Illegal Gods: The HSEL
The Human Science Experimentation League was decommissioned nearly seven years ago (Galactic Standard.)
Of the professionals who worked in the HSEL, 40 percent are still missing. Of the remaining sixty-percent, five percent still await trial. The rest have been found guilty, and sentenced to death.
Most were executed on the spot. The primary troop deployment included teams from the First Humanist League, the Slave Unions, and the military branch of the United Planetary Confluence. It was the investigatory arm of the First Humanist League that uncovered a great deal of the "research" being done. The acts were defined as "a horrifying display of sadism," where the HSEL had "deliberately ordered the destruction of the mental facilities essential to life and physical productivity," with "no regard to moral choice." The FHL fought for many years to bring the HSEL's atrocities to the attention of various governmental interests to no avail, finding most promoted the HSEL's products and innovations as a "benefit to society."
Then came the infamous, "Blue Paper," which demonstrated in no uncertain terms the conditions under which developments had progressed. Thousands of caches of "Medusa," the military-grade adrenaline alternative were destroyed by the UPC. The Slave Unions indicated a professional interest in monitoring the situation, and under some pressure from corporate sponsors, they agreed that the situation needed aggressive resolution. Once the outpost at Circle Primus was attacked, it was destroyed by internal processes within hours. All ties to the HSEL were denied under plausability standards, and all monies frozen.
HSEL PCs
Not everyone went into the HSEL for sadism. Many were top scientists in their fields (primarily chemical research) whose studies were either underfunded or insufficiently tested as human substitution (the preferred method after cloning development leveled out) was morally ambiguous, and often illegal. Many of the scientists were lied to, told that their "research subjects" were criminals who had signed away their rights against experimentation, whose families or victims families were being compensated, and that it had been "legal under these territories." Some were trammeled into their positions utilizing either blackmail or harsher methodology. With the destruction of Circle Primus, however, any and all documentation relating to their recruitment has become hard to find.
PCs playing members of the HSEL will find themselves hunted if any information about their past comes to light. However guilty or innocent, and whatever improvements made to humanity done under the HSEL's tattered banner, it is the kind of secret that kills.