History

## **The Atlanteans**

Four thousand years ago, a foreign civilization manifested itself upon the surface of the Earth. Advanced beyond human understanding and wielding godlike power, its people built a shining enclave for themselves floating high above the raging waves of an impassable ocean. Its true name was never recorded in human history, but the early Greeks would come to call this place **Atlantis**, and the beings that lived there the **Atlanteans**.

Looking out upon the early city-states of humanity, the Atlanteans saw a primitive race with the intelligence and potential to one day join them as peers. Reaching out across the world, they snatched up a handful of exceptional humans and manipulated their biology to grant them nigh-immortal bodies and incredible powers. In exchange for their gifts, these uplifted humans would serve the Atlanteans as emissaries, carrying their philosophies out into the world and shaping human culture to be more like their own.

Obeying the word of their new masters, the empowered superhumans spread out across the continents, and became revered far and wide as gods and kings. As the first known metahumans, they would later come to be known as **Precursors**, whose strength and wisdom helped fuel the development of early civilizations in Europe, China, Egypt, and South America. All the while, the Atlanteans quietly guided them along, waiting for the day when humanity could finally join them in enlightenment.

For all their intelligence, however, they could not fully understand the flaws of human nature. As the centuries wore on, the Precursors grew greedy and impatient, scheming against each other and engineering wars between their nations. They began to look upon their masters and wonder: why should they be the ones to serve?

## **Ragnarok**

Among the Precursors, one of the greatest and most favored by the Atlanteans was the man named **Prometheus**. Nurturing first Greece and then the successful empire of Rome, he was able to win their trust and learn many of their deeper secrets. Unbeknownst to his masters, however, Prometheus had ambitions of his own. When the time was ripe, he gathered dozens of his fellow Precursors and launched an all-out rebellion against Atlantis, flying out across the seas to lay siege to the otherworldly city itself.

The ensuing war between the alien race and the gods they had created was not witnessed by any mortal eyes. It is said that Prometheus stole something from the heart of Atlantis, a forbidden weapon of such terror that it threatened to burn the entire world. Earthquakes rippled out across the globe, entire tectonic plates shifting from the fury of the supernatural clash. The landmass that would later become Lellorium was lifted out of the sea, while the western Roman empire fell almost overnight, its cities collapsing into rubble.

In the aftermath of it all, as humans peered up at the skies in awe and dread, they found that their gods had vanished. The city of Atlantis was destroyed, and with it the Atlanteans, scattered fragments of their inscrutable technologies washing up on beaches for centuries to come. The Precursors, too, had been nearly wiped out, with the few survivors so badly weakened that they had little choice but to hide themselves away. For the first time in over two millennia, the human race was left without its gods, free to determine its own fate.

## **The Human Age**

Unbound and uncontrolled, history began to flow along its natural course. Rome was left sacked and burned by invading tribes, and elsewhere the Mayan empire and the early Caliphates rose to prominence. While wars raged and empires shifted, however, a new phenomenon was taking shape across the globe.

Shattered pieces of arcane machinery weren’t the only things left behind by the Atlanteans. Without a guiding hand, their biotechnology spread unchecked through the ecosystem, causing several species-wide extinctions in the process. Flowing across borders and along trade routes, it rapidly colonized all existing nations, causing a fundamental change in the human genome that would persist for millennia to come.

In each generation, a small percentage of humans were being born with unexplainable powers over natural and unnatural phenomena. These abilities were extremely weak at first: a manipulator of fire could do nothing more impressive than light a candle with their bare fingers, and a telekinetic could barely lift a small pebble. Even so, people immediately took notice, and reactions varied wildly between different cultures. Some parts of the world lauded these powers as blessings from the vanished gods of old, while in others decried them as witchcraft and heresy. Scholars coined many names for those gifted with such traits, and it wasn’t until the Renaissance that they settled on a single term—Metahumans.

