Renegade Earth

[SA]

[ooc]Omigosh!  Supers campaign!  Quickly churning a setting out for the weekend, and I want it to be a crazy kind of pan-cosmology.  It's basically our Earth, pretty much identical until 2009, when the fun starts.  Anyhoo, read the damned thing!  (Sorry, very short at the moment)[/ooc]

RENEGADE EARTH

[ic=Beginnings]There is no single name for the madness that began in those early days of January, 2009.  Science cannot name it, for the anomalies that comprise it are all unique and unrepeatable.  It has many, many names, and for each human who remembers it, it means something quite different.

In Uludag, Bursa, a thunderclap sounds inexplicably in a park, and a dozen witnesses will swear they heard a voice amid the noise.  Two young newlyweds will dedicate themselves to discovering the meaning of its words.  She will learn the song first sung by Allah to Adam in the wildness of Paradise; he will learn the first hateful cry of the Adversary as It ascended the throne of Gehenna.

Three teens in Singapore City fall into a hole in space-time, reappearing mere moments later but rendered blind, mute, and wise beyond comprehension.  They wage an urban war against the servants of the Anti-Dharma, bringing enlightenment to a city slowly collapsing toward solipsism.

A golden light envelops a quiet street in Columbia Heights, Washington DC, blinding a homeless man and rendering four others comatose.  One will wake days later and, suddenly possessed of superhuman strength, attempt the assassination of the President Elect.

Those are the first, as far as we know.  But there have been hundreds since.  Lives altered in a myriad ways, some subtle, others grand.  Miraculous births; transformations of the flesh, mind or soul; glorious new creations on an Earth gone wild.[/ic]
Setting
Between twenty and fifty years after the First Revelation (a popular name for the event among America's NeoPuritans).  A more advanced world, a more confused world, but not more or less delightful on the balance of things.

Tone
Think Neil Gaiman's Sandman crossed with Alan Moore's Watchmen.  The PCs are far from ordinary people, and these are far from ordinary times, but as always normal folks are striving toward a manageable and predictable life.

Themes
Transformations - every miracle works a unique change upon those who were privy to it, and not always for the better.  Some are changed in unobtrusive ways, or their alterations are considered good in their local culture.  Geniuses rise to the top of their fields; physical supermen render mundane athleticism obsolete; singers with crystalline voices cure cancers and madness with their songs.  But others are reshaped into beasts, or their substance is made elemental, or they are divested of flesh entirely.  Monsters are born, and deviant criminal intellects scheme dark wonders.

New Faiths - human spirituality has had to adapt to a changing metaphysical reality, and as always, people interpret the new within the logical framework of the old.  There are new messiahs, new prophets, new buddhas, and new promises of transcendence.

Strange Worlds - there are other planets where humans dwell, that cannot be called quite parallel.  They are simply Other, their existence known, even now, as but the gentlest of whispers.  Few travel between them: only the blessed, the lost, and the irredeemably damned.

Characters
Ingrid Bessel, 22, is preparing dinner when a bullet passes through the flimsy drywall of her apartment, entering her brain.  In those last fleeting moments her mind slips and falls, almost by accident, into the nascent subconscious of her own unborn child.  Comatose but alive, she will give birth to herself in a telepathic reincarnation, and so make her first stumbling step toward Nirvana.

Kirill Maslov, a serial murderer rotting in an Alabama prison cell, suffers a stroke and becomes suddenly aware of the wild rhythms of his inmates' beating hearts.  He has become attuned to the human machine, and knows, as though by instinct, a thousand ways to kill without a weapon in his hands.

Sometimes Gwembeshe feels like his mind's running away from him.  A dozen thoughts crash through his head in a second, and he gets dizzy and has to catch his breath.  Then sometimes his chest gets really tight and hurts almost like its vibrating really fast.  He looks all blurry, but he knows his eyes aren't the problem.  When that happens, he doesn't want to move; it feels like he could explode.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

So all the origins are spiritually-based, especially with regards to modern religions?

