Agents of Freedom Design Journal #5: UNISON
UNISON is an outgrowth of the UN Peacekeeping forces established in 1956 to deal with the Suez Canal crisis. At the same time as the first peacekeeping forces were established, many people wondered about forces to battle “extra-national security threats” such as the Killer Kaiser, a madman who threatened Germany in the early 1950s. Though supervillains were less common in those days, they were still a concern to international authorities, and when the first peacekeeping forces were established, a provision was added for the creation of a task force to coordinate and hunt supervillains who traveled across international borders.
Invasion of the Malfidians!
In 1969, the United Nation dealt with a new menace: the Malfidians, an expeditionary force from Farside City. They operated out of a small gravel quarry in Central England. Their mission was to procure certain rare elements and assess the planet for conquest.
Uniforce (as it was then called) learned of the menace, and with the help of a mysterious pair called the Associates (time travelers from the future who could possess the bodies of people in the present and work against threats that originated from outside Earth’s timestream), the Malfidians were defeated, and the Associates exposed the influence of the time tamperer Zeitgeist, who had possessed the body of Lady Lunar’s chief advisor. With her Malfidian Guard defeated, Lady Lunar pledged peaceful coexistence with the Earth (for as long as that lasted).
The Threat of MENACE
In the 1960s, a number of terrorist and anarchist groups sprang up around the globe to threaten human freedom and the rule of law. SHADOW is the most infamous of these agencies of evil; however, the now largely-forgotten MENACE (Mobile European Network Acquiring Control of Earth) was a group of European lunatics that stole plans for the Inexistence Gun, a weapon that altered causality.
This brought about the creation of Team Alphabet (inspired by an offhand comment by the Associates that “you’d need a special agent for every letter of the alphabet to stop MENACE and their super weapon!”). Team Alphabet is an elite team of 26 super-spies who boasted that if they were given a suicide mission, they could solve it “from beyond the grave.”
Although its name often makes eyes roll, the team has always fielded a top-notch contingent. The second-in-command of Team Alphabet, Agent E (Anthony Ellis) is the father of current UNISON chief Colonel Jennifer Ellis. During his mercenary days, Jack Wolf spent a year on the squad as “Agent W” (which, until then, had a reputation for being the “unluckiest letter”).
Convergence
Thanks to the wonders of compartmentalization, Uniforce and Team Alphabet were not the only UN agencies investigating superhuman threats. By 1970, the bureaucracy of the United Nations had no less than six different agencies to handle matters relating to aliens and superhuman threats. Clearly, a more unified approach was needed to coordinate these agencies into an effective force.
For years, two sub-agencies, the United Nations Science Advisory Council (UNSAC) analyzed alien technology and the United Nations Paranormal Enclave Committee (UNPEC) advised on dealings with places like Atlantis. Enemy agents interested in sowing dissent had infiltrated both agencies. As a result, convergence of all United Nations concerns did not occur for another 25 years, though the other agencies moved closer to cooperation.
In 1993, everything changed. The Terminus Invasion was a clear signal that the world needed to organize a response to alien threats on a global scale. Major Jennifer Ellis of Great Britain and Major Jahal Daliwhal of India, both experienced Uniforce operatives, again proposed an umbrella organization. When UNSAC opposed the measure, Team Alphabet went undercover and discovered UNSAC had been infiltrated by a race of alien parasites. With this threat exposed, there was nothing keeping the proposal from going forward. UNISON, a name meant to signify the single-mindedness of the agency to protect humanity, was formally created in 1994.
New Threats
In the late 1980s, a new terrorist threat surfaced to trouble the world in the absence of SHADOW and MENACE: Overthrow, an alliance of European terrorist cells organized into a terrorist super-organization. This misfit collection of anarchists and political extremists began a campaign of bombing and assassination in Germany, which soon spread to France, Spain, Italy, and Greece, and eventually reached Eastern Europe and even America.
Vehemently opposed to globalization and other market forces driving economies together, Overthrow’s skill in hiding itself from sight was matched only by the viciousness of their attacks. In 1999, Overthrow assassinated UNISON Director Santiago, and the following year they assassinated his successor, a capable Jamaican named Harry Smith. In 2002, the UK’s Jennifer Ellis was appointed director of UNISON, and has managed to avoid Overthrow bombs and assassins’ bullets (though not for lack of trying on Overthrow’s part).
In addition to the Overthrow threat, UNISON aided in fighting the Grue invasion of 2003, fielding Uni-Storm, a fleet of ten space-capable heavy fighter planes that UNISON commissioned after the Terminus Invasion. The existence of a small independent space fleet came as something of a shock to members of the Security Council and sparked intense debate on UNISON’s role in planetary defense. So far, Ellis has managed to defend her organization from attempts to cripple its independent military capacity, thanks in part to close friends of UNISON like King M’Balla of Dakana (who secretly backed the Uni-Storm program), the Atom Family, and (most notably) the Freedom League.
UNISON Today
Today, UNISON has something of a split personality. Because its objectives vary depending on the part of the globe in which they are operating, UNISON is much more aggressive in areas of the world that don’t have a strong military presence or central authority. Elsewhere, they are investigators who deal with international threats like Overthrow. Their record is excellent; however, they are under intense scrutiny from many quarters.
