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Apr 27, 2012 8:16:29 GMT -5
Post by gamedave on Apr 27, 2012 8:16:29 GMT -5
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Apr 29, 2012 13:23:29 GMT -5
Post by gamedave on Apr 29, 2012 13:23:29 GMT -5
METAHUMANS Metahumans have been walking among us for a very long time. Many fringe scholars refer to an “Age of Myth”, when gods walked among men, and mortal heroes battle ferocious monsters; these beings may have been the earliest metahumans.
Since that time, throughout history, unusual men and women have appeared, wielding mysterious powers or performing deeds no ordinary mortal should have been capable of performing.
The earliest recorded “super-hero”, an individual with extraordinary abilities and a secret identity, may have been the Black Knight of Arthurian England. Other costumed adventurers, concentrated in England, France, China, and Japan, for reasons that are still debated, appeared periodically throughout the centuries.
A surge in possible metahuman activity occurred in the 1600s and 1700s, as a number of costumed swashbucklers fought nefarious villains in England and on the Continent; the most famous of these was the Scarlet Pimpernel. The Americas also saw the advent of costumed adventurers, mainly pirates and privateers in the Caribbean, but also notably Zorro, who fought corrupt Spanish overlords in California.
After the American Civil War, the American West seemingly became the locus for “proto-super heroes”, with masked gunfighters, Indian mystic warriors, and even secret agents and the occasional wandering Chinese martial artist.
Up until this point, it is not clear that any of these individuals was actually a metahuman; if they were, their abilities were seemingly limited, perhaps including low-level superhuman strength or agility, accelerated healing, enhanced senses, or other such low-key powers.
During the Victorian Age, especially in the 1880s and 1890s, the locus of activity for such individuals briefly shifted back to England, and to a lesser extent France and China, as some of the first clearly metahuman heroes and villains appeared, although it was generally villains, such as Mr. Hyde and the Invisible Man, who had the obvious metahuman abilities. Ultratechnology, in forms now often referred to as “steampunk”, began to appear in significant quantities as well, most famously the airship of Robur the Conqueror, and the Nautilus, the submarine of Captain Nemo.
After the turn of the century, American adventurers, primarily explorers, inventors, and pioneering pilots, became more and more prevalent.
Then, during the First World War, virtually an entire generation of heroes and villains died on the battlefields of Europe. The contemporaneous situation in China is still much debated; there was no catastrophe on par with World War I in Asia, yet an entire generation of Chinese heroes and villains also died or disappeared around the same time.
The European metahuman community would not recover to its former numbers until late in the Twentieth Century, but in China metahumans did make a limited comeback. In the United States, however, there was a veritable explosion. Scientists, explorers, detectives, crusading reporters, and, above all, the masked “mystery men” mad the United States of the 1920s and 1930s the highest point of metahuman activity in centuries, perhaps only surpassed by the still-hypothetical “Age of Myth” in Classical times.
During World War II, however, this new generation was, again, nearly completely destroyed. Unlike the interwar period, when a metahuman Renaissance began almost immediately following the end of the First World War, there was a prolonged lull in metahuman activity, lasting through much of the 1950s. Then, in 1953, the first metahuman hero of the postwar era appeared, the Atomic Man.
The Atomic Man truly heralded a new era. While many of the so-called mystery men of the interwar years clearly had metahuman abilities, they still tended to be fairly low-key, such as the Shadow’s ability to cloud men’s minds, or the Wraith’s ability to merge with shadows. The Atomic Man, however, wielded raw nuclear energy, enabling him to project devastating energy blasts, fly at supersonic speeds, and manipulate matter at the atomic, and even subatomic, levels. To this day, many experts consider the Atomic Man to have been the most powerful human being in recorded history.
The 1950s also saw the dramatic resurgence of the Technocracy, an international conspiracy of scientists and engineers bent on world domination, signaling the advent of a new era of non-state organizations which wielded power greater than that of many nation-states. In fact, recently declassified documents reveal that, at the height of its power in the late 1950s, the Technocracy was considered by both the CIA and the KGB to be the third most powerful entity on the planet, trailing only the United States and the Soviet Union themselves.
The 1960s saw an explosion of activity by metahumans and costumed adventurers of all stripes, heavily concentrated, for still-unknown reasons, in the United States, especially in New York City, with a lesser concentration in Japan. In fact, the numbers of metahumans in the United States became so great that the world’s first true superteam (the only others being ad hoc groupings during the two World Wars), the Argonauts, was formed in New York City.
The 1960s also saw a proliferation of international criminal and terrorist organizations with access to hypertechnology and metahuman operatives, most notably the anarcho-nihilist group, CHIMERA.
In response to these developments, most of the non-communist nations of the world cooperated to create COUNTERForce (Combined Operations and UNconventional Threat Emergency Response Force), an international law enforcement organization specifically trained and equipped to deal with metahumans and hypertechnology-equipped criminals. The Soviet Union set up its own version for itself and its allies, and, although there was often distrust and rivalry, COUNTERForce and its Soviet counterpart worked fairly well together, even setting up experimental joint task forces.
Meanwhile, the United States government also created SECT, the Special Exotic Crimes Task Force, to deal with such activities in the United States, preferring to keep the international COUNTERForce out of its territory as much as possible.
Then, in 1973, yet another mass tragedy befell the world’s metahuman community as virtually every known costumed hero and villain died during the Fall. Only a handful of individuals is known to have survived; the Atomic Man disappeared and is presumed dead by most, while Dr. Challenger, reputedly the world’s smartest man and a founding member of the Argonauts, retired and formed the Challenger Institute, a scientific research organization.