[Steerpike]

I assume there are going to be some individuals attuned to older deities, if the setting is pan-cosmological, rather simply than modern religions?  The voice of Zeus or Thor in that thunderclap?  I'm wondering how much the exact nature of the spiritual resonance or anomalies are keyed to the subjective beliefs of the one who experiences them: it seems, for example, that in the case of the newlyweds their changes weren't wholly in sync with their personal beliefs, at least on a conscious level.  Could, for example, a devout Christian evangelist suddenly find himself the avatar of Anubis, or does it not work like that?

Whatever the case, I'll be following this setting eagerly.

[Ninja D!]

You have an interesting start here. Is religion to be a heavy focus of the game?

[SA]

So all the origins are spiritually-based, especially with regards to modern religions?

I assume there are going to be some individuals attuned to earlier deities.[/quote]do[/i] have some kind of relationship to the spiritual motifs of past and present earth: the Demon-Bodhisattvas, for instance, do act a lot like you'd expect a regular Bodhisattva to, but they certainly don't call themselves by old Buddhist words.  And there's also the bit about them being demons (another inadequate description).

The Voice of Zeus or Thor in that thunderclap?

all the way down[/i] in Turkey.  But it'd more likely be someone like Bai-Ulugan, a local ancient divinity.

I'm wondering how much the exact nature of the spiritual resonance or anomalies are keyed to the subjective beliefs of the one who experiences them: it seems, for example, that in the case of the newlyweds their changes weren't wholly in sync with their personal beliefs, at least on a conscious level.

Could, for example, a devout Christian evangelist suddenly find himself the avatar of Anubis, or does it not work like that?[/quote]You have an interesting start here. Is religion to be a heavy focus of the game?[/quote]more[/i] asserted when mothers birth babies that can hiccough typhoons.  Singapore, for example, is widely considered a gateway to Hell.  No-one can really prove it, but folks tend to agree the place just isn't the same after the Battle of Eighty-six Armies rampaged through Downtown Core.

I'll post some more NPCs, organisations, and some cosmological ideas soon.  Any suggestions (of powers, spiritual influences, historical events, technologies etc.) are more than welcome.

[Steerpike]

Ok, interesting.  A lot subtler than I was originally thinking, and more compelling.  The "deities" or numinous figures prompt transformations or revelations rather than straight-out "possessing" people or selecting them as avatars - I can see this now in your opening, I was just misinterpreting.

By the way, I wasn't inquiring whether the voice that spoke in the thunderclap specifically was Thor or Zeus, I was more wondering whether those sorts of pagan deities were around in the setting, considering their lack of modern worship - I was just invoking the thunder as an example.  I think you answered my question, though - if I'm not mistaken, collective belief/reverence doesn't affect the power of a deity/power as such on Renegade Earth.

[Steerpike]

Since you said you were welcoming ideas, here's a random snippet I wrote - I don't know if it fits with what you're creating, but feel free to take as much or as little as you like:

[ic=The Dweller]In Manchester, England, static blares on the television in a cheap flat smelling of piss and stale pizza.  A charlatan magician sprawls naked on his frayed sofa, a gluey strand of drool dangling viscously from his lips, his scuffed top hat in his lap and a rheumy film of cocaine caking his nostrils.  As his sallow limbs twitch in the throes of the overdose the magician perceives in the white cackle of the television a pattern that suddenly resolves itself into speech'¦ a face'¦ eyes that gaze back from the frenzied void.  The darkness in the depths of his hat unfolds, grasping, enveloping, embracing him like some tenebrous lover; the Dweller of the Abyss insinuates its whispers deep within him, a sibilant insemination.  He spasms, ecstatic, and spends himself in the wasting black.

When he rises, refreshed, he speaks with the white-noise Word of Choronzon, and all who hear him are helpless to resist his hissing, unintelligible call.  He walks the streets of the city like a somnambulist or amnesiac or Old Testament prophet, followed always by a steadily growing congregation of Void-touched, seduced by the Dweller's crackling and infectious Will.
[/ic]
Picturing a guy who opens his mouth and white noise comes out (or can come out when he chooses to speak with the Word), representing a kind of Nietzschean abyssal meaninglessness (the abyss has gazed back)... but perhaps too alienating?

[SA]

I like it, but it's a bit dark for the general tenor of the campaign.

Here's some more random stuff:

It is impossible to say how many Powers exist.  In many places Empowerment has significant stigma associated with it, and locals are therefore reluctant to expose themselves.  Besides which, public announcement inevitably brings visits from the likes of the Protectors, Unity, Throne or the Infinite Army.

