My current campaign is set in Great Britain ten years from now, after the breakdown of society. After a disaster of '28 Days Later' flavour, the landscape of Britain becomes a nightmare of looting and violence.
However this cannot be sustained indefinately and eventually small communities begin to form as ordinary people seek safety, trade and shelter. Individual leaders rise to limited power and commerce becomes a car-boot/yard sale business of dealing in whatever commodities have been scavenged from the no-go areas (the old abandoned cities).
Travel is confined to the 'safe' highways, avoiding the lunatic filled towns and communities that are considered 'off road'. The players take the roles of the 'Highyway Watch', members of a guild of (mostly) well-meaning individuals and teams who patrol the roads dealing with bandits and making travel safe for normal folk.
Meanwhile various forces compete to establish a new order and solidarity to disparate England, these include the New Roman Empire, the Forth Reich, an apocalyptic cult and the House of Mordred (which speaks for itself). The treasures of Britain hold the key to their ambitions.
While the players cope with all this, and combat corrupt members of their own faction, they begin to discover that even the contemporary Britain we know now, dear reader, is not what it seems. The disovery of strange installations leads them to believe that pre-apocalyptic Britain was covering the most horrendous secret of all...
Summary of the Watchmen Campaign so far...
After the breakdown of civilisation, a vigilante network know as the Highway Watch work to bring safety and justice to the dangerous highways of Great Britain.
A Watchmen sub-faction, the Slayers, combat not only outlaws, but corruption within their own organisation. Their work is often horrendously dangerous but they achieved incredible success bringing law and order to no-go areas, like gang-dominated Tor.
The Slayers gained national fame during the pirate televising of the Death Race 2024, where the Slayers masqueraded as competitors and then forcibly removed the outlaw drivers from the roads.
During a routine bounty-hunt, the Slayers discovered the existence of an ancient extraterrestial race, the Annunaki who visited the world 3,600 years ago. The Annunaki are due to return and are already putting plans in motion to create a slave race of humans through bio-technic implantation.
The Slayers found themselves pitted against diabolical alien schemes such as 'False Rapture', an attempt to subvert popular religious expectations and trick people into accepting an Annunaki Messiah. Travelling as far and wide as the Pyramids of Egypt, and semi-colonised Mars, the Slayers used Treasures of Britain such as Excalibur, and their considerable wit and courage, to prevail.
Raiding the memory cells of cyborg Annunaki agents the Slayers discovered that the invasion date is only weeks away.
To prepare for and fight this catastrophie the Slayers had to retrieve the sacred rulership of Britain from it's usurper Mordred, a thousand year old tyrant who had secretly ruled the country from it's spiritual counterpart in the land of Faerie.
With help from the benevolent ancient powers known as the Aeons, the Slayers defeated Mordred and returned Faerie to it's rightful Leige.
The Slayers ready themselves for whatever comes next...
The Slayers received a radio transmission from Crystal (a doll with sentient A.I. who, like them, is a member of the Highway Watchmen). It transpired that the Guild Master had been murdered and in an urgent message she requested the Slayers meet her at an abandoned Government facility.
Under strangely catastrophic weather the Slayers made their journey through deserted streets and old decaying roads to the facility.
Once there the Slayers discovered the truth behind the origins of the Highway Watch. The founder, Brian Plantagenet, had been a biological scientist for covert military experiments back in the ‘old world’. Plantagenet had used his expertise to imbue the original Highway Watchmen with nano-technic implants, increasing their physical abilities beyond normal human potential.
What had once been a boon to enforcing justice was now a disaster. The alien Annunaki had subverted these implants to their own ends, taking these original Watchmen now under their control. In her typical impetuous style Crystal had taken the liberty of doing some dabbling of her own and had ‘recalled’ the original Watchmen back to the facility, so the Slayers could confront them.
Less than impressed with Crystal’s rash plan, the Slayers were then forced to do battle with their old mentors. A bitter struggle with those they had once aspired to become, but whose wills were no longer their own. With ruthless cunning the Slayers triumphed. This created mixed feelings as some of these mentors had been their friends, yet somehow there was also a sense the Slayers had ‘come of age’ in overthrowing their original role models.
After tending to their injuries the Slayers emerged from the facility to witness a sight 3,600 years in the making. The turbulent skies had finally cleared and the celestial scene was both beautiful and foreboding.
Nibiru had arrived, the mysterious planet, finally returned from its orbit around a distant dead sun, was now fully visible in our solar system, as clearly as the moon. Visibly a world as rich as Earth, Nibiru’s beauty belied the dark implications of its prophesised return. More immediately an initial fleet of Annunaki vessels were patrolling the British skies, and beginning to lay waste to the last surviving cities.
