Emerald City & The World As We Know It...
Freedom City & Emerald City
Freedom City does not exist in this world. Most American metahuman activity is centered around New York City, instead. Emerald City was, until five years ago, comparatively quiet.
Rise of Metahumans
There have always been costumed adventurers and vigilantes. Recorded history is full of accounts of these individuals. But it wasn't until WWII where they really came to stand out. Many conscripted into military service.
Project Starfish
Project Starfish was the name of a private scientific effort to cure cancer.
Funded by billionaire industrialist Sebastian Swift in an attempt to save his daughter, Project Starfish bankrolled an enormous research project attempting to reproduce the regenerative effects of some echinoderms.
The scientist leading the research effort, Doctor Alexandra Harding, became "infected" with microbes from an extra-dimensional (possibly extra-solar) origin. These turned out to be sentient and pan-dimensional. Not only did they heal the cancer, they endowed Doctor Harding with extra-ordinary powers. Unfortunately, her talking to the "colonists" within her led her to being put under psychiatric observation, and she was unable to prevent the subsequent infection of several dozen volunteers for the radical last-ditch cancer treatment.
Twenty-two of the 120 volunteers survived. But every one of them showed complete remission and, surprisingly, evidence of metahuman powers.
Clandestine War
In an altered psychological state, Doctor Harding revealed her new abilities, thus setting off a multi-national hunt. Not just for the cure to cancer but the key to unlock metahuman abilities.
Swift moved his volunteer-patients to several remote locations around the world, to both safeguard them and prevent them from being taken into custody and used as guinea-pigs.
Project AEGIS
In late 2014, Sebastian Swift joined with AEGIS (American Elite Government Intervention Services) the federal arm of the Justice department tasked with overseeing and responding to superhuman threats. Swift positioned his former patients (those who volunteered to join Project AEGIS) to form a metahuman group answerable to the United Nations. The group still has it's base on Governor's Island in New York City.
A year later, the United Nations passes the Barcelona Accords, declaring that metahumans are human beings and retain all the rights and responsibilities of such.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:05, Sun 08 Mar 2020.