Conspiracies

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Conspiracies

Post by Siege »

Why didn't we have this thread already? Moby, Arty, add at will...

Interational Conspiracies

BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROUND TABLE

Emergence: 462 AD (claimed)

Headquarters: Glastonbury

A secretive fraternity of British army and navy officers that claims to trace its roots to the Knights of the Round Table of Arthurian legend. The group is known to have ties to the Freemasonry, secret societies such as the Diogenes Club, British intelligence and the House of Lords, as well as contacts throughout the current and former British Empire. Its stated mission is to 'preserve the virtue of the Empire', though this official motto has over the decades and centuries been assumed to mean a greaty many different things. The current Brotherhood considers itself first and foremost to be custodians against treason, corruption, and undue foreign influences over the armed forces and, by extension, the United Kingdom as a whole.

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COMINTERN

Emergence: 1919

Headquarters: Moscow

Officially dissolved in on May 15, 1943, the Communist International, abbreviated as COMINTERN, continues to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State." Agents of COMINTERN aid anti-capitalist movements worldwide by providing leadership, training and weapons to revolutionaries all over the world. The government of the USSR officially disavows knowledge of and ties to the organization, but in effect COMINTERN acts as a counterpart to the School of the Americas and similar Western institutions, furthering the cause of international communism by aiding and abetting socialist revolutionary movements worldwide.

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MIDNIGHT

Emergence: 2015

Headquarters: Arlington

Totalitarian cabal of American political and military leaders conspiring to replace the legitimate US government with an authoritarian government for the purpose of winning the Cold War by any means necessary. The conspiracy has its roots in the right-wing pseudo-military Westmoreland administration (1969 - 1977), and leverages public paranoia in combination with mass surveillance and targeted assassinations to further its reactionary, hyper-militaristic political cause through a number of elected strawmen, culminating in the assassination of President Skye, the declaration of martial law and the outbreak of the Second Secret War in 2017.

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NEW WORLD ORDER

Emergence: 1931

Headquarters: Washington D.C.

A secretive collective of politicians and traditional big businesses from the worlds of finance, industry, labour, education and communications primarily but not exclusively from the United States. Formed in the interbellum as a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda to further American influence world-wide. The NWO backed President Johnson during the first Secret War; the conspiracy's influence was at its zenith between the 1970s and 1990s but declined noticeably in the early 21st century when it suffered serious casualties during the Second Secret War, when it came under heavy attack from the previously unknown 'MIDNIGHT' conspiracy. The group reformed in the wake of the secretive conflict and became noticeably obsessed with and invested in means of population control, manufacturing national consensus and surveillance--to the point where some argue that post-2020 the NWO effectively absorbed the remnants of the MIDNIGHT conspiracy, becoming one block of secretive power.

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ORDER OF THE TEMPLE

Emergence: 13 AD (claimed)

Headquarters: Rome

An vast and ancient conspirary that claims to trace its history to the latter days of Emperor Augustus, the Order of the Temple is a massive web of businesses, wealthy families, former nobility, politicians and clergy that includes high-ranking members of the Curia of the Catholic Church, commissioners of the Western European Union, the upper levels of the international Freemasonry, the CEO of ConEurope International and many other individuals of great influence within Europe. The Order itself is heavily ritualized and steeped in occult tradition, and divided into cells to preserve maximum secrecy, which has allowed the organization to survive threats ranging from Robespierre's purges to Nazi persecution. Its goals are many and varied, ranging from occult mysticism to the unification of Europe: the Order of the Temple was one of the driving influences behind the formation of the WEU and its gradual drift toward a 'Republic of Europe'.

