community developed a revolutionary attitude towards the place of mutants in the world. Erick had gained a great amount of world respect prior to his revelation, but now the citizens of the newly formed European Union have rallied to his cause. With Erick as Prime Senator, mutants have flocked to the shores of Europe where mutantism is becoming more widely accepted.
The former soviet countries, although not considered a superpower any longer, still hold a great amount of resources. The leaders are currently negotiating a possible re-unification, but there are still many old-liners who do not fully trust the motives of their former adversaries-turned-comrades.
In the Middle East, there has not been many world-threatening problems since the accident of 2002. Sheik Ab-Aklar and his World Jihad Movement obtained a cache of nuclear weapons hidden by the former dictator of Iraq and in an effort to move them to their base in Kuwait, accidentally detonated them. The ensuing nuclear devastation and subsequent fallout left the majority of the Middle Eastern nations in ruins. In addition, a cloud of radioactive fallout traveled over much of the eastern Mediterranean region, forcing entire population centers to relocate. In an effort to preserve what remained of their civilization, the Middle Eastern nations formed an alliance called the Unified Arab Federation. At the present, the UAF is struggling to rebuild its culture and does not have the resources to be a threat to the free world.

Worldwide Organizations:

Over the past 20 years, the United Nations has become almost an entity in itself. Although almost every nation in the world has a representative in the U.N., it is widely believed that the organization is run from within by inner circles consisting of superpowers (nations) and influential humanitarians (or malefactors, if you distrust the entity). UNTIL forces represent a world police enforcement agency, with jurisdiction in almost every country. UNTIL deals mainly with super-powered crises, but occasionally will intercede in domestic affairs. UNTIL is respected by the educated and the law-abiding, mistrusted by the ignorant and financially challenged, and despised by the unjust and villainous.
Most of the governments of major countries realized that they also needed a group of operatives that could effectively deal with possible super-powered threats. In 1996, the United States reinstated the PRIMUS organization. PRIMUS operated through the end of WWII, but dissolved to lack of funding. A new Golden Avenger leads PRIMUS and other superheroes and agents of the organization benefit from the most advanced technologies. PRIMUS answers directly to a federal law-enforcement commission which is an offshoot of the FBI. The other countries have likewise developed national responses to super-powered threats. Several of these groups are summarized later.
SHIELD took a great amount of public bashing when it was discovered that some of its secret backers were actually plants from various HYDRA, DEMON and VIPER affiliates. In addition, with the X’al infiltration abated, it left SHIELD in a state of vulnerability. Colonel Nick Fury left when the organization was officially disbanded and reformed a group by the same name with some of his most trusted advisors, operatives and agents. SHIELD still has contacts all over the globe and many suspect that covertly, the SHIELD organization exists with the secret consent of many countries’ leaders. In 2007, Nick Fury was involved in a conflict with the Punisher and died in hand-to-hand combat.
In 2008 the world realized that the very same competition that instigated the space-race was now forcing countries to expend incredible resources to duplicate the achievements of each other country. The United State’s NASA, European Space Agency, Japan’s National Space Development Agency and the Russian Space Agency cooperatively combined to form the UESA, or United Earth Space Agency.