For a long time, Metahuman powers remained insignificant in strength and numbers, though each passing generation was a fraction stronger than the last. In the meantime, the world carried on much as it otherwise would: the Mongols wrought their conquest all across Asia, and European nations steadily grew in power, sending fleets of ships out over the oceans to stake their claims in distant lands. For a thousand years, technology and geopolitics would determine who ruled the world, while Atlantis and the Precursors faded further and further into the mists of legend.

## **Heroes, Villains, and Gods**

By the dawn of the seventeenth century, Metahumans had become too powerful to be ignored. Their unique abilities gave them a distinct advantage in combat, and cultures that had once held them in contempt began to quietly cease their persecution, fearing the possibility of a superpowered rebellion. As their freedoms increased, so too did their fame: many records of these times depict ‘metas’ as either brave explorers or fearsome outlaws.

In the 1700s the world received an even greater shock: the Precursors were real, and several of them were still alive. The mighty **Ọya** was the first to openly declare her presence, and united dozens of African tribes under the banner of the Yoruba before conquering nearly half of the continent. Not long after, **Tezcatlipoca** would rise in Central America and wage bloody war against all in his path, leading both **Hades** and **Baba Yaga** to form a united front against his advance. While the rousing gods would eventually reach a new stalemate, their clashes fundamentally altered the global balance of power, with unintended repercussions elsewhere.

With Europe reeling from the loss of its African colonies, the United States declared its independence and rose in violent rebellion. When it became clear that they might actually win, the neighboring British colony of Lellorium began its own revolt, starting a two-front conflict that not even the vast English navy could keep up for long. Before long, two newly forged nations had risen from the ashes and begun their rise to prominence.

The increasing strength of meta abilities, meanwhile, was outpacing the development of weapons and technology. Legal slavery and indentured servitude came to an early end across the globe, as the upper classes learned that even a single oppressed servant could turn into a massive threat overnight. While many saw these changes as a positive, governments still had a big problem on their hands: how did one enforce the law on Metahumans too powerful to be rebuked? Their varied abilities and unstable psychology made them difficult to control in military and police forces, and unchecked clashes between them could cause untold amounts of damage. As metas became more aware of their own capabilities, a wave of violence spread across the globe, with tyrannical villains and murderous vigilantes turning entire cities into their personal warzones.

Unexpectedly, the solution emerged from Lellorium, which at the time was on the verge of collapsing due to Metahuman violence. Rather than try to crack down on superpowered fighting, which many countries had already tried and failed, they instead *embraced* it. A new edict was established: willing metas could enlist themselves as independent public Heroes, and gain legal recognition as law enforcement officials working in tandem with the police. In return, they would have to abide by a strict code of honor, one that minimized civilian casualties and unnecessary damage to property:

* *Targeting the innocent friends and family of an enemy is prohibited.*
* *Rape and sexual assault are prohibited.*
* *Lethal force must only be employed when necessary to save lives.*
* *Firearms are lethal weapons, and follow the same rule as above.*
* *Violence must be contained and resolved, not escalated.*

To ensure the success of their plan, the government launched a massive campaign to make being an official Hero as attractive as possible. Not only were Heroes given leeway to work outside of the police chain of command, they also received handsome compensation for their services, and were advertised everywhere as saviors come to solve the crisis for once and for all. The press was flooded with positive endorsements, and metas flocked to the new career opportunity, including many former villains. In time, a steady flow of propaganda and bright, flashy costumes won the hearts of the public, and created an aura of celebrity that lead even more metas to register. Superheroes now patrolled the streets in teams, and the Codes of Honor were firmly established as the norm. Though violence between metas continued, the number of civilian casualties fell sharply, especially once the government began lowering sentences for villains who followed the Codes.

Having witnessed the system’s success, other countries applied similar methods, using money and fame to manipulate metas into policing and regulating themselves. Heroes and villains who obeyed the Codes were allowed to duke it out and gain massive public followings, while those who broke them were harshly punished before their dangerous actions could threaten the new order. Though one could say it was a peace built on false ideals, most people were willing to let themselves be deceived, aware on some level that this game of costumed heroics was far better than the lawless alternative.

