Renaissance - The Light and Darkness War

While the original Guardians of Empire City game had ended when I moved to another city to start a new job, my broader DC Heroes universe lived on with a new campaign that included some existing characters. The various individual DC Heroes games had become increasingly interconnected over time, so even when I was no longer running a specific game, those characters still existed and their lives went on. I would even run one-shot games when visiting with old friends. In the ongoing game I would sometimes reference or hint at current events involving the characters from those older games. Those references included elements that tied to a major event involving the Guardians, something I called the Light and Darkness War. While I never actually ran that event as a game, it was implied to have happened. Now that the old DC Heroes campaign universe is back but set several years after the last game ended, it has become necessary to fill in the blanks for some of these major events; and so, I present the Light and Darkness War.

The Light and Darkness War

Home Again

After returning to Empire City following their sojourn in Skartaris, the trio of Tazer, Guardienne, and Flashback realized that with Rift Manor gone they no longer had a home. This wasn't much of a problem for Guardienne, who was able to get an apartment thanks to her family money, but it meant Tazer and Flashback would have to crash with her until they could get back on their feet. For the next almost six months Jackie and Josh bounced from odd job to odd job while also trying, with some success, to keep up their superhero activities. Things started to turn around when Harbinger arrived, pulling Tazer, Guardienne and Flashback together into a proper team again.

Our Worlds at War

Harbinger had intended for the reformed Guardians to start preparing for the fight against the forces of the Darklord, but fate had other plans. Just over a month later the Earth came under threat by a cosmic being called Imperiex. Superheroes from across the world found themselves pressed into service, and the Guardians were no different. One plus from these events was to reunite the group with their former teammate, the Human Bomb. Together they are dispatched to Northern Canada, joining with Canada's Northguard team to help deal with one of the Imperiex Probes that threatens to burrow to the center of the Earth to destroy the planet.

Darkness Rising

Unlike his previous efforts at entering this universe, the Darklord stayed, appropriately, in the shadows for the early part of the campaign. He let Prophet gather converts, while Scorn chose the best to be Dark Soldiers. Wraith was tasked with gathering the mystic artifacts that would let Maaldor take the Earth. For his part, after killing his father in Superior City and taking control of Lucifer's Six, Prophet began working his way back east across the US. As they passed through city after city, Prophet and Lucifier's Six would find converts to the Darklord's path of power through hate and fear. From among the converts, the truly worthy would become acolytes imbued with a small fraction of Maaldor's power, while some others would be chosen as sacrifices, their life force drained to strength the Darklord.

The Guardians attempted to track Prophet from his last known appearance in Superior City. They finally located Prophet and Lucifer's Six when they were in Midway City, leading to a confrontation which Prophet and the Six were able to escape from. Having encountered Harbinger for the first time, Prophet recognized the threat and sent Lucifer's Six to Empire City. This drew the Guardians back to Empire, leading to a series of encounters before the Six were finally defeated. While the Guardians were preoccupied, Prophet went underground and joined up with Scorn.

Philip Adler, aka Scorn, had been driven insane by the Spectre at the end of the Revelations crisis and was imprisoned in Arkham Asylum. Scorn was freed after the earthquake that turned Gotham City into a No Man's Land. He wandered the ruins of Gotham until his sanity was restored when a rogue angel tried to usurp the power of the Spectre. The Darklord enlisted Scorn shortly after this, tasking him with finding soldiers to serve Maaldor. Scorn proceeded to recruit several super-villains, including several members of the Soldiers of Anarchy who had previously served him during the Revelations crisis. Joined by Prophet, Scorn then took his Dark Soldiers to Empire City.

Dark Empire

Prophet, Scorn, and the Dark Soldiers laid siege to Empire City. At the same time, the Dark Acolytes in cities across the country began causing chaos, preventing other heroes from coming to Empire to help the Guardians. Despite the odds, the Guardians were able to hold their own, defeating many of the Dark Soldiers. As they readied to take on Prophet and Scorn directly, the Guardians were suddenly joined by a future version of Flashback. As usually happened in these circumstances, the future Flashback merged with his present-day self to transfer the knowledge of events to come. This Flashback had come from the very near future where Maaldor had managed to manifest and conquer the Earth, and with this information came the knowledge of what Wraith had been doing. Flashback led the Guardians to a location in Empire City where Wraith had assembled the magical artifacts he had collected, combining them into an amplifier that would allow Maaldor to focus his Dark Energies and fully enter this reality. Encouraged by Flashback the Guardians turned their combined powers onto the amplifier to destroy it. As Harbinger, Tazer, Guardienne, Torch and Human Bomb poured their power into the construct it suddenly erupted in a wave of Dark Energy.

As the wave of Dark Energy spread outward, Harbinger threw up a Light Shield to try and protect himself and the rest of the Guardians. All around them, Empire City began to transform into a nightmarish Hellscape. From the heart of the maelstrom stepped a giant figure, and the hulking form of Maaldor crossed from his realm into this. The Guardians prepared to make a desperate last stand, but were stunned by a thunderous blow from behind. Shocked, the heroes realized they had been betrayed by one of their own - Flashback. A laughing Maaldor taunted how it had been his own future self who had sent the other Flashback through time, a Flashback already possessed and twisted by a victorious Darklord. When the Dark Flashback merged with his present-day self the corruption took over and Flashback tricked his teammates into providing the power needed for Maaldor to finally cross over.

