TYPE
Now what?
- S E T T I N G -
Twenty one years in the future, in the year 2040 - primarily set around Vancouver, Canada - within an alternate reality where some individuals are set upon with great power. Technology remains mostly as what we expect. Things like Mars Missions are underway, Most of the world has slowly converted to renewable energy and - while there remains pockets holding more 'extreme' views, for the most part it seems like the world had been settling down due to the lack of drive for natural resources. In the last twenty or so years, however, people have started exhibiting a great variety of other-natural abilities (the cause of which is described below) - which has caused tensions to rise once more. Some have come to deify these people, forming cults of personality around the few who have taken to the public sphere. With society primed for 'social justice' movements, the Other-Natural individuals quickly found themselves the subject of social-ethical-and-political inquiry, going through their own 'civil' rights movements in the span of only a few years, securing a general sense of 'person-hood' most other humans have come to expect. During this time a few individuals have come to rise as the 'cultural and social' cornerstones of other-natural folk. Chief among them being Dr. Valentin “Valentine” Novikov, a man as mysterious as he is cranky, offering a wealth of scientific research, financial backing and 'media' controversy - taking a clear position in the face of a concerned globe which read something like "Yeah, you can either now make peace with this or I am gonna have to fuck you up" - a sentiment smoothed over by his own in-house public relations. Others include the noted activist and historian, Dr Ostrowski - assassinated while speaking at the UN (NOTED: While the bomb disintegrated her almost immediately, Valentine whom had been accompanying her was unharmed), as well as Professor of Ethics - Dr. Hermann Hahn - who now works for Valentin at his facility.
Why are there powers?
- These are innate abilities with a primarily genetic component.
- 77 years ago, the Soviet Union tested out "The Tsar Bomba" - a 100 megaton warhead, releasing upon impact a shock-wave that could be felt in Northern Germany, shattering windows and disrupting telecommunications in places so far as Paris.
- The resulting release of hyper-condensed radioactivity left the island on which it was tested, and some parts of northern Russia, uninhabitable since.
- Animals and people within a 60 mile radius were killed almost immediately, while those within a 100 mile radius required near immediate radiation poisoning treatment, most dying within the span of a few weeks.
- The after effects of the earth shattering explosion and its impact upon the environment of the immediate area gave rise to a hurricane which littered Europe in nuclear fallout. This problem was further intensified 25 years later with the Chernobyl disaster.
- The phenomena has been cause for both political and scientific interest for almost 80 years, as many seek to either use it to to further anti-nuclear sentiments, or encourage its further development.
- While those who had either researched the phenomena, or were directly affected by it (and managed to survive) went about their lives as they might have regardless of the bomb, the generation following directly from them showed extensive cases of malformation, their DNA failing to replicate in consistent manners. It is known that most of this generation died either in development, within the first few weeks of birth, or early in their lives from severe cases of cancer. The children that managed to survive from this generation were generally considered “Miracle” cases, many of them taken into advanced clinical studies and reported on (at least in the scientific community) for many years.
- The generation that followed from the ‘Miracle’ generation, were the first to show rather advanced - yet stable mutations. While many were still deformed, or died early or were prone to cancer - some were born without any physical defects. Instead, they seemed to have developed unique properties which quickly led to them being compared to ‘superheroes’.
