A Detailed Summary of Eclipse's History

[STAFF]

To new and potential members: welcome! And for regulars, here’s a refresher course!

////The Beginning

Eclipse is loosely based on the former TV show Heroes. However, the site diverged from the show after its second season. Since then, the site has continued to evolve, and today, there are only a very few elements of the show that remain. It’s very easy to find your way around the site and grow acclimated to it without being familiar with Heroes itself.

The site was opened on or around July 16, 2008 by Nick, otherwise known on the site by his characters Nick Black, Adam Lynch, and Ray Miller; or his occasional cbox name, Ir0nEagle. At that time, Eclipse was very much tied into Heroes, but had already put its own spin on things with original characters, events, and factions.

A host of other admins, including Nick, have come and gone, but the site itself has remained and prospered, and reached its five-year anniversary as of July 2013. Plots have changed, members have changed, but Eclipse itself has formed a base upon which lifetime friendships have been made and in which the community comes together to assist its own both online and off.

To everyone who has had a hand in making this site what it is today, we remember and thank you.

-The Staff


////Volume III - Unsung
*Volumes One and Two correspond with seasons one and two of the TV show Heroes. Summaries of those are available online to anyone who is interested, but all important points are explained here.

Specials - seemingly ordinary people with superhuman abilities - have existed for millennia; no one is quite sure when the first evolution happened or who the first Special was, although a few claims to the latter have been made. What is known now - to certain parties, at least - is that around the year 10 AD, a group of Specials, fearing for the fate of their kind under the rule of the Roman Empire, formed a group to defend themselves. The members called themselves “Specialis.”

The group evolved, remaining in secrecy, over many centuries. Meanwhile, a number of other Specials were born; these learned to keep their unusual abilities largely secret, using lies to cover their tracks, or choosing to ignore their gifts, or taking more creative routes. A few proved to be immortal; they learned to change identities and adapt as time passed. Occasionally they met other Specials, and occasionally their offspring developed abilities as well. Fearing judgements and repercussions, they continued to live their lives quietly - or not, in a few cases - until the modern era shook them and their current-era brethren out from hiding.

As technology advanced and information became more accessible much faster, the governments of many countries began to take notice of small, inexplicable events, such as an unexpected freeze in the middle of summer, or a building spontaneously catching fire. These governments, particularly that of the United States, began to monitor these activities, and, in the 2000s, with the influence of certain parties, a small organization known simply as “the Company” was founded.

The Company set as its mission to protect the world from what was now being referred to as “Specials.” This involved various procedures, including the “bag-and-tag,” a term which spread quickly and quietly through the increasingly connected Special community. This procedure involved the monitoring and capture of a Special - the “bag” - the transportation of the Special to a Company base, and the entrance of that Special’s details into their system, followed by giving the Special a small brand - the “tag.” In most cases, the Special was released, with their memories of the Company wiped and no idea where their new tattoo came from. In other cases, for those deemed too dangerous to remain among society, the Special was kept in holding, sometimes in Level Five.

What happened in Level Five was known, for a long time, only in whispers and gossip of fearful things among Specials.

In October 2008, a plot was hatched between two men to blow up New York and Odessa, where secret Company headquarters were located. The plan was ultimately foiled, but not without costs; one of the perpetrators, Algernon Crowe, was sent to Level Five, along with two other Specials who had not been directly involved in the scheme, but who were determined had abilities too dangerous for the safety of the nation. The second perpetrator, Adam Lynch, escaped.

////Volume IV - Alliance

November 2008 saw the very quiet passage of a law that gave the government and its agencies full power to capture Specials. The next month, the Watchers, a group of private investigators, came together to start solving mysteries tied to Specials, starting with one series of murders involving ice. It took some months for them to find the “Ice Killer,” but in March 2009, the Watchers learned his true identity - Adam Lynch. However, even with that discovery, the Watchers found themselves taken in by the government, just as a new killer, the “Fixer Killer,” begins his own play by kidnapping Specials.

The Fixer Killer was stopped quickly, but the government itself began to antagonize itself by taking in more and more Specials. To combat this, an unlikely team came together: Patrick Solidus, head of the Solidus institution; Adam Lynch, the anarchist and insane supervillain; Pacy McNeil, the director of the Company at the time; Danny Wallace, a time traveler and the prime hero in stopping the bombings of New York and Odessa in 2008; and Travis Payne and Harrison Mosley, the heads of Watchers P.I. It became clear during their meeting that Pulse, a codename for an unknown Special, was their best resource for rescuing the Specials that the government was holding in Building 26.

