The XCOM (Extraterrestrial Combat) Project was never expected to be necessary.
Formed as a clandestine international task force, its stated mission goal was to prepare for the possibility of attack from extraterrestrials. It cleared away the complexities of politics, proprietary knowledge, and patents to allow the free research of cutting edge science and technology, and undertook to train an elite fighting force for global response to alien threats that might arise.
But the aliens never came, and the research bore only limited fruit, much of which couldn’t even be used in the world outside XCOM. The Council of Nations funding the project shrank, budget and resources dwindled, and the project soon became a convenient place to offload troublemakers, weirdos, and other inconvenient problems. Its staff became a skeleton crew, its core mission a joke, and its command assignment a career dead end. Only a handful of diehard advocates on the Council kept the project from being entirely scrapped and its assets sold off to the highest bidder.
Now, of course, the aliens are here, and this idealistic, atrophied dream is the only force capable of immediate global response.
UPDATE FEB 20TH: The war with the aliens continues, and pressure on XCOM personnel is only increasing. Now is the time to step up and join the effort to save humanity.
While this story isn’t actively recruiting, we welcome interested players and newcomers to Storium who are interested in a friendly space to explore characters under intense pressure. Just send a PM!
Don’t let the size of the cast or the existing story intimidate you, there’s still plenty of room for more voices and perspectives, and no need to be intimately familiar with everything that’s happened to date. XCOM maintains a public channel on the Unofficial Storium Slack for discussion and brainstorming. Feel free to say hi anytime you like.
A high-level summary of the story so far is provided for convenient catch up and familiarization with the plot.
Link to personnel roster(s).
The story so far…
In the month of March, the XCOM project was hastily activated in response to reports of aliens invading–not through a full scale assault, but with a concerted effort to abduct humans, making landings, and infiltrate infrastructure. While this shadow war continued, staff was hastily added to XCOM’s base of operations in Brazil, and tensions mounted as the project struggled with budget constraints, secrecy, conflicting interests, and frayed nerves.
Ultimately, and despite the loss of one operative and injuries sustained by others, the XCOM project made great strides in beginning to harness alien technology and learning about alien physiology. Towards the end of the month, a bold plan was hatched: to truly understand the aliens, what they want, and how to defeat them, the XCOM project needed to bring one in alive.
In the month of April, the XCOM project made critical headway to its top priority: interrogating a living alien. Unfortunately, while XCOM solved the question of how to capture and hold an alien, attempts to capture one remain elusive. After two months of incredibly brutal missions, the roster is looking increasingly thin. Worse still, XCOM’s management experiences a radical shake-up, as a new interim commander is put in place and a new Ops Chief imposed by the Council. With new initiatives and new operational patterns struggling to take hold, the project must continue to make headway against the alien threat.
The question hanging over XCOM’s scientists and engineers centers around the new element, Elerium, the still-unknown substance Meld. and new aliens encountered in the field. Towards the end of the month, while the XCOM R&D division closes in on a breakthrough for improved field armor, the aliens abruptly change their tactics and start hitting urban populations in a campaign of terror. Finally unavoidable, XCOM is revealed to the public.
Table of Contents
- Scene 1-1: March 1st, 2015, wherein the project is activated and operatives return from their first active mission in nearby Sao Paulo.
- Scene 1-2: March 8th, 2015. After nearly 8 days, the aliens strike again, and XCOM again responds. Personnel begin to struggle with rumors and great infighting within departments. Too soon, another operation launches, this one with fatal consequences.
- Scene 1-3: March 9th, 2015. The lost operative is mourned, and management continues to struggle with the way forward for the XCOM project. Worse, personnel issues in engineering and elsewhere continue to grow worse, requiring more intervention. Then: XCOM shoots down its first alien craft.
- Scene 1-4: March 11th, 2015. Following the first successful operation on a crashed UFO site, XCOM’s salvage group is sent down for retrieval of valuable alien tech and materials. Engineering is reorganized alongside Science, and the steady isolation continues to take its toll. On Friday the 13th, a cross-organizational party takes place, wherein there are some incidents of misconduct.
- Scene 1-5: March 15th, 2015. The merging of Science and Engineering has led to new, radical ideas for integrating projects between the two, including construction of a new facility space. An operative is reassigned, and the commander must consider desperate, ethically questionable means to acquire more funding for the project.
- Scene 1-6: March 20th, 2015. Science considers the dizzying scope of alien ‘Meld’. Salvage gains a guest scientist and runs training, while the operatives compete in a mostly-friendly game of capture the flag…until the aliens strike again. Global panic continues to rise.
- Scene 1-7: March 28th, 2015. Engineers works to implement new technology, while Science considers a radical initiative to capture a live alien. The commander prepares for a meeting with the Council of Nations, where the fate of XCOM will be decided.
- Scene 2-1: April 1st, 2015. XCOM is funded through another month, and capture of a live alien deemed the Project’s top priority. While management puzzles out how to safely capture and detain an alien, most of the base is gathered together for the Copa do Brasil–futbol!–and some much-needed time for personal business, like messages home and care packages, though Gabriel and Ashlyn have… less than ideal experiences. Elsewhere, Dar and Rhea hatch a plan to covertly continue experimentation with Meld.
- Scene 2-2: April 8th, 2015. Another Operation, and this one goes south. Two dead, two heavily injured, it’s only by the skin of their teeth that the operatives pull off a successful operation, and the cost sends ripples through the base. many wonder ‘could we have done more?’, which Dr. Sahni isn’t afraid to leverage for greater focus on experimental research. Then, mere hours later, the Council calls on XCOM for another operation. A smaller team is sent out, and unexpectedly encounter the heaviest resistance from aliens to date–over a military convoy attacked by humans, not aliens. One survivor of the convoy is brought back for questioning.
