Session 6 - Signals and Flares Report

General Summary

One of the survivors of the Huang Marr project, Doctor Malachi Ross had escaped from Earth and crashed on Luna in an escape pod. He was now a horrific mutant, changed by experiments with Aberrant DNA. His only goal was to slay his tormentor, Mangels, now hiding somewhere on Earth. The investigators found Ross's crashed pod, and learned that he was headed to the Clintech facility.    The investigators visited the Clintech organ banks floor, having learned that Mangels was now working there under pseudonym. Ignoring a potential scandal around organ bank trading, the investigators dealt with Ross and quickly located Mangels and interrogated him, learning that the Huang-Marr project was based in FSA's Blight Zone. Lawrence    With a team of soldiers, the investigators journeyed into the Blight Zone, keeping on eye on the strange mutations and anomalies that dotted the desert landscape.  The found another team of researchers quartered in the run-down university town of Worthington, somehow preserved despite the mutations abounding in the Blight. Heading into the complex, the investigators overpowered the scientists, learning that they had sent a signal to a space station, the Eyrie.    Flying to the Eyrie in the Black Hawk, Lawrence was confronted with his old flame Francoise Durand, who told him that she was working on a experiment that would benefit all of humanity. Guided by a person known only as the Justicar, the plan was to show the world that Aberrants were safe and could be trusted.  Before the investigators could disable the space station, Duran activated her plan - an alien invasion! An alien space ship, full of Chromatics, crashed into the USA and started to attack the population with primitive weapons. The frog-like Chromatics were a primitive species previously contacted by humans. Here, they were using a technology that they were barely able to understand.  But before the Earth's psions could muster and drive off the Chromatics, the experimental biorgs awoke - mutants changed by Aberrant-DNA implants into having powers capable of battling the Chromatics. Although the biorgs were unstable, they were able to defeat the Chromatics, at least before Aeon's anti-aberrant teams could deal with the unstable biorgs.   Lawrence then found that weaponised algorithms had been injected into the OpNet overwriting and infecting social meda. These algorithms used data taken from the biorgs battle against the Chromatics, and presented the Aberrants in a positive light.  While the space station and Durand were captured and defeated, the damage had been done - the world was now awash with algorithm-guided PR, promoting Aberrants in a positive light at the expense of the Psions.  In the aftermath, old Aberrant cults and nostalgia for the era of the novas flooded social media and the OpNet, while the psions' reputation was similarly downgraded.   Someone had set a up complex scheme to make Earth less hostile and more welcoming of Aberrant forces. Was it this Justicar? Who were they, and what would be their end-game?