After Nemesis

[Cybermancer]

This thread contents is related to the stories being told in the "What Would Victor Lazlo Do?" thread. As opposed to actual 'War Stories', this thread will relate more to the world at large, how it had changed and the actual conduct of the war.

Information found herein may be useful as an example of what can and did happen when conditions in the world are right. Some assumptions we have made in the past may be challenged.

As I post information, please feel free to ask specific questions that relate to what was happening in the world and how people were reacting to it. This thread is not for the relating of what I, or my allies specifically did. That will continue on in the "WWVLD?" thread.

[Cybermancer]

I will start by focusing on North America as that was where my attention was primarily focused.

In March of 2000 the invaders crossed the veil and began taking over our world. They did not have unlimited resources so they took a 'top down' approach to conquest. This meant that they had to focus on replacing or subverting key people within government. They couldn't replace every police officer but they might replace the chief. They couldn't replace every soldier but they could replace the generals. They couldn't replace every federal agent but they could replace the directors.

When it came to politicians, they knew that they couldn't replace them all. So they focused on taking over key positions in what they considered to be key locations. They had a tendency to focus on taking over regions that were near each other. In areas that the invaders controlled, they managed pretty much saturation levels of infiltration.

For example, in the United States, a number of states were completely subverted. I mean the enemy controlled every level of government. Municipal, county, state and federal representatives from those locations were all solidly in the claws of the invaders. These were the States that the enemy had complete control of by April of 2000. Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.

Outside of this area of control, the enemy also obtained pockets of control in the USA where they held what was effectively absolute control. They included the District of Columbia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Colorado Springs, Miami, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Atlanta.

This of course was just in the United States. In Canada, the enemy focused on southern Ontario, southern Quebec, The region around the great lakes, the St. Lawrence waterway and Halifax. West of the Ontario border, their influence dropped off significantly. They did hold the key cities of Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver however.

In Mexico, they managed complete saturation in about a week. Six months later they were struggling to hold on to the southern half of the country. Why? A single vampire saw what was going on from day one. He started spawning more vampires immediately and had them spawn more vampires who in turn spawned more vampires... had they not formed a bulwark against the enemy, it would have been horrifying.

To this day I feel badly for the people of Mexico. They were caught in the middle of a war between supernatural powers. The ones north of Mexico city were kept alive as livestock. Psychics and mages were pressed into service as daytime protectors. Or else.

In the south, the invaders found ever more inventive and cruel ways to exterminate the population. As the enemy lost ground against the vampires in the first six months, the enemy took a scorched earth policy as they retreated. This meant, not only the destruction of any resource of any remote value but also the genocide of the population in an attempt to starve out the vampires.

Vampires were not limited to Mexico either. They strongly contested invader control in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. The vampires were more subtle here. They limited their numbers and took control of key humans in government and the military. There came a point when many humans willingly joined forces with the vampires. It was realized that the vampires needed a substantial human population. The invaders had no such need. It's amazing the sacrifices we'll make in the name of survival.

They made early inroads into Texas but we chased those damned blood suckers back across the Rio Grande. Two years after Nemesis day, you weren't a real Texan if you didn't openly carry with silver bullets loaded. Everyone went to church, and everyone wore crucifixes. Easy to disassemble wood furniture was also extremely popular.

Lycanthropes also realized that in order to survive this invasion, they not only had to come out of hiding but had to multiply and fast. Large populations of lycanthropes began to appear in northern Ontario and Quebec. They also rose up in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington State. They didn't control the government but they had a chokehold on the land. And they killed the enemy when they could.

But this war was not fought solely by supernatural powerhouses. We humans had our strongholds as well. In Canada, that was everything west of the Ontario except the big cities I mentioned above. It also included Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. In the United States, that included Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.

The south would rise again, damn it!

Everything else in between the places I mentioned above was hotly contested by all of us.

