Post by eurofed on Nov 24, 2019 22:50:24 GMT
ITTL, two extraordinary events occurred during WWII that changed the course of human history forever. First, Nazi occultists stumbled upon a document of unknown origin that promised a way to transform suitable candidates into powerful superhumans. After a slow and difficult partial translation, the document seemed to describe the synthesis process for a substance that worked as a catalyst for superhuman transformation, a broad description of the process and its results, and a method to identify the rare subjects that were able to undergo the otherwise lethal transformation successfully. Over time, a combination of espionage, smuggling, and sharing between allies led the main WWII belligerents (Nazi Germany, USA, USSR, Britain, Japan) to share the secrets of nuclear and superhuman creation technology, albeit far from complete, and start their own research programs.
Second, an alien civilization invaded Earth. The alien invaders were broadly similar to Tau Cetians in the Worldwar series, if somewhat more ruthless: reptilian, monarchist, culturally monolithic, imperialist, colonialist, risk-averse perfectionists, prone to very slow and careful cultural and technological change. They had mastered STL interstellar flight and cold sleep. Their overall technological level was broadly similar to 1990s Earth, although somewhat more advanced in a few fields. They invaded our world out of a drive to absorb humanity in their empire as second-class citizens and settle the areas of Earth most favorable to their species (desert and tropical-equatorial regions) with their colonists. Alien attack forced the belligerent human powers to make a truce and form an uneasy but effective alliance against the common enemy. Technological superiority gave the aliens a serious initial advantage, although superior human talent for creativity, change, and adaptation surprised the invaders and threatened to force a stalemate in the conventional conflict. When the aliens felt conquest was getting too costly and difficult, they resorted to nuclear bombing. They nuked about 100-120 targets across the world, crippling the human powers enough to break their conventional fighting capability and force them to surrender in relatively short order. During the conflict, the human powers had been struggling to fulfil their nuclear and superhuman programs but they were still far from complete when the alien onslaught cornered them. Therefore, their governments reluctantly agreed to make a show of capitulating to the alien enemy, go underground to continue the struggle by means of guerrilla warfare, and continue the covert effort to develop nuclear weapons and the means to create superhuman fighters. The leaders that would not agree with this policy, such as Hitler, Stalin, and the extremist Japanese militarists, either died during the nuclear strike or were overthrown by more pragmatic and moderate members of the ruling elites. In 1944, Earth surrendered but the struggle continued.
The aliens occupied Earth but their numbers were insufficient to police it to a fine level. This allowed the human nations to keep their shadow governments functioning under a facade of collaboration and set up a worldwide resistance movement that gradually organized into a global network. The aliens were hard-pressed to contain the human Resistance that dealt them increasingly severe losses and demoralization to a degree they could hardly cope with. They reacted by large-scale repression that only stiffened and galvanized human will to fight, as well as enacting ethnic cleansing of the areas they earmarked as preferential for their colonization. Alien repression and ethnic cleansing combined with the previous effects of conventional conflict and nuclear strikes to deal serious losses to human population. This was especially relevant in certain areas of the planet, such as the desert and tropical-equatorial areas, which got largely depopulated of humans and partially resettled by the alien conquerors. All the way, the humans struggled with growing effectiveness to deal a death of 1000 cuts to the alien invaders, close the technological gap with them by stealing and reverse-engineering their tech, build nuclear arsenals, and create superhuman champions.
Given the circumstances, the antagonisms stirred by the World Wars, totalitarianism, and colonialism, as well as nationalist and sectarian divisions, got largely forgotten or at least put aside or lessened. The US and Canadian shadow governments fused into an unified structure (the United States of North America) that gradually absorbed the rest of North America; the European nations reconciled and merged into a continental union (the European Alliance), also thanks to the circumstances of surrender causing the downfall of the fascist regimes; the Europeans and the Soviets, and the Chinese and the Japanese, accomplished uneasy but effective wartime cooperation; the KMT and CCP factions in China, and the Hindu and Muslim nationalists in India, formed united fronts. To various degrees of effectiveness, all human nations took part and cooperated in the common struggle against the alien invaders. However, the bulk of the effort and the main role fell to the industrialized Big Four (USNA, EA, USSR, Japan) that supplied and led the global resistance network and pursued covert nuclear build-up and development of superhumans. Over time, other nations such as China, India, Brazil, and Argentina also acquired a role of increasing importance in the struggle thanks to their population and resources. Although far from unknown, genuine collaborationists (as opposed to double agents that often provided a useful facade for the shadow governments) were relatively rare, overwhelmingly unpopular, and often met a brutal end. Quislings failed to make a serious dent in the effectiveness of the resistance or compromise the secrecy of its research programs. The alien overlords largely turned unable or unwilling to understand the nuances of human culture enough to exploit its weak points.
