That is, until Weisswald came along, of course.

The shock and upheaval that he caused, not just to Japan’s country but to their very culture can’t be overstated.

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Threat Classifications are a tricky thing – they are difficult to assign, and prone to change over time. Not to mention that they don’t necessarily have anything to do with combat ability or raw destructive power – in fact, of the four known metahumans to hold the highest possible rating, only half have outright destructive, combat-focused powers. There are even a few baseline humans, typically those who associate heavily with other metahumans and thus gain influence over them, who are given these classifications.

Official Classifications in America are assigned by the Department for Supernatural Affairs (DSA), though the United Heroes and the Police usually give a lot of input, and may assign temporary classifications.

Internationally, the United Supernatural Committee, a part of the PATO, handles these classifications.

Generally, these descriptors are only given to villains and vigilantes, but many heroes, as well as powerful metahuman political figures also carry one.

Note: A classification may be given a “+” or “-” descriptor, identify the individual as especially dangerous within that threat class, or less dangerous than most of said class.

E-Class

Also known as the Kitchen Sink Class, this classification is the minimal class assigned to all metahumans, simply due to the volatile nature of powers, the impossibility of perfectly analyzing and predicting them. It is of no real importance, in the great scheme of things, and few bother ever mentioning it, as calling a person an E-Class threat is the same as saying “not dangerous enough in any way to qualify for the real classifications”.

D-Class

This is the second-most often applied classification, describing mostly metahumans (as well as a few very successful baseline operatives). It describes individuals who can threaten any baseline human, physically or mentally, by virtue of their power alone, without factoring in training, as well as the opposite, highly-trained individuals that can threaten any baseline human by virtue of training alone (as such, it can apply to a lot of baseline criminals, soldiers and policement, though it is very, very rarely applied to exceptional cases).

C-Class

This is the most common classification applied to metahumans whose power alone or power and  training combined can challenge entire groups of professional baseline fighters – be they military, criminal or any other professional unit. Usually, all superheroes and villains rate at least a C- rating.

B-Class

Now we get into the meat of things – those metahumans who really give the powers that be a headache. Of the three high classes, B-Class is by far the most common, comprising more than seventy percent of all classified metahumans above C-Class. Metahumans in this class are beyond the ability of anything less than a small army of baseline humans to take him or her down, or has some manner of connection or influence that allows them to defy baseline attempts of being taken down, as well as the willingness to use said abilities to cause damage to society in some way. It can also be applied to metahumans whose powers are, in and of themselves, going to cause low- to mid-level trouble (like most gadgeteers, limited mind controllers or power enhancers). Metahumans from this level and up are generally kept under close scrutiny by the government, though generally not to the point of antagonizing them – and, in fact, are treated very favourably when it comes to using their powers for the “good guys”. For example, a B-Class combat-focused metahuman who joins the army will generally make five to seven times the wage of any other personnel of the same rank.

A-Class

This is where things get really problematic. For the longest time, A-Class was the highest class assigned to metahumans, applying to all those individuals judged impossible or extremely unlikely to take down without using metahumans of comparable power, or several metahumans with fitting powers. Lady Light and the Dark were both among the first to be given this classification, when they were first introduced in the mid-thirties. An A-Class metahuman in government employ generally makes ten to twelve times the wage of baselines of the same or similar function, and that doesn’t even factor in what some can do in the private market (such as as part of Private Security Companies – metahuman bodyguards are sought after to incredible degrees).

S-Class

Here comes the big one. Well, second-biggest, but that’s a recent development. S-Class metahumans are the nightmare of every democrat or socialist – individuals who, by dint of power alone, power and training or connections are capable of threatening entire cities or even countries, threats on a global scale. They are generally capable of shrugging off anything but concentrated metahuman attempts at taking them down, either through sheer toughness, mobility or obfuscation, capable of causing massive damage to or subvert either material, mental, economic or social structures of society. Universal telepaths, for example, are usually rated as such due to the many, many ways in which they can cause said subversion, but it also applies to nearly all so-called ‘broken’ metahumans – monstrosities such as  Hastur, Weisswald and Queen Bee.