[Cybermancer]

Nemesis day, whatever it was, changed the world in ways that might be hard to imagine. First and foremost, from my perspective, the dimensional fabric of the world had changed. On one hand it was easier than it is now to pass through what can be considered 'close' dimensions or demi-dimensions as some who travel between worlds call them. So the fey realm, astral plane and even the dreamscape were all much easier to access then they were before Nemesis day or now. This was essential to the enemies plan as their base of operations was located there.

On the other hand, access to distinct dimensions became much more difficult. Even a natural dimensional traveller such as Maddie had difficulty piercing the veil. She had to pump more of her energy into the attempt in order to succeed. Summoning wasn't impaired though. Things could get in. They just couldn't get back out again. Not without help, anyway.

I'm not sure if this next observation has anything to do with the change in the dimensional fabric or not. It is possible that the one way permeability of the dimension created a sort of feed back loop or resonance or something. I really don't know as I didn't have time to study it in depth nor is it part of my area of expertise. I can nevertheless, describe it.

The geomantric energy of the world increased dramatically. The invisible lines of power vibrated with energy to the extent that it could actually be detected via various means. Those who rely on geomancy such as mages greatly benefited from this increase. Doctor Boggs said he was twice as powerful on the day after Nemesis day than he was the day before.

This had an effect on psychics as well. Where once a psychic might have trouble bending a spoon in front of an audience, they could now hurl books in a cyclone around a room with ease. Even more dramatically was the sudden increase of those with significant psionic power. Approximately one quarter of the world's population were suddenly gifted with powers they could not explain.

As you can imagine, the paranormal was now suddenly thrust into the front of everyone's consciousness. It was no longer something that could be ignored, scoffed at and believed not to exist. It did exist, it could be proven to exist and everyone knew it.

That was part of the reasoning behind me posing as Professor Victor Lazlo. As I mentioned before, my little trip back through time changed me. I hesitate to use the word 'devolve' but there were no denying the effects. I aged about ten years in a moment. My hair turned shock white. Even the appearance of my eyes was altered to a significant degree. The use of conventional and magical illusionary techniques allowed me to completely emulate Victor Lazlo down to the last detail.

We were further assisted by a loose network of friends that Victor had left behind. While they had been targeted by the invaders, they were better prepared than most. They had seen the signs that something was coming and had coordinated with one another to prepare for it. So as a network, they survived largely intact. Within days, we made contact with some of them and presented them with a plan.

What the world needed was information on the supernatural. They also needed a figurehead they could look up to and believe in. Victor Lazlo would have been ideal had he been around. But the sad fact was, that he was still missing. Possibly the ritual to summon him had been partially successful, taking him out of his time and sending him... I have no idea where. Or when.

However, a carefully orchestrated fraud might serve the function just as well. The first hurdle was the fact that I didn't look anywhere near as old as Victor Lazlo should. I could barely pull off looking as old as he did when he disappeared. No reasonable or rational story really seemed to fit the bill.

So we went with the fantastic. The day I went public with my return, I looked right at the video camera and told the world I had been abducted by aliens. Due to travelling at fantastic speeds, I had aged very little while a lot of time had passed here on earth. Those same aliens, who were basically benevolent, had returned me to the Earth after Nemesis Day as they felt the world needed me now, more than ever.

With psionics appearing in one of four people, rise in vampire and lycanthrope populations, tales of never before imagined monsters and a day where the world was cloaked in darkness for 24 hours made this story a lot more palatable than you might otherwise imagine.

The environment was right to tell people the truth about the supernatural.

[Cybermancer]

The people were ready to believe but they weren't ready to believe anything. Or to paraphrase a great man:

You can educate some of the people all the time
and all of the people some of the time.
But you can't educate all of the people, all of the time.

We were able to convince people that psionic powers existed. They were seeing it in their day to day lives anyway. It was something that could now be openly studied and quantified. They weren't ready to accept the existence of magic, however. Anytime magic was demonstrated, it was seen as just another form of psionics. I should stipulate that there were those who believed in magic, more than before. But it was still considered fringe or quack science. It also led to witch hunts where belief was too strong.

People were also ready to accept the existence of aliens, other worlds and other dimensions. And with much less proof than there existed for psionic powers. I think it was because it could be couched in familiar scientific terms, so was easier to accept on faith, as ironic as that is.