By the early 1960s, the leaders of the Resistance decided the moment was right to shift the struggle from guerrilla warfare to a massive counteroffensive to drive the alien invaders off the Earth. They had achieved a sufficient degree of global cooperation and cohesion, stockpiled a sufficient amount of nukes and missiles, and even more importantly, they had at last managed to create a few superhumans. Covertly managing the nuclear and superhuman research programs under the snout of the alien overlords was slow and difficult, but at last it paid generous dividends. Deciphering the source document, synthetizing the catalyst, finding and testing suitable candidates for transformation, dealing with failures, and training the successful cases in outmost secrecy took a couple decades. But the rewards were huge and promised to turn the entire course of the war on its head. Each of the Big Four managed to stockpile a sizable nuclear arsenal and field a team of powerful superhuman fighters.
Researchers were not sure about the origin of the document that described the superhuman transformation process, but circumstantial evidence suggested either an alien civilization (different from and much more advanced than the reptilian invaders) or a lost advanced culture. Basically speaking, Atlantis or Precursors. The supers acquired a basic power set that was largely the same for all of them, albeit with a few individual variations. It included super-strength; nigh-invulnerability and superhuman stamina; regeneration; immortality; immunity to disease, poison, starvation, suffocation, and environmental conditions; fire and electricity manipulation; flight; super-speed; shape-shifting; telekinesis; superhuman agility and reflexes; and superior combat skills. The supers also had near-genius intellect, eidetic memory, math savant abilities, enhanced senses, and the uncanny (likely psychic) ability to understand and speak every language used by at least one million persons. Additional powers (apparently natural extensions of their basic abilities) that all supers were able to develop with further training and effort included matter manipulation and transmutation; control of the elements; healing and biomanipulation; and weather control.
In addition to this, each super had a few (typically one to three) personal signature abilities; they might be enhancements or refinements of some default power, or something entirely different. The supers got enough instinctual proficiency in their abilities to perform basic or moderately complex uses of their powers with little difficulty. However, especially complex or advanced applications would often require some special training to master or a serious amount of trial and error to perform adequately. The supers were usually able to exercise their superhuman abilities up to a village- or even town-sized scale for a sustained time before significantly taxing or tiring themselves, so they were one-person armies and living engines of mass destruction and construction. Greater levels of effort were often possible, although at the price of increasingly serious exhaustion or even physical damage.
The supers had perfect physiques, full control of their bodily processes, and were very difficult to kill. They were effectively invulnerable to conventional weapons and anything that humans or the Lizards might throw at them, short of nukes or equivalent damage. In normal circumstances only a sustained barrage of successful attacks by one or more of their peers, extreme sources of damage (ground zero of a nuclear explosion, being thrown into the sun), or hypothetical super-science weapons would be able to really threaten or seriously harm them. A sufficient amount of damage by such a source might kill or physically destroy them, but they were able to recover completely from any non-lethal damage. All available evidence pointed to the fact they were immortal and eternally young.
Thanks to their shape-shifting powers, the supers were able to adjust their bodily features, looks, and gender the same way normal humans might pick their clothing and makeup. Many did so as their fancy dictated, not so rarely even experimenting with features not natural to humans. Others favored a preferred shape. In both cases, the most common invariant features included preference for a humanoid form, extreme conventional attractiveness, and the ethnic traits common in one’s homeland. Dedicated shape-shifters usually picked a pansexual orientation; others’ preferences might be all over the place. However, exclusive homosexuality appeared to be rare, and exclusive heterosexuality not so frequent, making bisexuality in various degrees the prevalent norm. Most supers preferred taking the opposite-gender form of a sexual partner, although this was by no means a universal rule.
Later evidence showed supers were fertile and in full control of their reproductive abilities. Their offspring from mating with normal humans most commonly resembled humans with peak physical and mental abilities; sometimes they inherited a full set of superhuman powers. When two supers mated, they always bred true. The superhumans were able to imbue other people with similar abilities as themselves, although they often were reluctant to do so since the involved effort would deplete their energies for a good while. The task was substantially less exhausting if multiple supers teamed up to power the transformation, and/or the recipient was one of their children, someone with exceptional talents to begin with, or a potential responder to the catalyst. Supers’ children who inherited their powers got a survival-oriented and substantially diminished set of abilities at birth, and grew into their full power during adolescence. Much like other humans with better than average or optimally peak physical and mental abilities, it seemed non-powered children of supers had a much better chance of being responders to the catalyst.
