Uzbekistan

The Silk Road, an ancient trade route that crossed through Asia, Africa, and Europe, ran through Uzbekistan, leaving cities and trade centers along its route. The ruins of these cities still dot the landscape, sometimes standing empty and other times serving as anchors for settlements. In the 20th century, the network of roads and cities served as a way to move and bivouac troops, which further established the old routes. In the present-day, oil and gas pipelines have had the same effect on the region.
Millennia after the first travelers crossed her, Uzbekistan still acts as a roadway for goods traveling to and from distant lands. As a result, it’s more cosmopolitan than neighboring countries—for all the good and bad that brings. People are more accepting, but crime is rampant. SHADOW has a strong presence here because it’s able to use the nation as a hub for communication, travel, espionage, and as a recruiting ground.
Although their agents are throughout the region, SHADOW’s largest base in Uzbekistan rests at the edge of the Chechak oil fields. In case the base there is ever discovered, they’ve set up demolitions to create a controlled explosion so they can use the resulting gas fire to cover their escape. They also maintain a secret communications monitoring base, codenamed Avatar, that analyzes global trends and specifically looks for areas ripe for exploitation.
SHADOW watches the local super-powered population closely and subtly manipulates their early life experiences to make them open to working for radical organizations, such as itself. They are not above murdering families and burning schoolhouses to achieve this goal, and so far this practice has resulted in a significant number of extraordinary beings joining their ranks and the ranks of other terrorist organizations. Those superheroes who hail from Uzbekistan tend to have unusually tragic histories.
UNISON suspects a SHADOW presence here, but has not pinpointed its headquarters yet. Delphi, UNISON’s agent in the region, has been in country for a year looking for SHADOW. She plays a cat-and-mouse game online and in the physical world using her ability to meld with the country’s data infrastructure in an attempt to locate the SHADOW base.

Type

Geopolitical, Country