History (page 2 of 3)

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Opening Moves: The Misery Journey

The semester began badly, with a highly suspicious gas explosion that proved just dangerous enough to move all six targets into one building. Within a week, the Board's worst fears would be realised in a single month of pure insanity...

The on-site surveillance team suffered a total loss of their equipment after a plague of fabric-eating (and, it is discovered, superconductor-eating) moths, leaving them totally unprepared and effectively blind when their three male targets promptly disappeared for several weeks. An entire brigade of Boardies was mobilised to mop up the trail of bizarre events left in the newly- mutated group's wake, culminating in the infamous "FBI Incident", where Board influence finally managed to have any and all federal charges levelled at their surrogate students dropped...and, in the case of one Boardie, personally dropping them off outside the building. He would kick himself later for not keeping ahold of them while he had the chance.

The end of the "Misery Journey" incident had one major side effect beyond the sudden frantic bioresearch - sudden accusations of "loss of objectivity" rocked Speculation for a highly-charged week, one that saw the formation of D&M and the laying of the groundwork for the near-civil-war that would follow. At the time, however, the slowly-building infighting was deferred by...

The Tokyo Incident

Mortal research mishaps, their cause still unknown to this day, unleashed a legendary forgotten god in an orgy of destruction in downtown Tokyo, scattering his mind-warping minions across the globe in the process. The Board responded en masse for the first time, revealing themselves to the world in a massive wave of urban combat that tossed Cthulu off the mortal plane in a spectacular battle of magical wills and bizarre war machines. The battle raged for 16 hours, and by the end of it the streets of the "matchstick city" were paved with sushi.

More worrying, however, was the later discovery that all research documents had vanished, along with the equipment used in the presumably-successful dimensional breach. Much of it would later resurface, in corrected and revised (albeit altered, from clinical lab reports to occult texts in ancient languages) form, in the hands of many mortal sorcerers - most infamously Steven Archer. In hindsight, the Adversary or His agents were clearly experimenting with large-scale summoning processes using means available to the mundane.

The once-again-nigh-miraculous survival of David Jones (assisting in the death of one of the elder god's minions, no less) led many Boardies to wonder just who this kid is. Despite this, background checks continue to show nothing more than a standard genetic provenance. It would not be long before his file finally acquired some more...prosaic...material to consider.

...and What Happened Next.

Exactly where the species of fungi now classified as Lentinus Azuri originated from is unknown, and a more detailed analysis is available in the relevant files, but the first outbreak of mass hallucinations caused by the substance had spectacular results. Speculation would give their collective right arms to know just what their charges experienced in the storm of occult radiation given off by their release...but what they do know is bad enough. While a considerable curiosity on their own, it was the events that followed the release that attracted the most attention at the time.

Using an occult tome, provenance unknown but suspected to be diabolical (see above), a pair of college deadbeats more normally known for their bloody gothic practices somehow successfully contacted Diabolical Powers...or, as is generally accepted, said Powers only chose to come because they were specifically waiting for an opportunity. Exactly what transpired in that apartment remains unknown to the Board even to this day (there were several dozen feet of concrete between their satellites, less sophisticated at the time, and ground zero - all they have to go on are audio tapes from a laser bug), but by the end of it the Board's suspicions regarding Margaret had been confirmed, David had managed to resurrect himself and acquire a soulcat, and Roger's shotgun got put on the "quietly acquire NOW" list.

It was now abundantly clear that not only was there a genuine intelligence driving the suspected enemy action and pushing humanity towards a fiery atomic abyss, said intelligence was Not Very Nice At All.

And then Blue Green walked onto campus.

The Civil War:

By this point, the Board was already beginning to show signs of severe strain as they struggled to absorb the stunningly rapid series of revelations. From a quiet belief that one should "never ascribe to malice events that may more easily be ascribed to stupidity", they had stumbled onto genuine Biblical demons, of all things. Appeals to the Goddess for information provided yet more data to sift through, mostly on occult practices, and in the process triggered waves of paranoid speculation that did little more than stoke the growing panic. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Board was starting to crack up into doomsday cults.

A bastion of sanity in all this confusion was the part social club, part political party known informally as D&M. Convinced the pair of mortals and their pasts harboured a solution to the dilemma, they provided the only understood route out of the situation...until the appearance of the flirtatious and less-than-subtle young Green heiress. Unbeknownst to her at the time, Lord Mork used her as the basis for a rival political stance, the later-to-be-infamous D&B. Holding as their central tenet the belief that David should be left to live his own life free of the clearly-cursed influence of Margaret, they rapidly attracted large numbers of rebellious, restless Boardies unwilling to follow D&M's policies of aggressive anti-demonic activity.

D&M's first response was informed debate, but the hysteria of the times soon degenerated the debates into little more than public slanging matches. Duels and riots soon followed, and it was not long afterwards that sheer open warfare broke out in Mohaborad wherever the two factions clashed. Just to make matters worse, a third sect of radical scientists attempted to resolve the dispute by pledging pure mechanical order - the so-called BoardieBorg. Their own philosophy added to the conflict, calling as it did for unrelenting assimilation of all factions into a harmonious unity. The streets of the Board's headquarters-city were soon little more than a low-level war zone.

Despite this, some degree of order was maintained in the Operations divisions themselves - discipline was maintained in the militia units that formed most ops teams. There was enough organisation to assist in the quelling of Fin-Groot-Taboo's zombie uprising, but it was abundantly clear from the frustrated after-action reports that support from Command was non-existent, there were nowhere near enough reserve personnel available to make any real difference if the operation had gone badly, and in any regard the teams were so woefully undermanned and ill-equipped that any serious opposition would go through them like tissue paper.

The War Rages On:

With hindsight, the strife so effectively paralysing the Board may well have been planned. Certainly subsequent events revealed more than enough turncoats to have formed an effective fifth-column, but the warring organisations themselves seem to have been perfectly innocent in origin...which has not stopped low-level "you're all Satanic dupes!" sniping from continuing to this day.

As the long, hot summer dragged on, virtually all Board operations aside from Speculation ground to a halt. Appearances by the Goddess ceased entirely, and Mohaborad's many complex mystical wards and conventional systems either fell into disrepair or were destroyed by one group or another. The encroaching Himalyan snowline was just as much of a threat as a street fight. Almost all records from this period are either lost or so biased as to be almost entirely useless...until they all agree, on one being universally revered and hated by all sides. The militia commander known to his men as Miles.

Miles, later General Miles but for now a militia commander determined to reunite his decaying people, had thus far attempted to keep his unit's collective heads down. His first, dramatic appearance was when the BoardieBorg attempted to forcibly "recruit" them, fighting the cyborgs to a bloody standstill...all the while frantically attempting to negotiate with either of the other factions to save his men. When both rebuffed him, he turned on them in disgust.

It was an indication of just how far the Board had fallen that his units were capable of the rapid strikes that followed. As the only remaining group with any training or equipment to match their zeal, Miles rapidly disarmed and suppressed every faction he could find, proclaiming the sectors he cleared to be "peaceful", and inviting the subdued groups to reassemble High Command and govern "properly". By the time he issued this invitation, they were all battered shadows of their former glory...while mass desertions by exhausted and uncaring Boardies swelled the ranks of Miles' followers. They had little choice but to accept.

For a few weeks, matters seemed finally resolved. Rebuilding began, co-operation over insights and improvisations thrown together during the civil war led to many advances in magical and scientific realms. The Goddess was expected to reappear shortly. And, as the crowning glory, the reassembled Speculation teams reported the apparent vindication of D&M's theories when Dave finally convinced his brooding love to go on a date. The jubilation that followed was awesome to behold.

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