Zona Alfa: Our Antagonists, the Monolith

    Whew, last post was kinda heavy, huh? What do we say to a palette cleanser?

   I'm starting a new campaign of Zona Alfa with my wife! For those who don't know, Zona Alfa is a tabletop skirmish game set in a royalty free equivalent of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe (C.R.E.E.P., maybe?), which my wife and I both adore. She's always wanted to explore the setting, but the video games aren't really her style, so she asked me to come up with the lore and missions for our campaign.

    I decided to set up a custom Stalker prequel timeline set in 2008, with new factions, lore, and locations. Today I want to share with you the reimagined Monolith who will serve as our antagonists. Please, enjoy!

Premise and Inspirations

"Bring death to those who spurned the holy powers of the Monolith!"

    For the main antagonists of the whole franchise, we know surprisingly little about what they were up to before the events of the first game. We only get a couple lore snippets here and there, like in Clear Sky.

   "Buzz? Well, a whole faction has gone missing. And it's not like they were taken out by people or wiped out by monsters. They just vanished, warts and all. These guys were weird too, with a real hard-on for the Zone. They believed that the Zone was alive, and in its center was a Monolith - a Wish Granter. So they declared themselves the protectors of this Monolith. And then one fine day their whole faction just got up and took off for the center. Yep, right to the Wish Granter. They headed for the Scorcher, crossed the Barrier, and no-one has seen them since."

    So, what's the difference? How are they distinct from the Monolith of later games? Well, for starters, they're much worse-equipped, more akin to Bandits than the militaristic faction we know. I imagine they were equipped with such cutting edge military gear by the C-Consciousness after the crossed the Barrier. They're actually less inspired by Monolith itself and more inspired by Sin. (They were actually going to be Sin before I realized I liked the color scheme, lore, and imagery of Monolith better.)

    For context, the Cult of Sin are a cut faction from Shadow of Chernobyl which have made their way into many popular fan mods. All we know about them from the game data is that they were a cult of Stalkers religiously devoted to the Zone who were all mutated in some way and are hostile towards outsiders. In fan depictions, they've ranged from savage cannibals who sacrifice innocents to the Zone to tragic villains looking for a way to reverse their mutations.

    My take on them is villainous, but nuanced. This is Monolith before they wandered into the Brain Scorcher and were controlled by the C-Consciousness. That's why they're going to be equipped less with high-tech military equipment and more so like bandits and regular Stalkers. Look, the point is that they aren't brainwashed murderers yet: they need to be a cult that people would actually reasonably join. So, in my view, they need to be less sadistic and more "noble," or at least, they need to be able to convince themselves that they are.

    Also, only recently did they declare themselves "Defenders of the Monolith." This actually left some members (not many, but some) to become disaffected and leave the organization. We'll talk about them later.

    So, how does a cult grow and thrive in the Zone? How do they attract new members? How do they believe they are in the right, while still being wrong?

Ideology and Religion

The Wish Granter, whose miracles are many.

    Monolith believes in the divinity of the Zone, and they believe in the Wish Granter as the peak physical manifestation of that divinity. They believe in protecting the Zone from those who would seek to strip it bare or destroy it. However, they don't just shoot everyone on sight. They aren't blind murderous fanatics. Instead, they warn trespassers and try to explain themselves and their motives to those who would attempt to defy them. Only after diplomacy has failed do they open fire.

   Their arguments are convincing to Stalkers because many of them have seen the impossible firsthand. They've seen people ripped to shreds by thin air, they've seen animals and artifacts which defy the laws of nature, they've seen fire and lightning erupt from the very ground they tread. Unlike any other incredible natural phenomena, they don't have any scientific justification yet. Nobody understands what's going on. It's not a huge leap from unexplained science to magic, and it's an even shorter leap from magic to divinity.

    Another point is that they acknowledge their lack of understanding much more readily than other factions. Ecologists and Clear Sky insist there must be some reason to things, Duty claims they know that the Zone must be utterly destroyed, but Monolith? They concede that they know nothing. This unsureness is how they argue that the Zone cannot be explored or scavenged: what divine wrath do they risk incurring if the Zone is holy ground?

    They view themselves both as protectors of the Zone from humanity, and protectors of humanity from the Zone. They do firmly believe that the Zone is holy and sacred and cannot be touched by human hands (their religious beliefs are still rooted in the narratives of sin which they learned outside), but they are also utterly terrified of the consequences of breaking into this holy ground.