As time went on, certain other paranormal things become believable, though not on quite the same scale as psionics. As vampires and lycanthropes became more numerous and more blatant, people started believing in them. News reports would cover attacks by these creatures as, "The death is being blamed by eye witnesses on an alleged vampire (or werewolf) attack."

Such things were taken seriously enough that LEO and military agencies of all sorts were creating special squads to deal with them. Along with these special squads came special training and special gear. The people knew that these teams were there to deal with the paranormal. They rarely spoke to the press or addressed the public. When they did, it was in the most general and broad terms.

Everybody, and I mean everybody believed in ghosts and spirits. Depending on your religious tendencies, you might also believe in angels and demons. The belief in faeries also become much more widespread.

So obviously they would be receptive to the idea of a paranormal conspiracy to take over the government, right?

Wrong.

The things that people were starting to believe in had always been there and been a part of their awareness, even if they didn't believe in it. If a non-believer sees a man transform into a wolf, his mind will scream "Werewolf!" He may try to rationalize what he is seeing and continue on with his disbelief but he will on some level recognize what that creature is and what it represents to him (a threat).

Aliens, ghosts, faeries, vampires, lycanthropes, bigfoot, psionics, demons, gargoyles, gremlins, angels and magic are all very, very familiar to all of us. We recognize them. We know what they are, even if we don't want to believe in them.

It is so much easier to accept what we are familiar with as being real than something we've never encountered before.

The invaders? They were alien to us.

People not only didn't want to believe in them, they were incapable of recognizing them for what they were. They were so completely outside anyone's experience or capability to deal with, that it was nearly impossible to convince anyone that more was going on than a simple return of the supernatural to the natural world.

Victor Lazlo had always tried to warn us that the supernatural was real and that it was a danger to us.

The enemy had all but announced their arrival with Nemesis day and people still didn't believe the danger we were facing. Vampire? We know and understand that. Stake and burn it. Werewolf? Silver bullet. Ghost? Exorcism. Secret entities controlling our government? Be serious.

What was worse, the enemy was using humanities new acceptance of the supernatural against their enemies on every front. That's right. Knowledge of the existence of the supernatural actually worked in the enemies favor!

[Cybermancer]

The Enemy Themselves

By now, I can only hope that you're wondering who or what the enemy was.

The truth is, I have no idea what they called themselves. Even after having fought them for over a decade, there is still a great deal that I don't know about them. Even though I have encountered them before on my world and another, the mysteries outweigh the facts.

In this war, I observed what I consider to be three tiers of power among the invaders.

The first and most populous tier would be what I would call minions. This covers everything from human dupes to constructs to demon lords who sided with them.

The second tier would be the leaders themselves. These were beings of such incredible power that they could directly translate energy to matter and back again. The most powerful magics were just petty tricks to these monsters. Psychic power was beneath notice. Elder Gods feared these beings. But to be fair, they also feared the elder gods.

The last tier was a singular entity. IT was not even a complete entity. Just a fragment. A merest hint of infinite power. In the end, it would take the power to unmake the world to defeat it. Just a fragment.

But what is a fraction of infinity?

There are no words to describe IT. IT was evil given form. IT was blackness and chaos. Any psychic foolish enough to open their mind to IT went catatonic instantly. The psychics intentions were irrelevant. IT's malevolence was such that even those closed to the supernatural could sense IT's scrutiny. To be in IT's presence, is to have hot black tar covering your soul.

Why do I refer to IT as IT?

Because IT has no name. IT cannot be described. IT cannot even be imagined. IT simply IS.

IT has no business even existing.

To paraphrase once more:

IT is fear.

Fear leads to anger.

Anger leads to hatred.

Hatred leads to the Dark.

[Ron Caliburn]

This is why I keep saying we need to teach people about the supernatural before it's too late.

If people are still in denial when they are confronted by the paranormal, even in large obvious displays, they won't be able to handle what they are seeing. They won't understand and they will miss the significance of things that could save their lives.

