Early history

The island group of San Hermanos was inhabited by Mesoamerican tribes prior to its discovery. In 1499 four Spanish brothers set out to find new land, but three of them died during the long sea voyage. San Hermanos was discovered by the surviving brother, Garcia Moreno, in 1501. Garcia named the islands after himself and his brothers Fraco, Sal and Tori and dubbed the entire island group San Hermanos meaning Saint Brothers.

End of the Spanish rule

After Garcia Monero’s arrival, San Hermanos became a Spanish colony, ruled by Garcia Monero himself as a governor in Tio. He passed on the torch to his family who continued to keep San Hermanos on Spanish hands. A series of rebellion wars during the 19th century didn’t end the Spanish rule. In 1895 Spain withdrew from San Hermanos and in 1909 the island group gained independence.

The 1981 military coup

From 1909 to 1971 San Hermanos experienced a rise in corrupt leaders culminating with communist leader Salvador Primo who lead the country from 1971 until the military coup in 1981. After the coup the head of the San Hermanos Armed Forces (SHAF), General Waldo Roberto, announced that he had removed the former communist leader from power and proclaimed that he would arrange a fair election. His rival, a man named Oswald Picotta, won the election and got nicknamed The Prince.

San Hermanos and the Cold War

During the Cold War San Hermanos rented out a piece of land to the USSR, but the military of San Hermanos never interfered with US or USSR business. In the eighties San Hermanos was under suspicion for possessing weapons of mass destruction as well as dealing arms to US enemies. However no substantial evidence existed to support the claims. Regardless, the tension between the US and San Hermanos grew, but with the Soviets present on the islands, the US was reluctant to go through with an official military action.

General Waldo... epic :) Guess after we pay him a visit he runs off to Arulco and goes undercover as a mechanic, eh? :P

Actually that wouldn't be a bad idea, to leave hints to the future destiny of JAF characters that would lead us to characters in Arulco... So many funny twists and turns could be added to the plot you could play the entire game giggling in front of your PC...

Love the general mood of the story, feels very "JA-ish". +1 from me.

Glad you like it and I'm sure Morten does as well ^^ 

We have a lot of possibilities with this story and we also have to option of making cheesy and fun connections to epic movies and adding "easter eggs" to the mix. Morten spends a lot of time looking at JA lore, making sure most things make sense, but yeah I agree that it's also fun to add small hints to the future in many aspects.

I'll keep it short:

I like

I'll keep it short too:

I like short comments :D

Ok I'm going to be a bit nasty and say the writing could use some improvement.  It reads a bit simple - "rented a piece of land", "got nicknamed", "Saint Brothers" (Saintly?)... you're going to be slammed for poor writing on release because your sentence construction is high school-ish.

"Weapons of mass destruction" as an international concern is anachronistic - in the 1980s the only thing anyone might have cared about were nukes, and in the aftermath of START and SALT treaties, were relatively under control (until India and Pakistan decided to screw that up with their own race).  No one could do much about chemical or biological weapons if states were protected by one of the Cold War powers - but an independent rogue state would be very unlikely to exist (notice how people only just woke up to the danger of Bashar al-Asad having chemical weapons in 20-flipping-12).  And please don't give them ICBMs, the US would have gone all ballistic (ha) on them if they acquired them - that's what the Cuban missile crisis was all about to begin with.

The other premise about the political events of SH are leading up to a Soviet invasion/counter-coup?  Because the Cold War was fought primarily by proxy and I think this doesn't come through in your setting - it looks like they fight direct wars in countries of little strategic significance - in fact the majority of Cold War conflicts had no US or Soviet boots on the ground.  I think one useful device you can use is that this is early-Gorbachev era, before glastnost and perestroika, but clearly these didn't emerge from nothing.  So there would be progressives amongst the Soviets who had different ideas about the Communist International.  Secondly, they're heavily embroiled in Afghanistan at this point - a lot of soldiers might have 'prefered' a cushy posting to SH because it meant they weren't fighting jihadists in Afghanistan (or Rambo haha) - so some of the troops might be 'soft', but your mercenaries would want to avoid the battle-hardened ruthless Afghan war vets.  Third device is this is very fresh after the US withdrawal from Vietnam, and fresh in the mind of the strategists (Vietnam still loomed large over US thinking up to Gulf War I in 1990).  The US military was a lot more reticent and it was the civilian administration that was hawkish (Republicans!).

