<div class="floatright">(http://orig10.deviantart.net/3f32/f/2012/002/5/6/dust_and_smoke_by_shimmering_sword-d4l4dg7.jpg)</div>Name: Darclight<br/>Where: SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE ZEPPELIN!<br/>Milestones: Riders on the Storm and The Moonstone Robbery!<br/>1 PP | 0 Physical | 0 Mental | 0 Emotional | 3xp<br/><hr/><br/>Darclight listened as Ghost and Boushh went back and forth - Auxilia, Captain Hammer, a handful of other subjects.  The last bit at the end, about Zohar, was really what grabbed him and sent his mental gears into action.  There was...something...<tt class="bbc_tt"> "Ghost...do we ever know what happened to the people of CHESS?  I know a number of them publicly left Earth, but if memory serves, at the time Stormwatch shut down, about forty percent of CHESS' active personnel were off-radar, hadn't been heard from."</tt><br/><br/>CHESS was, quite simply, the biggest hero group that had existed before Retirement.  Stormwatch was a pretty big organization as far as hero teams went - but they only fielded about a dozen or so heroes, with the support personnel for them bringing the total members up to about fifty.<em>CHESS</em>, on the other hand, fielded<em>triple-digit</em>heroes, the only organization to successfully have done so.  Part of it was that it was the main superheroic effort spearheaded by the UN (it had originally started off as the superpowered arm of UNATCO before becoming its own org) - so it drew in heroes from around the world, especially those who were, shall we say, government-issue.  Major Jack Thames - the skyscraper-high profile hero from the UK - was one such person.<br/><br/>Every major industrialized country contributed heroes to CHESS - the longstanding exception had been China, but once the British had ceded control of Hong Kong back at the turn of the millennium, they finally started to pony up, as well - and in return, had a major CHESS base somewhere on their soil.  CHESS heroes could be deployed to nearly any crisis within twelve hours.  Darclight had gotten to know a number of them through inter-group operations against major villains (like the Count of Cruel).<tt class="bbc_tt">"CHESS was an enormous group,"</tt>he went on.<tt class="bbc_tt">"Between the heroes and support staff, it consisted of - at its peak - over ten thousand people worldwide.  Now, most of those were just paid-by-the-week employees.  The assessors for city-wrecking battles, the clerks who typed up and submitted the reports, the press staff..." </tt>That in and of itself was enormous: one out of FIVE people employed by CHESS worked in 'public relations.'<br/><tt class="bbc_tt"><br/>"...but the heroes, the top-rankers at the bases, they all had access to information you're suggesting.  I haven't much idea why one of them would want to help a maniac like Zohar, but I have my suspicions."</tt>