Rising Stars General Setting Information

[KahlessNestor]

GENERAL SETTING INFORMATION

Base: A generally modern setting, much like our present day.


SUPERHEROES

Masked “superheroes” have popped up throughout history, from Robin Hood in England to Zorro in Spanish California to The Phantom and The Shadow during the age of radio. Most generally think of them as legendary folklore or even fictional characters and were often merely fighters of exceptional calibre.

Modern superheroes emerged in World War 2. As the fires of war engulfed the world, masked crime fighters joined forces joined military supersoldier experiments and high tech experiments to defend liberty and justice as the Liberty League. They were joined by heroes from formerly hidden civilizations like Atlantis. The Axis powers responded in kind with their own superpowered individuals. After the war, both sides of the Cold War saw value in these new assets and developed their own programs. Many other countries followed suit. These superheroes were often the results of deliberate experimentation, advanced technology, or industrial, atomic, or biochemical accidents.

The first post-war independent organization of superheroes was the United Nations Peace Force (UNPF), or Peacers, as they came to be colloquially called. They were made up of superheroes from around the world that swore allegiance to the United Nations ideals. Eventually, however, many started to refer to them as the Pathetic Failures or other less complimentary F words. The team eventually floundered on the rocky shoals of the Cold War. Following the Korean War and the Vietnam War, which saw members of the team fighting on either side, the Peacers still exist, but mostly as a rump of their former selves, and mostly to provide support and firepower to UN peacekeeping missions, while the United Nations security measures turned their focus more toward combating international terrorism from groups like Mask.

The first successful independent superhero group was the Guardians. It was founded in the wake of the collapse of the United Nations Peace Force after the Vietnam War by a superhero known as the Highwayman, one of the founding members of the Liberty League and now past his prime. During the 1970s and 1980s the team was almost an extension of American interests and frequently clashed with members of the Soviet Red Sickles and the Chinese Red Dragons. There was regular turnover in the team as members were injured, killed, or retired and new members recruited.

With the end of the Cold War the American government felt a need for less investment in the Guardians and the team looked elsewhere to make up the funding. Multi-billionaire tech industrialist Peter Venta stepped up with a new, brilliant idea. As a majority shareholder and founder of the company Force Majeure, Inc (F.M.I.), an insurance and reconstruction company that dealt with the damage and fallout from superheroic conflict, he had made a lot of money off of the Guardians, and keeping them in business was in his interest. He came up with the idea to franchise the Guardians. He established new chapters of the team in Chicago (Guardians Midwest, or Windy City Guardians) and Los Angeles (West Coast Guardians), as well as a Guardian Academy in Dallas for aspiring superheroes. Recently Guardians, Inc. has started to go global with a team in London, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, and Sydney. This has occasionally brought them into conflict with national teams, but Guardians, Inc. tries to work in cooperation with locals and continues to negotiate contracts to expand its ability to act internationally.

MUTANTS

No one knows when the first mutant appeared. There have always been people in history that claimed to have extraordinary powers, like Rasputin, for example. A minority of scholars, often considered dismissable by experts on the subject, even consider the witchcraft craze following the Black Death as evidence of mutants. What is recognized is that since the early to mid-20th century the evidence has risen, especially during the atomic and biochemical age.

Mutant powers are genetic and exist potentially from birth, as opposed to meta-humans who may have had their genetics altered via external means to give them power. Mutant powers often emerge under stress, usually during puberty. Many times these initial manifestations can be highly destructive and deadly. In an age where “if it bleeds, it leads,” these are the events that capture public attention.

While most superheroes are viewed favorably or mixed, mutants are generally feared. Their unpredictability and invisibility in society make normal humans uncomfortable. At least superheroes wear colorful costumes and announce their presence so you can get out of the line of fire. What you don’t know if is if the teenage boy having a fight with his girlfriend in the mall is going to suddenly, literally, blow up and ruin your existence. Thus public attitudes are predominantly negative, though there are groups that are championing for equal rights.

Mutants have been classified in many ways, but this is generally the most common:

Omega: These mutants seem to have unlimited levels of power. They carry serious destructive potential, potentially global.

Alpha: Mutants with very destructive power levels or extensive range and ability.

Beta: Mutants with destructive powers, but less extensive.

