Champions 2040

Rough draft.

The year is 2040

 

The Dark Metropolis

 

Salt Lake City has been reduced to rubble twice in twenty years, the last time by an alien invasion (the Reptilians).  The old city is buried or sprawling on the outskirts.  Two major lakes are now full of dark and fishable water.  The deserts now have patches of thick forests from eco-forming attempts. 

 

The city itself is a dystopian urban sprawl consisting of shanty-towns, the undercity, and 3D printed suburbs ruled by sophisticated rings of organized criminals.  It more resembles in tenor a cyberpunk Las Vegas, than the clean-cut city of today.  This is the majority backdrop of the setting, a gothic slum where the commoners slave away in hive industries and lack the most basic human protections.  A single super can form a gang and carve out a territory to protect and exploit.

 

In the center of the city is massive cluster of shining skyscrapers and parks.  This apparent utopia is infested with the worst sorts of corruption. The media blacks out the truth- idolizing and white-washing the worst oppressors ever known to man.  The city creates (and sells) hero licenses, deputizing supers to act as an arm of the law against rogue supers.  On the surface, these "good" supers are not allowed to act against normal citizens, this is left to standard law enforcement.

 

Total population: thirty million.

In 2030, Salt Lake City was reduced to rubble.  Even though the populace was in the process of a near complete evacuation there was a massive loss of human life.  The country and the world rallied, and with the help of newly emerged heroes a gleaming metropolis was rebuilt. 

Technology

• Private medical companies will evacuate injured supers using quick-respond dropships.
  
• Buildings are 3D printed on site by massive printers that are brought in by helicopter.  Human workers put on finishing touches.  This has allowed exotic architecture.
•  Amazon and Google merge to become “Amazoogle” one of many emerging corporate states operating in the framework of regular governments.
• Uber still exists and has a fleet of car-sized flying drones that operate as flying taxis.
• Low altitude flight lanes exist for flying cars.  These look more like huge four-propeller drones and are mostly used by automated package and taxi services.

• In 2028 a teleporting hero (who can only go places he has seen) undertakes the years-long journey to Mars.  Once there he starts ferrying people and cargo to form a martian base.  It is now a city of 20,000 inhabitants.  Terraforming efforts are underway thanks to a separate hero “Plantman” who creates vast forests that start producing breathable air.
• Most things are run now by quarter-sized discs of glowing blue metal called “blues” or “batteries”.  Houses, cities, cars… pretty much everything.  Adapters for combustion engines are created and almost every car on the planet is switched to electric power.  The global power structure is shifted as fossil fuels go extinct.  This power source originates in the US, and puts the country into an enviable and prosperous state.  Naturally, this is also weaponized into power weapons.
•  Various hyper-intelligent heroes create  new technologies, but these are usually hidden, guarded, or just not generally adopted.
•  In 2033 a child hero dubbed “Hyperspace” was able to achieve faster than light travel and survive in space, but has an initial few terrifying experiences jetting into the vacuum and darkness of the void.  He is being trained to reach and explore interstellar regions.  He is now a teenager and has explored the solar system and made three trips to Alpha Centauri. He can travel one light year in an hour.
• President: Kimberly Noel Kardashian.  Second female president.
• Netflix bought out Disney.  It only costs $3.99 a month.

Society

• Androids (droids) are commonplace, but laws prohibit them from too closely approximating humans.  Droid rights is a hotly contested topic, the slavery of the time.  If robots are sentient, then they can’t be treated as slaves.  People are really worked up about this.  “Robosexuals” are generally reviled, but not persecuted.  Mocked but not jailed.  It’s the civil rights issue of the time.  Imagine walking down the street holding hands with your semi-sentient sex doll.  That.
• Drugs of all kinds can be easily “printed” on molecular home printers.  Not everyone can afford them, so there are centers (like Kinkos) that will print them.  It becomes impossible to ban substances anymore.  Governments at all levels take it on with education.  In 2025 there is a massive wave of home suicides using printed ultra-kill capsules.
•  Minority Report pre-crime is a fully real thing.  Predictive behavior allows for intervention.  However, people are not arrested for pre-crime.  It is only used as probable cause which usually leads to low level mediation.  For example: if someone seems apt to a violent act, they might start getting texts steering them to help lines and social services.  They might be watched.
• Heroes gaint massive cult followings, if they operate in the open. 
• Social Media!  The common form is a Public Relations AI that does all the media for you using behavior prediction to make posts for you.  Cell phones are a thing of the past.  Blue-powered microdrones hover or crawl around the typical citizen and record their behavior, posting as desired using customer-created algorithms.  Basically your phone is a floating personal assistant- out of the way hands-free.  Pet-droids are common. 

