Backstory

# Basic Premise

You are different.

At first, you thought you were crazy. You see creatures that no one else does. You hear things that no one else hears. You thought it was all in your head. Until today.

You are a Shadow Master that has recently stumbled into the hidden world of Shadow Masters. It is a world where people have the special ability to control and command Monsters to do their bidding. The world is controlled by five factions – the Viridian Circle, Pact Archeron, the Extreme Security Division (ESD), the Cambion Families and the Office of Special Intelligence (OSI). Each of the five factions have their own agendas and will stomp over one another to get to the top. It is a brutal world where only the strongest survive.

## Player Journey

The player is on a journey to rise in power. The end goal is for the player to become the leader of a large secret organization that is allied with other like-sized organizations under the banner of a faction. While starting off as a nobody, the player must work their way through the world, city by city, region by region, claiming territory for themselves, employing others to clear and control conquered nodes. The player makes their way through a region, defeating various strategically relevant positions (nodes); the level of success on a node (stars) determines the player’s influence at that location. Once three stars are achieved, the player fully owns it and the clean-up and setup of a control point can be established (currently done via the clean-up crew feature). When the player has a certain number of established control points in a region, they fully own it and can move on to the next region. Players claim two major regions in a city before moving onto the next and may return later to claim more territory. During the campaign, the player builds up people in their employ, which increases with each collected star. It is important that the player feels the power as he builds up both his monster collection and his human resources in the game.

## Who Are You?

You are the player. We don’t tell you much of your story, because only you know what your history is. In the beginning of the game, you find out that you are a Monster Master. You don’t realise this until you encounter Jaime who tells you the truth.

You are forced to learn the ropes of monster summoning with the assistance of Jaime, and you set off on your journey in this dark world.

## The World

Shadow Wars is set in the real world, at the present time. Mortals are mostly unaware of their existence, although stories, superstitions and nightmares give away hints of the truth.

It is a time where technology plays a huge hand in monster summoning. Masters don’t have to be born, they can be created. Refined Arc has never been as potent as it has before. The Shadow Portal was invented to help Masters bind monsters they have failed to capture.

## The Shadow Realm

Monsters come from the Shadow Realm, although not much is known about it - monsters don’t tend to share that information. It does seem like it’s a parallel universe that exists alongside our reality. When a monster is unbound from its Master, they go back to the Shadow Realm. Another Master can try to bind it to them before they go back, but it’s up to chance. If they try to bind the monster to themselves but fail, a trace of the monster will still be left on them. They can then go to the Summoning Portal and attempt to bind them again.