[Cybermancer]

I agree that the public needs to be educated about the supernatural. I think what we lack is a charismatic, informed and intelligent spokesman to step forward. In that regard, the enemy hurt us hard when we lost Victor Lazlo.

For now, I will simply keep doing my best to educate those willing to learn.

I have already discussed the so-called doppelganger minions employed by the enemy. I'll now discuss some of their other common minions.

The most common (perhaps even more numerous than the doppelgangers), would be the automations or constructs.

These things remind me of stories of golems from ages past. They were magically animated devices in (usually) humanoid form. They were hard to study as they discorporate after being destroyed. What is left after they discorporate is a pile of carbon ash, similar to those found near ground zero in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

When animated, they appear to be made of black metal. They can be either highly shone or dull and flat in color. They might have wings and be able to fly or not. They may have the head of a humanoid or animal skull. They may be skeletal in appearance or look like walking suits of gothic armor. They could be human sized or two times the height of the tallest man. There was no one single template for their creation. Regardless of their form, they were as tough as walking armoured vehicles.

As constructs, these things had superhuman strength and endless endurance. They simply did not get tired, ever. Their strength was such that they could tear apart tanks in their talons. Darkness did not seem to impair their vision any. They definitely had good senses of sight and hearing. We have no idea if they had any other senses. They could speak to communicate with humans but generally remained silent. They seem to use some form of telepathy to communicate with each other and their masters.

They did not regenerate damage done to them but could apparently be repaired by some means. Purpose built constructs were also possible although they were all usually black and of humanoid form. They had no thoughts that we could ever discern but seemed able to carry out complex tasks by their masters and demonstrated the ability to solve problems, often by trial and error. We found no way to subvert them against their masters.

Constructs served as the enemy's shock troops when they were no longer concerned with subtlety. They were primarily deployed in the fey realm. Early on when we had no effective weapons against these things, resistance SOP's when confronted by them was to run away or employ explosives. Eventually we were forced to use larger, more powerful calibers to counter this threat. This caused logistical problems of all kinds but was a necessity. Later in the war, with advances in propellant and materials, we were able to return to lighter calibers such as the 5.56 NATO. This helped resolve some of our logistic difficulties.

While dangerous with their bare talons, the constructs were always armed with some sort of melee weapon. These weapons appeared to be made of the same substance as the constructs carrying them, some other process must have been employed in their manufacture. Where the constructs would discorporate, the weapons continued to exist. These weapons were often bladed but I did witness blunt weapons such as war hammers a well. An edge made from this material would never dull and could defeat virtually any type of armor we had at our disposal. Magic forms of protection could slow them down but not stop them.

With difficulty, these weapons can be melted down and reformed into other weapons. I developed a process to create rounds jacketed in this material. I also have a sword and a dagger made from the material. I will not be making them available for study as they are irreplaceable. Armor and ballistic plates could also be made from this material. Since the enemy was the only source of this metal, all these things were exceptionally rare.

These things inspired Darcy to insist that the following song be adopted as the (un)official anthem of the resistance. I think it may have been just that she felt some sort of strong connection to this particular melody. Why, was never quite clear.

"The Pretender"

Keep you in the dark
You know they all pretend
Keep you in the dark
And so it all began

Send in your skeletons
Sing as their bones go marching in... again
They need you buried deep
The secrets that you keep are ever ready
Are you ready?
I'm finished making sense
Done pleading ignorance
That whole defense

Spinning infinity, boy
The wheel is spinning me
It's never-ending, never-ending
Same old story

What if I say I'm not like the others?
What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays?
You're the pretender
What if I say I will never surrender?

In time or so I'm told
I'm just another soul for sale... oh, well
The page is out of print
We are not permanent
We're temporary, temporary
Same old story

I'm the voice inside your head
You refuse to hear
I'm the face that you have to face
Mirrored in your stare
I'm what's left, I'm what's right
I'm the enemy
I'm the hand that will take you down
Bring you to your knees

So who are you?
Yeah, who are you?
Yeah, who are you?
Yeah, who are you?