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SIMULECTS

Emergence: 1994

Headquarters: cyberspace

A digital collective of post-classical anarchists, nihilists, new revolutionaries and techno-partisans, the Simulects are a faceless aggregate of radical post-modern thinkers. They are notable for rejecting the traditional geopolitical status quo, espousing the Stateless Society, Total Information Freedom and other ideals considered seditious and/or dangerous by many governments. The collective is suspected to include members from both sides of the Iron Curtain. Members of the group are completely anonymous, utilizing sophisticated encryption technology to hide from authorities, and communicating only through the Internet under a series of unique aliases like The Tribun, The Wizard, The Attorney, The Cardinal, etc.
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

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Re: Conspiracies

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culminating in the assassination of President Skye, the declaration of martial law and the outbreak of the Second Secret War in 2017.
OH SHI-. This actually brings up the idea we had bouncing around of CSW basically splitting off into several timelines, some with interaction, some without. I had bad things happening in STB-verse CSW, but that takes the cake in the meantime, while moving the breakout later.

I guess it ties into that idea the WEU has weird quantum-manipulation technology that allows them to basically manipulate the future they create tons of self-fulfilling prophecies?
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Re: Conspiracies

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:)

It does, really -- I also figured that hey, wouldn't it be better if things were worse?
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Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
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Re: Conspiracies

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I'll be honest in that I've been tip-toeing around making things worse in my notes for STB-timeline because I things are already so bad by the (planned) end of STB2.

Also - Skye would be out of office for a year by the time of her assassination, assuming she was elected following Barclay and served two terms. Perhaps she became a 'leader' of the anti-MIDNIGHT group even after leaving office?
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Re: Conspiracies

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2001 - 2009 Raymond Edward Barclay (D)

2009 - 2017 Helen Skye (R)

Although I suppose it could've happened in '16, the third year of her second term. I personally don't mind the Secret War getting bad as long as it stays, well, secret. So you could assassinate the president and have the conspirators blame it on a lone gunman, for example, but you couldn't blow up New York City.

I prefer to leave Skye as a mostly innocent victum of the conspiracy because, well, that's just in my opinion more dramatically satisfying. She was trying to reduce the US' footprint in the world, running damage control and convincing Kiralova not to nuke the shit out of CONUS for what the conpirators did during STB and then she gets murdered for petty selfish reasons by brutal assholes on a powertrip... That's tragic.
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
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Re: Conspiracies

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Siege wrote:2001 - 2009 Raymond Edward Barclay (D)

2009 - 2017 Helen Skye (R)
Considering 2017 would consist of maybe half a month until her successor is sworn in, yeah.
Although I suppose it could've happened in '16, the third year of her second term. I personally don't mind the Secret War getting bad as long as it stays, well, secret. So you could assassinate the president and have the conspirators blame it on a lone gunman, for example, but you couldn't blow up New York City.
Well, yeah. I wasn't aiming for that. :) I'm with what I remember you describing a part of the SW as: a lot VIPs getting secured, back alley assassinations, shit like that. It's people who try to mess with that 'dynamic' that interested me, and what could happen while still throwing up excuses. There's a pretty large area of the sliding scale between 'low level,' 'Sitting President is assassinated' and 'World-changing things like the first world's center of commerce getting blown to smithereens." After all, the last secret war ended with "the supercarrier USS United States, carrying key leaders of the rebelling military, [being] annihilated by an atomic explosion and lost with all hands in the South Pacific."

I think I actually had a character comment on this in a STB2 draft - the Russians had a huge war and now have their shit in order, and it's America's turn put their house back into order. Except instead of having a huge civil war and losing a bunch of national institutions (MIR, Lenin, haha), the US decides to have a protracted cloak and dagger chess match that is a very protracted, long-term bloodbath. You mentioned NWO absorbing the remnants of MIDNIGHT after MN is broken up - what do you see as the endgame for MIDNIGHT? While I always had the ending of STB-series on paper as having Baylor and Co launching a final assault on a new Paragon installation (sorta returning it to where it all began), that doesn't exactly deal with the larger picture.
I prefer to leave Skye as a mostly innocent victum of the conspiracy because, well, that's just in my opinion more dramatically satisfying. She was trying to reduce the US' footprint in the world, running damage control and convincing Kiralova not to nuke the shit out of CONUS for what the conpirators did during STB and then she gets murdered for petty selfish reasons by brutal assholes on a powertrip... That's tragic.
I actually have it like that so far in STB-timeline, though would her assassination be a result of said asshole seeing her as a threat to their goals? Granted, one doesn't need to be leading a personal anti-MIDNIGHT root-em-out task force to be seen as a threat, just her 'scale it back and make sure we don't do anything I don't know about' is just as hindering to MIDNIGHT as actively trying to break them apart piece by piece.

