We've seen them in comics again and again. some event that leaves 99% of the world unaffected, but turns one percent into super humans?
Obviously this is cinematic and not scientific...but have fun. I will start.
1) Above ground nuclear testing. There is a reason nuke tests went underground...the radiation produced super power mutants who could breed true. In many cases it lay dormant for a few generations and sprung up in the most surprising people. This is also why a nuke war never happened, The world powers feared the wave of supers that would be unleashed.
2) a nearby star went nova. It lit up the night sky for three nights. Months later, a wave of radiation bathed the earth for 11 days. The star was too far away to seriously affect the earth, the radiation was weak. But there was something odd about the radiation, it twisted a tiny percent of humans and animals into supers who could breed true.
3) in the waning days of WWI, desperate Nazis sought to change the outcome of way by initiating Ragnarok. They failed but unleashed a wave of magic that created the first supers. Heroes and villains have been with us ever since.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
Already have it thought out for my own superhero universe!
On August 24th 0079, Mount Vesuvius, located at a ley line nexus point, erupted, disrupting and diminishing much of the power of the superhuman/supernatural/meta kind, slowly having all fall away until there was no more and what was, was just myth.
On August 6th 1945, the first deployed atomic bomb was dropped on another nexus point, causing the re-emergence of the superhuman/supernatural/meta kind.
This wasn't to say none of it didn't exist during that time, but it was much MUCH less and most of it much MUCH weaker.
Those are good ones, almost classics. ^_^
I like The Event that [url=https://marionharmon.com/]Marion George Harmon[/url] used in his [url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074PLF5SF/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i8]Wearing the Cape[/url] series: Everyone, all over the world, experienced about 3.15 seconds of total sensory deprivation, during which time all electrical power stopped, and after which people in stressful situations occasionally started manifesting superpowers. But beyond those bare facts, no one knows what The Event was, or what caused it...
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Ley lines work! I wonder if Super powers get a boost when they are used on such a line. Supers might be naturally attracted to ley lines, feel them instinctively. Villains might build a base on a conjunction of lines.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
In my setting, I was of the thought it likely didn't help the super powered types as such, but likely the magic and supernatural types, while still being a trigger to the re-emergence of super powers.
So... Hellboy except they unleashed magic instead?
(EDIT: I realized as I was finished typing this is basically a take on Starship Troopers and the most recent V series) As a pre-emptive strike, a space faring alien force hurled asteroids toward the earth to create havoc in preparation of their invasion to secure resources. However, they were not entirely familiar with human biology and the reaction the radioactivity of the asteroids would have on us. Their strategy had the negative affect of imbuing incredible abilities into the population. Unfortunately for them they cannot reach another planet without our resources. Now they hurdle towards Earth, and confrontation of their own making!
Silly aliens. With the exception of lifeforms and their products, there is nothing on Earth that can't be gotten elsewhere in the solar system, largely without conflict. So to make conflict less of a factor, they drop more resources down the well, killing many of the lifeforms, destroying many of the products of the lifeforms, and making the survivors angry and (in your scenario, though they had no way of knowing) much much tougher.
Not that I haven't seen humans do equally silly things, often for what they saw as very good reasons. ^_^
Also, in Starship Troopers, Humans already had the tech to be considered a military threat. Not sure about the more recent V, as the first V exceeded my Silly Aliens Threshold. ^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
All powers came from the Great Flood. It was an attempt to wipe out emerging super powered individuals, but it only ended up making more.
In the bible it was something about water, animals and a great boat, but it was an allegory and nothing more.
Something as drastic as wiping all life from a planet can have greater consequences....
City of Gaymers
050505 thru 120112
Another Tunguska Event?
Be Well!
Fireheart
In a game I once ran, it started several thousand years ago, with three brothers, the sons of Pandora.
Pandora, as you may know, was created by the gods to curse mankind, 'Pandora's box' is actually a reference to her womb (in my story). The evils of the world where her children.
The eldest was called Demonius, and was the father of demons.
The second was called Sanguinus, and was the father of vampires.
The third was called Therion, and was the father of werebeasts.
