Campaign Overview

Warning! 

This gives away all the secrets of the campaign.   It is intended for game masters and players who have finished playing. It will spoil the campaign for players who have not yet finished the campaign.

Back Story

Life evolved on the Grey home world very differently to life on Earth. Instead of relying on physical senses such as sight and sound, life on the Grey home world relied on psychic ability to sense prey and predators. Rather than the fight-or-flight instinct that is the core psychology of all Terran animal life, the psychology of life of the Grey home world centres on psychic domination or evasion.  Predators willed food into their mouths and prey species misdirected predators with the equivalent of the Jedi mind trick of Star Wars.

The Greys developed intelligence nearly 20 million years before human.  They lived a peaceful, aquatic existence before gradually becoming aware that something was interfering with their psychic ability.  They noticed an increasing amount of psychic static, for want of a better term, causing them discomfort, like the constant whining buzz of mosquito you cannot see.  This discomfort grew until it began to hinder their ability to use their mental powers.

Eventually, they located the source of the psychic static, a blue- green planet located far from their own.   They already knew that psychic energy does not attenuate with distance. This discovery spurred their technological development in order to find the source of the static on that planet and stop it. They built craft, powered by mental energy, and in them the strongest of their kind traveled to Earth.

Here, about 12,000 years ago, they discovered humans, an intelligence, psychically active species but unable to control or limit their powers. This lack of control resulted in psychic energy seeping from their minds in to the general environment in a way never seen on the Grey home world. This was the source of the static.  The Greys decided that the source of the static must either be controlled or destroyed.

They selected the most advance civilization on the planet, known to folklorists as the Empire of Rama, in the river valleys of what are now Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, and attempted contact.   When this failed, they began experiments to determine how to either switch off or awaken psychic ability in humans. They could not find a way to do this but all humans they experimented on were marked with a pattern introduced into their DNA. The experiments continued for the quality of life of the Grey on their home world was increasingly threatened by the psychic static which grew in intensity in proportion with the increase in the population of human on Earth.

The citizens of the Rama Empire reacted in one of two ways to this threat. Some, knowing that they could not run from the Grey flying machines, bowed down before them, hoping that if they did what the Greys told them, they would remain unharmed.  Others took up arms against the threat but found stone and copper weapons next to useless against a foe that knows your every move before you make it.

One small band, led by a hero known as Rama, a warrior who by chance was also able to control his psychic powers, led a raid to capture one of the small Grey flying machines. He learned of the Grey’s plan to either enslave or destroy humanity and discovered that the craft his group stole contained one of the weapons the Grey’s planned to use if their experiments to limit the uncontrolled outpouring of human psychic energy failed.

In a spectacular aerial battle, he used the weapon on one of the Grey’s flying cities, destroying it completely. In retaliation, they Greys destroyed all major population centres of the Rama Empire, throwing humans into a new dark age and triggering the fragile climate back into a mini-Ice Age. These were the first nuclear weapons used on Earth.

Millennia later and fifty years before the present day, the Greys returned to Earth to fix the problem of the psychic static once and for all. They wanted to determine whether any of their previous experiments showed any merit and began abducting humans for this purpose.   The Abductees are first searched for the genetic markers plant in their ancestors and then the victim’s psychic potential is measured. The results are being collated.

The event known as the Roswell Incident was the first major point of contact with the Greys in the modern era.   Here, the fight-or-flight instinct made itself apparent once again.  The contact team were split in the actions they recommended.  One group advocated destroying the Grey invaded.  The others wanted to study them and determine their threat potential and whether they may aid humanity in its technological development.

The first group became known as the Black Book.   The decided that the best way to fight the Greys was first to learn their strengths and weaknesses, then exploit them. The best way to do this was to contact the Greys and pretend to be their allies. The problem with this approach soon became apparent.   The psychic Greys learned what the Black Book was up to and co-opted them into working for them conducting abductions and silencing witnesses and protesters.

The second group called themselves Aegis and relied on their own meager control of psychic ability to discover what they could about the Greys.   When this turned out to be next to nothing, they turned their powers toward the Greys’ Black Book allies. In this way, the Aegis mission degenerated into conducting covert action against the Black Book and their original purpose was, to a large extent, lost. In turn, this led to internal bickering.

In the Black Book, however, those not in direct contact with the Grey retained their original mission. They had kept secret from the public the fact of the Greys’ existence, not wanting to cause a panic among the population, until they were sure they could defeat the aliens. Once they were certain of this and had eliminated any interference from Aegis, it would be time to act.

The Campaign

The purpose of the opening couple of adventures is to create the campaign world in the minds of the players.   These adventures show the characters that:

Once the campaign world is established, the first key point is to get the characters to make a big win against the Black Book.   If they cannot do it, another Aegis cell will and the characters are hit by the consequences. The Black Book’s response is massive retaliation, far more than the circumstances warrant. The characters may or may not pick up on this.

