Prologue

**PROLOGUE:**

The protagonist is given command of a squad who are ordered to search a derelict vessel for "signs of infection." This seems cryptic but the alien council wants to know what happened. The council had dispatched previously a special-forces team (of aliens selected from the council races) to investigate but all communication was lost.

The protagonist and his team board the derelict ship, and while searching the ship they find several dead spec-ops soldiers, killed by mysterious causes. The protagonist takes a small team to the infirmary to recover any information and discovers several data drives containing the research of a parasitic organism discovered on a derelict spacecraft orbiting a planetary system several light-years past the galactic periphery. The information within these drives however is scrambled and cryptic, but the location of this extra-galactic system and the ship is retrieved as transmissions from several squads spread throughout the ship break the otherwise eerie silence and report contact with lifeforms of an "unknown origin" and the protagonist orders a full retreat to their vessel.

They manage to fight their way through the derelict ship's darkened corridors and to the docking area where their ship is waiting. Upon departing the derelict ship the protagonist radios the council requesting permission to destroy the derelict but is denied that request. The protagonist explains the data drives that was recovered in the infirmary and the coordinates to the distant planetary system. The council then orders the protagonist to investigate the and secure the location of the orbiting spacecraft before returning for debriefing.

The protagonist heads to the planet and docks with the floating spacecraft. Upon inspection, they discover the dessicated and rotting corpses of a long-dead race. The entire ship is dead, with no power or any life-support, however, the protagonist orders a full sweep of the ship and splits his group of marines and troopers into two groups. As the two groups begin searching the ship, they discover a chamber similar to the derelict's infirmary where several distinctly different creatures are found dissected and rotting on surgical tables. The protagonist recovers footage of this portion of the vessel and is ordered by the council to retrieve a viable DNA sample for analysis.

The protagonist (regardless of his player-made moral compass) collects the DNA and returns to their spacecraft just as a fleet of council vessels arrive and establish a quarantine zone around the planet and the dead spacecraft. A squad of commandos approach the protagonist and take the DNA sample from them, informing them that the council wants to meet with the protagonist. Upon arriving at the city-planet (the capitol of all the galactic species) the protagonist meets with the council and Senate in a classified hearing where the information retrieved from the derelict ship and the dead orbiting spacecraft is reviewed. The council meeting adjourns, and afterwards the leadership of the council (only seven individuals, one from each species) informs the protagonist that the Senate and council has been corrupted and that a seperatist group managed to board the derelict ship and recover a stasis capsule containing the last remaining precursor to all galactic races. That precursor is known as an Ancient and was the only remaining survivor (albeit in stasis) on the dead ship in orbit around that extra-galactic planetary system.

The protagonist is inducted into the council special operations group and is given the order to gather a team of individuals loyal to the council to track down the location of the seperatists leadership and recover the stolen stasis capsule.

Note: one of the seven individuals from the council leadership is the head of the seperatist group, but has managed to conceal that from the others. (The evidence incriminating this individual will be gathered during a latter part of the campaign).

After the inducting the protagonist is introduced to the first two of his 13 teammates. The first is a fellow marine (the opposite sex of the protagonist) who fought with the protagonist in the past.

Note: the location of where depends on the decisions made in the "prologue" mission, and this marine's attitude is based off of the protagonist's decisions made during the "prologue" mission.

A. If the protagonist performed the suicide mission [regardless of being heroic, ruthless, etc] the marine will be pessimistic because [he/she] was nearly killed during the mission.

B. If the protagonist was on 'vacation' the marine was also on leave and commends the protagonist on the militia they formed during the attack and mentions that bringing a team a lot smaller than that militia shouldn't be too hard.

C. If the protagonist infiltrated the terrorist camp the marine will compliment the protagonist on that mission's success and will tell the protagonist that [he/she] was part of the extraction team that exfiltrated the protagonist as the camp detonated.

The second teammate is a council investigator tasked with tapping the Senate's communications to discover the location or the seperatists and the stasis tube. This teammate is generally very straight-forward with a wry sense of humor who also has quips during recon missions or combat situations.

**Mission 1:**

The protagonist is informed by the council investigator on the possible location of a seperatist hideout (one of four that need to be searched to move on to the next segment of "investigation") and this one is located on a space station orbiting a red dwarf. The location was given to the investigator by a possible informant on the space station. The protagonist deduces that this could be a trap, but the marine teammate states that it could be worth a look and the team makes the trip to the station.

