Initiative (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) - Sunnydale

Sunnydale

In 1999, the research center of 'the Initiative' is located underground, beneath the University of California campus in Sunnydale. It is commanded by Maggie Walsh, also a psychology professor at the school. Under her direction, military commandos captured vampires, demons and other supernatural creatures to be studied by scientists for the covert U.S. government operation. The Initiative experiments on the creatures, a primary goal of this being to negate the threat that "hostile sub-terrestrials", demonic entities, pose to human beings. However, a more sinister and ultra-classified goal is to hybridize demons and humans to create super-soldiers. The Initiative's captives have (at various points) included the werewolf Oz and the vampire Spike, the latter of whom was implanted with a chip that caused him to experience extreme pain whenever he attacked (or intended to attack) a human being.

Buffy's boyfriend Riley Finn is initially a member of the Initiative, as are other soldiers posing as UC Sunnydale students, including Forrest and Graham. Riley is unaware that Professor Walsh has also been experimenting on him and the other soldiers, enhancing their performance through methods that threaten their lives. In "New Moon Rising", Riley discovered the extent of the Initiative's corruption and chose to leave it.

Professor Walsh's secret project eventually results in the creation of Adam, a humanoid creature consisting of machinery, human and demon parts. The project goes horribly awry when Adam kills members of Initiative (who are later re-animated as zombies) and escapes. Adam possesses a strong capacity for strategy, as well as physical strength that is far superior to Buffy's, and only through a spell cast by Willow, Xander and Giles was she able to defeat him. His plan was to create a master race of demon/human hybrids.

After Adam, his zombified Initiative members and plans for an army of cyber-demonoids are destroyed, the Initiative's operations are deemed a failure by a panel of government overseers and are officially closed down.