Scroll forward several thousand years, Pandora has been working as a lab assistant on 'supernatural DNA', the other researchers do not know her identity, but they soon find out.
A group of new humanoids are awakened from their birthing chambers, these are werecats (imagine thundercats, except with both human, werecat, and angelic forms)
Pandora has been able to purify her DNA, these new werecats are good aligned, the player characters.
The game goes on for several months, with Pandora (a rather shy and slim girl, brown hair and green eyes, usually dressed in her lab gear) backing the group in their endevours to fight evil. Eventually the group discovered a rich neo-nazi cell, they had taken genetic samples from all types of supernaturals, combined them, and removed most of the impurities (supernatural drawbacks). They had huge vats of this genetic modifier, ready to inject into their guys, creating an army of nazi-super soldiers.
So the werecats, along with a few reformed werewolves and dreamer demons, attacked the nazi-base, and smashed it to pieces.
Unfortunatly (well, I planned it this way), the vats of genetic modifier were also smashed, with the samples going airborn.
Of course it was so diluted, so it was rare that it could affect anyone, but still, eventually 1/1024 people developed random powers.
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Wow! I actually had a very similar idea quite a few years ago. Great minds and all that.
In the new V series (which was cancelled 8 years ago so I call no spoiler ranting) the aliens scheme is to come to earth and pick out the best, highest quality DNA, combine it with their own and, as described in the show, fast forward their evolution. What would be interesting if humans had some DNA capability of gaining super powers the aliens and other species did not have. But instead of just taking the "capability DNA" and waiting for the random abilities to manifest (if they did at all), they decided to fire up our dormant DNA and then harvest the 'super DNA" to blend with their own.
(I think how it worked on the show was: they modify a males DNA to basically be missing certain sequences of DNA, they harvest the best DNA, combine it with the males to complete the DNA sequence, the queen mates with the male and then births thousands of eggs that are now genetically superior)
The universe, for all its light, can be a very dark place. Once, alien entities and eldritch beings of inconceivable power roamed in the void between the stars, from world to world, with a cadre of servants -- created beings, or spawn of lesser power whose function in life was to nurture more temporary life.
The fathomless evils and those simply incomprehensible to lesser life, were made of colors, changing shapes, memories of the future and visions of the past, exotic existences that stretched out across multiple planes rather than being bound merely to the physical as mortals are. They were known by many names. The one name that resonates among the civilizations that have survived contact with them, and countless more that were not so fortunate, in all the myriad tongues, still in use or utterly dead, was simply, "The Old Ones".
Their minions, the servants they created and gifted with a fraction of their true power, a sliver of their essence, each held within them a core purpose, a root of inspiration that bound them to a particular concept. Knowledge, the harvest, fertility, death, fate, fire, storms, dreams... Each held his, her, or its own bailiwick. They too, bearing many names, both as a species, and as individuals, would become known as deities.
For each new world visited, the atmosphere was altered, and the terrain shaped, so that it could sustain life. Where life already existed, its course of evolution was accelerated. Through intervention, the Old Ones and their divine-servants would produce entire civilizations of sapient beings, teaching them agriculture, construction, laws, and setting them to make their worlds lush and vibrant.
And then, when the world's people were ready, their planet ripe enough, the Old One who had set its gods to the task would drain the world dry, consuming life, knowledge, souls, and every source of nutrients, leaving it a barren, dessicated rock.
The deities served in their role for billions of years, divided into two camps. The Titans, direct creations and offspring of the Old One, and the gods, born of the Titans. Many of the gods, and some of the Titans, reviling what they were forced to do, but doing it anyway, lamented how much weaker they were than their creators.
But the turning point in their destinies came when they reached a planet that would one day be called Earth.
The deities who served a particular Old One, who embodied the hungry void itself, grew to love Earth and its people. It was already quite far along its natural course when they arrived, and the humans had great potential within them. Still, most of the deities -- whether good, evil, or somewhere inbetween -- did nothing. A few, however, decided enough was enough. In secret, one of the Titans, and several of the gods, brought the gift of magic to humans. Supernatural power that had been given to the deities so that they could affect lesser works to the extra-dimensional powers of their makers, in the hands of mortals for the first time.