In May 2009, the alliance, with Pulse’s assistance, burst into Building 26, not aware that their break-in was actually an ambush on the part of the government. However, the alliance was still successful due to the government not expecting Pulse. Adam Lynch was trapped during the break-in. Grace Harper and the Company get every special captured out of there minus some casualties. And Danny Wallace and Harrison Mosley stood up to the leaders of the government, briefly defeating the kidnappers’ leaders before Monica Austen used her boosting abilities on Harrison, taking him and a government agent into the future and forming an alternate timeline. During this event, a virus created by James Mosley was released into the environment, infecting some of the people involved in the escape, including Danny Wallace, Grace Harper, Nicholas Black, and Harrison Mosley himself.

Meanwhile, following the successful rescue, one of the senators responsible for the kidnappings in the first place asked the President to grant wider powers to the government, to allow them to stop Specials “for good.” In the following month - July - the President was kidnapped, apparently by a group of Specials, but in truth by his own senators, and was instead rescued by a group of Specials. The rescuers also discovered that the returned Fixer Killer was now not only one, but four individuals, all Company agents.

////Volume V - Salvation

In September 2009, the President, acknowledging the rescue made by the group of Specials and the crimes of his advising senators, disbanded all programs initiated by those senators and gave the Company the power to police Specials. A new organization, this one comprised of more malevolent-minded Specials, was founded by a man named Kiros Monroe, and called the Rogue Society. In the same month, a psychologist named Penelope Tyler encountered a Special - a pyrokinetic - for the first time, and thereafter founded the Jung Facility, a mental institution designed to treat and, in some cases, rehabilitate Specials.

As the year came to an end, more organizations that had previously been unknown began to resurface. Specialis, the organization that had existed since 10 AD, sensed a threat and eliminated it it by blackmailing and killing anyone who might oppose them. The Company caught wind of and investigated the group. Meanwhile, Ark Industries, a powerhouse in the technology industry but otherwise unfamiliar to the public, set up an online chat room for Specials and emailed invitations to them in order to get Specials in contact with each other.

A specially selected group of Specials rang in the year 2010 with a New Year’s ball hosted by Ark Industries. The Rogue Society grew as the Company and the Watchers set their attention on Specialis. Meanwhile, the Specials that had fallen ill due to James Mosely’s virus during the rescue in Building 26 began to realize that they were dying. In March 2010, they located James Mosely in the past and killed him, reversing their illness in the future. The Company ambushed Specialis, taking them down for good.

A series of events in April 2010 turned the world on its head. Kiros Monroe and the Rogue Society successfully blew up every Company building, as well as the Watchers’ headquarters. Harrison Mosely fell into a coma and was taken away by Jessica Connelly, one of the cofounders of the Jung Facility. Meanwhile, Ark Industries had been studying Specials and found a way to imbue normal people with abilities, and set up a press conference on the fourth of April to reveal their findings. The press conference began at nine A.M. Eastern time, with a few of their leaders giving forewords before the reveal. Finally, at 9:13 A.M., the experiment began - but with every single normal human in the world gaining superhuman abilities.

The repercussions were felt around the world.

[STAFF]

////Volume VI - Exposure

For four minutes and thirty-four seconds, the world fell under the weight of its ordinary citizens gaining powers. Hurricanes and typhoons swept across towns, geomagnetic storms broke out overhead, earthquakes shook cities down to bare bones. It fell to Specials themselves - who, for the most part, were far more familiar with having abilities - to keep their communities from breaking apart.

When the dust cleared, another immediate problem arose: The entire world was now aware of the existence of Specials.

The world lauded Specials as heroes. Specials had saved their lives, after all, and were rebuilding much more quickly than the “civilians” could have managed on their own. Meanwhile, the Jung Facility took Kiros captive, and Ark retraced its steps to find where their experiment had gone wrong. As they did, in order to win themselves better publicity - the April Fourth disaster having been wholly blamed on them by everyone - they rebuilt the Watchers’ headquarters into a new, modernized building, then forced the Watchers to recruit new members via a reality TV show.

Ark faced a Congressional hearing in July. Led by Dakari Johessman, the Department of Justice questioned Ark’s leaders; although Ark’s representatives turned the hearing into a farce, Congress found that the corporation could not be held responsible for the events of April Fourth, and only assigned them to restitution in rebuilding some of the cities that had suffered the worst.

