Liam’s Gamer Hours

Under the guidance of their CEO Alonzo "Lon" Jevity the Tenth and his near identical ancestors, the Eternal Power Company has been the leader in global energy sales and innovation in new ways to provide power to a world with increasing demand to fuel strange technology (and occasionally doomsday devices) Recently, they have come under criticism for somehow coming into possession of the Eon Beam, a futuristic weapon that ages its target tens of thousands of years in seconds. Previously, this item has been the focal point of schemes by villains such as Chronovore, The DieVergent and Madam Forever- to name a few, and was THOUGHT to currently be in the possession of the Protectorate. The EPC uses the Beam to turn bones of livestock, bought en mass from the agricultural industry, into fossils, for the purpose of replenishing the worlds quickly draining supply of fossil fuels. Supporters call this the only long term solution to the energy crisis that would not require complete restructuring of the world's energy infrastructure, critics point out that doubling down on fossil fuels will make a host of environmental issues work. But business is booming, and if the Protectorate has tried to retrieve the beam, they clearly did not succeed.

On New Year's Day, 1986, Ambrose Black, the hemokinetic serial killer supervillain better known as Viscera, murdered Cub, Sparrow, Hint Kid, Awe, and Miss Mortar (Identities Redacted) and displayed their body in a very public fashion as revenge for them putting him away three years prior. stringing them up on the statue of Paragon in Probus City Center. The fallout of this triggered the “Dark Age of Heroes” (Also known as the Bronze Age), as Lone Wolf (Lobo Cazador), Aerie (Jan Vogelhüter), Clue-Keeper (Helena Sagebrush), Shock (Identity Unknown), and The Bricklayer (Clay Martins) championed a violent vengeance quest that spiraled into a culture of fear and a cycle of revenge. The public turned against the very idea of sidekicks and the endangerment of meta-youth in a way not previously so consistently felt, a persisting sentiment among older generations to this day. The founding of Prospects Academy in ‘88 was a direct response to this, led by the Protectorate of the time and the original sidekick, Comfort.

The Instant, being the fastest being in the universe by a wide margin, is critical to keeping the world safe from an ever increasing number of world ending threats. While most civilians are of the perception that things have “calmed down” since the silver age of heroism, the opposite is in fact true, and the Instant Protection Network is perhaps the only reason for our planet’s continued existence. 

The process, on the surface, is simple. A set of scanners, a world wide network, monitors for intense energy signatures and distortions of all kinds. This could range from nuclear fission to gravitational implosions, or matters more arcane and less scientifically understood. The Network notifies the Instant, who deploys with functionally zero delay to resolve the issue before anyone can be hurt. No less than 5 attempts to create a black hole on the Earth’s surface by 3 different villains (and one heroic accident) have been thwarted with no casualties through this method. The Instant Defense Network is what the Instant’s time is almost entirely devoted to, so they don’t appear on missions with the rest of the Protectorate except in the direst circumstances, and even with their speed, they must delegate. Energy is the primary concern for them, and they must determine what to leave to other heroes, and what is truly an IPN level crisis. 

Behind the scenes, the network is a marvel of bioengineering, with closely guarded secrets to its functioning. No technology on Earth could process, transmit, and convey the information at the necessary speeds, so a new technology was created, by using cloned grey matter and nerves from the Instant’s own brain. Nothing else could’ve done it. But how does the information travel? Supposedly, these nerves stretch in a network throughout the world, each connecting to a regional sensor node, all coming back to wherever the IPN HQ is located. Such an experimental technology is dangerous. Thank goodness the Instant’s allies don’t know who really built it, or trouble may brew…

Excerpt an interview with Paragon on THE SHOWDOWN with Cathy Creighton (Circa 2010)

C - “Recently, reports have emerged, particularly in the American Midwest, of the Prayers for Paragon movement gaining strength. Do you have any comments on that?” P - “Sorry, I’m afraid I haven’t heard of that. People are praying for me?” C - “They’re praying TO you. Congratulations. You’ve reached godhood. Only took you coming back from the dead to do it.”

P - “Oh, I’m um, flattered I supposed, but there’s really no need. I’m not a god.”

C - “Why not? Your devotees would argue the woman who stitched reality itself back together is as close to God as any of us will ever get to know.” P - “Sorry, I think you misunderstood. A god is something specific, at least the gods I know.”

C - “The ones you know?”

P - “Yes, like well. I suppose you might not recognize them. But the gods I know are all sort of- how do I put this? They’re stories. Living stories. Remembrance, worship, and belief help fuel them. And I understand that this might disqualify them from godhood in many cultures, such an ability to be quantified, but gods as I understand them have a specific definition, a criteria I don’t meet.” 

C - “So, you aren’t like them because you aren’t powered this belief or outside consciousness?” P - “Among other things, but that’s probably the main one.” C - “Are you weaker than them?” P - “....”

C - “For example, in a fight, who would win? I imagine you must have fought them if you met them, that’s what heroes do!” Creighton winks to camera, conspiratorially.

