On Refuge few factions had the reputation for success and moral high ground that the Iron Crusaders once had. In their prime they were a mercenary band that finished every job they accepted but they also were very picky about what jobs they felt fit their moral compass.
The Iron Crusader’s calling card was their suits of Powered Battle Armor. Everyone in the Iron crusaders wore a unique suit of armor. These armor suits were valued as much as 20 times more than anyone else’s armor designs.
The Iron Crusaders did not recruit often but they made up for their reduced numbers with equipment that put everyone else to shame.
The Iron Crusader’s main rival was a crime band that dabbled in every illicit art that there was. They used any means at their disposal and had the profits of their other endeavors to back their jobs. This Criminal faction was known only as “The Trade”.
The Trade earned it’s name from their total command of the Black market and their ability to find people to sell as slaves.
The Trade was aggressively against independent criminals. If they found out about a theft that wasn’t given their blessing they “silenced” the perpetrator.
The Trade stayed out of trouble with the Refuge Council through bribery of some members, black mail, and intimidation of the rest.
Eventually both sides stopped accepting jobs from clients and put the entirety of their resources into an all out war with the other.
The conflict broke out into the streets of Refuge Station with The Iron Crusaders trying desperately to prevent civilians from dying in the conflict and The Trade using that to their full advantage.
Slowly but surely The Trade’s superior numbers ate away at The Iron Crusader’s defenses. The iron Crusader’s were losing.
Things only got worse when The Trade infiltrated the Iron Crusaders and stole blueprints to create their own mass produced suits of Power Armor.
The Trade’s suits lacked the quality of the Iron Crusader’s ones but the weakened crusader’s could not defend against a rejuvenated onslaught.
During the last stand of the Crusade one of their ranks who went by the name Xevins fled and survived only by ejecting from his armor before his death.
Now without his armor and nowhere left to return Xevins reshaped his identity into a legend.
He learned to fight The Trade from the shadows using guerrilla tactics. Members of the Trade began to create legends of “The Shadow” that struck then relentlessly. They began to see him less as a man and more as a supernatural being who was taking down The Trade from within and without.
He influenced a man named Davon Marcus to found the Refuge Sentinels who would become the Official Security force of Refuge and eventually drive the Trade back out of Council territory.
Xevins eventually settled down under the pseudonym Axle Garan. He became something of an accepted Vigilante. He liked to perch on one of the balconies of the Council Tower where he would use the scope of his gun to spot crime below.
How does this story end? It doesn’t.
This is where my game Refuge begins.
It’s definitely a good setup for a game.