## **An Otherworldly Invasion**

On a cold autumn day in 1963, it emerged from the clouds above the Aegean Sea. Five miles tall, and bearing a shape that seemed to mock the human form, its very footsteps set off tsunamis as it waded its was towards the shore.

In decades prior, two Great Wars had embroiled the world’s nations in conflict, and once again shown off the ruinous potential of Metahuman powers. Savage Broken creatures now roamed the earth, half-sentient manifestations of Atlantean biotech that had hijacked the dying bodies of its hosts. Like natural disasters, they wandered haphazardly about and left devastation wherever they went… But this, this was something different. Its size and shape seemed to defy the very laws of reality, yet it acted with a clear and cruel intelligence, methodically seeking out coastal towns and pulverizing them underfoot. Then, as the shattered remains of the coastline slid into the sea, it turned its attention inland.

Millions of people raced to flee their homes. Few were fast enough. Athens was reduced to dust, Thessaly a broken wasteland. In an act of desperation, the Precursor **Hades** threw himself into battle, fighting with all his formidable ancient powers just to buy his people a few more hours to escape.

By the next morning, nothing was left. The Precursor was dead. The heroes of Greece were dead. An entire country lay crushed and flattened, devoid of all visible life. The aggressor vanished much as it had arrived, dissolving into an ashen cloud that floated serenely off into the sky.

The events of that day shocked the world. In the face of an unknown and seemingly unstoppable enemy, the major powers immediately convened an emergency summit. Heroes, Precursors, and national governments all saw the need for a united front, a means of collaborating against a foe none of them could face alone. It was **Baba Yaga**, a former friend of Hades, who took the lead and founded the **International Peacekeeping Treaty Organization**, or IPTO.

The IPTO’s purpose was twofold. First, it would serve as a peacekeeping force and diplomatic intermediary between human nations, ensuring that despite their differences they never again came into open conflict. Second, it would draw upon the best and brightest from all those nations to study and counteract threats to human civilization, be they Broken, Precursor, or this mysterious new **Desolate-class** entity. Though not all nations agreed with or contributed to the IPTO, its influence was great enough to head off dozens of international incidents, and kept the world almost entirely free of war.

These efforts were well warranted, as it turned out: the destroyer of Greece was not the only one of its kind. One by one, horrific entities would suddenly appear to wipe out entire cities or even regions, only to hide themselves away for years at a time before they reemerged. Thousands of humanity’s best and strongest went to face them, and thousands fell, managing only to stall or mitigate the damage at the cost of their lives. In spite of the IPTO’s best efforts, the world seemed condemned to a slow apocalypse, overwhelmed by an alien invasion it could barely comprehend.

Perhaps it was fate, that Lellorium would once again be the country to stand against certain doom. In the year 2021, the Desolate-class entity **Nightfall** began an intercontinental rampage that destroyed Berlin and Los Angeles in turn, with each victory only strengthening the eldritch monstrosity. After infiltrating Lellorium via its insidious servants, the creature would emerge to strike against the entire nation, defeating its military and police forces one after the other.

The heroes, however, would not give in so easily. Rallied by the mysterious Precursor **Newton Gripe**, and temporarily allied with villains who had once been their worst enemies, they fought a weeks-long war on multiple fronts, tearing through the Desolate’s endless forces. Against all odds, they would drive the invader back to its own foul dimension, and cleanse their streets of the flesh-eating creatures it had spawned.

One year on, the international aid flooding into the country has fueled a gigantic reconstruction effort and brought Lellorium's cities back to their thriving former selves. Though over a million were left dead by the attack, these numbers are being quickly replenished as immigrants now flock to its borders. For better or for worse, the populous island nation is now known as a beacon of hope, a land of heroes that endures against all disasters—and many hands, from the protectors of the world to those who would unmake it, now seek to guide its fate.