Employing the reconstructed fighter-jets they had for months been salvaging parts for, the Slayers took to the skies and in a post-apocalyptic ‘Battle of Britain’ fought a dramatic dog-fight with the strange alien crafts. During the finale of the battle the Slayers witnessed the Annunaki vessels trying to intercept one of their own craft. Deciding to intervene they guided this vessel to safety in the coastal Tor region.
When the vessel landed it revealed two Annunaki occupants, a husband and wife, who shattered some misconceptions about the Annunaki race. The unearthly visitors explained that the plant Nibiru itself is in the grip of a tyranny, a vile God-Emperor whose warlike disposition towards Earth is not reflective of the wishes of the Annunaki people. They bid the Slayers return with them to Nibiru and aid the resistance in the fight against their Emperor…
The Slayers journey from Earth to the surface of the planet Nibiru, which has passed through a course, not only of space, but also of dimensions on it’s strange orbit.
Anu and Ki, the husband and wife who have bought the Slayers here, take them to a vastly towering structure where they meet other members of the Annunaki resistance.
In this strange place the Slayers are finally able to piece together the final pieces of the cosmic puzzle.
Ki explains that the Annunaki require gold from Earth, used to shield to their world from fatal atmosphere loss. For the people of Nibiru this is a strict necessity. Thousands of years ago the Annunaki intervened in human evolution to create an able slave race, and established themselves as ‘Gods’ to primitive humanity. Thus they were able to farm the resources they needed.
Whatever the merits or flaws of this approach, it soon became a far more complex undertaking when humans began to advance their mental and spiritual capacity. The Annunaki found themselves in the roles of lawgivers, instructing humanity and sometimes destroying human civilisations that displeased them.
Some politically powerful Annunaki began to exploit the humans in other ways and to believe in their own false claims of Godhood. Annunaki men began to mate with human females, producing offspring that were far more powerful than anticipated – legendary ‘children of the Gods’, like Achilles or Hercules. Some of these ‘demi-gods’ became the enemies of the Annunaki, fighting against their slave status, for the establishment of a moral and righteous order of man – people like Merlin.
When Nibiru moved out of the Solar System they left agents on Earth to continue to rule as Gods, powerful Annunaki such as Horus, Zeus and Ares. Eventually even these vestiges died out and the humans were left to their own devices.
On this latter return to our Solar System the Annunaki faced their greatest challenge, for the incredible advancement of human technology and spirituality had turned the slave race into a fiercely self-identified species. As well as creating their own governance, humans had become a formidable force capable of massive destruction. The Annunaki had little hope of picking up where they left off, and hence devised the devastating signal that had destroyed the sanity of many humans, enough to reduce human society into total chaos and reduce the population to a manageable number.
Even covert military advancements in artificial life capable of combating an extraterrestrial threat had been subverted by the Annunaki schemers.
Instituting the New Advent faith from the chaos, the Annunaki had begun to gather those who would best serve them.
But they had not had reckoned on the true Gods. The silent ‘Aeons’ who had observed without intervention throughout history, those whose power was synonymous with the forces of nature, and their Queen, great Sophia whose soul was itself the living essence of Mother Earth.
Unable to intervene directly, the Aeons had assisted mankind all this time by the creation of mighty treasures that defied the usual boundaries of balance, weapons such as Excalibur.
Contemporary human champions, the Slayers, were given these treasures and had foiled some of the Annunaki invasion plans. With their further assistance on Nibiru it is hoped they can overthrow the Annunaki Emperor ‘Enki’ and deliver Nibiru into the hands of those who would co-operate peacefully with the humans for the mutual benefit of both communities.
However, for the Slayers to confront the undying Enki they must first be willing to surrender their lives and become resurrected in a perfect state that transcends the division between physical and spiritual matter…
The Slayers learn that Enki is coming to the end of his cycle of leadership on Nibiru, but that he plans to extend his reign by marrying the rightful heir, his own daughter, Princess Nanshe. The Princess agrees to have the Slayers masquerade as her personal entourage for the wedding ceremony, an event that will be visually transmitted all over Annunaki society.
A vast computer network, appropriately named ‘The Matrix’, compiles DNA data on every citizen of Nibiru and thereby controls privileges and access. Because the Slayers are not part of this system they alone are able to enter the most sacred areas of the Great Temple unmonitored.
Hence with the Grand Chapel as battlefield, the Slayers infiltrate the wedding ceremony and confront Enki. The God-Emperor, his head Exterminator, Senior High Priests and a contingent of Annunaki Guards do battle with the human intruders while all of Nibiru watches.
The fierce battle ends when Slayer Nero, impales and decapitates Enki, leaving the legacy of Nibiru to its rightful heir Princess Nanshe.
This act opens the way for a new future and the potential for co-operation between both Earth and Nibiru.
Nanshe takes one of the Slayers, Sun, to be her husband and a new era begins…
THE END!