World Description: The Global Guardians Universe is a four-color comic book world full of larger than life characters. Technology is more advanced than the real world, and magic is real. Aliens and creatures of legend roam the earth. Ancient relics and alien artifacts, rumored to have mystical properties, await discovery in the furthest and darkest reaches of the world.

The Story So Far:

A Consortium of Friends

The University of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa was the choice of study for most of the sons and even a few daughters of the British South Africa Company. It was in 1901 that one such tight group graduated with honors from their assorted master degree programs and rejoined their respective fathers at various ports of service around the southern African region. With the influence of their prestigious families and granted funds from the British South Africa Company, the friends formed a consortium of sorts.

The young entrepreneurs set up companies of their own to oversee various mining, oil drilling, ivory harvesting, and archaeological expeditions and ventures. These companies worked under the authority of the British South Africa Company, but had a large amount of their own autonomy in administrative and operational decisions. As long as productivity kept the Queen in pounds up to her ears, then all was golden.

As the years wore on, the consortium of friends controlled more and more of the import and export profits from gold, silver, copper and other precious metals, as well as diamonds, oil, ivory and the reclamation of historical and cultural relics and artifacts from South Africa, the West South Africa territory (Namibia), Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), Botswana, and Mozambique. It was one of these friends, Osgrove Wellington III (who in 1918 had attained his doctorate in African Archaeology and Anthropology from his renamed Alma Matter, The University of South Africa) that was the central facilitator and administrator of their combined efforts. Despite his haphazard organizational skills, the others did not want to deal with the every day sundry, and so they eventually made him their Chief Executive Officer.

Mr. Wellington had set up his headquarters in Harare, Rhodesia (as it was known at the time), and commanded a quite sizeable native work force, which, uncharacteristically for the British, he treated extraordinarily well. He uncovered many interesting relics, and at least one of the oldest human skeletons ever found. It didn't take long before Osgrove expanded his efforts worldwide. Of course the British Commonwealth did not mind, as the profits from the consortium kept on rolling. Eventually, by 1968, as his friends and partners died of a gruesome assortment of malaise and foul play, Osgrove Wellington III began centralizing the organization.

Harare became the new headquarters for all the business endeavors of his old consortium. While each of the old companies remained autonomous in their own right, with their own system of executives and administration, they all answered to Harare office. Osgrove also hired several trustworthy associates and executives to handle the everyday organizational skills, which he lacked. All decisions, however, still were required to move across his quite large desk. This is the first indication of the Syndicate known today.

South Africa: A Nation of Purity

South Africa has always been a nationalistic and expansionistic country, from the time it was occupied by the Dutch Boers and the British South Africa Company until its independence from the British Commonwealth in 1961. The West South Africa territory, by U.N. general assembly mandate at the end of WWI, was made into a protectorate and trustee of South Africa. Even, when in 1966, the U.N. general assembly voted to terminate the mandate, South Africa refused to give up control.

Under other circumstances, the U.N. and other international political and military heavyweights may have tried to enforce the U.N. doctrine, but since 1948 when apartheid became a reality, the South African government had formed a paramilitary force they dubbed Purity. Purity consisted of typical Afrikaner soldiers, a small unit of temporary chemically enhanced super soldiers called the White Legion, and a very few apartheid friendly metahumans. The world did not want a metahuman war, which is what they determined it would take to enforce anything on South Africa.

A Force to Reckon

Osgrove Wellington III and his trusted advisors saw the danger that South African presented the world and especially the region. Fearing the worst, in 1962, as a reactionary response to South Africa's complete independence from British rule, Osgrove recruited several indigenous Rhodesians and Botswanans to carry the banner against apartheid incursion. They were to carry items with mystical properties that when wielded by a strong and able person, could make for a formidable force. Several of these relics and artifacts had been uncovered and reclaimed by the Syndicate and remained in vaults beneath the Harare headquarters.

