Well over a thousand years ago, the Merchant Corporations rose as major powers in the place of the old nations. By the might of their technology and resources, they transformed the moon -- Luna -- and the innermost planets of the solar system into habitable environments, even as they corrupted the Earth with their excesses and their wars. Eventually, the greatest city in all the history of humanity grew on Luna, and its people asserted their independence from Earth by raining destruction upon the world of their ancestors.

The Merchant Corporations colonized the inner worlds with the "best and brightest" selected from Earth, while billions were left to die on the ravaged planet. All those left on Earth were considered as dead, and life went on without them. A new Church of considerable influence was formed to replace the old Roman Catholic Church, with a Cardinal at its head instead of a Pope, and other faiths were similarly cut off from any connection to Earth. The corporations filled the roles of the old nations, with boundaries no longer truly determined by geography, though each had its own home planet:

Capitol, the first megacorporation, with its roots in a conglomerate of North American corporations, making its home on the desert world of Mars

Bauhaus, possibly the mightiest of the megacorporations, born from a European combine, dominated by Germany and France, making its home on the jungle planet of Venus

Mishima, the third megacorporation, born of the most powerful Japanese corporations, basing its operations in the subterranean artificial "underworlds" of Mercury

Imperial, latecomer amongst the original four Merchant Corporations, born of proud clans tracing their heritage back to the islands of the United Kingdom, now based on the large asteroid of Victoria and the moon of Ganymede.

Thus was ushered in an age of remarkable advances in technology, where not only could mankind shape new worlds, but it could construct thinking machines and even rearrange the building blocks of life. Man became his own god, and it seemed as if nothing was outside his grasp ...

... or so it seemed, until the time of the Age of Catastrophe, over a thousand years ago. The history books speak of a strange force known as the Dark Symmetry, which corrupted mankind's computers and made his technology turn against him. Civilization nearly collapsed, but in the midst of the chaos, a champion arose, possessing the power of the Light -- Nathaniel Durand the First, who declared himself a new Cardinal of the Church, which he reformed into the mighty Brotherhood, leading the forces of mankind against a mysterious enemy known as the Dark Legion. Durand was victorious, but suffered mortal wounds in battle against alien monsters.

Thus came yet another new age -- an age of the Brotherhood, a theocracy declaring itself the ultimate authority in all matters spiritual, and a culmination of all faiths of humanity into one. Many of the old technologies were forbidden by the Edicts of Toth, lest humankind risk corruption by the Darkness once more. Another body was created, that of the Cartel, a "United Nations" of the megacorporations, with the intent of unifying the corporations in their struggle against the Darkness.

Centuries have passed, and nearly a millenium, and over these many years, people have come to doubt the histories. What is this "Darkness"? What is this "Dark Symmetry"? They have seen corruption in the Brotherhood, and there have been those who have suggested that the Dark Legion might merely be a bogeyman invented by the Brotherhood to keep the "flock" under control. A new corporation has emerged, Cybertronic, which openly defies the Edicts of Toth, with its experiments in genetic alteration, cybernetic enhancement, and mind-altering drugs. The other corporations have grown bold, and while claiming varying degrees of allegiance to the Brotherhood, have begun to make use of these forbidden technologies again for use in their wars upon each other.

In recent years, the Second Corporate Wars reached unprecedented levels of bloodshed, to the point where the first reports of the return of the Dark Legion were largely ignored as Brotherhood propaganda. Some of these marvelous "new" machines have begun to malfunction spectacularly. Could it be that the Darkness is among us once more?

Here, in the largest city in the solar system, so close to the birthplace of mankind, the Brotherhood has its strongest grip on the populace, but Luna City is not wholly theirs -- the Merchant Corporations have their own chunks of the city to control, and there are countless smaller "freelance" corporations at work here as well -- especially out on the nearly forgotten fringes of the city, known as the Perimeter. Furthermore, the corporations have returned to the poisoned Earth, Dark Eden, and have made contact with some of the most powerful tribes there, even taking some of them as mercenaries to the other worlds. The tribes, as "primitive" as they may seem in comparison to the corporations, are still not without their strengths, and may even vie to wrest some power from their spacefaring brethren that left them to die on Dark Eden so many generations ago.

One of these lesser corporations is a security service known as the Dawn Alert Civilian Protection Service, contracted to protect a number of Perimeter districts, elected by the populace and paid out of the "voluntary" tithes to the Brotherhood that are expected from every citizen of Luna City. Not all of Dawn Alert's employees are human -- nor are all its customers. Relics of technologies and excesses of centuries past exist in the form of genetically engineered creatures that are hybrids of human and animal DNA, erroneously but commonly referred to as "Mutants". While the Brotherhood insists that Mutants have souls (and therefore can pay tithes like everyone else) they still comprise a minority in the worlds of humanity, and due to the hereditary flows of wealth in most of the Merchant Corporations, they tend to be ghettoized ... such as they are here, tending to be found in greater numbers on the fringes of human cities.

There are some who claim that there are creatures even less human lurking out there, preying upon the weak and helpless. There are many who doubt whether any police force can truly protect the city from dangers within and without. The Merchant Corporations fight amongst themselves over resources, the Brotherhood is perhaps overzealous in its drive to root out Heretics, criminal organizations such as the Triads are getting more bold, and then there are the tales about the horrors of the Dark Legion.

Now is the time for heroes.