P - “Yes, I’ve fought some gods. We’ve resolved our differences since then, though.”

C - “Did you win?” P - “....Yes.” C - “So if they are deserving of worship, why wouldn’t you be? Then again, I suppose you never said you aren’t, just that you aren’t a god.” P - “Well hang on, I didn’t think you would assume I-” C - “You heard it here first folks. The old gods are dead, and Paragon killed them!” P - “I told you I didn’t kill any-”

Taking children to battle is a monster's game. Trying to keep them from being heroes is a fool's errand. Thus, sidekicks. The first sidekick was Comfort, the boy-healer who supported Lady Liberty, and he set the standard for many that would come after for years. Playing support, generally avoiding direct action confrontation, allowed to help, as he would whether he was allowed to or not, but under conditions. This worked, for a long time. There were missteps, there were mistakes, there were even tragedies. But no one thought there was a better way. Until Viscera. When he killed the Sidekick Squad, strung up their bodies for their mentors to find, drove said mentors to violence and madness, he broke something, in the hero community and the hearts of the public. Sidekicks were banned for years, policed with hovering relentlessness. Children are not to be in battle. It is insane they were ever allowed to be. 

But they wanted to be. And they would be. Heroes are too inspiring. The thrill is too tempting. To rebel against authority is an act of childhood in and of itself. And when you have power, and you can help someone, you do. That’s what they’d been taught, if not directly, by proof, by spacemen from the sky and those with nothing but masks and wits. So they would go it alone, in secret. And some would succeed. Others would get hurt, or worse. You can stop some, but only so many. And if they do it alone, there’s no one to help them. 

A bullet train with a hungering maw rips through time in space swallowing warriors for motives unknown. Once it has collected its army, they must fight through the train's endless cars to be the last fighter standing, while dealing with whatever else the train has picked up along the way. The Pain Train usually grants some sort of reward to the winner, before depositing everyone (or what's left of them) back in the time and place they were swallowed. The Train’s creator is unknown, its conductor only rumored, but the Train has a will, and it has themes. In the past, it has (in different trials) collected the greatest sword fighters from across the universe, the same warrior from different points in their life, the same warrior but from different alternate timelines, every descendant of Ghengis Khan between the age of 18 and 35, and every attendant of one year’s summer olympics. The trials are always combat. Not always lethal, but usually are. You don’t have to fight, if you don’t want to, of course. But there’s no other way off. There are aged corpses of those who tried. 

The most nefarious minds in villainy, brought together at last! Dr. Half-Life, the master of transformative radiation, with human trials by nuclear fire! Jyvan the Builder, The Mother of Ruin, the alien architect of the most terrifying weapons of war in the galaxy!  Reaperman, The living scythe that commands the dead and consumes the living! The Glutton, the Darkworld ruler-in-absentia, eater of all magic, older than man!  Terrorformist, the pathokinetic who makes the gods tremble in fear! Cambrian, the planets wrath made manifest! And Deathtective, the solver of “unbreakable” cases, killer of the unkillable! Alone, each could bring a city to its knees, on the rare occasions their egos let them work together, the world is at their knees!

Ten thousand realms of malignance rest in a reality below our own. We were one of them, once, or so the stories go. But we fought our way to the top, freed from the corrupting influence of being awash in magic, where it would’ve seeped into our bodies and turned us from mortals into beings of stories and myth, we were allowed to become human. The Seven Sentinels of the Summit (including Amulet, Dreamland, and other unknown parties), protect Earth’s position as the surface reality. Below, the realms close enough to exist in a form that can understand their plight and our freedom plot to take our place. General Havoc rallies the endless armies of the Bloodlands. The No-Man on the Unmoon creeps through dreams to drag us to the Undersky. Inferno of the Pyre waits still for the bonds of reality itself to melt. Nobody does nothing, and never has. King Sheep, Uoy, Clericus, Merlin the Mad, Aurchavaust, and hundreds of others make plots of their own. If you do not know of what they’ve tried to do to us, you are lucky. Look into it no further. 

Once, a smith loved a god of lies. The smith was rejected, for his craft was one of truth, of honest expression and exact formulas, and the god could never see him embracing the art of trickery. Undeterred, the smith forged a weapon in falsity, funded on fake promises, directing his apprentice with ill advice, engraving it with another’s mark. He made a weapon that loves a lie. This weapon can win any battle, but only if wielded earnestly by one fighting for a falsehood, one who does not know the truth. Proud of his work, the smith presented the weapon to the god of lies as proof that he did understand the god’s craft. The god laughed, and rejected him again. The crestfallen smith fell to his knees, realizing the first reason he’d been given was no more true than anything else about the god, and his tears gave the weapon its life, the first lie of its birth revealed.

The existence of extranormal entities traces its lineage back centuries, but they were far and few between, or, particularly in the case of magical beings, well contained from public knowledge, relegated to the realm of rumor and mythos. This only really changed in the 40s, and since then, the “eras” of metahumanity have been established by historians to understand trends of behavior amongst the superhuman community.