Supers

• Supers are a new thing.  Only fifteen years, so it’s still emerging.
• There are no Omega-level supers.  No supermans.
  
• To be a proper super-hero is one in a million.  There are about five hundred supers in the US, and ten thousand worldwide.  However, only about half of these are documented, the remainder are underground or unknown.  It is supremely rare to have powers. 
• There are ten-times these numbers of supers that simply have minor power.  Even these allow for them to distinguish themselves in all sorts of professions.  Most of these low-level supers are helpful.  They are not powerful enough to make waves and defend themselves solo, so they usually place nice and integrate into a group for protection.
• And by another factor of ten for Omega level supers.  One in ten supers has a world-shattering power. These creatures can take out whole countries.  Rumors of a hero that can stop time exist—he is a masked hero that claims to have lived twelve-thousand years between ticking of seconds.  He engages in performance art such as re-painting all cars in a city green, or turning all chairs and desks in a top secret installation upside down.  A three year old having a tantrum sunk the island of Kauai with gravity powers. It is beneath the waves.  She survived.  Another super-villain with molecular transmutation powers has destroyed the gold market by creating five hundred tons of gold.  He lived large until he was assassinated.
• Copycats are common.  In this universe all our comic book heroes exist (eg the Avengers) and they are often imitated by ultra-cosplayers who have the real powers to back it up.  Other media, like anime or wargames, have this phenomenon as well.  There’s an east coast gadgeteer operating as the “Space Marine” for example.
• Supers are a huge problem.  Countries and corporate states go out of their way to recruit and support them.  Special ops teams of supers are used to trouble-shoot problems.  Usually other supers.  Branches of law enforcement and military are created to respond to the threat.
• Super-stars.  Some supers are incredibly famous and wealthy.  One such hero “Tracker” can find anybody, anywhere with just a trace of DNA.  He is in high demand, but is also hunted by people who don’t want people found.  Solution- get rid of all the DNA.  Also, he can’t find a body (but knows that the person is dead).  But yeah, this guy is super-rich.
• Costumes are generally practical.  Not a lot of bright spandex out there. 

This following list is not accurate, it's just some old ideas.  I will elaborate soon on the actual roster of supers in the area.

 

 
Local Low Levels
These demi-heroes are usually based on 100-150 points, and have fairly regular human stat-lines.  They would get crushed in a real supers fight.  They are often well-equipped and have above average defensive measures (side-arms, light body armor, escape plans, bodyguards and so forth).

Reflex (aka Slappy, Josh McGee) a man with super-reflexes, so fast that he can hit bullets out of the air, or catch arrows easily.  He is not a speedster.  He works as a computer programmer.  He types and processes at 2500 WPM.  He needs specialty computers to keep up, and will literally destroy a regular keyboard.  He wears specialty gloves to absorb high impacts.

Drama Mama (aka Sally Elders) A mother of eight, who has a limited mental power, anyone that listens to her gets caught up emotionally in what she says, going along with her nonsense.  She can only affect a few hundred persons at a time.  She is also a fitness model (blonde, short hair).

Amputator (aka Darrel Drummond) A potentially very dangerous creature.  At short range (2m) he can perfectly cut off a limb, including a head, creating a perfectly healed stump on both sides.  He works at the hospital.  He does not like being called "Amputator".