Second, an alien civilization invaded Earth. The alien invaders were broadly similar to Tau Cetians in the Worldwar series, if somewhat more ruthless: reptilian, monarchist, culturally monolithic, imperialist, colonialist, risk-averse perfectionists, prone to very slow and careful cultural and technological change. They had mastered STL interstellar flight and cold sleep. Their overall technological level was broadly similar to 1990s Earth, although somewhat more advanced in a few fields. They invaded our world out of a drive to absorb humanity in their empire as second-class citizens and settle the areas of Earth most favorable to their species (desert and tropical-equatorial regions) with their colonists. Alien attack forced the belligerent human powers to make a truce and form an uneasy but effective alliance against the common enemy. Technological superiority gave the aliens a serious initial advantage, although superior human talent for creativity, change, and adaptation surprised the invaders and threatened to force a stalemate in the conventional conflict. When the aliens felt conquest was getting too costly and difficult, they resorted to nuclear bombing. They nuked about 100-120 targets across the world, crippling the human powers enough to break their conventional fighting capability and force them to surrender in relatively short order. During the conflict, the human powers had been struggling to fulfil their nuclear and superhuman programs but they were still far from complete when the alien onslaught cornered them. Therefore, their governments reluctantly agreed to make a show of capitulating to the alien enemy, go underground to continue the struggle by means of guerrilla warfare, and continue the covert effort to develop nuclear weapons and the means to create superhuman fighters. The leaders that would not agree with this policy, such as Hitler, Stalin, and the extremist Japanese militarists, either died during the nuclear strike or were overthrown by more pragmatic and moderate members of the ruling elites. In 1944, Earth surrendered but the struggle continued.
The aliens occupied Earth but their numbers were insufficient to police it to a fine level. This allowed the human nations to keep their shadow governments functioning under a facade of collaboration and set up a worldwide resistance movement that gradually organized into a global network. The aliens were hard-pressed to contain the human Resistance that dealt them increasingly severe losses and demoralization to a degree they could hardly cope with. They reacted by large-scale repression that only stiffened and galvanized human will to fight, as well as enacting ethnic cleansing of the areas they earmarked as preferential for their colonization. Alien repression and ethnic cleansing combined with the previous effects of conventional conflict and nuclear strikes to deal serious losses to human population. This was especially relevant in certain areas of the planet, such as the desert and tropical-equatorial areas, which got largely depopulated of humans and partially resettled by the alien conquerors. All the way, the humans struggled with growing effectiveness to deal a death of 1000 cuts to the alien invaders, close the technological gap with them by stealing and reverse-engineering their tech, build nuclear arsenals, and create superhuman champions.
Given the circumstances, the antagonisms stirred by the World Wars, totalitarianism, and colonialism, as well as nationalist and sectarian divisions, got largely forgotten or at least put aside or lessened. The US and Canadian shadow governments fused into an unified structure (the United States of North America) that gradually absorbed the rest of North America; the European nations reconciled and merged into a continental union (the European Alliance), also thanks to the circumstances of surrender causing the downfall of the fascist regimes; the Europeans and the Soviets, and the Chinese and the Japanese, accomplished uneasy but effective wartime cooperation; the KMT and CCP factions in China, and the Hindu and Muslim nationalists in India, formed united fronts. To various degrees of effectiveness, all human nations took part and cooperated in the common struggle against the alien invaders. However, the bulk of the effort and the main role fell to the industrialized Big Four (USNA, EA, USSR, Japan) that supplied and led the global resistance network and pursued covert nuclear build-up and development of superhumans. Over time, other nations such as China, India, Brazil, and Argentina also acquired a role of increasing importance in the struggle thanks to their population and resources. Although far from unknown, genuine collaborationists (as opposed to double agents that often provided a useful facade for the shadow governments) were relatively rare, overwhelmingly unpopular, and often met a brutal end. Quislings failed to make a serious dent in the effectiveness of the resistance or compromise the secrecy of its research programs. The alien overlords largely turned unable or unwilling to understand the nuances of human culture enough to exploit its weak points.
