HotZone South of the Border

A companion and concurrent campaign to HotZone (East Timor), HotZone Deux(Corsica), HotZone 3 (Albania), HotZone 4 (Romania).

Background

Global Context

(The following was written in 2007.) It's ten years in the future on Gurth, and the world has changed significantly in the last 20 years. America invaded Iraq in 2003, and tensions began escalating worldwide immediately. In 2008, the sectarian violence in Iraq spread like wildfire, and War in Iraq became the War in the Middle East which became the Central Asian Crisis. Long before pundits stopped changing the label, it was a world class clusterfuck. Had Russia, China, and India not united to quell the violence through diplomatic means in 2011-2012, the crisis was on track to evolve into World War 3.

This gradual unraveling of peaceful cohabitation was apparent to military leaders in numerous countries, and in fact the United States Special Operations Command presciently predicted a change in strategy would be required way back in 2006 when they issued the following public statement:

“Creating conditions where people want to live peacefully is a powerful weapon against terrorism. Direct action will become increasingly restricted as the Global War on Terrorism matures. Indirect actions of Foreign Internal Defense and Civil Affairs programs are the key to winning the war on terror.” 1

Powerful governments with awesome military arsenals became increasingly aware that wielding their power was becoming politically untenable in all but the most extreme situations. United States Special Operations Command, as just one example of a trend worldwide, quadrupled in funding and personnel from 2008-2015, but forced a significant portion of their Direct Action specialists into early retirement, and instead filled their ranks with civil engineers, psy ops specialists, administrators, and diplomats.

However, focused Direct Action operations will always be required when organized groups are willing to commit violence to contravene national interests, and so outside of government military operations, a second and third tier of operatives evolved. The second tier consisted of large private security companies, with tens of thousands of employees, some tiny portion of which could be used for “wet work” of Direct Action operations.

The third tier has evolved over the past 7-8 years. Increasing public scrutiny over and demand for transparency in military expenditures in industrialized nations worldwide has made certain operations difficult to fund through the large and somewhat infamous security corporations. However, worldwide, government agencies always have funds available for classified “black” operations, and it is here that the third tier of operatives has found its niche.

This third tier, or “SubNet” is a loose affiliation of a few thousand specialists and commanders worldwide, mostly ex-military. By adopting terrorist organizations' practice of maintaining “cells” which know little about global operations, the SubNet maintains a thick veil and appears to be nothing more than disconnected gangs of shadowy figures.

Your Team

Your team is one such cell.

You're all freelance mercenaries who have been working as a team for the last five years, based out of an island compound off the coast of San Carlos, Mexico, on the Gulf of California. INFO ABOUT THE COMPOUND

It's typical for the team to go months between missions, and during downtime, you might DOWNTIME ACTIVITIES

Some recent missions include:

Character Creation

Background stories and proposed character details are due to the GM by end of day.....DUE DATE

These are 250 point action hero characters.

Constraints:

• Though your skills may be focused anywhere you like, you are a capable tactical operator. You can run and shoot.
• Nothing supernatural.
• You can speak English competently -- additional languages are encouraged (and cost a couple points each).
• Your background almost certainly includes years of some country's military training. But you're no longer officially affiliated with any government agency.

If you are building your character:

• Max 150 points in Attributes (ST, DX, HT, IQ)
• Max -60 points in Disadvantages
• -5 points in Quirks required
• 5 points in Perks optional

If you are not building your character:

Please provide:

• Name, gender, age (28-55), height, weight
• Appearance description + (Hideous/Ugly/Unattractive/Average/Attractive/Gorgeous)
• Background story (many examples at HotZone#Characters, HotZone_Deux#Characters, HotZone_3#Characters)
• If trained by a national military, which? What focus? How long? How far did you get?
• If not, who taught you your action hero skills?
• Native language, additional languages (broken, accented, or fluent?)
• Social strengths and weaknesses - super schmoozy, perfect liar, terrible liar, playboy, barking colonel, or an awkward loner or something else?
• Personality and/or proposed Advantages & Disadvantages
• One or more Contacts -- an acquaintance, somewhere, who might be able to provide information, sometimes. More knowledgeable and available contacts cost more, of course.
• Skills -- your focus/expertise. You can only be super-awesome at one or two things, but sometimes it can be more valauble to be versatile and pretty good at lots of things.
• Desired Attributes (ST, IQ, DX, HT, 8-16)
• Desired "go bag" gear. Two revolvers and a bulletproof vest? 12 lbs of C4? $50k in cash? Laptop and bug detector? Etc. Additional gear will be available, this is just a starter list.
• Anything special you want to propose. Deep kung-fu training. Insane pistol skills. Ability to pilot any aircraft. Rapid Healing. Tons of hit points. Personal cell phone number of the King of Indonesia?
• Quirks, dislikes, habits, sayings, prejudices, fears, appetites, scars, tattoos, enemies, etc.