Gamma: Mutants with little or “useless” powers.

Delta: Mutants who have physical mutations but no real powers.

Latents: People with the mutant gene who have not expressed powers or physical mutations.

Carriers: Technically not mutants, these humans carry a copy of the mutant gene. If they procreate with another carrier, or with a mutant, a mutant child may result.

Mutant Society

Mutant response to prejudice has taken many forms. Many mutants stay quiet and keep hidden, going about their normal lives. This is partly what makes mutants so terrifying. Some of them are so normal. Other mutants have taken the other extreme. They live out and proud.

Some mutants have begun to strike back at this prejudice, resorting sometimes to violence. They claim to be homo superior, the next step in evolution and the rightful heirs to Earth. Most of these have been quickly squashed by government forces and the Guardians, but often martyrs are created. The Mutant Liberation Front (M.L.F.) is one of the most active mutant terrorist groups, though it has been hit hard by the government and the Guardians recently. Another group that has begun appearing on the government’s radar is the Brotherhood. At the moment, they don’t seem a threat, mostly small individual cells unconnected from each other, many nothing more than angsty mutant teens posting “mutant pride” videos on social media, though sometimes advocating violence. A few cells have been implicated in actual violence.

Many mutants aren’t so lucky to be able to pass as human. They have very noticeable physical mutations. Many of these have started banding together for mutual support and defense in their own ghetto neighborhoods in American cities, colloquially called Mutant Town. These neighborhoods are often little more than slums or shanty towns that exist uneasily with nearby mixed or human neighborhoods.

Mutant Towns are often centers of Freak Pride, using the derogatory term as a positive. They often give up their legal, human “slave name” for a more descriptive “freak name”. They use derogatory terms like flatscan or normie for humans and call those mutants that can pass for human -- whether because they look human or can hide their mutations -- “pretties” and look down on them and urge them to “fly their freak flag high”


THE CURRENT SITUATION

Ten years ago, the town of Elkins, West Virginia, population ~7000, was literally wiped off the map in a massive, fiery conflagration. The flames ignited a coal mine and brought down half a mountain. At the center of the destruction was a naked teenage girl muttering nearly incoherently about “mutants” and obviously had suffered some kind of trauma. Jane Doe was sent to a local hospital. She promptly burned it down, killing more people, and disappeared in the panic.

The nation was stunned. More than seven thousand people and an entire town just...gone because of one mutant. What if that had occured in a city? People started to clamor for the government to do more about the mutant menace. The government responded, but legislation and executive orders got tied up in civil liberties legislation in the courts. The rhetoric crossed political boundaries and in the last election Senator Andrew Bell, a powerful and popular charismatic politician from West Virginia, abandoned his party and created a third party called the Humanity’s Defense Party (H.D.P.) with the support of many anti-mutant movements in the country like the Human Purity League (H.P.L.). The H.D.P. managed to secure 25% of the votes and gain several seats in Congress. Even the Guardians were forced to bow to public pressure, and they released several known mutant superheroes from their organization.

In response to the election, Congress created the Joint Committee on Mutant Affairs (C.M.A.) to oversee the government response to the rising tensions. Ostensibly nonpartisan, it is chaired by Senator Bell. The committee managed to appropriate funds for a new public-private cooperative initiative. By providing the funding, but using private companies, the government got around the restrictive civil liberties rulings by some of the courts.

The Nexus initiative brought together the efforts of the three companies that were at the forefront of dealing with the mutant problem: Salvador Manx of Manx Advanced Robotic Science (M.A.R.S.), Amira Farouk of Anubis Security, and Stephen Granger of the Advance Human Potential Project (A.H.P.). Together they were overseen by Dr. Nathaniel Essex, an expert on mutants who reported to the Committee. Nexus went active this year.