Sorry for the pedantry, I'm a phd student in international relations so :-?

@gdalf Thanks for your feedback. It’s much appreciated. I’m sorry you feel the writing is too simple. Several malicious editors taught me to keep my sentences short and to the point. Over the years that made me a fan of the simple and that will not change. Some like it, some find it naïve. Mostly the text uses spoken language since it’s not meant to be an excerpt from a history book. But it might be too casual. I’ll keep that in mind. This text is not meant to be a part of the game, not at the moment at least. It’s something I cooked up to have some background info and to share with you guys. :)

A lot happened in the world in that time period as you mentioned. We want a story resonating with the cheesy action movies of the 1980s. The story will not focus on political realism or world history. But you have a lot of great points about the period, which I’ll take a closer look at. Thanks.

1981 - military coup

It's completely unbelievable, that the general is making a military coup and he is not taking the power for himself. After that, he is arranging a fair election and after democratic votes he lost and the main rival is taking control. No, no, no, it's not a story, it's some kind of a fairy tale. It's just silly. The perfect example of that times of Cold War could be  "The Last King of Scotland" movie (The Idi Amin story), where the general is taking power and he assured everybody, that from now everything will be just perfect, everyone know how it ended.

San Hermanos and the Cold War

Something it's not right. Ok, San Hermanos rented small piece of land from USSR, but what this has to do with story, I don't get it. The main action will place on San Hermanos, not on this small piece of land. The second case it's the Soviets soldiers present on the islands, but from where, how they got there. San hermanos in 1905 has proclaimed independence and in 1981 there was a military coup, where the democratic power has been raised, so what is the need for military present of (Communist) Soviets on that (Democratic) group of islands. This is make any sense for me. Please give us more details how the Soviets got to the San Hermanos.

Something's definitely rotten on San Hermanos no doubt about that. Perhaps some of the very valid questions you put out here are actually questions you have to find the answer to while playing the game … ;)

Sorry, but if I say more about the story I'll lose my kneecaps. And I’ve really grown fond of both of them!

@bugmonster - it would be refreshing indeed to see a cheesy story that reflect the actual America of the 80s, with FBI hunting intellectuals for being "commies" and every John and Mary preparing for Doomsday. US was almost as paranoid, corrupt and indoctrinated as its counterpart. But had better propaganda movies.

Back to the story...I agree with gdalf - I doubt the USSR would've ever rented land anywhere for a small base. It didn't work like NATO today, where the americans come and pay rent for a piece of land where they build a base and a McDonalds. The Soviets would either send political "advisors" or an entire army/fleet if you disrespected them. I am not a historian, I just lived in those times on the "bad" side of the Iron Curtain. 

Agreed on WMDs, too. This is a Bush era topic. Back in the 80s, when the world was half and half, you wouldn't have this topic. If there were WMDs anywhere, they would've been installed either by US or USSR, not by some shady smugglers. There were no second-hand nukes to be dealt in cause they were pretty much very tightly kept under observation by both sides. 

In general the great powers were interested in controlling a small 3rd world country if:

a) it held a strategical position over the enemy (Cuba?)

b) it was a bridgehead into some area they wanted to control (Africa)

c) it had extremely rare mineral resources (Chechnya) or a lot of riches (diamonds and gold)

I think C is a safe bet for any 80s scenario. JA2 had Crepaton. JAF can have some rare mineral for what I care needed by both US and USSR to build their future stealth planes or nukes or whatever. And the story can go from there.

I think the first motives should be as obscure as possible.
So if the CIA sends a team of mercs in  to destabilize the country under the pretense that they want to prevent it becoming a second Cuba.