Outside, the Dark Energy continued to spread until it had transformed the entire Earth. Those who served Maaldor now stood victorious over a terrified populace, and any who might have opposed him had now been magically transformed to stone. The most powerful of Earth's heroes were now statues that simply served as food for the Darklord as he slowly began to drain their life forces. Protected by Harbinger's Light Shield the Guardians were not transformed, but now found themselves imprisoned in the Darklord's dungeon in his mighty fortress that sat where Empire City once was. Harbinger tried to buoy the hopes of the heroes, but the rest of the Guardians were mostly in shock. Torch, the youngest member, was overwhelmed while Tazer was still reeling from Flashback's betrayal as Guardienne tried in vain to comfort her friend. Only the Human Bomb was managing to hold himself together, though only barely.

Ray of Light

Time seemed to lose all meaning and the Guardians could not even guess how long they had been in the dungeon. Their few escape attempts had come to nought, and other than Prophet briefly coming to taunt the group that Maaldor was merely saving them for last, after he had drained the rest of Earth's heroes, their captors seemed to ignore them. The group had almost given up all hope when they heard the sounds of a fight outside their prison. The doors of their cell flew open and they saw that their rescuers were a man in a glowing white costume and a woman wearing black, winged power armor. It took a second for Harbinger to recognize the man as the hero Twilight from Superior City. Twilight's powers were tied to both the Light like Harbinger and the Dark like Prophet, but now that Darkness had taken over the hero's powers had swung completely to the Light as a reaction. The woman's identity was a mystery, though her armor, despite the color scheme, resembled that of the deceased hero ArcAngel; she merely introduced herself as the Rook.

Twilight's powers had obviously shielded him from the effect of the Dark Energy wave, and something had also protected the Rook, though she professed to not know how she had escaped being transformed by the wave. The two had met up in the transformed Superior City and spent several days crossing the continent to reach what had once been Empire City, where Twilight had sensed the source of the Darkness was. As to how they knew that the Guardians were prisoners, the surprising answer to that was that they had been told by Wraith, who had intercepted the two as they arrived at Empire. With this revelation, Wraith himself then appeared in the dungeon. Wraith stated that while the chaos of Maaldor's Dark Earth might have been fun to start, he has decided that it's not somewhere he'd like to stay permanently. Tazer was ready to fry Wraith for what she assumed was his role in what happened to Flashback, but he stopped her by saying there was a way to free him from Maaldor's control. Harbinger asked if Wraith knew how Maaldor could be stopped, but the sorcerer remained evasive. While one of Maaldor's earlier attempts had been thwarted by destroying the artifact channeling the Dark Energy, Wraith said that wouldn't work now as Maaldor has absorbed the power into himself. Wraith was, however, able to fill in the heroes on Maaldor's earlier encounters with Earth's heroes, including Superman and the Green Lantern Corps, and how he was defeated each time. Human Bomb then told Harbinger that he thought he knew how they could defeat the Darklord, if they could reach him. Wraith wished the heroes luck and disappeared into the shadows.

The heroes fought their way towards Maaldor's throne room, facing off against the Dark Soldiers along the way. Among the Dark Soldiers was the evil Flashback and, heeding Wraith's advice, Tazer fought through her anger at Flashback's betrayal and drew on her love for him instead to reach Josh and give him the strength to drive out Maaldor's possessing corruption. Scorn himself arrived on the scene with the strongest of the Dark Soldiers, and Guardienne, Torch and Rook headed them off to free the others to find the Darklord. Outside of the throne room itself the remaining heroes were confronted by Prophet and Lucifier's Six, their powers enhanced by Maaldor. Even with their increased power, Lucifer's Six were not able to hold off Tazer, Flashback and Twilight while Prophet, possessing few real combat skills, fell quickly to the veteran warrior Harbinger. The path cleared, Human Bomb smashed through the giant doors of the throne room and the heroes stepped through the wreckage to confront the Darklord himself.

A confident Maaldor readied to strike down the heroes when Tazer and Flashback went in for the first strike. Superspeed blows rained down, having seemingly little effect, with only a final shock from Tazer garnering a reaction before the speedsters were swatted away. The attacks provided a suitable distraction, allowing Harbinger and Twilight to combine their powers and deal a powerful strike of Light Energy. The blow staggered Maaldor, who then proceeded to draw much of the power he'd shared with his servants back into himself. This proved to be the opening Human Bomb needed and he grappled the Darklord and began drawing the energy into himself. This further weakened Maaldor, though the Human Bomb could not hope to hold such vast energies for long. Knowing what was at stake, the Human Bomb held tight to the Darklord as Tazer and Flashback ran the entwined pair out of the castle with their friends following behind.

As Human Bomb continued to drain the grappled Maaldor, Harbinger and Twilight kept the Darklord pinned with a continuous bombardment of Light Energy. Taser and Flashback began running in tandem, circling around and around faster than they ever had before, enough to begin opening an interdimensional portal. With guidance from the advanced computer in Rook's power armor, Guardienne then used her Omni-Cube to stabilize the portal so that it led to an empty dimension. With the portal open, Human Bomb began to head towards it with Maaldor in tow. The Darklord's desperate final attempt to break free was stopped by a combined blast from Harbinger and Twilight that sent Maaldor through. Before the portal could be closed though, Human Bomb revealed that he could not hold the energy he had drained and that the explosion would destroy half the Earth. Before the other heroes could react, Human Bomb leapt through the portal with moments to spare. As the portal closed, Human Bomb unleashed all the collected energy, destroying himself and Maaldor.

A New Dawn

With the Darklord and his evil energy gone, the Earth swiftly began to change back to normal. The entrapped heroes were freed and most of the population was left with only a vague recollection of what had happened, like waking from a collective nightmare. The remaining defeated enemies; Scorn, Prophet, Lucifer's Six, and the Dark Soldiers; were all taken into custody by authorities and the surviving Guardians mourned the fallen Human Bomb, realizing that he had planned to sacrifice himself all along. With the danger over, Twilight and Rook returned to Superior City leaving the Guardians to look towards their own futures.