Levitator (aka Vertical Babe, Babe Persons) She can fly, and has high strength, but can only go straight up or down.  She works as a contractor with a personal website for those that might need her very odd powers.  Sometimes in construction but also to get to difficult to reach places.  Often as a guide to exotic locales.

Amnesia (aka Mindwipe, Blackout, Shelley Warren) A teenage girl who can make someone completely forget the last one minute to one hour.  She has to touch the target's skull and look into their eyes.  After using her power she also forgets a similar amount of time.  She is very clever with it, and has an AI that updates her in the event of a blackout.

Horchata-man (aka Juan Gonzaga) He can create a liquid identical to horchata.  It manifests out of his hands.  It's kind of super-gross.  It's theorized that he could have more powers, such as to duplicate other liquids.  People are mostly grossed out by his body-created liquid and won't drink it.  The thing is that he can create firehose intensity streams.  As a local joke he is called up as a firefighter.  He's tried to make other liquids, but for whatever reason he has a mental block and can only make different flavors of horchata.

The Angels (aka Joseph and Estelle Stuart) Fraternal twins age twenty with the power to restore the human body.  Some of their clients make themselves sick again with bad mental state.  Needless to say they are fabulously wealthy and live on a private and incredibly secure compound in the eastern hills.  Normally the range of their power is touch, but working together they can increase the radius to a few meters and do mass healings.  They used to travel the world and do work in poorer countries, but after a bad experience they now keep to their compound or take short well-guarded forays into the world.

Cartwheel (aka Ruby Slippers) Yes, her parents named her that.  She is seventeen years old and a master gymnast.  Her power is to reduce personal impacts.  She can fall from a great height or hit the floor hard and bounce back, which combined with supernatural dexterity, make her by far the most accomplished gymnast in the world.

Mars Baby (aka Mars, Wynne Stover) The first boy child born on Mars has red skin.  He is now eight years old and has limited teleportation powers.  He can only jump after one minute of meditation and can go to any place where his living cells can be found.  He senses them like a web in his mind.  The range is currently limited to a hundred meters, but that range is expanding.

Muscle Man (aka Corinth Sapper) A Brazilian ex-pat who is a proper brick.  Big and muscly he can bench press a bus.  He's a performer that travels six months out of the year.  Well-respected and loved the world over.  Husband to Sparkler.

Sparkler (aka Dorla Sapper) Descended from icelandic pioneers, this mormon mom can create colorful explosions from paint that resemble metallic fireworks.  She uses this in performance art with her husband on the road.  Little known fact, she can use her powers to deadly effect when needed, causing smoke and deadly fire to rain out of common painted surfaces.  Her children have various even lower level powers as well.

Groundball (aka John Jimes) A low-level criminal and drifter discovers his power and creates a lair underneath the city.  His power is to summon a spherical force field around himself. The field is dark grey, and once he gains momentum there is no stopping him.  He can propel himself through the air and tunnel through buildings.

 

The Six Thousand (aka Kerry Orr)  A conspiracy theory blogger can create a small city of duplicates.  They calve off the original only and appear nude. They have a hive mind with long range telepathy and keep the original's intentions an attitudes. All duplicates know they are simulacrums.  When destroyed or if they are removed from a six mile radius, they revert to a foamy white goo.  The original is a good person who uses his powers to benefit the city.

Lightning Lady (aka Lana Pendelton) A local opera singer turned superhero. She has her own agenda an leads a band of elemental type heroes called Bad Weather.  She has standard lightning abilities, but can also fly, levitate and throw objects with sustained lightning bolts.  All the hammer of Thor without the hammer.  She can weather control and summon mega bolts that can turn buildings into glass craters (this takes many hours).  Group: Bad Weather

Clara Voyant

Mothman

Hyperios

Minion Groups
The Knuckleheads

The Gimpsuits

Delta Level Heroes

Game

Zero endurance not allowed.

Character concepts need to be at least semi-serious.  This isn’t “The Tick” or “Mystery Men”.  But it’s also not Blade Runner.