Metalanguage
The instincts, desires and patterns of comprehension common to all people.  Unsullied, it allows a speaker to communicate with '" and understand '" any other human being, regardless of their language.  The Truesayers analysed and quantified the metalanguage, and the language they constructed from it (called Felicity) is proclaimed the truest expression of infinite human consciousness.

However, Felicity is subtly flawed.  The Truesayers have engineered its principles so that its speakers (inhabitants of Dominion and the principalities of Prosody) obey, instinctively, the insidious and labyrinthine precepts defined by the Sophist Kings.

Other permutations of the metalanguage include Gehennan, Gloomverse and Stellar.

Unity
First established by Putin in the early years of the Revelation, in order to deal with Russia's high incidence of Empowered individuals.  As membership grew, it adopted a more general (if high-level) policing role, as well as spearheading Putin's search for Controlled Ascendancy.

Eventually, with the rise of such figures as Purity and Tirade, Unity became increasingly divorced from the Russian chain of command; only their public face, Patriot Star, remained liable to Public censure while the body of the organisation operated with near impunity.

Today, Unity has expanded beyond (some say discarded) its nationalist ideals, manipulating events not only globally, but on other worlds.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Delicious Magical Mud Party]Purity and Tirade[/blockquote]
So these are individuals - Powers - correct?  Both sound potentially fascinating... great non-standard super-names.

[SA]

Holy shit. I just discovered Unity is a real Russian political party. Coincidence??? Probabably. But still... now what am I gonna call them?

More coming.

[Xeviat]

I like this. Definitely stokes my love of universalist sci-fi (like how Stargate had old deities being aliens). It actually has some echos of a setting I was going to put together for some short stories; exploring how the world would react to magic if it suddenly appeared is a lot of fun.

Are you going to be using Mutants and Masterminds for this system, or some other super RPG?

On a literary standpoint, what is going to be the focus of your stories? The journey of the heroes? Or the interplay between society and "the other"?

[SA]

I've never used Mutants and Masterminds. I'll probably stick with Fudge or break in the One Roll Engine.

The story focus depends on the sort of characters. I got the idea after reading the Marvel Civil War event series, but the tone is a marriage of Sandman, Watchmen and Midnight's Children. There are many kinds of plots: the occult, personal journeys of an empowered individual seeking self-realisation through their gifts; stranger and more epic quests for transcedance; political intrigue and more overt warfare (although the more spectacular empowered are kept out of conflicts because that would otherwise lead to an unstoppable escalation and eventually the introduction of the likes of Basilisk, Cuchulain and Mechanical Dream, the empowered equivalents of weapons of massive destruction); then diplomacy, adventure and conquest on the otherworlds and even the search for the tetragrammaton, the One True Word which all the permutations of the metalanguage reflect.

As for the relationship between society and the empowered, Renegade Earth does take some cues from Civil War. Those who cannot conceal their empowerment are, in many countries (particularly the world superpowers), forced or "encouraged" to register. Many would argue that this is a good thing, because the government is able to "best make use of the talents of its exceptional members". The United States, with its cult of celebrity combined with the ingrained superhero mythology, succumbed to the rhetoric incredibly quickly: While nominally subordinate to the president and serving as advisors with "special insights", the empowered tribunal of the Presidium is the real head of state.

In many ways Renegade Earth is remarkably more advanced than it likely would have been had the Revelation not occurred. As mentioned before, there are people who can cure pretty much any disease, and the brightest minds in the world are capable of feats that not only stagger mundane folk but defy any kind of recognised science. There are machines in every modernised household that can store and interpret dreams and even portable devices that can record subconscious thoughts. Human cloning is a reality, though the empowered are not legally permitted to do so (the very rich get away with it). Shapeshifters provide an inexhaustible supply of stem-cells, though so-called mutable organisms have volatile biologies and even very small cultures of cells can develop in potent and nasty directions. On the other hand, there are also people who can eat other people without using their mouths and a guy who speaks only soul-numbing white noise. There's a woman who kills any unborn baby by her mere proximity and a boy who transforms into a ravaging deformed man-wolf the size of a house. The androgynous lunatic nuclear god-human Am Omega used to be called kid Alpha back in the early days when the yanks still thought comic powers were cool, but then it figured out it was basically god and then everyone else figured it out and now it's banished from the world and thankfully someone else's problem (the kings of the Inward Space don't appreciate that).

