Vanguard

"The problem with being born into power, you don't stop to consider what it costs. These mutants who think that a genetic advantage gives them the right to play at being gods... It's up to us to bring them back to terra firma."

―Colonel Gideon Vasher

Vanguard is a highly secretive research and development program within the United States military under the oversight of the Department of Home Security. Officially, its function is to speculate on potential terrorist threats and to provide recommendations to U.S. law enforcement and military forces. However, under the direction of General Gideon Vasher, it has become a powerful and independent paramilitary agency dedicated to protecting the United States and the entire human race from the emerging mutant threat.

History

Colonel Gideon Vasher

Initially a cooperative effort between the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. military, Vanguard suffered from a lack of executive direction and poorly-defined objectives which hamstrung its effectiveness as an anti-terrorism agency. It languished for several years under a series of unimaginative directors who were hesitant to take any action beyond holding routine training maneuvers and filing regular reports. The program was a bureaucratic wasteland, redundant, under-funded, and ineffective.

That changed with the arrival of Colonel Gideon Vasher, a decorated military operative with the U.S. Army department of intelligence. Despite his effectiveness in the field, Vasher had acquired a well-deserved reputation as a loose cannon, and his superiors were eager to shuffle him off to a quiet position where he could do no harm. Vanguard appeared to be the perfect assignment in which to effectively retire the maverick officer.

However, Vasher recognized a great deal of potential in the convoluted network of contacts and requisitions that Vanguard had in place, and he quickly supplemented it with his own resources and contacts in the States and abroad. Taking advantage of his program's lowly state in his superiors' eyes, he secretly cast a nation-wide web of supply orders and grant requests that all led through a variety of tortuous channels and into Vanguard's accounts. Backed by friends in upper levels of American intelligence, various defense contractors, and private corporations, Vasher transformed Vanguard into his own personal Black Ops division.

Vanguard's covert facility in Montana

Facilities

Vanguard operates a network of military bases and research and fabrication facilities around the nation. Of these facilities, only the Bastion Training Grounds and Vanguard One are known to the public, but the inner workings of all Vanguard facilities are highly classified.

Vanguard Zero

Vanguard Zero is a converted nuclear fallout bunker built into the mountains of western Montana. It was Vanguard's first base of operations and continues to be its primary site for genetic and cybernetic research. Within this bunker are numerous medical facilities, holding cells, scientific labs, and field testing ranges. Colonel Vasher has assembled some of the finest minds in genetic and military engineering to populate the facility's extensive research and development wing.

Vanguard One

Following NORAD's departure from the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, Vanguard took possession of the facility and moved its primary base of operations there. Vanguard One remains the command and control center for all Vanguard operations worldwide.

Vanguard Two

Vanguard Two is the agency's primary heavy fabrications facility. It is here that Vanguard's specialized weaponry and armor are manufactured after they have been approved for mass production. Vanguard Two also serves as an engineering site and testing ground for heavy machinery and battle vehicles, including the highly classified Project Sentinel. Vanguard Two occupies the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository, which was abandoned after a Brotherhood attack left parts of it contaminated by radioactive waste. Vanguard's facilities are clean, but the waste serves as both cover for their activities and as an effective defensive picket against intruders.

Bastion Training Grounds

The Bastion Training Grounds, located in the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, is the site where Vanguard Special Forces and other combat personnel are trained. As Vanguard combat troops are drawn almost entirely from among the existing armed forces, this training focuses almost exclusively on weaponry and tactics unique to Vanguard. The organization's mutant agents occasionally serve as adversaries for the trainees.

Agenda

Under Colonel Vasher's directorship, Vanguard has taken a highly liberal interpretation of its original mandate. Rather than speculate broadly on the potential activities of conventional terrorists, Vanguard now focuses exclusively on what Vasher believes to be the greatest single threat ever to face the United States - the mutant strain.

In the eyes of Vanguard, mutants represent not a subset of humanity but a competing species vying for dominance. Conflict between the two species is inevitable; therefore humans must find a way to overcome the mutants' genetic advantage or risk their own eventual extinction. To that end, Vanguard has developed a variety of anti-mutant countermeasures including restraining collars, blood tests for the X-gene, adaptive tranquilizing agents, advanced tactical weaponry, and body armor. Some of these technologies have already been released to hospitals and law enforcement through Vanguard's various partner companies.

However, all these pursuits are secondary to the goal of creating an entirely new kind of soldier capable of matching the mutant threat force for force. To that end, Vanguard has poured considerable resources into advancing the state of both military hardware and wetware. Their facilities have conducted extensive research into genetic resequencing and cybernetics. They have even created a series of viral serums, dubbed "mutagen," designed to infuse human soldiers with the power of the X-gene.

Projects

Weapon Zero

Project Cerberus

Personnel

• General Gideon Vasher - Commanding Officer (Army)
• Major Mackenzie Keller - Attaché to General Vasher; Public Affairs Officer (Army)

Operations / Special Forces

• Colonel M. James Hunter - Commanding Officer, Operations / Special Forces (USAF)
• Lieutenant William O'Hara - Attaché to Colonel Hunter (USAF)
• Lieutenant Andrew Murphey - Special Forces Officer (Army)

Research & Development

Field Agents

• Zero

Mission File

Foxhunt

In his first first field assignment, Zero was dispatched to locate and apprehend Virginia "Ginny" Hayes, aka Vigilante. He tracked the mutant to her apartment where, after a brief struggle, he rendered Ginny unconscious and delivered her to a subterranean research facility owned by Vanguard. Colonel Vasher allowed Ginny to temporarily escape her cell so he could study her teleportation abilities in action; Zero was called upon again to ensure that she did not go far and to bring her back into custody.

Just Another Day in Paradise

As Vanguard's genetic therapy program progress, Colonel Vasher informs Captain Jack Wednesday of the beginning of Project Cerberus.

Birdhouse in Your Soul

Mutant operatives infiltrated the Jericho Center to abduct Jamie Morrigan, a young girl who was scheduled for a transfer to Vanguard's primary facility. Captain Wednesday, on-site to oversee the transfer, engaged the mutants but was unable to prevent their escape.

London's Burning

When the Brotherhood of Mutants took credit for a dirty bomb attack on King's Cross Station and the subsequent kidnapping of a member of Parliament, Zero was covertly dispatched to track the perpetrators.