The Modern Age of Supers (Patreon)

The following is backstory for a superhero campaign setting I ran a few games in about a decade ago. 

The first known super in the Modern Age was a Confederate super soldier known as Southern Cross. The result of an occult ritual binding a primal spirit to the human body, Southern Cross served as a rallying point for Confederate forces. Despite his superhuman capabilities, Southern Cross was slain at the Battle of Cynthiana in 1864. The death of Southern Cross broke the spirit of the Confederate Army and General Lee signed the Unification Proclamation alongside President Lincoln January 27, 1865, ending the American Civil War. A few months after the end of the war, Southern Cross’s grave was reported vandalized, and the body stolen. It was soon discovered that Southern Cross’s grave hadn’t been vandalized but that his undead body had dug itself out, with his public declaration that he wouldn’t rest until the South was free from the North.

It wasn’t until fifteen years later that the event that truly triggered the Modern Age of Supers occurred. In the first few months of the First Boer War, British Private Jack White stumbled into an oasis after being separated from his platoon. Drinking from the cool waters, he was endowed with the might and power of an ancient, unnamed god. Leaving the oasis, Jack White unintentionally broke a seal that kept the potential for godlike powers among the human population locked away. Dubbing himself Union Jack after his country’s flag upon his return, Jack White couldn’t have possibly imagined what his time in Africa unleashed unto the world.

The first super to appear after the opening of Pandora’s Box, as the seal would be named in later decades, was a British vigilante that called himself Excalibur after King Arthur’s famous blade. A swordsman of supernatural skill, he remained active from 1887 until dying in 1915 fighting a German super soldier. The next super was initially a villain, though many would debate if his actions later in his life would redeem him, the alter-ego of the brilliant Dr. Jekyll: the brutish though still brilliant Mr. Hyde. The next public super was not from Europe, but was instead Canadian. Stag had unparalleled leaping capabilities and senses, and used those abilities to become one of the most successful Canadian Mounties since their formation a decade before.

Several more supers began popping up around the world, with seemingly no connection between them, not even location. But it wasn’t until almost twenty years after the appearance of Union Jack that the first super team formed. Having survived the fall at Reichenbach Falls, Professor James Moriarty used the opportunity to fake his death and began building a personal army and military technology unmatched by the rest of the world at large. Calling himself ‘The Fantom’ and staging attacks on both Britain and Germany while framing the other, he set the stage for a world war with him selling advanced weapons to both sides.

Seeking to capitalize on the newly emerging human weapons, Moriarty disguised himself as a servant of the British Queen and created a fictional title for his targets to rally behind: the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Alan Quartermain, renowned hunter, marksman, and tracker. Captain Nemo, skilled martial artist and captain of the Nautilus, the world’s first submarine. Mina Harker, vampire and chemist. Rodney Skinner, the second Invisible Man. Dorian Grey, immortal and Moriarty’s spy within the League. Finally, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Though the League thwarted Moriarty’s attempts to spark a world war, the Napoleon of Crime escaped to vex the team on multiple occasions.

With the exception of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the supers of the world primarily served in the military or law enforcement of their home nations. Few saw a problem with this as while they had powers most were easily understandable and could be countered with the proper application of technology or military force. Even the use of supers in World War I saw little change to the general way of life. There were a few supers who used their abilities for their own gain, but by and large the supers had lost the mystical awe and fascination they had in their initial decades of appearance. Then came the mighty Atlas.

Atlas was an African-Thai super who was also master of five different fighting styles: American boxing, Muay Thai, Tai Kwan Do, the kung fu style known to the West as Drunken Boxing, and South American Capuera. While his martial art training would be more than enough to make him a match for all previous supers, he also had seemingly unlimited strength and speed, making him without a doubt the most powerful super alive at the time.

He remained a relative minor super, despite his power, for most of his career. While refusing to serve in the armed forces when America was drawn into World War II, he still remained relatively unknown until 1944 when a Japanese invasion force of thirty thousand infantry and almost three hundred Japanese supers (based off of the original Japanese super Kamikaze) attacked the continental United States. With almost every super that the United States had in the armed forces, Atlas was the only one in the city that was being used as a beachhead.

Atlas singlehandedly held off the Japanese invasion force for two and a half days. Though his speed and strength were unmatched by any, his endurance levels and durability were just as limited as they would be for anyone who had his level of training. Eventually, an unknown soldier got lucky. June 15, 1944 1:34PM, Atlas died after fighting nonstop for sixty three hours and forty seven minutes. Thirty thousand troops and two hundred ninety five supers attacked the West Coast. Less than six hundred troops and fifty three supers survived the force of nature that was Atlas. By that point, the military reinforcements arrived to drive off the broken invasion force. Despite having gambled the majority of their forces into that attack, Japan refused to surrender.

