SHADOW

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SHADOW, the Secret Hierarchy of Agents for Domination Over the World, is an organization that is the number 1# threat to world peace in today's society. Revealed by declassified government documents after decades of being fought in secret, Shadow was thought to be a myth by most. It is the No. 1 priority for A.E.G.I.S. and UNISON to eliminate. Unfortunately, they face an evil that has a very good ability to restore itself after being killed.


Shadow is a group that lurks behind the governments of a hundred unstable nations. It is the financier behind most modern terrorist organizations and their arms supplier. Shadow is also a leading supporter of the United States' military industrial complex and has controlled at least two American Presidents.


History

Wermacht Intelligence General Wilhelm Kantor was an immortal Thule magic practicing sorcerer who had existed since Ancient Egypt as Tan-Aktor, using the powers body-switching to continue his immortal life. Thus, SHADOW has existed in some form since Biblical times. He arranged for the rise of the National Socialist Party to power in hopes of creating an immortal occult ruled fascist power. Unfortunately, Adolf Hitler's focus on eugenics and Pan-Germanism thwarted Wilhelm's efforts and he ended up betraying the entirety of the Axis war effort to the communists.


Moving his best scientists and soldiers to the West, Wilhelm Kantor proceeded to switch bodies and began usurping control over the KGB while his agents gradually infiltrated the government. Through the use of mind control spells and psychics, Wilhelm Kantor manipulated both superpowers into carrying out research into the paranormal while dumping massive amounts of funding into a network of spies and saboteurs that he controlled. The United States, seeking a top man to the (wrongly) believed communist conspiracy spreading through the world, named him Overshadow.


During the Cold War, he acted as a 'third side' as he played both super-powers against one another and became a nuclear power relatively early. A.E.G.I.S. was formed by President Kennedy to fight him, which resulted in Overshadow having him assassinated. Likewise, Overshadow's agents were involved in the assassination of Martin Luther King as they hoped to trigger a race war that could be exploited.


Overshadow successfully conquered the United States for a brief time when they managed to make an alliance with Richard Milhouse Nixon in order to secure SHADOW's ideals (Nixon, for his part, believed he was making an alliance that would guarantee the end of the Soviet Union's dominance over the world). Unfortunately, AEGIS successfully rounded up most of the SHADOW sympathetic agents around Nixon before forcing him to resign.


Since the 1980s, SHADOW has mostly been devoted to smaller scale conflicts and attempting to conquer the world through corporate terrorism and slow erosion of American civil liberties. While our world provides a ripe feeding ground for SHADOW's envisioned police-state paradise, it's a little more difficult in this world. Nevertheless, they continue never ending streams of terrorist attacks and fostering brushfire wars to force the United States and other nations to become more totalitarian (fostering their own agents in power who are the heads of reactionary parties).


Operations

SHADOW operates a fairly never-ending stream of criminal operations and terrorist attacks. It actually fosters a large number of 'crazy' plans as well, that are meant to fail but can distract heroes and the government from more subtle schemes. Shadow makes most of its fortune in entirely legitimate corporate ventures like weapons design and mercenary companies but it cannot buy instability. It's agents are recruited from American Militias, Fundamentalist religious groups, Racist Organizations, its own mercenary front companies, prisons and existing terrorist groups. For obvious reasons, many of these groups do not mix and operate in cell format but ultimately all roads lead back to Overshadow.


Amongst Super-Criminals, Shadow routinely arranges for their release and simultaneously offers their own operatives to help them carry out missions. Doctor Sin's Fangs of the Dragon have actually merged with the Chinese branch of SHADOW to become the most powerful Anti-Communist/Criminal Enterprise in Asia. The henchmen of the super villains are mostly told to obey without question and to keep their SHADOW affiliations a secret. The chaos caused by super villains is enough to guarantee that SHADOW's aims are fulfilled.


SHADOW's front organizations and corporations are, of course, too numerous to list.


Idealogy

SHADOW teaches its members to be members of a universal order that's controlled by Overshadow. Depending on the level of clearance, Shadow's goals may change with most of it coaxed to appear sympathetic to the listener's own ambitions. At the height, it's world domination with a totalitarian society controlled and brainwashed by a steady stream of conformity inducing propaganda.


Halt Evil Doer!