It's simple and sufficient to warrant the landing of our team anything can happen after that and as Shanga pointed out if the CIA made a move then the KGB would try to mirror it or keep a close eye on it. So there you have those two factions on the island.
The rare minerals could be the real reason the US wants to claim the island, but they want to do it under the guise of "We're bringing democracy".

But that's something the writers can play with. The potential Nukes, beside being a bit of a (as pointed out) anachronism, it is too specific it could pop back though later in the story that one of the factions is bringing one of them too the island, for whatever reason.

The question is do mercs really have to know the full story when they are being hired? Without a large organization behind it (AIM) they would just go where the money is wouldn't they? :)

It even happened with AIM, Gus accidentaly joined the Lucas Santino side in Jagged Alliance and that is why he had to earn his trust back in Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games. I think AIM just deals with mercs and the mercs have to look out for themselves.

If JAF is about how AIM got created then the only right way is to have no AIM. This is an extreme idea - but the most realistic way would be for the player to start the game with just one character and "build up" AIM rooster from mercs he recruits on the island. 

How did the mercs get on the island? They are working (or some used to work) for CIA and KGB infiltration teams. And for private contractors. The devs should come up with a plot that makes them join up with the player.

Remember, this is the 80s, there's no website. At most you'd have some BBS and no web as we know it. So most of the interface we know in JA2 would be gone and replaced by paper files anyway (still a text BBS would be cool).

From what I have gathered so far:
There is no AIM in this game and CIA gives you contact information about people who you can hire (Could be a file cabinet http://splitfocus.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/file-cabinet.jpg with bunch of files and Jagged Alliance 1 laptop music playing - hint hint :)). Once you are on the island you meet other people, get other contacts etc. And in the end the mercs feel that there should be an organisation for mercs - the AIM (possibly to prevent so mercs won''t get screwer over so much in the future). 

To avoid political flamewar, imho, would be better if the player would start off the game either with direct choice what faction to support (lame, i know) or as independent figure.

The only roles I can think of that wouldn't be biased are:

a) a journalist reporting on the events

b) a detective looking for someone

c) a foreign engineer/prospector 

From this position it would easier to write a story allowing the player to meet with various factions and various mercs, uncover the main plot and make decisions what side to support and how. It would also easier to justify player's presence on the island. No need to make up some cheesy excuse of why you land with a troop of mercs on the beach.

..

Dunno, think of the player character like that narrator who's remembering a story from his youth, where himself was an actor. We - unless we fell from the Moon - know that AIM will exist. So does the narrator. But his character in the movie... sorry, the game... doesn't know that yet. It's a pretty classic movie plot we' ve seen hundreds of time, shouldn't be that hard. But I think it's better than everyone pretending JA2 never was.

..

I feel like there should be no direct conflict involvement. This won't give time for the main plot to be properly built. If the player's character is some sort of drunk Hemingway chilling in some Cuban pub that without intent triggers a chain of events that leads to a major blow-out between local factions, it would be much better. Let's do a bit of classic RPG at start. JA2 didn't need that cause it had AIM website and all that. But here it's mano-a-mano, face-to-face kind of recruiting. We need time for that.

..

And we all should catch up on our AIM lore reading here:

http://jaggedalliance.wikia.com/wiki/Association_of_International_Mercenaries

In a subterranean Montreal bunker in 1991, three men, known only by their aliases Colonel Mohanned,Commander Spice, and The White Asian, found themselves in the heat of an armed struggle without access to enough manpower to end the hostilities. With great effort, they secured financing and located the people they needed to put an end to the conflict.

The underground channels they developed became known as the Association of International Mercenaries. Vowing that others seeking justice should have access to professional soldiers, their assembled team of men and women became the original members of A.I.M. Commanders engaged in small scale, private conflicts adopted the organization as a prime resource for labor.

This is the AIM History text from the JA2 AIM webpage and it's where the whole story should lead in the end.

@Shanga - My bad, did not remember that the founding story took place in Montreal. So the game should not end with the founding of AIM.

