New Champions Universe Season 3 Intro & World History

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The story so far...

For those that didn't know, Season three takes place in 2072, some fifty years after the events of "The End Game" at the end of Season two. If you missed that finale, you missed that all of the New Champions and Socrates himself had all been vanished, had sacrificed themself, or had been trapped in the Hollow by Judge Osborn and Division.
Since that time, the world has changed greatly with organizations rising and falling. The turmoil brought to the world by Doctor Destroyer, or Sennacherib, if you will, had given rise to a period that we now refer to as "The Vanishing Wars". During that time, fear and chaos plagued the entire world as the Vanishing technology became widespread. Quickly thereafter, an arms race for the creation of Vanishing Machines ignited and even more of the world’s population was vanished. Vanishings were used by terrorists to extort money. Vanishings were used by governments topple their opposing foreign governments. Billionaires bought their own vanishing machines and tried to vanish their business rivals. It was a horrible time for the planet and nearly four decades of uncertainty and dread followed.
One fundamental aspect of the Vanishing technology was the high level of energy that was required to make it work. This foundation led to the creation of The International Energy Regulation Authority in 2055, out of a coalition of countries that banded together to end the chaos of Vanishing Wars. The IERA was authorized by the remnants of the United Nations to identify and regulate the production and storage of energy. More specifically, their mandate includes the enforcement of laws enacted to eliminate energy production and storage that might predicate a ‘vanishing’. In time, the IERA became the equivalent of an FBI, but on the international scale. At its core, the IERA vehemently opposes Vanishing and believes in their mission as a moral imperative.
There are many that believe that the IERA has gone too far. Like the city of Waco, Texas. In 2059, The city of Waco refused to acquiesce to the IERA's strict energy regulation demands. They operated for twenty-six days without providing real-time energy data to the IERA. In return, the IERA brought military action against the city, disconnecting them from the energy grid, and began actively seeking out and destroying all energy stores and renewable energy sources within a sixty-mile radius, Darkening the city. The military force established energy detection units across the city, eventually returning access to the energy grid. However, flames from the destruction combined with high winds in the area created cascading wildfires that could not be extinguished while water pumping stations were offline. The city was destroyed; More than 100,000 were made homeless and 25,000 lives were lost, despite the best efforts of both local and international fire and rescue. Seven years of disciplinary hearings against the IERA followed the events at Waco, and not a single meaningful result had come from it. Frustrated and exacerbated by internal strife over the decisions that led to the Waco debacle, many high-level officials within the IERA left the organization.
Shortly after the conclusion of the hearings a new organization, technically labeled a “terrorist organization” by the United Nations, made their presence known to the world: The Leaders of the Free Energy Resistance. Though unconfirmed, it is rumored that the LFER was formed, in part, by those who departed the IERA. The LFER believed the actions of the IERA had gone too far, invading the privacy of individuals, communities, and other organizations through their energy monitoring regime. They also strictly disavowed the IERA’s practice of ‘darkening’ cities and villages who do not comply with their requirements. Even without the extreme loss of life experienced in Waco, the poverty and humanitarian crises caused by ‘Darkenings’ had been catastrophic — far worse than the vanishings, they believed.   While the foundation of the LFER started with the best of ideals, by 2071, the LFER had become a network of ‘cells’ operating independently across the world. In June 2071, the city of New York was rocked by explosions at power stations and gas pipelines that occurred simultaneous with the malfunction of nearby hydroelectric stations. This caused a seven-day summer blackout in New York City in which thousands of people, mostly elderly, died of heat stroke and heat exhaustion. The rolling blackouts continue for a further 17 days while repairs were being made around the city. LEFR claimed responsibility for the blackout and claimed that this disruption of energy distribution was in response to the so-called 'darkening' of Waco, Texas, and other similar actions by the non-elected and out of touch International Energy Regulation Agency (“IERA”). They had hoped that this action, extreme though it may be, would provide a much-needed wake up call for the tyrants oppressing and surveilling the free peoples of these United States. It is believed that the New York cell responsible was acting against the greater charter of the LFER and was excommunicated from the group for these actions.
Operating in the shadows throughout all of this is the secretive organization known as Level 37. No exact date has ever been confirmed, but during the 2030’s, special agents operating in secret established distributed access points connected by a quantum encrypted key which ultimately ‘hacked’ into the Cyberplane after venturing through the various dimensional levels: thirty-seven, to be exact. Then, with an undetermined amount of energy required, the agents were able to broadcast a sustained signal from the Cyberplane into the Hollow and the first communication with James Harmon was rumored to occur on August 7th, 2037. In the years that followed, the quantum encryption key required to communicate with the Hollow changed hands many times. According to common lore, it was captured by a rogue nation, traded between industrial conglomerates, and then recovered by a secretive religious organization. Throughout the Vanishing Wars, “the key” as it become known was used to allow family members to communicate with vanished loved ones, to recover lost information from the vanished, and for other various reasons.
By 2072, the organization is widely known as the group responsible for continuing to operate small-scale vanishings. From sparse reports, their vanishings are sometimes conducted for ransom, sometimes for vengeance, sometimes for love. Their motivations are complicated and not well communicated with the public. Based on rumor and confidential reports within either LFER and IERA, members of Level 37 are given kidnapping missions, ransoms, straightforward vanishings, or other operations opposed to the IERA policies which constantly threaten energy use — the foundation of their existence.
All of this has led us here, to this moment. Are you up for the challenge?