The public awe over Specials continued to grow, with Specials being asked to be guests on TV shows and interviewed in other media. That came to an end on September Fourth, 2010, when two concurrent events in towns called Hell, Arizona and Costa Verde, California further decimated the American population. An explosion of unknown origin completely destroyed the town of Hell and its few residents; Costa Verde was completely frozen, presumably by a cryokinetic, and remains frozen to this day. Following those events, public opinion of Specials took a sudden downturn; in November 2010, a bill was proposed that would force all Specials to report their abilities to the CIA and NSA, or be treated as terrorists. That bill became law.

Some Specials chose to register; some did not. Some became very vocal about their refusals; others cooperated - most notably, those within Ark Industries, in a bid to ally themselves with the government. As if to further complicate matters, another explosion destroyed Vatican City, and was said to also have been caused by a Special. This led to governments of many other nations enacting laws similar to the American registration laws. The Watchers rejected Ark’s assistance and moved into a new building, severing their ties to the corporation for good.

In order to enforce the new registration laws, an agency called the Registration Strike Force, or RSF, was formed. If an unregistered Special was found using his or her abilities, he or she was made to pay a fine at best and face prison time at worst. Additionally, of course, he or she would be made to register.

March 2011 saw control of Ark Industries pass to a new CEO, Dr. Noah Rydberg. In early April 2011, as riots were breaking out around the country, Ark took the opportunity to test some new technology - projectiles launched from space to be used in crowd control, specifically against Specials. The projectiles caused Specials to experience the temporary loss of their abilities, along with painful, shooting migraines at best, and, in some cases, a complete loss of consciousness. Ark meant to field-test the devices - called “the Eggs” - in New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles; the first two were executed to their satisfaction, but the collapse of the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, caused by Khalidah Rahal, an influential and secretly ancient Special, resulted in a missed opportunity. Most of the rioters there were killed by falling debris instead.

Around the same time, an old and powerful Special - called Philippe by some, Jeremiah by others, and a host of names further - met with Gabriel Constant, a precognitive regional planner with a penchant for conflict. This meeting marked the recruitment of the Architect, the second-in-command of a secret organization called GEIST. Aside from its twelve members, no one knew of its existence, and to this day, no one knows it existed. However, the short-lived alliance would bring around events that would bring the nation to its knees once again.

In June 2011, the RSF stormed the Company’s headquarters in Las Vegas and attempted to arrest the Company’s agents, and particularly threatened Grace Harper, one of the Company’s directors. It was then that the RSF’s leader, Victor Vaughn, revealed that he had been imbued with an ability. In the conflict that followed, one Company agent, Colton Walker, was killed. The Elite, the Company’s secret special operations arm, had one agent wounded in the backlash, but Vaughn was seriously wounded, and the RSF retreated.

September and October 2011 saw a number of events occur. The RSF went through a few changes; Brian Gamble took Victor Vaughn’s place as the head of the agency, and it was revealed that, as part of a “Project Prometheus,” both Brian and Victor had been genetically treated in order to manifest abilities. This offer was made to all of the RSF agents; many accepted and soon became Specials themselves.

At a charity dinner that took place on September twenty-second, a decapitation strike made by GEIST removed everyone from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives from power. Their deaths made Philip Sawyer, the Speaker of the House, the new President of the United States.

On the fifth of October, a giant, unexpected geomagnetic storm accidentally caused by a young woman - Reggie Sawyer, the new First Daughter - and strengthened by Khalidah Rahal terminated electrical communications and fried power grids throughout North America and Western Europe, causing damage to satellites and blackouts across the affected areas. Also, Reggie’s immediate area, the part of Atlanta that Georgia State University was scattered across, was reduced to ashes. In the midst of the madness, Grace Harper found Reggie and took the young woman into her custody.

[STAFF]

////Volume VII - Revelation

Just as it seemed that the country had recovered from the loss of its former President and the effects of the geomagnetic storm, yet another tragedy took place. Some months earlier, a young man named Jamie Gilmore had gone missing. He reappeared in Phoenix, Arizona, on October 31, 2011, with a young woman who had been well known as the leader of the Specials’ Resistance group. To all appearances, at least; the woman was, in fact, a clone of Eric Westwood, a GEIST member who could duplicate himself. The disguised duplicate shot Jamie; as Jaime possessed a radioactive ability, the shot resulted in not only the full decimation of the city, but radiation all over its boundaries. Gabriel Constant himself oversaw the mission; his wife, Alexandria, easily one of the best pilots in the nation and also a member of GEIST, used her skills to get them out of the city in time.

Meanwhile, Ark Industries suffered a sudden corporate hostile takeover, perpetrated by Gabriel Constant and Lucius Kilvayne, the CEO of the Kilvayne Corporation, a conglomerate that had many smaller companies in a variety of fields in its holdings. The two men acted as temporary CEOs while they vetted candidates for the position.

