Setting: Dark Conspiracy (True20)

In the future, imagine an Earth where chaos reigns. Runaway population growth, diminishing resources, global climate change, chemical and biological wars and human greed have all taken their toll on the planet. Megacorporations have slipped the reigns of federal and national regulation, and now they wage a continual economic war on political governments. A global economic collapse has plunged all but the most privileged into poverty.

The superpowers have collapsed from inertia and economic stress. In some places those federal republics still exist in name, but their individual states have stepped forward to fill the vacuum of power, and where those states fall short, local governments take up the slack. The result is a political crazy quilt of bizarre and contradictory laws and practices. What is the custom in one locale may well get you shot in another.

But economic and political chaos are only the symptoms of the disease. Its cause lies in the roots of humanity’s deepest, darkest nightmares. Somehow, an ancient, unspeakable evil has been unleashed on the Earth, an evil which thrives on the anguish of a billion tortured souls. This malevolent power now twists the minds of men and women, using their base instincts to serve its purposes. Parts of the world have fallen completely under its control, and from them emerge its Dark Minions, creatures of another time and space that feed not only on human flesh, but also on the human spirit.

But there are still people fighting to drive back the Darkness. Sometimes they’re agents of organizations that retain some small residue of their former power and independence. Sometimes they’re members of what remains of the free press. Most often they’re just victims who’ve escaped the horror and are now fighting back. But always, they have to walk softly, because thousands of people disappear every day, people who simply know too much. People who know that Darkness has returned.