GLOSSARY

Organizations

Advance Human Potential Project (A.H.P.): Company at the leading edge of human enhancement using biomedicine, genetic manipulation, and nanotechnology.
Anubis Security: Private intelligence and security company. Has begun to specialize in using mutants against mutant threats through its Hound program.
Atlantis: Undersea kingdom in the Atlantic Ocean. Reclusive and occasionally hostile to the surface nations due to pollution.
Black Eagles: Russia’s national super team.
Force Majeure, Inc (F.M.I.): Insurance and reconstruction company specializing in restoration after superhero battles and insuring property from said fights.
Guardian Academy: Training facility run by the Guardians in Dallas.
Guardians, Inc.: Primary world superhero team. Multinational corporation based in New York.
Guardians Midwest/Windy City Guardians: Guardians franchise located in Chicago.
Humanity’s Defense Party (H.D.P.): Anti-mutant political party that did quite well last election.
Human Purity League (H.P.L.): anti-mutant grassroots organization, frequently violent toward mutants.
Joint Committee on Mutant Affairs (C.M.A.): Congressional committee tasked with oversight over mutant response.
Liberty League: Superhero team formed by America and the Allied powers during World War 2.
Manx Advanced Robotic Science (M.A.R.S.): World’s leading developer of advanced robotics technology. Operates mutant-hunting Watchmen robots.
Mask: Global terrorist organization bent on world dominance. They often prefer to work behind the scenes, using legitimate governments and businesses as their public face. Primary antagonist of the Peace Force.
Mutant Liberation Front (M.L.F.): Mutant terrorist organization fighting violently for mutant rights.
Mutant Town: Neighborhoods in cities where mutants, especially those with obvious physical mutations, live together, usually in squalor and fear. Mutant ghettos. In Chicago, it is located in the Englewood neighborhood under the expressway.
Nexus: Publicly funded private organization tasked with dealing with mutants.
Pathetic Failures/Pathetic F*ckers: Derisive name for the Peace Force superhero team.
Peacers: Colloquial term for the Peace Force, and more specifically its superhero team.
Red Dragons: China’s national super team
Red Sickles: Cold War Soviet superhero team. Now defunct and replaced by the Black Eagles.
United Nations Peace Force (UNPF): Umbrella organization of the United Nations’ global security initiatives. Includes counterterrorism, espionage, and special operations, as well as a small superhero team. Reports to the United Nations Security Council. While its public headquarters is in the United Nations building in New York and the UN complex in Geneva, its true center of operations is a mobile helicarrier.
Venta Industries: Multinational industrial and advanced electronics conglomerate and defense contractor helmed by Peter Venta.
Watchman: Mutant hunting robots.
West Coast Guardians: Guardians franchise located in Los Angeles.

People

Amira Farouk: CEO of Anubis Security.
Andrew Bell: Powerful, popular, and charismatic senator from West Virginia. Founder of the Human Defense Party. Former presidential candidate.
Grigory Rasputin: Russian holy man during World War 1. Conjectured by some to be a mutant because he was so damn hard to kill.
Highwayman: Costumed superhero member of the Liberty League and founding member of the Guardians.
Hound: A mutant tasked with hunting other mutants by Anubis Security.
Dr. Nathaniel Essex: Head of Nexus.
Peter Venta: CEO of Venta Industries. Financier of the Guardians. Chairman of the Board of Force Majeure, Inc (F.M.I.)
Salvador Manx: CEO of Manx Advanced Robotic Science (M.A.R.S.)
Stephen Granger: CEO of the Advance Human Potential Project (A.H.P.).

Terms

Alpha: Mutants with very destructive power levels or extensive range and ability.

Beta: Mutants with destructive powers, but less extensive.

Brotherhood: Mutant rights organization. Advocates violence, though has done little actively yet. Individual, diffused cell structure.

Carriers: Technically not mutants, these humans carry a copy of the mutant gene. If they procreate with another carrier, or with a mutant, a mutant child may result.

Delta: Mutants who have physical mutations but no real powers.

Flatscan: a normal human who doesn’t appear on scans for the mutant gene.

Fly your freak flag high: Take pride and show off your mutant status, particularly physical mutations that mark you as not human.

Freak name: The name a mutant takes for himself to reflect his mutant nature.

Freak Pride: Taking pride in your mutant nature, especially obvious physical mutations that mark you as not human.

Gamma: Mutants with little or “useless” powers.

Latents: Those with the mutant gene who have not expressed powers or physical mutations.

Normie: Normal human.

Omega: These mutants seem to have unlimited levels of power. They carry serious destructive potential, potentially global.

Pretty: A mutant who can pass for human, whether because they look human or can hide their physical mutation.

Slave name: The name a mutant was born with as a human.