It also applies to such persons as Lady Light, whose cultural weight and influence on the hero community (not to mention connections to the Dark and leading politicians) would allow her to cause incredible damage to the world, rivaling even her daughter Desolation-in-Light, should she go bad – or die (one shudders to think how the Dark or Gloom Glimmer, not to mention the Shining Guardians – two of whom are S-Class threats in and of themselves, and all of whom consider her a kind of mother to themselves – would react to her death).

Another special member of this classification was Lara Appleton, Ember’s mother. Even though the mere thought of her threatening so much as a cripple in a wheelchair was laughable, the simple fact that she was the mother – and the closest confidante – of Ember bumped her up to this level.

S+

This classification was originally created for Desolation-in-Light alone, but soon thereafter, Emyr Blackhill (also known as The Godking of Mars) was raised to this level, and they were soon joined by Ember.

S+ metahumans – and this classification applies solely to metahumans – are those few individuals whose mere existence is a threat to global security, and whose every action is unlikely to do anything other than make things worse.

They are also, one and all, considered effectively immortal, or at least so close that it makes no difference – the only member of the group that was killed, Emyr Blackhill, could only be killed by a power that is pretty much unique in its unrestrained lethality, and which was lost during that last, barely known battle on Mars. And yet, to this day, the repercussions of his none too brief rule are still being felt all across the globe.

And one can make a pretty convincing argument that the man who single-handedly conquered the entire planet Earth in five days was, overall, the least dangerous of the three S+ threats known to the world.

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These are the monsters that make the Dark seem not so bad.

Dread Roger

The very, very first S-Class metahuman, Dread Roger was a supervillain of the late twenties and early thirties. Little is known about his past, other than his Nationality – he spoke with a Dutch accent, though he did use the English language. A self-styled “Heir to Blackbeard”, his powers allowed him to terrorize the world for seven years, before he mysteriously vanished – the world simply wasn’t ready to deal with someone of his abilities.

His powers were multilayered:

• He was tough enough to go toe to toe with a normal-sized Kraquok and shrug off even military rifle rounds of the time. His strength matched his toughness, and his reaction speed allowed him to cut bullets out of the air.
• His Captain’s Uniform gave him the ability to fly, and his cutlass could cut through solid steel and his flintgun could blow up cars.
• His main power created a pirate ship that could fly – and, as he put it, “sail across the oceans of reality”. It was self-repairing, self-flying, had cannons that could take down buildings and could evade most pursuit by escaping into other dimensions (one theory as to his disappearance is that he ran afoul of something even he couldn’t deal with, in some other dimension). What was most terrifying, though, was his crew. He could make deals with people, taking them into his crew. His crewmembers were empowered by him, becoming monstrous and immortal – no matter what happened to them, they would be reborn on his ship, after a while. The only limit was the maximal capacity of his ship (around 100 people, no one ever got the exact number out of him).
• The top three reasons for joining his crew, back then: Terminal Illness, Greed, Flight from Enemies
• Estimates put about four thousand deaths to his name, and several million dollars of damage (at a time where that was an incredible amount of money).

Queen Bee

Queen Bee surfaced in the late fifties in Southern Iran – at least that’s where her first colony was stationed. She was a monstrous being, a twisted bee-woman the size of a horse who implanted her eggs into the bodies of her victims. The eggs hatched, and her children worked their way up into the brain of their host, taking over their bodies. Depending on their caste – worker, warrior, spy or bodyguard for the queen – they developed different mutations and powers, and shared a hive mind with her as the center and master controller.

Ironically, Queen Bee did not meet her end at the hands of any hero – but at the hands of Weisswald. In 1958, she attacked and killed a whole division of his metahuman army near the Turkish border – as she was quite unwilling to negotiate with him, he set out to take her down. The following battle – which he won, if barely – contributed greatly to giving the PATO and the Sovjet Union time to recuperate, gather their forces and plan how to strike back. Despite the terror she caused – nearly a hundred thousand people are supposed to have died at the hands of the Queen Bee and her “children” – she is considered one of the main reasons for the allied victory (apart from Lady Lights near-legendary rampage after the death of Brightchild).