By deciding what faction to support in the beginning would cause many endings which some of them wouldn't be canonical. That is ok with me.

 

@Hyrax - me neither lol, I guess that's one part of the AIM website nobody cares to read. :)) Up to this discussion it never registered for me. 

I would be funny though to see FC come up with a story that starts on San Hermanos and ends up in Montreal. Do Canadians have underground bunkers or they're reffering here to a bear's cave or something? :D

Fictional Canadian civil war?
or
they were playing the boardgame version of Space Hulk in their basement and took it too seriously?

On second thought, I wouldn't be hurt if the founding would not take place in Montreal (I'm betting this is some tongue-in-cheek humor from Sir-Tech Canada.)

Well, for me it would be enough if the game would end with a hint on who are Colonel Mohanned, Commander Spice and The White Asian.

Montreal was were Sir-tech (Canada) found refuge from the mean publishers and decided to go forth and publish JA2 despite all the problems. Now who are those... we can only guess... I guess the devs could ask Ian though, he certainly knows. 

I agree with this.  You can't have plot twists if you reveal all at the beginning.

And no of course I don't expect it to be hyper-realistic, but I want it realistic enough that I can plausibly suspend disbelief. Russians sneaking in sneaky groups for sneaky purposes under the US' nose? Absolutely! A Russian anti-Rambo fresh from exploits in Afghanistan coming to SH for r&r and making our mercs lives hell?  Yes! Russians establishing a military base within missile range of the US mainland in a country possibly holding WMDs?  Uh not likely.  So some balance has to be struck, mostly at the 'big picture' strategic level - but there's a lot of creative license at the more micro level I think.

Agreed, we need to leave out the grand "US vs USSR" scheme to the background and focus on a local conflict. Afterall it's a small island, it's not like it's Cuba. I imagine our island something like Comoros islands:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/comorosandmayotte/1365909/Mercenaries-killed-in-Comoros-coup-attempt.html

Just read the above, it's a superb source for any merc story. Here are the gems I found that are almost like take out JA2:

• Col Bob Denard, a notorious French mercenary and a former car mechanic.
• Comoros -  a remote and fractious country off Mozambique in east Africa.
• Since the Comoros voted for independence from France in 1975 there have been more than 20 coups or attempted coups.
• The apparent coup attempt was launched in the island of Moheli in the early hours by about 20 French-speaking soldiers wearing balaclavas. 

And to top that out... this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/comorosandmayotte/1352366/French-mercenary-is-behind-nudist-coup.html

THE steely reputation of France's best-known mercenary, Bob Denard, may have suffered a terminal blow with a report that he has branched out into running a nudist colony. (..) It was M Philippo, an expert in camouflage, who reportedly organised the infiltration of the resort while it was under control of its former management.

This is a pure CLASSIC of how a mercenary story should be told. It's... perfect. 

-
I am not saying JAF should tell in any form Denard's story or any real merc for that matter. But to tell a story that's credible you need to research his life and that of his likes. You can't tell a story about Rome and not do your homework on ancient history, right?

Hello,

I don’t know if JAF team can manage now to move the plot from a USA versus USSR background on the Caribbean to another plot in another part of the world and to remove WMD from the plot.

Looks to me that SH is a kind of reverse Cuba with a “Guantanamoskva” base.

IMO, when even loosely set against an historical background, a fanciful plot should show some consistency with what people know, even superficially and even if they were not born at that time.

USA never would stand a USSR base on the Caribbean, whatever the president, let alone with Reagan in charge!

I’d suggest to talk about USSR and allied (Cuba for instance) “military advisors” instead, already present to help the former regime. General Waldo was willing to expel them but the “Prince”, a bit suspicious regarding USA cover activities, decided to keep them. USA could have tolerated their presence for diplomatic purposes (negotiations of SALT).