For a while, the Syndicate's team of mystical warriors, dubbed Z-Optima by a Star Trek fan in 1969, held off Purity and South African expansionistic advance. This did not stop the occasional raid or border incursion, but for the most part, peace prevailed across the southern region of Africa. Due to the tenuous peace, and the infrequency of White Legion activity, Osgrove Wellington III started using his super team to help him recover more ancient artifacts, mystical relics, and lost alien devices.

The South African Metahuman War

Grown bold by its defiance of U.N. mandate, and its continued healthy existence even under international sanction, South Africa decided to make a brazen move for dominance of the region. In 1983, it simultaneously invaded Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe (which by this time had separated from Zambia), Mozambique, Swaziland and Madagascar. It sent its White Legion, which had mysteriously grown into near horde proportions, and the rest of purity across the borders, at high noon on Tuesday, August 9th.

Scrambling to respond to the surprise assault, the rest of the region banded together to stop South African forces. With the help of the mystical warriors of Z-Optima and Cuban super soldiers from Angola, the region held strong until the rest of the world could take action. A combined British and French fleet was sent to ward off South African cruisers from landing in Madagascar, while the U.S. airforce started bombing the White Legion base camps.

It didn't take much more than the official threat of worldwide super teams for South Africa to retreat back across its borders. The war took all of three weeks, and Purity limped back a broken organization. Strangely enough, the White Legion seemed to shrink back to its normal single unit sized proportions soon after the war. Additionally, the various metahumans of Purity went into hiding for a bit until the furor died down.

A high level meeting took place between opposing sides in the war and representatives of British, French and U.S. forces in Lesotho under the auspices of King Moshoeshoe the Great. Osgrove Wellington III was allowed to observe the meeting, but was not officially granted participation. In any case, The Treaty of Lesotho required South Africa to recede back to its borders pre-WWI. This meant that Namibia was granted its independence finally, and the other countries were able to keep each of their borders intact.

A Meta Assassination

Despite their going incognito for several years or so, the metahuman faction of Purity had not forgotten the embarrassing defeat during the war. In 1993, after South Africa pretty much disbanded Purity as an official paramilitary force under extreme international pressure, the metahumans of Purity struck a resounding blow. In a single attack, at midnight of Thursday, August the 22nd, Z-Optima was gruesomely slaughtered, execution style.

Osgrove Wellington III, President of the Z-Optima Syndicate (ZOS), chose not to reform his mystical warrior team, in honor of those who died before. He was not a man who sat well with commanding men to their death. This all changed, however, in recent years, as Purity began tactical strikes across the region.

Z-Optima Reborn

After their respective heads of state were assassinated by Purity in 2001, Zimbabwe and Zambia decided to reintegrate back into the British Commonwealth named Rhodesia. They remained independent of British control, but became a stronger country with the combination of their respective resources. The new government was resoundingly democratic in formation became an interesting counterpoint to Apartheid controlled South Africa (which had reincorporated Namibia by this time) to the south and Nazi Rwanda to the north.

With the rampant and violent activity of Purity, and the dual presidential assassinations, the regional governments met for regional security talks in early 2002. Attending were representatives from Angola, newly formed Rhodesia, Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zaire, Madagascar, Tanzania, and ZOS. Much discussion about creating an economic union similar to OPEC and the European Union were discussed, but no firm agreements could be made. This discussion was tabled for a planned meeting in late 2003 to form an economic union to be called the Southern African Regional Confederation or SARC.

Various ideas were discussed for regional security, but no nation wanted to give up its sovereignty, and putting itself at risk by allowing another country's forces to occupy its territory. That is when Wendell Osgrove Wellington, the great, great grandson of the recently late Osgrove Wellington III, made a suggestion. He offered to rebuild the Z-Optima team and create a unified regional security force under ZOS control. Each country would maintain jurisdictional authority, and any ZOS units within their country would not take action without permission. However, no ZOS unit would act without explicit authorization from ZOS Central Command.

This idea met with resounding approval, and so the great, great grandson of Osgrove Wellington III, would rebuild Z-Optima and create a regional security force under ZOS control. Late 2003 saw the first regional security force units spread throughout the southern African region, and the first few metahuman recruits for Z-Optima arrive.