Note: On the space station the next teammate is recruited, this one also depends on the choices made in the prologue. If the protagonist was a gang member, then the recruit will also be a former gang member. If the protagonist's parent was killed in the pirate raid, the teammate will be a doctor onboard that same ship and was a friend of the protagonist's parent. If the protagonist was raised by military parents, the teammate will be a retired lieutenant who fought with the deceased parent and was present at their funeral.

After infiltrating and fighting through several corridors the team meets up with a person who is the informant (and now a teammate of the protagonist's squad). This person is badly beaten and the protagonist radios for medical assistance. As a pair of medic soldiers retrieve the informant and take him/her back to the ship, the protagonist and his team moves deeper into the bowels of the space station and retrieve the first of four clues leading to the whereabouts of the seperatists and their hidden location.

The team fights through several waves of enemies on their way back to their ship but are cut off as part of the station is detonated, sucking all the air into space and plunging the station into darkness with no gravity. The team manages to seal a bulkhead and restore pressure and gravity to the remains of the station just as it starts to enter the red dwarf's atmosphere. The protagonist and their team manage to fight through several squads of enemies and to a corridor filled with escape pods and escape, just as the station disintegrates in the planet's extremely hot atmosphere.

The escape pod is retrieved by the protagonist's ship and the council wants to be informed privately of the information received. The ship returns to the capitol (city-planet) and in a private meeting with the council leadership the protagonist reveals the first of four clues which is a cryptic series of numbers and letters. (Note: they are actually part of a set of spatial coordinates to a planetary system previously erased from the council galactic map). The council leadership concludes that this piece of evidence, however cryptic, is a start and that the protagonist is given permissions to use whatever means necessary to retrieve the remaining clues.

It is also admonished (but not ordered) for the protagonist to continue retrieving more team members loyal to the council who will (in the future) provide a clear alleigance to the state of the galactic community. It is here that the meeting is adjourned and the protagonist has the choice to:

**A. Retrieve the final clues.**

**B. Recruit 6 more teammates.**

i. The Don (an "made man" with a thirst for violence)

ii. The Berzerker (a vehicle mechanic with a lust for destruction)

iii. The Terrorist (she's the galaxy's most notorious war criminal)

iv. The Spy (a suave, smooth-talking operative who has been known to end wars with one pull of the trigger [he uses customized silenced pistols] or through the manipulation of information [by using intel provided by The Hacker].)

v. The Doctor (once a field medic for his species' military, now a freelance physician who is recruited to concoct special drugs for interrogations, stealth missions and poisonous projectiles for combat.)

vi. The Hacker (infamous and well-known for breaching the council star-control system and nearly causing the council's skyhook collision with the capitol planet. Also is known for sifting funds from several Senate members to fund unsanctioned operations for terrorist groups targeting interstellar trade routes.)

After the clues are analyzed (and the teammates are either ignored or recruited) the coordinates are revealed to pinpoint a location no longer accessible in the galactic map in the council headquarters. The protagonist is ordered to travel to this location and find what it is that is apparently hidden at this location. (After this mission the protagonist is ordered to discover the final coordinates to the separatists' headquarters and is given the option to recruit more teammates).

The protagonist at this point in the campaign can:

**A. Search the separatists' bases for the final location of their headquarters.**

After the missions are complete and the planetary coordinates are unscrambled protagonist collapses to the floor and starts convulsing. During this seizure, the protagonist has a vision of several starships fleeing the galaxy to a distant location (which is revealed through a series of numbers and blinking stars) that some of the Ancients escaped to.

**B. Recruit 5 more teammates.**

i. The Actor (a retired officer well known for his fame in the action-vid scene, now recruited to put his good looks and acting to

ii. The Traitor (a former revolutionary-type who was left for dead by the council's military forces after a failed attempt to contain a hazardous situation on a volcanic planet. He has the scars and marks of burns and skin grafting on his body.)

iii. The Interrogator (a recently discharged military and special activities interrogator who once before and continues to utilize the special serums created by The Doctor in his interrogative techniques.

iv. The Patriot (a forcibly retired war veteran and hero who has cybernetic limbs and torso after being caught in an ambush in a minefield while on patrol with his squad on a jungle planet.)

v. The Hunter (a dishonorably discharged sniper from the council Armed Expeditionary Forces after being charged with treason and working with the enemy [The Terrorist], they were once in a relationship but after his imprisonment and "release"[The Hunter's recruitment mission is to break into a top-secret military prison and extract him.] by the protagonist he and The Terrorist [if not in a relationship with the protagonist] start a new relationship.)