As for WMD (not necessarily nukes), assuming the player is informed upfront and not getting suspicious on the field, you may say that CIA is somewhat suspicious about WMD on SH, but considers it rather unlikely. Therefore CIA has decided to entrust someone with a loosely tie to CIA and unknown from KGB : a junior analyst, an inexperienced operative or a journalist, or someone from  a non-governmental  agency as already mentioned. That would explain why the player starts at beginner level.

Hope it helps.

I really like Shanga's research about Denard and the Comoros - this is really stuff for mercenary legends. This does not mean that the games setting has to be moved to someplace else but the Caribbean - I think San Hermanos is really okay. And I will feel completely comfortable if the final plot will be some cheesy / tongue-in-cheek mixup of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the 80ies, a reverse-Cuba-Crisis + Guantanamovska setting and some french mercenarys biography.

Afterall, look at the stories the previous JA games had: they give the Player some idea of his Mercs motivation, but are (most) always a little over-the-top.

Things like: Magical heal-it-all-medication derived from atomically mutated plants? (JA) A democratically elected King feigns his own death with help from his hardest competitor to not be killed by his psycho wife? (JA2) A corporation bombing a high-security prison to blackmail a whole country for mining rights? (JA2UB)

All this has at least a comic-book-feel to it (in a good way), and I think too much effort for historically correct settings / stories will just take away from what I think is a strength of the series: not taking itself too serious.

JA:F is on the right way with the snippets of artdesign and glimpses of story we got to see until now.

I agree, the plots have one basis: "You have been hired to do the right thing." There are no great motivations - You and your mercs work for money, but have been always on the good side and get the satisfaction in the end of doing something good.

I think this game should also have the same basis, but this game should let you achieve your mission or goal in different ways - some more noble others less noble.

It can be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhenium , extremely rare and expensive metal for rocket and military jet engines.

It's late 80's, so there is a laptops with color display and ARPAnet.

Remember, late 80's in the USSR it is Perestroika and Glasnost, it is West's best buddy Gorbachev and move to disarmament and peace in all the world.

So, if there are hostile soviet military in islands near US, they must be political exiles or rogue military, willing to restore good ol' Cold War.

That is soooo cliché and 80's action movie plot...

So that would totally work with this game. XD

Though it is going to be the Bad Russians again. Perhaps a good Russian faction should be arrive on the Island aswell... Of course doing missions for them will annoy the CIA.

Well it could be that in the start that you get to choose if you were hired by CIA, KGB (or some other soviet organisation), the local fraction or the local drug businessmen to resolve the situation on the island (political exilies trying to run the island or rogue military). You can still work with other factions also but all factions have their own interests:

CIA and KGB - region influence and local valuable resources
Local fraction - independence and sovereignty
Local drug businessmen - Favorable ground for their business venture

So in the end everyone wants the local situation solved, but with own political agenda    

During KS campaign it was stated what player character is hired by CIA for shady anonymous job, and later they set him up, so we play on our own side and decide which faction to help.

For example, KGB reveals that huge batch of old strategic bombers that would be destroyed under treaty with US was disassembled and covertly moved to SH islands. Further investigation showed some hedeous soviet military group allied with some bearded carribean leader to build a new world superpower, the Union of Carribean Socialist Republics. This one intended to lead anti-american world inplace of softening USSR, and thereafter can handle some strategic weapons to be a real power. USSR can not deal with conspirators because large soviet military presence near US borders is unacceptable, but US military engagement against the rogue soviet military on SH would turn to the WW3. So, it was decided to involve third party "neutral" mercenaries to destroy bombers in SH. But new enemy and new war means more money and more influence for CIA and weapon manufacturers so the party of "hawks of war" had it's own plan. Hence all sides have their interest. USSR gov't want those bombers destroyed. US gov't want them to move in US for scrutiny. Consparators want to put them to service for new supepower. The "hawks of war" want them to set up a false flag attack, to provoke a full scale military invasion on carribean basin countries.

WOW, I like a lot of the ideas floating around in here.

I also like that its gonna flow more with the 80s cheesy action movie style. 

I like the initial design of the story in the OP, but do like a lot of options discussed here in this thread.

Very nice!