In connection with our Supers/Technothriller campaign of
Project Jade Serenity, I've been considering what the intelligence services, military establishments and political leadership of other nations would think if they got wind of the experiments that the US Army carried out until the year 2000* in our backstory.
The experiments themselves were relatively tame. I don't expect any nation states will flip out at the news that others are experimenting with nootropic drugs, designer steroids or anything of that nature. And when the project was abandoned, it had not produced any dramatic repeatable successes.
On the other hand, in the era in which our play is set, the current time of 2017*, the former test subjects exhibit enhanced performance, major side-effects and even traits that the experiment was never meant to affect. In layman's terms, some of them have superpowers.
This has been developing over time, with the first indicators of enhanced performance probably becoming evident to the former test subjects themselves around 2005-2007 and with several isolated incidents of individudals exhibiting full-blown superpowers around 2011-2012.
Once the situation became evident to the US government, at least one task force had been formed to get a handle on the issue and respond appropriately. This is Onyx Rain, the handlers, watchers and jailers of our PCs in the game. They want to contact all former test subjects, study them and place them under permanent observation until a decision is made about what to do with them.
The setting is pretty much unchanged from our world to all appearances. The results of Project Jade Serenity are still highly classified and so far, nothing has leaked to the public, but that could change rapidly in play.
What I'm wondering about is who else might have pieced together information on Project Jade Serenity?
If one secret government experiment had the effects of giving people superpowers, could others have done the same?
What nation states, aside from China and Russia, might be interested enough in the results of Project Jade Serenity to run risky intelligence operations in the Americas?
The potential upside would be getting their hands on miracle drugs that not only enhance the effects of military training, but could actually give recruits superhuman abilities. The downside would be an international incident and damaging US relations.
If it got out that many, perhaps even most, of the former Project Jade Serenity test subjects were fleeing from the US and were currently in Mexico, what nation states might be intersted in offering them asylum in return for information?
*Assuming they ever stopped, but as far as we are aware, there haven't been experiments since then. This could simply mean that whoever was placed in charge of continuing them was better at security than his predecessors.
**It was current time when we started. Now we're about two months ahead of the in-game date.