    And yet, they also worship the Zone, and specifically the Monolith / Wish Granter. It is, to them, the first manifestation of a truly holy and miraculous event for thousands of years, and for some of them, forever. No matter one's initial religion, they all rally around the fact that they are witnessing holy power in action, some of the only people in history to do so. It makes sense that they treat it with such reverence.

Followers

Monolith Cultist.

    Monolith's followers are varied in motivation, devoutness, and origins. Their philosophy appeals to people from all sorts of backgrounds. The logic of not interfering with something dangerous, or the religious explanation for the unexplained, or the narrative of being the heroic knight of a new faith: these are all things which can draw people to the Monolith.

    Upon entering the cult, a Monolithian most often discards their past. Wherever they came from, whatever divided them beforehand, they have found a new life within the Monolith. For that reason, they often appeal to those who flee to the Zone from previously poor lives. It's also why they come across as extremely creepy in groups, as they don't treat each other like individuals, but more like different shards of a collective consciousness.

    One important thing about the people they draw in, heavily inspired by what we know of the cut Sin faction, is mutations and scars. When a stalker is disfigured by the Zone, mutilated by an anomaly or burned by radiation or mutated, they are often scorned. The reason is twofold, as there's the obvious problem of becoming "ugly" and "unpleasant" to be around, but there's also the shame. These scars are marks of failure, a sign that you attempted to delve into the Zone and failed.

    Monolith, however, offers another path. To them, people with these injuries are blessed: they've come closer than anyone else to the divine power of the Zone and lived to tell the tale. They're treated as heroes, and welcomed enthusiastically. This is why most Monolithians are marked in this way. Many even intentionally injure themselves to attain the same status.

Monolith Preacher.

    Monolith's hierarchy and leadership is odd. To lead the troops, a Monolithian must have received a Vision. This Vision must be approved of by their peers. Upon this event, they immediately ascend to the rank of Preacher, and lead their comrades in defense of the Zone.

Faction Relations

    It won't surprise you that Monolith is hostile to everyone. To them, all factions are enemies of the Zone. However, it wasn't always this way.

   In the first years of exploration, they were a cult, but they were substantially less fanatical beforehand, instead peacefully preaching to Stalkers. They were still viewed as strange and somewhat demented, but they weren't as hated as they are now.

    They even used to collaborate with factions like Ecologists in an attempt to understand the Zone, although they disagreed with the purely scientific conclusions of the scientists. By the time of their conversion to militant beliefs, they had largely cut contact with everyone due to their use of artifacts.

    Something interesting is that the Zone's mutants seem to be aligned with them. It's unknown how this is the case, but Mutants will never attack Monolithians and will actually aid them in battle.

The Pilgrims

    "Pilgrims" are an offshoot faction of Monolith that will play a minor role in the campaign in the form of quest-giving.  These Pilgrims are those ex-Monolithians who still believe in the divinity of the Zone, but disagree with the militant defense of it from outsiders. They are often still working with other factions to obtain artifacts and understand the Zone's secrets. They are extremely disliked due to their previous association, but once they explain themselves, things tend to calm down.

Why are they Evil?

    I've spent a lot of time talking about how I want the Monolith to be nuanced and understandable. While reading, you might be sympathetic towards them. I hope so. That means I wrote them well. But they're still antagonists. My wife and I's teams will still be fighting them. Why is that?

    There's the obvious: we, as people who know the lore, know that they're just plain incorrect about the Zone. The mutants and anomalies are not divine, but rather the results of inhumane scientific experiments from underground labs. They obviously don't know that, but regardless, it's still incorrect.

    But also, ideologically, they're not good guys in the slightest. Their philosophy is rooted in the fallacy of "God in the Gaps," or the idea that, where science can't yet explain something, one simply explains it with religion and brushes off the possibility of future scientific discovery. That isn't the harmful part: that would be the fact they violently enforce this belief. They claim to humbly accept how little they know, and yet are willing to kill innocent people for their ideology. They are so paralyzingly terrified of an extremely implausible "what if" divine reckoning scenario that they will happily murder anyone who dares disagree with it.

    They're also a staunch barrier against any benefit humanity could gain by studying and learning about the Zone. Artifacts could cure diseases, create new technology, and solve countless world crises, and in a way, they really are gifts and miracles. But the Monolith, rather than embrace this outlook, instead choose to idly worship them without even attempting to create some greater good. In that way, they become radical luddites, who see all the wonders the future could hold, but also the potential risks, and instead decide that the world must be cut off from all of it.

    I really hope you guys enjoyed reading about my ideas for the Monolith faction in my Zona Alfa campaign. I'll be sure to update you guys on the setting, factions, and battle reports as they happen. Much love, and God bless!