And just to clarify the whole divine question: everybody has got it wrong. Everyone. Theists, atheists, agnostics, nihilists, and unthinking "drones" alike, they all have no idea. The purpose of the Revelation and the source of the empowered is something almost totally beyond their conception. Almost.

[Superfluous Crow]

I like this. Especially your characters. Those small personal stories of sudden revelation and ability that seems to go in wildly different directions for each individual. There is no pattern, just like one would expect in a world where, as you say, "everybody has got it wrong". The Empowered are a force of unpredictable change.
I also find the abilities you have given them intriguing by themselves. These are interesting, new, fickle, and sometimes bad "superpowers".
Do the Empowered have equal rights with common humans, or are they the property of the state in some version of neo-slavery?
What are the powers of Basilisk, Cuchulain and Mechanical Dream? Who controls these living weapons?
How frequent are the happenings?  

[SA]

Basilisk ossifies organic material - sort of like Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva - by being looked at. Cuchulain is the aforementioned child that transforms into the nasty beastie. He's part Hulk part Nordic avatar. Mechanical Dream is... well, I'm not quite sure. But it sounds cool, yes?

Spontaneous happenings aren't very frequent these days, but it is common for the children of a Power to experience one. This has led some scholars to suggest that genetics has something to do with it. It doesn't. Some people, such as Lamia and Ingrid Bessel (well, depending on how you look at it), experienced the happening before birth. In Lamia's case every expectant mother in the hospital miscarried and many of the babies in the maternity ward died as well.

You make a very good point about the lack of pattern. Even so, humans, ordered as the are, have tried to force a pattern on the events. Thus we have high profile powers adopting mythical, biblical or otherwise spiritual names such as the Antediluvian, Oroboros, Choronzon, Chrism and the like. Others adopt sensational titles such as Powerhouse, Entropos and Typhoon.

These names are deceptive, making them seem larger than life. Entropos, for example, is merely an old man who accelerates the decay of his environment when his mood drops. His house rapidly aged and fell down on him when his wife died and when the paramedics rushed him to hospital the ambulance equipment broke down. He seems to be immune to aging, but he's still an old, miserable man and ruin follows him.

Then there's Choronzon, whom Steerpike introduced. He's nothing special, just a human channel for something distant and cruel.

And here's Chrism:

In his twenties Chrism was afflicted with mysterious unhealing wounds that bled restorative bile, and studied by scientists who kept him confined in a hidden facility with other powers. He eventually escaped and created a transformative alchemical solution with the help of the genius alchemist Luo Xue, who had by that time already changed herself into a completely different life form. The solution worked, but scarred him horribly. He appears covered in third degree burns and wears a sealed suit that is constantly bathing his body in soothing fluid (ironically developed from his own bile by his erstwhile jailors). He is a skilled alchemist and can still produce restorative materials through the extraction and chemical stimulation of his own cells.

Chrism is believed to be the one fully human child of Allmother. He is therefore not a distinct power with a unique origin but, like all her 'children', a continuation of Allmother's mutative somatic line and thus an extension of her being. He is currently in league with Throne, but his allegiance is ultimately to the House of Alchemists.

[Superfluous Crow]

It is always enjoyable that whenever you introduce a new character you refer to another not yet introduced character. Makes the world seem alive already just by virtue of you having a lot of unpublished ideas.
But you also do the reverse and refer to someone you have already introduced, but never by name, as you just did with Lamia. That's maybe a bit confusing. Maybe you should do a list somewhere of the known "individuals".
And while Cuchulain and Basilisk sound powerful, they are hardly superweapons are they? They are powerful in localized instances, but they are not exactly capable of distant mass destruction.
Perhaps Mechanical Dream (and yes, it does sound awfully cool) is a comatose patient who makes nearby machines "go to sleep". Which of course would make it terribly difficult to take care of him. But he could act as a perpetual EMP weapon.
Is Lamia shunned? Or do people use her for abortions for example?