The Golden Age: Running through the mid 40s to mid 60s, this era is considered to have begun with the debut of Lady Liberty at the tail end of WWII, her being the first person to match the modern conception of a “superhero”, and end with the debut of Paragon. Powers back then were less flashy, less dramatic and frankly less powerful. Many heroes were completely unpowered, mystery men taking advantage of the ability of a mask to make a myth. Criminals had yet to fully embrace this tactic however, and the ratio of superheroes to supervillains far favored the heroes. This would be the last time this was true.

The Silver Age: Running through the mid 60s to mids 80s. An era characterized by a sharp spike in power, as well as in strangeness. New technologies created monsters and drew the attention of aliens, magic leaked into the world in greater numbers, villains embraced the idea of masks of their own as the number of enhanced beings spiked. Paragon was among the first and the greatest of this new generation, and set a good role model for how power should be used. There was an element of disbelief to the strangeness that would occur in this era, while an undercurrent of restraint on both sides was always employed, under an unspoken understanding of mutually assured destruction. This era came to an end with three decisive blows in the same year, Paragon’s death, a series of brutal murders of sidekicks, and the release of the deadly virus known as the Metaphage.

The Bronze Age: Running through the mid 80s to the mid aughts, the metaphage brought the level of power being wielded down considerably, and kept many outside influences away. Governments that had seen no hope in handling extranormals before now engaged them with a vengeance, and when the upper limit of power was no longer annihilation, conflicts could get more severe and more personal. A dark and bloody time, of old norms being broken and old bonds breaking apart. It was only when Paragon was reborn shortly after Boffin cured the metaphage that these dark days ended.

The Modern Age: So it is called now, so it will be until a new one arises. Running from the mid aughts to the present. The scars of the bronze age remain, but power has begun approaching the ridiculous levels of the silver age again, if not the extranormal population. A new generation of young heroes and villains inspire hope for a balance, for understanding, for a world that could heal from the violence of times past, but the bottle has been opened, and can’t be recorked. An edge lies below the surface, and when it surfaces is often hard to predict. 

The greatest heroes of our modern age! They are our guardians, our heroes, our golden gods who would never presume such a title. Paragon, the reborn, the beloved, the all-powerful, the leader. The Instant, that blur of gold, who keeps us all safe from threats we never have even a moment to see. Outworlder, alien, warrior, princess, metamorph, doer of battle and lover of life. Amulet, that mysterious magician, covered in artifacts, taking and giving sanctuary from somewhere beyond our ken. Technowarden, built for evil, who chose good, a machine that reminds us all we can be better. Vyros Knight, pilot of a machine from the stars, who in body is just a person like us. Also Agent Everyman. We don’t care for the pet M.E.R.A. stooge, but that indestructible man stands with them nonetheless, so his name shall be said.

Probus City is the Super City of Tomorrow! New York may have given rise to the nation’s first superhuman in Lady Liberty, but all its best have called Probus home for generations. You’ll of course want to hop on the hero sightseeing armored buses, but also be sure to visit the Stardome Arena for Sparkleball matches and other super sports! After, relax at the recently opened Xerxes Plaza (sponsored by the Xerxes Corporation) and be sure to visit its indoor/outdoor shopping megaplex. For some history, The American Heroes Museum covers Metahumans through the ages, and the old Probus Research Center that helped this city get its start offers daily tours! The Newton Energies Power Plant visitor experience is presently closed due to villain attacks. Again.

The basic understanding of extranormal abilities, often referred to as superpowers (because that’s what they are) is broken down into 5 basic categories, based on the source of said abilities. 

Altered (ALT) - Abilities provided by a change in a beings base physiology. Your radioactive bites or hard water vapors fall into this category.

Biological (BIO) - Abilities provided by inherent physiology of a being. Aliens using their natural talents and other non-human entities usually fall into this category.

Magical (MGC) - Abilities sourced from mystical energies fall into this category. Spellcasters, artifacts, and the powers of beings from the Darkworlds are found here. 

Technological (TEC) - Abilities provided by technology. Power armor, cyborgs, freeze rays and nanobots fall into this category. 

Trained (TRN)  - Abilities that are not actually extranormal, but are impressive enough that they far outstrip any non-metahuman/enhanced being in the same field. Your world's greatest detectives or marksmans fall in here.

Almost anyone can be categorized by one or a combination of these descriptors, and going forward I’ll mark characters with these tags are relevant to give a sense of their deal at a glance. For example the Inspector, a non powered human with incredible detective skills and gadgets, would be marked as (TRN/TEC) with his physical and mental training being the most important aspect, and his gadgets being secondary. 

Some creatures will have multiple built in. For example, creatures from the infernal realms known as the Darkworlds may have innate traits that are also, inherently, magical. Most of those creatures will automatically be (MGC/BIO).Just because something is Biological doesn’t mean its not magic, just because you’ve been exposed to nanobots that ALT your being doesn’t mean your powers aren’t TEC based as well.