Following the completion of the primary objective (and secondary recruitment if one wishes to do so) the final mission becomes available:

A. Discover the meaning of the clues and find a way to stop the separatists from taking control of the council!

After finding the final clues leading to the headquarters of the separatist group the spatial coordinates actually point to the planet that the protagonist saw council ships quarantine at the beginning. This planetary system was orignally part of the galaxy until it was moved. The question will arise: how does one move a planet, let alone an entire system and then a scientist will reveal that the method of regulating trade routes is actually done by using the inverse of space-time (think the inverted universal continuum, if you were to invert colors on a photograph) to transport some systems into new locations to protect certain council interests (like the location of the extragalactic planet) and to provide security to certain council races while maintaining control by putting other systems close enough to each other to create unrest and civil wars (which therefore permit the council to maintain military operations and thereby total control throughout the galaxy.) The protagonist is informed that there is also a teleportation system that allows council members to transport themselves in times of galactic conflict to secured locations throughout the galaxy and that the final clue leading to the location of where the 'stolen' stasis capsule is located lies within one of those secure locations. The protagonist chooses a squad and before entering the teleportation system orders the other teammates to wait on the spacecraft for the coordinates of the planet (or space station) he will be transported to. The protagonist and his team enters the teleportation system and is moved immediately to a gigantic orbiting spacecraft precursor in nature. This vessel is orbiting a dead star, somewhere on the opposite side of the galaxy from where the abandoned planet was located.

The protagonist activates a beacon and hopes that the signal transmits quickly enough to get the rest of the team to this location as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the protagonist's team can choose to infiltrate or assault. If infiltrate is chosen, the team will make their way through several air ducts, dark rooms and past patrolling guards. If assault is chosen, the team attacks the central hangar where several precursor fighters are being maintained, up several levels via gravity lifts and through several waves of separatist [council] enemies in precursor combat armor and wielding energy weapons that are also precursor in nature.

At the end of either infiltration, the team makes their way into the control center where the remaining council member/s (depending on if all of them were discovered, executed or ignored) in league with the precursor prisoner. The topic of precursor gear and weapons not being compatible with the council races comes up to which the precursor informs the protagonist that the prisoner's people were once a great people that split off from their brethren known as the Ancients. They split off due to their difference in the way the universe should have been governed. The precursor prisoner tells the protagonist that the Ancients embedded within every council species' DNA the ability to interact with precursor objects but that the Apostates or "Fallen" (the one the precursor prisoner is a part of) did everything they could to hide or (worst-case) destroy all precursor artifacts, weapons and objects. However, many of them were hidden from the Apostates/Fallen by the Ancients' leadership to come forth when the galactic races returned to inherit all that the Ancients had prepared for them. The precursor prisoner explains that a great revolution broke out between the Ancients and the Fallen and that by the time of his capture and abandonment the Ancients were nearly exterminated. Due to this, the precursor prisoner is smug enough to assume that all the Ancients are now extinct and reveals that the Fallen have been lying in wait for millenia to rise and take control of what is rightfully theirs.

Note: although the one council member is behind the separatist movement, the entire council is aware of it and the end game (which connects to the future stories to come) is that the recovered stasis capsule was of a prisoner of war that was captured by the universal precursors to civilization and holds the key to total domination in the universe. The reason why the ship the prisoner was found on is because the home galaxy and several others in the vicinity are on the periphery of the known universe. The ship was sent on a permanent voyage to depart the known occupied space to whatever lies in the darkness beyond, but the gravity of these galaxies slowed the ship's trajectory until it stopped at that abandoned planetary system floating inbetween the galaxies. The prisoner of the capsule is released and kills the remaining members of the council before escaping and at the end of the campaign the prisoner returns with an army (of the same species as the prisoner) and invades the capitol-planet, with hundreds of precursor starships in orbit and dozens of precursor fighters screaming through the sky.