I think over all this and laugh at the hilarity of the disparate timelines actually interacting. We initially discussed the idea of people realizing something to the degree of 'wait, things shouldn't be this way,' though how they would arrive at the conclusion that there's weird temporal manipulation happening instead of thinking that the world is on a fast track to things going to shit.
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Re: Conspiracies

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Mobius 1 wrote:Considering 2017 would consist of maybe half a month until her successor is sworn in, yeah.
Shows how much I know about American presidential incumbencies :).
Well, yeah. I wasn't aiming for that. :) I'm with what I remember you describing a part of the SW as: a lot VIPs getting secured, back alley assassinations, shit like that. It's people who try to mess with that 'dynamic' that interested me, and what could happen while still throwing up excuses. There's a pretty large area of the sliding scale between 'low level,' 'Sitting President is assassinated' and 'World-changing things like the first world's center of commerce getting blown to smithereens." After all, the last secret war ended with "the supercarrier USS United States, carrying key leaders of the rebelling military, [being] annihilated by an atomic explosion and lost with all hands in the South Pacific."
Yeah, exactly. There is probably some form of escalation to it: the more I think about it, the more I think nobody actually really set out to fight a war in the corridors of power. MIDNIGHT was probably working its angle for years, content with quietly getting people into position and having its way with American politics, and not even STB fazed them so much... Until one of its agents bollixed up an operation that was, on the whole, probably fairly minor key, but the agent's superiors had that whole Quantum thing going on, you know where Mr. White said that "we are on the other side, thinking, 'The Ml6, the CIA, they're looking over our shoulders. They're listening to our conversations...'" So the conspiracy overreacts trying to 'clean' its mistake. And that screw-up, whatever it is, might have otherwise have been seen as a relatively minor thing beneath the notice of really important people... But the heavy-handed follow-up definitely did attract attention.

Now all MIDNIGHT knows is that there is somebody after them, and they're probably gonna assume that they (probably SOLIDSIX) know a hell of a lot more than they actually do. They pull out all the stops trying to stop them, first by bureaucratic manoeuvers via its agents-in-place but the more politicians and bureaucrats start giving odd orders the more the enemies of the conpiracy begin to understand just how wide-spread this thing is... And as they begin counteracting that MIDNIGHT ultimately panics and tries to ram through its agenda, first by political brute force and then when the president proves less compliant than hoped, by killing her.

The first actual killings should probably represent a major escalation, and ought to be a sign that the conspiracy is feeling seriously threatened. And after they do, all bets are off. These are seriously dangerous people after all, especially when they feel cornered.

You mentioned NWO absorbing the remnants of MIDNIGHT after MN is broken up - what do you see as the endgame for MIDNIGHT? While I always had the ending of STB-series on paper as having Baylor and Co launching a final assault on a new Paragon installation (sorta returning it to where it all began), that doesn't exactly deal with the larger picture.
Right now I'm leaning toward the idea that there were people who were members of both conspiracies but maybe didn't even know it, or did and thought their goals weren't mutually exclusive. After all conspiracies don't have easily identified uniforms or member rosters, and a few high-ranking people meeting in an upscale restaurant could be a conspiracy or it could be a power lunch; you'd never know if you weren't listening in, and maybe you wouldn't even if you did. Plus the levels of secrecy involved mean that even a lot of the fairly high-up people in these things don't know exactly what is going on, or even who they're working for. The pawns and knights and bishops of this game have been sold a story that they're working for the good of America or something along those lines, but their bosses could be the New World Order or MIDNIGHT, the CIA or SOLIDSIX or even the KGB or god knows who -- they don't know, not even the guys who are in it for the patriotism, and a lot of them probably aren't, they're just after hard cash.