The character may or may not be able to start reforms of the Aegis corporate structure.  If there is reform, Aegis will be more responsive to internal and external threats in the future as members are revitalized and feel that they are working for something again rather than just going through the motions.

The next set of clues/information points is to link the Greys to:

The next major plot point consists of the Black Book rolling up Aegis and announcing to the world that aliens exist. If Aegis has been reformed, this will be tough and they’ll have a real fight on their hands.   Otherwise, the Black Book should have little trouble arresting Aegis operatives for all the dodgy deeds they’ve done.   The characters are obviously in danger here because player-characters rarely let ethics get in the way of a good gun battle in a public place.

The climax of the whole she-bang is CNN discovering the crashed flying disk buried under Hopkinsville.   This stirs up race memories of slaves and overseers in the town.   When the results of this are broadcast worldwide, everyone who saw the broadcast slips into one mode of thinking and starts killing the other type -- a universal blood bath.   This is not really what the Black Book intended.

The only thing that the characters cannot find out about, unless they somehow figure it out themselves, is exactly why the Greys are here.  Life’s tough and I need some mysteries left for if I ever run a campaign based on the Greys again.

Adventures

This is a list of the adventures planned for the campaign and the clues to the larger mystery that characters may discover in them. Originally, the adventures were in a different order. This is the order in which they were presented.

The Night of Rage

The lesson here is that Seepage, the uncontrolled release of unused psychic energy, is shaped by the belief of those who experience it. The stories that they tell about their experiences shape what those coming after encounter.

Mistaken Identity

This adventure shows the internal bickering within Aegis. One side wants reform.  The other has too many vested interests that are threatened by change. It features nasty internal politics and, hopefully, an assassination of some kind.

Operation Bower Bird

The adventure shows Aegis and the Black Book competing ruthlessly for possession of alien artefacts. It also serves as a good test of the game system’s combat rules and shows the players just how deadly combat can be.

The Watergate Scandal

This adventure shows the Black Book’s interest in all things evolutionary.  They attempt to co-opt a geneticist who has found the Grey’s marker in human DNA.   They also want to attack the concept of evolution to prepare the population for the idea of alien interference with human evolution. This is part of their plan to condition the population to act appropriately when the time comes.

Such Stuff As Dream Are Made On

This adventure furthers the characters’ knowledge of Seepage and links it to the Greys. The people of the turn see Greys because there is a Grey flying disk buried under the town.  Rama shot it down 12,000 years ago. Its psychic distress beacon is too damaged to be heard above the psychic static but it does shape the Seepage of the area.  Settlers from Europe interpret the Greys they see as fairies and bogarts.

Strangers In The Night

The characters investigate a series of abduction and discover the Greys and the Black Book working co-operatively together. This should be the big win needed to spur the Black Book into action.

By this stage, they should either know or start asking questions about the origins of the Black Book.   The main question is how can a group who originally swore to protect the earth from this threat end up working with the enemy.

The Winds of Change

The characters should be puzzled by The Black Book’s massive retaliation in response to the previous adventure.   If all goes according to the Black Book plan, they smash HERMES, the Aegis central intelligence database, crippling the agency for good.

Research Review

The characters come into possession of a secret Black Book report that Black Book is prepared to do anything to get back. The report talks about evidence of ancient atomic warfare and should direct the characters to Pakistan

Roll Up! Roll Up!

Using as evidence all the questionable deeds the characters have done up to this point, Black Book uses all its influence to arrest them.  It is doing the same to Aegis cells all over the country.  Once Aegis is out of the way, it can real the existence of the Greys, manage the population’s reaction, and prepare for battle.

This should give the characters the motivation to go to Pakistan, if they haven’t already done it. If they do go, play this as the situation they arrive back to find.

The Cult of Memory

The first they notice when they arrive in Pakistan is that the alien seven-star symbol is everywhere.   They discover a cult whose leader is unearthing race memories of Greys experimenting on human in the Rama Empire. People recover memories of being a slave, in which case they are fleeced of all their wealth for the cult, or overseers/rebels, in which case they become the leader’s bodyguard.

Aegis And The Pit

This adventure has not been played.

Following some clues in the last adventure, the character search for and hopefully find a cave in the Gobi desert where the remains of the craft Rama stole lie undisturbed for thousands of years.

Creatures Of The Id

The Black Book’s carefully laid plans of gradually revealing the existence of aliens and their plans is short circuited by CNN who have discovered the craft which crashed into Hopkinsville 12,000 years ago.   Releasing this knowledge suddenly triggers the fight-or-flight instinct.  People who watch the broadcast see themselves and others as either Grey slave or Rama’s rebels. Slaves want to kill the rebels to protect themselves from the Greys’ wrath.  Rebel want to kill the slaves for working with the alien enemy.   1.2 billion people watch the broadcast worldwide and, unless stopped, the blood bath begins.