Following the Fall, a new generation of heroes and villains quickly arose to replace the old, as the pace of appearance of new metahumans seemed to increase at a geometric and then exponential rate. The 1970s saw Los Angeles become the second major locus of metahuman activity in the United States, with the formation of another major superteam, the Stars. In New York, the Protectors were formed, giving that city two separate superteams, a first in metahuman history.
In the 1980s, COUNTERForce formed its first team of metahuman operatives, STRIKEForce, while the U.S. government formed its first official superteam since the ad hoc teams of World War II, the Sentinels, while yet another superteam was formed in New York City, the Warriors, made up of “street-level” heroes..
In the 1990s, the world’s first major for-profit superteam, Heroes, Inc., was formed in Los Angeles, while Chicago became the third locus of metahuman activity in the United States with the appearance of two separate superteams, the Crusaders and the Guardians, as well as the apparent appearance of a team of teenage mutants in training, tentatively identified as the Bloodbound.
By this time, a theory had become current in fringe research circles that at regular intervals, the metahuman community was “culled” and a new, larger, and more powerful generation of metahumans would appear. Most of the world’s known metahumans died in 1918, again in 1945, and yet again in 1973, at 27-28 year intervals. The coming millennium, it was widely predicted, would see yet another “die-off”.
That predicted die-off never occurred, but, in what is now widely referred to as the Millennium Event, a large number of new metahumans seemingly spontaneously, and sometimes disastrously, erupted onto the scene (in some cases, literally). Also, the city of Gray Harbor became the fourth major locus of metahuman activity in the United States with the formation of new metahuman team, Millennium.
Since that time, metahumans have continued to appear, with new superteams being founded, new villains launching schemes, and new heroes arising to face the ever-increasing challenges.
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Apr 29, 2012 13:40:44 GMT -5
Post by gamedave on Apr 29, 2012 13:40:44 GMT -5
METASCALE
Metahuman researchers have generally agreed upon a standardized system for classifying the power and threat level of metahumans, the MEtahuman Threat Assessment Scale, or METAScale. It is also often used for costumed adventurers and costumed criminals in general. This system has been officially adopted by COUNTERForce, INTERPOL, S.E.C.T., and numerous other law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Delta: This class is used for individuals who do not possess any known powers, but whose skills and abilities verge on the superhuman. This class usually includes top-level martial artists, spies, and thieves. The average Delta-class individual is actually probably a greater threat than the average Gamma-class individual.
[Game Mechanics: Delta-class individuals will typically be PL 8-10, with a few achieving PL 12. Their individual attributes will be within human norms, and they will have equipment rather than devices or powers. Attributes above the following will exceed human norms: Str 5, Sta 5, Agl 7, Dex 7, Fgt 13, Int 7, Awe 7, Pre 7. It's possible to have an Int, Awe, or Pre higher than this and still be classed as a Delta if the character is PL 12 or less, and doesn't have any powers or significant devices.]
Gamma: The lowest metahuman power level, Gamma-class individuals generally possess one or two low-level superhuman powers. Although conventional law enforcement and security services are generally capable of dealing with Gamma-class criminals, this pushes their bounds to the extremes.
[Game Mechanics: PL 8, with actual powers, devices, and/or attributes that exceed human norms, or PL 10 with combat abilities below normal for that PL.]
Beta: Beta-class individuals possess significant superhuman powers, and are capable of wreaking massive destruction. Dealing with them is beyond the capability of conventional law enforcement and security forces, and are capable of challenging or even defeating conventional military units.
[Game Mechanics: PL 10-12, with actual powers, devices, and/or attributes that exceed human norms.]
Alpha: Alpha-class individuals possess great superhuman powers. Individuals in this class are often considered to be living weapons of mass destruction, and are capable of posing a direct threat to national security. Alpha-class individuals are capable of engaging, and defeating, brigade or even division-sized conventional military forces.
[Game Mechanics: PL 14]
Omega: Only a handful of the most powerful metahumans in history are in this class; Omega-class individuals pose a direct threat to global security.
[Game Mechanics: PL 16+, or PL 14 with significantly more points than normal for that PL and broad-ranging powers.]
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May 5, 2012 16:35:40 GMT -5
Post by gamedave on May 5, 2012 16:35:40 GMT -5
MAGIC IN THE EDGE!VERSE
Although many people believe in ghosts or angels, overall the general public simply does not believe in magic or the supernatural. Sure, there are things running around that look like demons, and yeah, the Outsider claimed to be a mage, but there are plenty of weird-looking people who can fly and teleport and throw energy bolts. For most people, metahumans are metahumans are metahumans.
Game Mechanics: Magic definitely does exist in the Edge!verse, and most veteran heroes will have experienced it, but members of the general public and inexperienced heroes are more likely to believe that any apparent "magic" is merely an unusual metahuman power.
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May 5, 2012 16:36:35 GMT -5
Post by gamedave on May 5, 2012 16:36:35 GMT -5
MILLENNIUM
The newest major superteam, Millennium was founded in the wake of the Millennium Event, and is publicly based in Gray Harbor. It is funded by the philanthropic Prometheus Foundation, and seems to enjoy good relations with local law enforcement, the Federal government, and COUNTERForce. As its name implies, most if not all of its members gained their powers through the Millennium Event. At one point, its entire roster mysteriously vanished, and an entirely new team was recruited to replace it; the original team has since returned, and the replacement team members have retired or moved on to other activities. Unlike other teams, Millennium maintains a three-tier organization: the active team members who live and work at the team’s base; a pool of reservists who occasionally train with the active team and supplement them on a case-by-case basis; and a team of teenage trainees who also live and train at the main base, but, theoretically, do not go on missions or engage in crimefighting or other dangerous activities.
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