- Scene 2-3: April 13th, 2015. Still reeling from the recent losses, XCOM is a flurry of activity as new practical designs for equipment enter production, and construction of the alien containment facility it complete. The latest hostiles fielded by the aliens prove as much–or more–mechanical than biological, and Dr. Ocampo finds he must reach out to help from engineering for a full autopsy. With the operative injured list continuing to grow, five new operatives are flown in–as well as other new staff to aid the Project. Science experiences a breakthrough, discovering a new element synthesized by the aliens, dubbed “Elerium,” which seems to fuel much of their technology. If only it can be harnessed…
- Scene 2-4: April 16th, 2015. Word of abductions has another strike team sent out, this time to Sydney. While they fly and fight, the Arc Thrower continues to near completion, and new projects are considered–including Ashlyn’s bold proposal of a mechanized infantry vehicle. Isobel discovers signs that someone other than XCOM has been visiting operation sites, and Joshua considers the legal questions attached to capturing, detaining, and interrogating aliens. Meanwhile, a Base-wide audit and security recertification takes place, originating with a sudden and urgent Council concern over operational security.
- Scene 2-5: April 19th, 2015. XCOM receives a surprise visit from a Council representative, American and former general Adam Kimball. HE comes bearing a lot of top-level shake-ups for the project. Meanwhile, base personnel start an impromptu football league within XCOM’s vacant excavated space, and operatives are trained on use of the new Arc Thrower with less than successful results, just before another UFO appears in the skies over Brazil.
- Scene 2-6: April 22nd, 2015. XCOM adjusts to its new interim commander, and the imminent arrival of a new Ops Chief. But work must continue, including fielding a new request from the Council to manufacture some of XCOM’s experimental munitions for them. Elsewhere, Ashlyn Spahr receives a very unusual message from an old contact, just before terror strikes Alexandria, Egypt, indicating a radical shift in the aliens’ strategy.
- Scene 2-7: April 23rd, 2015. A new threat on the aliens’ arsenal turns injured civilians into health risks on the battlefield, forcing operatives to take necessary countermeasures. Another operative is lost in attempt to mitigate the invader’s terror attack on Alexandria while an extended response team arrives on the Condor to aid civilians. XCOM goes public, broadcasting worldwide the Project’s mission. The base is a flurry of activity responding to the aliens’ new tactics, addressing a MELD experiment gone awry, another cross-department get-together merging poker with group therapy, and the Commander giving XCOM’s new Operations Chief an assignment: fixed operative squads.
- Scene 3-1: May 3rd, 2015. The Council is unhappy with XCOM’s progress since activation and Canada is the first funding country to withdraw their support to the Project. The base recovers from a damaged power source explosion, trying to piece together what happened to trigger it and the information surrounding those present. The latest science breakthrough upgrades the existing Kevlar armour to a prototype Carapace Armour, and operatives put the new equipment through the paces while R&D begins the development of Beam Weaponry. Operatives undergo team-building exercises, and XCOM personnel from all departments participate in the Brasilia Underground League (BULL) season one.
- Scene 3-2: May 7th, 2015. Red Squadron returns from halting an alien abduction having abducted an alien, themselves. Ashlyn and Gabe immediately get to work trying to “interrogate” this subject (even going so far as to consult Manny on sustenance requirements), while others in Science begin to reverse engineer alien weaponry retrieved from the field. Isobel and Ashur wrestle over how to promote XCOM and their failure to assuage Canada. Wekesa and Olivia make an unexpected connection. Del struggles with the increasingly thin Security duty roster in the face of a new security concern. Felipe and Issy continue to get closer, and he formally meets the other Valkyries. XCOM finds itself with another opportunity to down a UFO–but fails.
- Scene 3-3: May 14th, 2015. XCOM responds to a strange incident in a small, Newfoundland village, but there’s something different about this operation, and it ends with three injured operatives and a UN airstrike. Back at the base, Ashlyn undergoes a psychological assessment, while Del helps out Torres with a difficult decision about her injured leg. Isobel and Gale struggle with feedback from the Council, and the former faces a difficult challenge after Newfoundland, with the world’s eyes still on XCOM. Ashlyn makes a desperate gamble to settle complications from Tsobane and makes a ruthless move to finish interrogating the live alien before it expires–and is then detained by XCOM Security.
- Scene 3-4: May 19th, 2015. EXALT makes itself known in South Africa, positioning itself as a challenge to XCOM’s actions, and taking local public opinion with it. Ndaba responds with a covert operation involving one select operative, chosen by Gale–a decision she analyzes as thoroughly as anything. Meanwhile, Ashlyn is interrogated for her affiliation with EXALT, and Gyorg is roped in by association. Isobel, as usual, is tasked with the public fallout. On the bright side, Del gets some relief in the form of new Security spending, but first he has to train them. Felipe is brought into ethically questionable efforts to keep XCOM’s budget in the black. Emily struggles with the cumulative stresses of working at XCOM.
- Scene 3-5: May 24th, 2015. Nationalistic pride begins to rear its face on the base, with personnel getting into disagreements–or open fighting–about their conflicting loyalties. Throughout, work continues in the wake of EXALT’s appearance: Wekesa continues his clandestine operation to infiltrate the group, while back in Brazil his team trains without him–until the time for extraction arrives. Elsewhere on the base, Gabe and Sahni talk with Nathalia Torres, a possible volunteer for Meld trials, while Ashlyn and Gyorg are given chances to redeem themselves. Emily makes a new friend on base. Valentina and Sarah take the first steps in starting a new club.
Hosted and narrated by:
J. P. Langsdorf (Prester)
Started 12/09/16.
Scenes played: 20
License: Community License
