When the first superheroes came, it was not with trumpeting fanfares and loud, sometimes [oftentimes] fashion deaf costumes. Instead it was with the sudden, sharp violence of a meteor strike, leaving an impact in the world and causing reverberations that would forever change the face of reality and life as we know it. Enhanced individuals, heroes and villains alike caused untold destruction to Paradigm City as they struggled to come to terms with their new powers and abilities, rocking the city to its very core as the traditional checks and balances of power were turned upside down overnight.
When the dust cloud from the initial strike finally settled, most people turned their eyes and minds towards the task of learning to coexist with enhanced neighbors. A select few others, like Doctor Steve Ensoni, a world-renowned geneticist knew that people feared what they didn’t understand, and so turned their eyes towards understanding this new phenomenon in the way that only modern science could.
The Aberrant and Enhanced Genetics Investigational and Scientific (AEGIS) Laboratories was founded with the intent to fully understand the genetic and biological changes that the human form underwent with the sudden onset and development of various extranormal abilities. Ensoni began by converting his old laboratory space into something that was capable of handling the new direction his company was heading. He began by hiring a new board of directors that were sympathetic to his personal leanings, giving them control of the company so that he could put himself elbow deep in the research. The board began offering contracts to like-minded scientists in relevant fields of study and securing funding and sponsorship from those of means within the city. Within a year, they were at the forefront of study and understanding of these new abilities.
It wasn’t long however, before study and understanding became research and experimentation and a well funded and well appointed Research and Development wing sprang up on the lab’s campus. The best and brightest engineers and manufacturers were snapped up before the competition could grab them. In the beginning, they were working on methods and equipment to better arm the peacekeeping forces of Paradigm City against enhanced threats, but after a while, that gave way to attempting to replicate these various abilities, even going so far as to create and fund several programs with the aim to create an enhanced individual themselves.
The months and years went by – initial progress was frustratingly slow. They weren’t making the breakthroughs they thought they would, and the research grants were starting to dry up as experiment after experiment failed to get off of the ground. Sure, they had small success in adapting existing technology to withstand the effects of various enhanced abilities, giving law enforcement more equal footing with those who flouted the law because they could, but their attempts at replication were constantly hitting brick walls, and success at creating an enhanced individual was non-existent. The fact that these failed experiments more often than not ended with the death of the volunteers only served to further demoralize the various project crews.
Finally, they had their first success – a young boy who could trace his lineage back to the far distant mythological past came on the scene. Rand Oikos was offered the chance to test a human enhancement serum that had so far failed. It serum bonded with his unique DNA in such a strong fashion that the results were well beyond the top end of the projected results, and the superhero Myrmidon was born.
This success bolstered not only the flagging spirits of AEGIS Laboratories scientists, but also their dwindling bank accounts. Existing donors opened their pocketbooks deeper in light of this success and new donors came out of the woodwork to give their resources to the group. Smaller companies were acquired, in both hostile and non- takeovers, soon leaving AEGIS one of the only players in town, utilizing what they had learned along with what other groups had learned and creating the most expansive understanding of enhanced individuals ever. And bolstered by their success with Myrmidon, they took their R&D into new, innovative directions, putting more and more people to work and bringing more and more projects closer to being realized.
This success also helped to launch a new initiative. With the first AEGIS Labs-created superhero realized and several more quickly approaching fruition, the various board members realized that they could better police the city from enhanced threats than the police could. Thus a new pursuit was created – the Enforcement Division. AEGIS started to take it upon themselves to police the superpowered community, a role that deeply divided that community. Many believed that they needed to be policed, but others felt that they were doing a fine job of policing themselves. Nothing had happened yet, but tensions continue to grow as more and more enhanced individuals were either created within their labs, or were recruited off the streets to join their Enforcement Division.
Nowadays, AEGIS Laboratories is practically synonymous with enhanced individuals in the collective consciousness. They have several sprawling campuses across the city, employing the best and brightest minds in various fields of study and R&D. They routinely give massive grants to promising students, bringing them into their family while growing their considerable monopoly over the field of study of enhanced individuals. Their Enforcement Division continues to grow at a sometimes alarming rate. Several teams of enhanced individuals operate throughout the city, backed by the AEGIS Board of Directors, who pay law enforcement enough in kickbacks to turn a blind eye to the sometimes extra-judicial practices that must be utilized against enhanced threats. They have even gone so far as to recruit promising candidates and officers from various precincts around the city, creating their own non-enhanced peace-keeping force, armed with the latest and greatest technologies that come out of their R&D labs to back up their enhanced teams.
AEGIS Laboratories works great as a major NPC of any stripe. They can be wonderful benefactors and they can be frustrating antagonists. Perhaps the PCs are members of a enhanced team in the Enforcement Division working within the confines of their handlers to keep the city safe from enhanced threats. Or maybe they find the thought of being shackled to a private organization abhorrent and work outside of their organizational procedures to do the things that the lab finds themselves incapable of doing. Maybe they go the opposite direction and stand in complete opposition to the methods the Labs use in their self-appointed study and enforcement of the enhanced communities – not villains, but also not the commonly accepted definition of hero that years of AEGIS propaganda has hammered into the average citizen of Paradigm City.
You could even, with a bit of tweaking, turn AEGIS Labs into a darker version of itself and making it a true antagonist by having them delve into darker and less ethical studies and experiments in their pursuit to understand these enhanced abilities. Their enforcement division becomes a suppressive force instead of a peacekeeping force, deployed to subdue and restrain those with abilities that act out against the status quo and bring them in for correction and study. The worst offenders end up being the next experiments.
And who can even say what might happen if the tensions in the enhanced community over the existence and use of the AEGIS Enforcement Division ever reaches a boiling point…
Ben Erickson