As 2012 began, Victor Vaughn was found dead; no information regarding the manner of his death was released, and the case remained unsolved.

The Rogue Society was fading away, but one of its last remaining members, Adrian Kilvayne (a younger cousin to Lucius) led an attack on Washington, D.C., specifically on the White House, the Supreme Court Building, and Capitol Hill, in May 2012. The attack met with unexpected resistance - on behalf of the Elite, scattered Company members, and the President himself. As such, Adrian’s aims were only partly fulfilled. The attack caused President Sawyer to rethink his stance on Specials, but he and his government found little recourse; the RSF had disbanded, the Company had changed course to assist Specials and civilians, and Ark Industries had temporarily withdrawn its support of the government pending the appointment of a new CEO. To make matters worse, Reggie Sawyer disappeared during the attack.

///Volume VIII - Reticence

In August 2012, a sudden and still-unexplained event left all Specials without access to their abilities for three months. Since some Specials rely on their abilities to survive - ergokinetics, those with sight-based abilities, and so on - a few faced a great deal of trouble, but aside from those cases, those three months passed largely without incident.

Things were quiet for a long time - in terms of disasters. Tension had existed between Specials and civilians for quite some time, but with the lack of actual events to blame on one side or the other, the tension seemed to intensify, or at least become more pronounced.

By November 2012, Gabriel Constant had decided to dissolve GEIST. The team’s conflicting motivations and ideas had brought a halt to their plans. He remained in touch with some of its members, and retained all of GEIST’s assets, but for the rest, they simply parted ways.

As 2012 concluded and 2013 began, the Company, occasionally assisted by the Elite, continued their work with special-civilian relations, the Jung Facility continued to take in patients - and, under the direction of Khalidah Rahal, also participate in emergency medical care missions - and the country finally finished rebuilding, save for Costa Verde and Phoenix, which remained uninhabitable.

Unbeknownst to just about anyone else, a small group of like-minded Specials began to gather with plans of reshaping the world into what it had been, many centuries before, with Specials in the place of gods. The collective named itself Lux Aeterna.

On July 15, 2013, Ark Industries announced the appointment of its new CEO, a young and previously unknown man named Christian Moynahan. With Christian’s appointment, Gabriel and Lucius retained ownership of Ark, but were able to step down and focus fully on their own work, with Christian overseeing the management of the corporation. Christian held a town hall meeting in Los Angeles the next day, during which he detailed Ark’s planned projects and research - which, as he described it, did not involve weapons or other tools against and testing of Specials - and fielded questions from the audience on those matters. He also declared Ark’s stance regarding Specials and civilians, and the government, to be neutral, and issued a public apology on behalf of the corporation for the events of April Fourth, 2010.

Meanwhile, Reggie Sawyer finally resurfaced in Los Angeles, albeit a little less herself. She traveled with Eliza Hardt, an acquaintance, back to Washington, and was reunited with her family.

[STAFF]

////Volume IX - Resurgence

On September 7, 2013, an unusual strain of cholera began to infect tens of thousands of people in the contiguous States, both Special and normal. The infection spread quickly, but was not restricted to water or food; neither its catalyst nor its agent was ever detected. Many groups, however, sprang into action, including assistance from somewhat unexpected sources.

The Jung Facility immediately dispatched its medical teams to heavily affected areas, especially those that had been quarantined. Its original psychological wing supported the teams by offering guidance and grief counseling to patients and their families. Thousands of those patients died despite Jung’s efforts and the efforts of organizations like Jung, but thousands more pulled through - in some cases, only to die as the strain mutated and developed.

Lucius Kilvayne, himself a geneticist, led an investigation into potential treatments and cures. The typical recourses for cholera were beginning to fail as the cholera strain adapted to them, and Lucius and his team began to realize that they were running out of time. Across the continent, in Los Angeles, a team of Ark scientists began to investigate as well, in tandem with the Kilvayne Corporation. The leader of Jung’s efforts, Marshall Quatrevaux, - who, like many others despite Ark’s turnaround, did not bother to hide his residual anger toward Ark - found himself working alongside Christian Moynahan as both teams toured hospitals and treatment facilities in the city. Gabriel Constant used his background and resources from his own company, Constant Design & Development, to lead tests of New York's water supply and treatment facilities, as New York City was known to be the center of the outbreak.