Keep you in the dark
You know they all pretend

What if I say I'm not like the others?
(Keep you in the dark)
What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays?
(You know they all... pretend)
You're the pretender
What if I say I will never surrender?

So who are you?
Yeah, who are you?
Yeah, who are you?

By the Foo Fighters

[Cybermancer]

I need to explain a statement I made earlier in this thread. I mentioned that the enemy was able to use the public's new knowledge and acceptance of the supernatural against us.

Just as I think Victor Lazlo would have done, I spent a good amount of time speaking to the media about the need to study the supernatural. By studying it, I argued, we could understand it and deal with it properly. It was a message that seemed to be universally accepted by the masses both at home and abroad.

The fact that during this time, no attempts were made on my life should have worried me more than it did.

A short time after the election in 2000, the government in the US introduced new laws and policies regarding the supernatural. Every single one of them was based on the public's desire, nay demand, that the supernatural be studied.

The first such law was the Psychic Registration Act or PRA. Anyone demonstrating any paranormal abilities was required by law to register with the government. Anyone seeing paranormal abilities in another was required by law to report it to the government. This was for the psychic's own good, of course and for the good of the nation and humanity at large. After all, good professor Victor Lazlo had been warning us for decades about the dangers of the supernatural. Good professor Victor Lazlo had been mandating the scientific study of the supernatural for decades. Now good professor Victor Lazlo would be getting his wish.

I tried to speak out against the PRA, but it fell on deaf ears. 'I' had been right all along. Now I should step aside and let the government and academia do what they should have been doing all along. Oh sure, it was a credit to me as a person that I was concerned about human rights abuses, but I shouldn't really be worried. Uncle Sam would take care of it.

Numerous incidents where psychic powers were used in crimes or manifested in an uncontrolled manner did nothing to help matters. Already there were whispers that psychic powers might alter the mind in unnatural ways. Every time enemy activity came to light, it was blamed on the psychics.

The Paranormal Investigation, Study and Research Act (PISRA) was worse. It gave the government the authority to do virtually anything in the course of studying the paranormal. Citizens could be moved to 'Research and Study Centers'. Except for a few 'showcase' camps that were propped up for media tours, most of these centers were death camps by 2005.

Part of the PISRA act was to give law enforcement the right to shoot to kill any suspect known or thought to possess psychic powers. This was for the protection of the officer and the larger community of course. I am loathe to say this but many good, honest and human police officers gunned down innocent people in the years that followed. A well meaning pamphlet was circulated in the psychic community as a result.

When confronted with law enforcement, remember your three F's.
Surrender First!
Surrender Fast!
Surrender Fervently!

This was not circulated by the enemy or by us. It was circulated by well meaning citizens.

One thing you have to remember. Early on, the enemy only controlled a third of the government. They were able to get these measures passed by getting regular people who were not affiliated with them in any way to agree with these draconian measures.

Some of these measures weren't even introduced by the enemy.

I believe the saying goes, "God save me from my friends."

[Cybermancer]

Before I continue any further, I am going to briefly discuss my use of pronouns and my perspective on these events.

The person who originally owned this account and who is also referred to as Mr. Blue on these boards has the same name as me and shares many other things with me as well. He contends that he is from a parallel universe and that I am this world's version of him. I contend that he is his world's version of me. Either way, we share a commonality that goes beyond merely being parallels of one another.

We share all memories of what happened in this other timeline. My feeling is that they were his memories and that they have somehow been transferred to me by some unknown agency or process. The reason I feel this is because I remember doing things that I now have no idea how to do. There were also technologies and sciences I remember knowing then but don't know now. Though they have inspired me in some of my projects since. One notable point of separation is that he was a fully qualified surgeon where I am barely first aid qualified (though I am a doctor of bio-chemistry and human genetics).

Regardless of how I gained these memories or the nature of my origins and relationship with Mr. Blue, I will use the pronoun "I" in these discussions as I do remember them and feel as though I experienced them. It should also make things simpler.

On with the passage of information.