So if let's say at some point MIDNIGHT has been beheaded, could be that some mid-level MIDNIGHT operative doesn't even know that. He only knows that he's meeting his (or her) handler, but somebody else shows up instead and tells him (or her) that "your old handler was retired. You work for us now", is handed an envelope full of cash, and is told not to ask questions if they don't want to end up face down in the East River. The entire cell structure from there on down is subverted, and nobody knows.

That's the kind of cloak and dagger I'm after. Most of the people involved don't even know who they're really working for, and the few people who do, don't know who everybody else is working for. Cue massive paranoia, which in turn drives the sort of assumptions that make people panic and overreact and start blowing things up and killing "loose ends" that just turn into more clues for the Opposing Forces to follow. And it's not just the bad guys either, the good guys would be just as blind. I had this idea where that guy in the abortive Griffin & Phoenix story, the colonel they rescue, actually works for MIDNIGHT, but he doesn't know it himself, so in trying to stop the conspiracy they're actually aiding it -- by doing the right thing, no less.

It ought to be just people and agencies working their own agendas, grasping in the dark trying to make out who the enemy is, and why. Heroic dudes storming easily identified fortresses full of Designated Badguys is all very good, but it doesn't quite convey what I have in mind here.

I think over all this and laugh at the hilarity of the disparate timelines actually interacting. We initially discussed the idea of people realizing something to the degree of 'wait, things shouldn't be this way,' though how they would arrive at the conclusion that there's weird temporal manipulation happening instead of thinking that the world is on a fast track to things going to shit.
I'm still not quite sure how to work with that, because it rapidly gets pretty meta and that's something to be avoided in this case. It ought to be something like, subtle yet strong tendencies in large groups of people to do things that aren't in their actual interest, but rather are playing right into the hands of people they have no real interest in aiding, but I'm not sure how to write that quite yet without it being utterly obvious and silly.
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
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Re: Conspiracies

Post by Mobius 1 »

The first actual killings should probably represent a major escalation, and ought to be a sign that the conspiracy is feeling seriously threatened. And after they do, all bets are off. These are seriously dangerous people after all, especially when they feel cornered.
That's mostly what I had in mind, yeah. While I had people on the presidentialist side (read: baylor) constructing an idea about an all-powerful MIDNIGHT, the reversal is quite interesting - MIDNIGHT is also overestimating their opponents, and it rapidly escalates from there to the actual Secret War.
It ought to be just people and agencies working their own agendas, grasping in the dark trying to make out who the enemy is, and why. Heroic dudes storming easily identified fortresses full of Designated Badguys is all very good, but it doesn't quite convey what I have in mind here.
It's the journey to that point that matters, I think, that matters. You can have your grand finale (for the specific characters, anyway), but the idea that the Storming the Castle either ultimately defeats the foe or solves the problems isn't what I was aiming for. Thinking about it all, I believe half the 'problem' is simply the nature of my STB arc - it comes in and out every four years or so of CSW-time, so one doesn't get the sense of the day-to-day of it all, just the big, game-changing events. With just that, one gets the impression that's all there is, but it belies the constant cloak-and-dagger stuff that's more 'adventure of the week' compared to 'season finale'. And I think, deep down, that has to do with the fact that I like writing big events and baysplosions over smaller weeklys. :)

Moreover, I never wanted to give the impression that my 'heroic dudes' were the end-all be-all to CSW and that they would end up solving most of it's 'problems,' and if you were alarmed at that, I apologize. I get the sense of that with the nothing ever ends, it just gets a new face bit with MN-NWO.
I'm still not quite sure how to work with that, because it rapidly gets pretty meta and that's something to be avoided in this case. It ought to be something like, subtle yet strong tendencies in large groups of people to do things that aren't in their actual interest, but rather are playing right into the hands of people they have no real interest in aiding, but I'm not sure how to write that quite yet without it being utterly obvious and silly.
Yeah, it's daunting to say the least.
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The day our skys fe||, the heavens split to create new skies.
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