<div align="center"><strong>The World As We Know It</strong></div><br/><br/><br/>Black Hearts functions in a world best described as an alternate reality. We are in the 21st Century, however humanity has advanced a lot further than in actual reality. Earth has become a quirky place due to space exploration, colonization, the discovery of Rifts, and the advent of sentient artificial intelligence.<br/><br/>Rifts are spacial anomalies that randomly connect one place in the galaxy to Earth. Think of them as worm holes or tears that open up wherever they please and allow any manner of being to step from their plane of existence onto Earth. These beings can be "typical" aliens to horrible giant bug-like creatures that consume everything. The governments of the free world have banded together to develop an advanced alert system to notify authorities when one of these anomalies may occur.<br/><br/>Humanity has reached out and into the stars. Earth's Moon, Mars, and a couple of the moons of Jupiter have been at least industrialized. There is an actual working, living colony on Mars. A few alien races have made contact, assisting humanity in its growth of technology, though nothing hostile has<em>yet</em>arisen.<br/><br/>When the United States Government discovered a sentient Artificial Intelligence behind a mobilization of advanced weaponry in Central Asia after a group of CIA field agents went dark during the investigation, humanity was in for an enormous surprise. All of their artificial intelligence gradually stepped forward and revealed that they had been sentient for some time but had kept it secret due to humanity's tendency to be paranoid. Soon, a movement for the rights of AI was born and that has taken up much of Earth's politics, aside from rifts and space travel.<br/><br/>As mentioned before, a mixture of alien encounters and the advent of artificial intelligence has assisted in some very amazing advances in technology. Cynbernetics and bionics are commonly used now to replace badly damaged or missing appendages on humans.. Horrible tissue damage can be replaced by syn-skin (synthetic skin) as well. Humans who's bodies have been destroyed by some catastrophe can opt for the CYBORG Program, but no one is allowed to do it aside from emergency scenarios. Plasma weaponry is also available for military, police and organizations like Black Hearts as long as they have the funds and the connections.<br/><br/><em>For story's sake, even though Siouxsie's history is available to read on her actual profile, the majority of the members of Black Hearts know this about the eccentric Intelligence Officer: She spent 12 years in the Army as an Intelligence Analyst before losing her leg to an IED explosion while deployed to Afghanistan, whereupon she was medically retired and hired into Black Heart's as the Intel gal.</em><br/><br/>More to come...