While the renegade gods, and the rogue Titan, Prometheus, tried to keep it secret, they were eventually found out, and punished for their actions. However, the monstrous creations of the Old One who came to eliminate the humans were attacked by the sorcery-wielding humans, overcoming their own terror of the unknown with the human spirit that had convinced that handful of gods that it was worth taking the risk.
The minions of the Old One were caught by surprise as the enslaved peoples who were merely meant to be sustenance for their master rose up against them, and were driven away. Emboldened by their small successes, their rebellion spread. With gods breaking ranks with the Old One and its monstrous creations, many more followed suit, transitioning into open defiance of their Titan parents. Mortals and monsters, gods and Titans, and even a secret weapon in the form of the forbidden off-spring of gods and humans, demi-gods, all waged war for the fate of their world.
Then the Old One decided enough was enough. Its formless darkness wiped out entire pantheons of gods, put down sorcerer armies, and rent the world asunder, beginning a new ice age as natural forces were disrupted. In the end, defeating the Old One proved to be impossible. It existed in too many planes across the past, present, and future. All they could do was weave an enchantment, a great spell of eternal slumber, and seal the great terror away.
The monstrous servants of the Old One, those who fought on to the bitter end, armies of demons, evil gods, and Titans who saw this as their chance to take charge now that they were the strongest deities, were either slain or sealed away along with their creator.
The gods and Titans who remained either surrendered, or otherwise reached a tenuous peace agreement. This would not be the last war among the gods, and now that both the Old One and most of the Titans were gone, the gods took up the same role as rulers that their predecessors once fulfilled. They solicited worship from mortals to sustain themselves now that they could no longer siphon a trickle of eldritch power from their creator. They provided their protection, parcelling out mystic knowledge, and, as they grew more arrogant, punishing and interfering in the lives of humans.
Great heroes and great villains, many of them children of the gods, or offspring of creatures created by the gods or that had survived the War of the Abyss, became the pawns in a game between individuals gods and entire pantheons. Eventually, as they had once before, humans fought back against cruel oppressors. They accumulated power and knowledge, and formed great civilizations that challenged the gods, and in turn were either struck down, or slew their former protectors and used the blood of the divine to empower themselves.
In their hubris, much like that of the gods, and the Titans before them, they wrought their own ruin. Atlantis was one such ancient and powerful civilization.
As mystic powers waned amidst the cataclysmic destruction of the world's magical wells of power, and the influence of the gods diminished with the mass deaths of their worshippers, humanity was pushed down a different route they had been pursuing. The path of science.
Thousands of years passed, and the mythic heroes, the demi-gods, the sorcerers, the once-in-a-life-time geniuses and inventors, all continued to appear, but their scale was frequently smaller to match the diminished magical energy of Earth. As well, rationalism frequently led people to explain away the fantastical and the abnormal.
Slowly and surely, however, the planet began to recover. Mystic energy levels were on the rise. And with it, ancient wizard blood lines felt their magic begin to return. Monsters and spirits who had slumbered or hidden away began to awaken and emerge. Those who were descended from the gods or from these monsters began to change, gaining superhuman powers, physical mutations, or both. Those with superhuman inventing prowess, natural geniuses, were able to produce ever more incredible technology thanks to the scientific discoveries and accumulation of machinery over the past several thousand years. Organizations began to engineer superhumans of their own through genetic experimentation, cybernetics, and more extreme procedures.
More and more superhumans appeared, first appearing in small pockets as secret weapons during World War I, and then becoming national icons by World War II, and then fully entering the public eye in the 1950s and 1960s. And all the while, as magic resurged, the overall potency and quantity of superhumans increased.
With the return of magic, the gods have begun to take more direct action in the world again, sizing up potential rivals, and looking upon a changed Earth for a way to reestablish their worship base in this age of reason and science.
And behind all these changes, they feel the influence of another is responsible for magic's restoration accelerating this much over so short a period of time.
An influence that is both familiar and terrible, who desires for super-powered mortals to proliferate across the globe for some unknown end...