By the early 1960s, the leaders of the Resistance decided the moment was right to shift the struggle from guerrilla warfare to a massive counteroffensive to drive the alien invaders off the Earth. They had achieved a sufficient degree of global cooperation and cohesion, stockpiled a sufficient amount of nukes and missiles, and even more importantly, they had at last managed to create a few superhumans. Covertly managing the nuclear and superhuman research programs under the snout of the alien overlords was slow and difficult, but at last it paid generous dividends. Deciphering the source document, synthetizing the catalyst, finding and testing suitable candidates for transformation, dealing with failures, and training the successful cases in outmost secrecy took a couple decades. But the rewards were huge and promised to turn the entire course of the war on its head. Each of the Big Four managed to stockpile a sizable nuclear arsenal and field a team of powerful superhuman fighters.
Researchers were not sure about the origin of the document that described the superhuman transformation process, but circumstantial evidence suggested either an alien civilization (different from and much more advanced than the reptilian invaders) or a lost advanced culture. Basically speaking, Atlantis or Precursors. The supers acquired a basic power set that was largely the same for all of them, albeit with a few individual variations. It included super-strength; nigh-invulnerability and superhuman stamina; regeneration; immortality; immunity to disease, poison, starvation, suffocation, and environmental conditions; fire and electricity manipulation; flight; super-speed; shape-shifting; telekinesis; superhuman agility and reflexes; and superior combat skills. The supers also had near-genius intellect, eidetic memory, math savant abilities, enhanced senses, and the uncanny (likely psychic) ability to understand and speak every language used by at least one million persons. Additional powers (apparently natural extensions of their basic abilities) that all supers were able to develop with further training and effort included matter manipulation and transmutation; control of the elements; healing and biomanipulation; and weather control.
In addition to this, each super had a few (typically one to three) personal signature abilities; they might be enhancements or refinements of some default power, or something entirely different. The supers got enough instinctual proficiency in their abilities to perform basic or moderately complex uses of their powers with little difficulty. However, especially complex or advanced applications would often require some special training to master or a serious amount of trial and error to perform adequately. The supers were usually able to exercise their superhuman abilities up to a village- or even town-sized scale for a sustained time before significantly taxing or tiring themselves, so they were one-person armies and living engines of mass destruction and construction. Greater levels of effort were often possible, although at the price of increasingly serious exhaustion or even physical damage.
The supers had perfect physiques, full control of their bodily processes, and were very difficult to kill. They were effectively invulnerable to conventional weapons and anything that humans or the Lizards might throw at them, short of nukes or equivalent damage. In normal circumstances only a sustained barrage of successful attacks by one or more of their peers, extreme sources of damage (ground zero of a nuclear explosion, being thrown into the sun), or hypothetical super-science weapons would be able to really threaten or seriously harm them. A sufficient amount of damage by such a source might kill or physically destroy them, but they were able to recover completely from any non-lethal damage. All available evidence pointed to the fact they were immortal and eternally young.
Thanks to their shape-shifting powers, the supers were able to adjust their bodily features, looks, and gender the same way normal humans might pick their clothing and makeup. Many did so as their fancy dictated, not so rarely even experimenting with features not natural to humans. Others favored a preferred shape. In both cases, the most common invariant features included preference for a humanoid form, extreme conventional attractiveness, and the ethnic traits common in one’s homeland. Dedicated shape-shifters usually picked a pansexual orientation; others’ preferences might be all over the place. However, exclusive homosexuality appeared to be rare, and exclusive heterosexuality not so frequent, making bisexuality in various degrees the prevalent norm. Most supers preferred taking the opposite-gender form of a sexual partner, although this was by no means a universal rule.
Later evidence showed supers were fertile and in full control of their reproductive abilities. Their offspring from mating with normal humans most commonly resembled humans with peak physical and mental abilities; sometimes they inherited a full set of superhuman powers. When two supers mated, they always bred true. The superhumans were able to imbue other people with similar abilities as themselves, although they often were reluctant to do so since the involved effort would deplete their energies for a good while. The task was substantially less exhausting if multiple supers teamed up to power the transformation, and/or the recipient was one of their children, someone with exceptional talents to begin with, or a potential responder to the catalyst. Supers’ children who inherited their powers got a survival-oriented and substantially diminished set of abilities at birth, and grew into their full power during adolescence. Much like other humans with better than average or optimally peak physical and mental abilities, it seemed non-powered children of supers had a much better chance of being responders to the catalyst.