My Homebrew Setting

[Tryskhell]

Hey, I'm the newbee who wondered what a Champions campaign was supposed to look like, and at some point I said I needed some feedback on my setting. I went homebrew because I'm simply better at homebrewing things than at following a pre-made thing, but I wont throw using premade thing like factions out the window either.

 

This setting is very highly inspired by the web-novel "Worm", by Civil War and by the Incredibles. In short, heroes are outlawed unless chaperoned by the government. Rogue heroes are untrusted by the general populace and form a very underground, close knit and street culture. The government secretly kidnaps young rogues to make experiments on superheroes and develop super-soldier serums, weapons and turn them into brainwashed hounds to get more test subjects.

 

Overall History (more info in the World Anvil Timeline here : https://www.worldanvil.com/w/earth-2045-tryskhell/t/global-earth-2045-history-timeline?preview=1 )

It is set in 2045. Up to 2020, our history is identical, but the 19 September 2020, a meteor crashes into a building, killing nearly everyone. A man named Charles Brook touches it and the glassed rock cracks, revealing an orb of light that enters his heart, turning him into the first -and certainly not the last- super-human. He becomes a super-hero with the moniker Rafael and founds the Guardians with four other super-heroes : Galaxy Rush (High-level energy projector/brick), The Mind (basically Iron Man), Heart Overdrive (can control masses of people and emotions) and Escalibur (he gains super-human abilities when he holds his sword. He dies and is replaced with Vanguard, basically Superman).

 

In 2034, he accidentally kills a young boy called Thomas Parn, and the government create the Thomas Part Act, making super-heroes illegal if they don't obey their orders. Rafael and Heart Overdrive disappear, The Mind and Galaxy Rush give themselves in and Vanguard takes over the Guardians, turning it into the Vanguard Corps, a squad of super-heroes under the thumb of the government. Heroes have the choice of declaring their powers to the government and working for them or becoming rogues.

 

In 2038, a young low-level rogue nicknamed Gauss turns crazy and becomes the supe-rvillain Induction. For 10 hours, she lays destruction on a district of New-Manhattan (the fictional city built after the destruction of Manhattan by super-villains). No one seems able to stop her, not even Vanguard. In the end, at around 3 in the morning, the military drops a seismic bomb directly onto her. It is unknown what exactly happened to her, but a 60 meter radius sphere is turned into plasma and explodes, destroying the whole district. Nobody knows where she is, if she is alive, and the whole district has been black-sited by the government. 

This is called the Induction Incident, and made everyone very wary of rogues, since they could all be ticking bombs.

Superpowers

Superpowers initially come from meteors that crash down from space, but they mysteriously cannot be detected until they are too close to be intercepted. In total, there is 4 ways to get superpowers :
- Originals : Touch a meteor. This is how brand new powers enter the pool of possibilities. These powers tend to depend on the circumstances of the crash, what was destroyed, the personality of the one who got the powers and the people who were killed by the crash. In quite a grim fashion, the more people died, the stronger the power.

- Birth Rights : Be the children of a super-human, and you get similar powers. If both parents are super, you might get one, the other, both, or an original combination.
- Legacy : If a super-human gives you an object linked to their powers (if Iron Man were to give you his suit, for instance) and you use it for an extended amount of time, you could end up getting similar powers.
- Exposure : If you are exposed to a super-human's powers, you have a small chance of getting similar powers. The stronger, more violent, and/or more frequent the exposure, the higher the chance you get those powers. For instance, Excalibur was impaled by Mordred (a super-villain who's power is summoning swords and making them levitate) and survived miraculously. After the event, each time he held the sword, he was able to make it fly in various direction for limited amounts of time.

 

Super-powers are classified by the government with a tool called the Frizzell's Scale. It gives a general understanding of their type and power-level. The power level goes from 0 to 2000, 0 being no powers at all (and not even human abilities) and 2000 being Rafael's level. As you can guess, this is the number of character points used in a character's creation. There is also 15 types of powers, Brick, Acrobat, Mystic, Breakout, Husher... I've made the full list on World Anvil, right here : https://www.worldanvil.com/w/earth-2045-tryskhell/a/power-type-list-article?preview=1

Most supers have a score bellow 1000 (a thousand being called the "Godhood threshold"). Officially, Rafael is the most powerful, but there's rumors that Induction's score was above 3000.

[Tryskhell]

The Government's misdeeds

As you can see, the government is kind of the overarching villain of the setting. They are indeed quite villainous, but it's only a limited, secret branch, and for instance cops aren't as anti-rogues as the rest.

 

Since Rafael's apparition, the government created the ASHRRaD, the Agency for Super Human Regulation, Research a Development. While it was initially thought as an organisation aimed at peacefully regulating superhumans and helping superheroes (and some branches, like the ASCF, the Anti Super-Criminality Force, still do just that) it was quickly turned into a corrupt, power-hungry agency.

 

In 2026, the ASHRRaD planned Excalibur's murder and worked with Vanguard to get him into the Guardians as a replacement. In 2034, the faked Thomas Parn's death. In 2038, they tested a theory and unlocking funds by preying on Gauss's weak sanity and pushing her to the limit by kidnapping all her superhero team. The same year, following the Induction Incident, they kickstarted the Constellation Program, aiming at turning Galaxy Rush's flesh, blood, bone marrow and cerebral fluids into a super-soldier serum. They used it to create the Constellation Squad, a super-secret squad of brainwashed super-soldier boosted with the Constellation serum and used to kidnap rogues and assassinate important targets. They are incredibly quick, extremely agile, insanely strong and have elite trainings. They can also regenerate at insane rates.

 

In 2045, the setting present day, the ASHRRaD is still abducting female soldiers with good combat records (female because the Constellation Serum kills XY chromosome individuals by destroying their DNA) to put them in the Constellation Squad. They recently started investigating on a big group of rogues, the one the players are going to meet.

[drunkonduty]

It's a pretty grim setting. I like it. 🙂

 

[Tjack]

    Standing applause.    Where do I stand in line to play this?

[Tryskhell]

Thanks, Drunk, it ended up being maybe a bit too grim for my own tastes, but the grim parts are buried deep under a chunky layer of good and kind people. For instance, there's a very low-level super-villain called Dr. Mischievous, who is totally harmless and does some petty crime, like stealing candy or pets. 

 

He makes sure to harm no one and generally works with new rogues to get arrested by them in the most flashy fashion, to get their fame up. Also, each time he gets arrested, he's broken out by a mysterious super-villain group called the Black Parlor. They're all dressed in black owl costumes and only appear to break out low-level super-villains like Dr. Mischievous and rogues. In truth, the Black Parlor is made up of rogue super-heroes (from that group the ASHRRaD is investigating) who don a super-villain costume just to help their friends.

 

They're a close knit, kind, cooperative and very wholesome community. They help each-other, get together every second Friday of the month for a barbecue, work with villains like Dr. Mischievous (who is actually an important part of the community, he's the one serving the sodas) to brighten up the day of the people, put stars in the eyes of children and make sure the community sees rogues with a good eye again. They also do things like giving blankets to homeless people, work as unpaid volunteer at shelters and might even try to work with schools to sensibilize children and teens to important matters, like drugs, sex, crime, bullying etc. 

 

Thanks Tjack! 

Unfortunately I'm French and I'm bad at DMing in another language, tried for 4 months, each Saturday, but it didn't really work 😕

I'll make sure to post session reports! 

And if there's enough demand, I might actually do that roleplay Discord server that's been in my drawers for almost a year now... 

[Panpiper]

I speak French!  😉