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 the Third World War. 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 amongst 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 SDA and their home nations.
Behind The Scenes: 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. Behind The Scenes may not be entirely truthful, as I (Marty) do like to keep a lid on some things until they are discovered in-game if they are plot-relevant.
Known Shadow War Operations
Project Brightlight and Operation Dark Extraction (December 2014 through End Of War)
Public: 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.
Behind The Scenes: No additional information beyond who participated in Brightlight.
Project Darklight (April 2015-End Of War)
Public: 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.
Behind The Scenes: No additional information beyond who participated in Darklight.
May 2015 Biowarfare Attacks
Public: 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 is blamed (by the USA) for releasing the disease in the USA after it is traced to a Spanish Research Lab. Spain denies the allegations and insists that the disease release was intentionally released by the USA on its own people.
Behind The Scenes: 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.
October 13th, 2015 – The Sydney Mystery
Public: ‘Something’ happened in Sydney, Australia. 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 discernable 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.
Behind The Scenes: The USA had something to do with this. At least, that’s the theory. Nobody is really quite sure on this one, and the keepers of the records of the former United States aren’t letting their records about this one into the open anytime soon.
Winter 2015-2016 – Russia’s Campaign in Alaska
Public: While those who lived in Alaska at this time certainly would not categorize this as “a Shadow War incident,” historians generally categorize the series of incidents stemming from Russia’s incursions into Alaska from December 2015 through April of 2016 as “Shadow War incidents” due to the prevalence of magic-users in the incidents. Believing they had the upper hand in winter combat, Russia sent a variety of forces into Alaska to attempt to distract the US from movements elsewhere in the world. This included several mages, an extensive array of UCAVs, two ATVUs, and several regiments of winter combat troops.
One of the incidents classified under this is Operation Frozen Dawn, which was a covert campaign in the form of a joint operation by Canada and the NSA which aimed to eliminate the Russian UCAVs which were straying dangerously close to the Canadian border.
Behind the Scenes: This is one of the better-known incidents of Russia posturing to secure its post-war position. The UCAVs that were ‘straying’ towards the Canadian border were indeed being sent there deliberately as reconnaissance. A Russian organization known as Необъяснимая управление (‘Unexplained Directorate’, also referred to as НУ or Н Branch) was heavily active inside the Alaskan Theater. H Branch was obsessed with capturing magically talented individuals from the NSA and Canada during this time, but they met with little success.
February 22nd, 2016 – Elementalist Use in Rome
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.
April 20th, 2016
Public: 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.
Behind The Scenes: 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.
January 9th, 2017
Public: 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.
Behind The Scenes: 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.
January 28th, 2017
Public: 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.
Behind The Scenes: 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.