Across the nation, news reports spoke of a single super who courageously held off the largest invasion force the Japanese had marshaled against the United States. Atlas became a martyr, stirring the hearts and determination of the American public. The city that Atlas defended was renamed in his honor, and after the war millions flocked to it, turning a small coastal city into a bustling metropolis. The death of Atlas had more effects than any could have anticipated. In the decade after the war, millions of African Americans began pointing out how the greatest hero the nation had wasn’t a white man, but a black man. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a peaceful civil rights movement that resulted in the outlaw of legalized segregation in December of 1958.

But despite the Japanese military being broken, the German forces remained strong. Focusing increasingly on supers and less on conventional military, the Nazi regime began fielding increasingly bizarre supers. Ones whose powers weren’t simply enhanced physical abilities, but ones capable of projecting energy, manipulating the basic forces of the universe, soaring through the skies under their own power, even sorcery. Then, in September 1944, Germany played their last major gambit.

The entire number, almost ten thousand in total, of Nazi supers launched a two pronged surprise attack on Britain and the United States while the conventional military reinforced the Eastern Front. The British attack was met by the super-team Knights of the Realm (which consisted of ten British supers led by Union Jack) coordinating the defense as well as three hundred supers apiece from Britain and Canada as well as all five hundred supers that Australia could field.

The force attacking America was led by the strongest super that Nazi Germany had: the Iron Cross. While America had more supers to their name than almost any other world power (only Russia and Mexico had more), relatively few were in any position to provide defense against the upcoming attack. While the other Nazi strike force adopted a strategy that had their entire attack focused on one city at a time, Iron Cross chose to use a different tactic due to the sheer geographical size of America. Splitting his forces into five groups of one thousand supers each, he directed each of his four lieutenants to lead one group apiece while he led the fifth. The chosen targets were New York City, Atlantic City, Boston, Annapolis, and Iron Cross would lead the attack on Washington D.C. personally.

Gift, a living poison, attacked New York but the hydrokinetic super Twin Bolt, an American spy within the ranks of the Nazi supers, turned the Hudson into an impenetrable bubble and drowned the entire invading force. Alder-Auge, a sniper of unmatched skill, led his strike on Boston and successfully crippled the city’s industry. Blitz, the fastest man alive now that Atlas had passed on, led the strike on Atlantic City, but was ultimately foiled due to the city’s unusually large population of supers. Dachs, a walking juggernaut, marched on Annapolis and managed to raze the city to the ground, though he lost seventy nine percent of his forces doing so. Iron Cross planned his attack perfectly. Within an hour he and his forces had decimated any defense the city’s supers mustered. Fortunately, an unaccredited source leaked Iron Cross’s attack to the American government. The US government was evacuated in secret by Sorcerer Mystier, the world’s most powerful spellcaster, to a pocket dimension where they would be safe. As soon as Iron Cross moved on, Sorcerer Mystier returned the American government to the Material Plane.

Though the assault on the United States destroyed several industrial points, it ultimately failed to achieve its goal: take the United States out of the war. Iron Cross and his forces were recalled back to Germany once word of the sheer destruction that was dealt to the New York assault force reached Nazi SS ears. The attack on Britain was ultimately halted and then driven back when Union Jack, the nation’s first super, unleashed previously untapped levels of power.

German efforts in World War II officially ended in March of 1945 with the suicide of Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s noted increasing instability as the war went on lead some conspiracy theorists to suggest that a new kind of super was secretly controlling Hitler from behind the scenes. Iron Cross along with a large portion of the Nazi party disappeared almost immediately afterwards. Their whereabouts remained one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century.

The only Axis nation still warring with the Allies was Japan. The majority of Nazi supers who weren’t captured by the Allies with the fall of Germany had fled to their allies, including the strongest one second to Iron Cross: Black Death. Any assault on Japanese shores would be bloody and costly, though if only by sheer numbers the Allies would succeed. American bombers began to make flying bomb dropping runs on major cities while a combined Allied fleet blockaded the island nation. Were it practically any other island nation such a siege could have theoretically worn away at it until surrender would be the only practical option, but Japan was too large and had too isolationist a history for that.

The US government was unwilling to lose potentially thousands of soldiers that simply landing on Japan’s beaches would cost, so instead chose another option. Nazi Germany had spent untold amounts of money researching new ways to grant ordinary soldiers super powers, but they didn’t put all of their eggs into one basket. They also researched advancements in conventional weapons technologies, and laid down the groundwork for the mightiest bomb the world had ever seen. On June 7, 1945 3:32 PM, the United States dropped the first A-Bomb used outside of testing on Hiroshima. Two days later, at 7:35 AM, a second A-Bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. On June 19, at 5:29 PM the Emperor of Japan signed Japan’s declaration of surrender.