Previously my predecessor has focused on North America in describing that other time line. Much of the modern world faced similar domination by the enemy as did North America. Certainly the return of the paranormal into modern consciousness was a world wide phenomenon. There was one country that managed to avoid domination by the invaders however.

That nation was China. The enemy did manage to gain control of the government but for various reasons failed to replace key members of the military hierarchy. Partly because these individuals already had connections with the paranormal world. As such, they were quickly able to recognize the threat being posed and responded quickly with a military take over of the entire country. Within months of the initial invasion, the invaders were all but completely routed from China. The people accepted martial law as a necessity and recognized the changes the world was going through.

China's military junta put the rest of the world on notice. They demonstrated both nuclear and anti-satellite technology and made it quite clear they would turn the entire world into a nuclear wasteland at the least sign of aggression from any other nation.

Initially this caused me a bit of concern since I thought that the enemy might call their bluff. I was and am certain that what the enemy wanted was nothing less than the extinction of humanity. Provoking a full nuclear exchange with China seemed an efficient way of achieving that end. Yet they shied away from such a confrontation with China (although they certainly worked on conventional means of overcoming the Chinese as well as ways to disarm the Chinese nuclear arsenal).

It was a mystery that I never fully resolved. I have a few theories though. First, I think that nuclear weapons represented a tier of power/energy that the enemy couldn't safely manipulate. Thus they posed an actual threat to them. Another theory proposed by those with a more mystic bent then me was that the mystic energy produced by a lot of mass death would overload the world's ability to hold bio-geo energy and that energy would spill out into the demi-dimensions. That excess energy might then pose a threat to the enemy.

Either way, it presented me with a unique opportunity and potential ally. I was trying to organize a resistance in North America and that meant I needed resources and support. China could provide those resources and support. Also, as a 'free' human nation, it only made sense to support them, make them stronger and hopefully have a chance at defeating the real enemy. Of course, I didn't expect their support for free and I didn't expect them to trust me right away.

So what I did was provide them with my technical knowledge. Although here I should use the 'his' pronoun. What he/I shared with them advanced their level of technology and capabilities by decades. In a few short years they had undergone an economic revolution that rivalled the agricultural, industrial and information revolutions combined. While not quite the singularity promised by many futurists, it did create a manufacturing capability that was nearly independent of human contribution and grew exponentially.

With a billion people, a powerhouse economy and the most advanced technology on the planet, China should have represented a true hope at defeated the enemy and liberating mankind. Here's the problem I didn't fully appreciate when I started sharing advanced technology with them. China was run by humans. Humans are often greedy, short sighted and power hungry. Really, one wonders why supernatural horrors even bother trying to destroy us. They could just sit back and enjoy the show.

China was a super power by every definition of the term. A super power run by a military junta that saw a very real threat posed by every other nation on the planet. Of course I expected that this would lead to war. But I failed to fully appreciate that this would be a war of conquest, not of liberation. In some cases, it was also a war of revenge for past wrongs, real and imagined. The horrors wrought by the invasions of Taiwan and Japan were as bad if not worse than those wrought by the hand of the enemy.

War has been, is and always shall be, hell.

[Grace]

You know Cyber, if I didn't know you better, I would swear you took a certain perverse pleasure in having a day of darkness heralding the possible end of the world named for me.

In that other time, you didn't have anything to do with that naming convention, did you? Don't worry, you can be honest. I'll blame Mr. Blue, not you.

More seriously, every time I start thinking that the world sucks, I read this or the WWVLD? thread and cheer up significantly. And I think it's interesting to see a world engulfed in a war against the supernatural, the very thing that Victor Lazlo seemed most afraid of.

[Gotham Witch]

That is a good way of looking at it, Red.

And yeah, generally speaking giving things to a military junta never turns out well.

[Ron Caliburn]

Trusting the Chinese without putting them over a barrel first? That's worse than trusting a mercenary who you've paid in advance.

[Shang Li]

Is that so?

[Ron Caliburn]

The government of China is not exactly known for it's strong moral fiber. In a world even darker and more twisted than our own, it is not surprising that that would continue to be the case.