As the death toll continued to rise, many members of the assembled teams began to work day and night towards a cure. The Kilvaynes kept in touch with Christian, the CDC, and occasionally other parties in their efforts. Finally, after about three weeks, they found the basis for a cure very close to home - Christian himself had proven immune to all versions of the strain, and his antibodies were cloned as the final result. Connections and a formidable team of lawyers put the treatment, as unconventional as it was, through very quickly, and the illness was finally stopped. Jung and the Kilvayne Corporation gained some visibility in their efforts during the outbreak, and in bringing the outbreak to an end. Christian declined taking any credit.

A meeting was called on October fifth. An odd assortment of individuals had been called together: Helena Rahal, a Company agent and a representative of Vital Energy; Maurelle Lacroix, the founder of Provencal Financial and Developments, among other projects; Khalidah Rahal, the founder of IntelliTouch and the leader of Jung’s medical program; her sister, Lilka, albeit uninvited; Frank Rook, a senior officer of the Company; Lucius Kilvayne; and Dakari Johessman, the lawyer and co-heir to the media and telecommunications conglomerate Acacia Heights Entertainment. The meeting had been called by Christian Moynahan, who found himself once more unwillingly at the forefront.

At the meeting, Christian revealed that his contacts in Washington had uncovered that their government was keeping a potentially devastating secret from its constituency: that a severe famine had suddenly started on the twenty-third of September in the American midwest and spread from there. By October, all of the contiguous States had been affected, and the government was quietly and desperately importing crops to replace the ones they had lost. The assembled group came together to form a solution. Maurelle, Frank, and Dakari would use their connections and usual shipping - and smuggling - routes to bring in additional crops, albeit without the government’s knowledge, and Lucius, Frank, and Christian would use their own resources to monitor the government’s response and findings and locate the source of the unnatural famine.

Their efforts began to play out well, with the American population none the wiser. This time, however, Christian did receive credit for his work: he was arrested and charged with espionage and willful communication of classified information, among other charges. After pleading “not guilty” to the charges, he was made to appear for a trial before a judge and jury.

At the trial, rather than attempt to prove his innocence, Christian presented the jury - and the world - with evidence with the government's cover-up of the famine. Although by then there was plenty of food to be had thanks to Christian's group's efforts, riots broke out over the government's inability to act and general lack of transparency. These riots were violent and caused much property damage and loss of life. With the notion that he had been the cause of the riots, Christian and two of his workers traveled across the country to help quell the riots, which included - unbeknownst to anyone but Christian himself - an attempt to stop a terrorist attack against the government as well, the same one that had damned him.

Christian arrived in Washington and was able to contain the effects of the nuclear bomb within a dome made of his own ability, but not without personal cost to his own health. He suffered smoke inhalation and his ability became toxic, impossible to use without triggering paresthesia along the nerves of his arm.

Meanwhile, for the past few years, the Johessman family, originally from Jamaica, had amassed a considerable empire of formerly sovereign countries in the Caribbean Sea. They called their assembled nations the Dominion of Jamaica, although far more countries than Jamaica were included. Under the impression that the Johessmans intended to take control of the Panama Canal - a lie perpetrated and spread by a Special named Nadine Daugherty - the Johessmans were demanded to cease and desist, a command they found laughable, as they had no plans to even touch the Canal.

This resulted in a war between America and its allies versus the Dominion. The first battle was won by the Dominion, due mostly to the fact that the Allies had simply underestimated the Johessmans (and the Kilvaynes). A second battle occurred when the Johessmans decided to strike back. The Allies were prepared, however, and an intense battle began - and was brought to a sudden halt.

A small but powerful group of Specials entered the field. Led by a woman who called herself Lilith, there was also an ability negator, a space-bender, a cryokinetic, a mental manipulator, and a deceiver (Nadine Daugherty). Lilith explained how she had arranged the cholera outbreak, the famine, and the war, adding as an aside that the "evidence" against the Johessmans had been completely fabricated. The battle started anew, but with everyone fighting Lilith and her team now.

Lilith killed Company agent Sparrow Akiyama and First Daughter Reggie Sawyer before decimating the rest of the troops from both sides. Her team was taken down easily, however, and she faced a suitable match against Trevor Taylor, the Elite's explosives expert, whose life-force ability countered Lilith's death manipulation. Despite Lilith's accumulated strength, Trevor killed her, to all appearances.

When the power negator was shot down, all the precognitives in the world had their abilities restored to them. Gabriel Constant and Maurelle Lacroix both experienced this; the first vision that hit Gabriel showed him exactly what he needed to do. Using their vast, pooled resources, Gabriel and his friends and allies quietly and peacefully removed Philip Sawyer and his government from power, and placed Dr. Lucius Kilvayne in the United States' Presidency.