The Nightmare Sun

In 1983, a glowing figure appeared over the Vietnamese city of Hue. Within three hours, the city had been entirely depopulated, and the Nightmare Sun flew out onto the ocean.

Three weeks later, it appeared at the coast of Ecuador and flew in a straight line towards the Atlantic Ocean, before swerving South to enter Brazil, and continuing towards the Southernmost tip of the continent.

Whomever its cruel light touched saw their own shadow come to life, rise from the ground and become… something. Whatever they feared mosts, monstrosities that embodied their each and every fear and shame. Many died simply from looking at them, their hearts ceasing their function from the shock. Many more died when the monstrosities went on a rampage – even the death of their creators did not stop these monsters, and each of them was hard to put down to say the least. The more powerful the person was that spawned them, the more powerful the shadows were. They also seemed to react strongly to powers that related to creating or intensifying light – shadows of such people were even more powerful.

The Nightmare Sun itself was a being made of pure light. There was no body, nothing to attack. It did not even seem to have a mind, or at least it was utterly immune and undetectable for mental powers. No one, not even Lady Light and the Dark, were able to so much as slow it down – only mitigate the damage its spawn caused (they did prove to be some of the few people immune to its power – fortunately, the world never had to find out what the shadow of Lady Light would have been capable of).

A week and a half after it appeared at the South American shore, the Nightmare Sun vanished. There was only a single, unreliable eye witness report – a small child that had escaped its light until the last moment – and when its shadow rose, it was immediately crushed underfoot by what it described as “that funny mirror man”. She went on to describe him punching the Nightmare Sun so hard “he punched it into another world”. Neither the Nightmare Sun nor the mirror man were ever seen again, as far as the world knows.

The final death toll of the Nightmare Sun’s rampage is estimated at about two million people – and the only reason it wasn’t more was because it didn’t specifically target population centers. In fact, to this day, it remains a mystery how and why it took the route it did.

The Iron Dragon

The Iron Dragon held, for the longest time, the distinction of being the oldest operating supervillain, second only to the Dark, with the Matriarch close behind. A mastermind of a villain, he got his start in LA’s Chinatown. His power was rather simple – he could always tell when someone lied. Always. He levereged that into taking over the triads, becoming the first great superpowered crime boss (the Dark was still flying solo at the time, save for his sidekick Kraquok).

At first, the man who called himself the Iron Dragon (it’s not known if he was actually of Chinese descent, despite his style – he always wore a mask) simply took over the local triad and profited from normal crime.

Then, two years after he first came to power, a group of superheroes managed to take his operation apart, and he fled the country when the government came after him.

For five years, no one in the West heard of the Iron Dragon, and he was thought either dead, or retired on his substantial private coffers.

Then, rumors came in of a new mastermind in the Chinese Empire, which was then still independent of the Sovjet Union. Many dismissed them out of hand – the Emperor did not tolerate supervillains, and the empire was, at the time, the most powerful police state in the world, even more so than the Sovjet Union. And these stories spoke of a man calling himself the Iron Dragon, who was leading a war against the Emperor, demanding the throne for himself.

A year later, the Iron Dragon had taken over, declaring himself Emperor. What follows is sketchy, at best. There were stories of Eugenics programs, of him trying to breed a new race of pure metahumans. There were stories of rape camps, where normal women and metahuman women who opposed him both were used by metahuman men to breed more children with the “metahuman gene”. But no one in the West cared much what happened to a bunch of Chinese people.

It wasn’t until the second world war that people payed attention again – because his ideas seemed quite similar to Weisswalds, and no one wanted Weisswald to get an ally as big as Imperial China. Thus, a team of metahuman spies known as the Dragonslayers were sent into the empire to find out what exactly was going on.

What they found was worse than the rumors. Whatever madness had befallen the Iron Dragon, it had driven him to rework entire cities into breeding camps, under the then still widely believed theory that metahumans were genetically different and could pass on their powers. He had drummed up an army of metahumans – almost all of the lowest level, but still more than anything anyone had known at the time – and was preparing to assault Korea, in order to incorporate the population in his program.

What followed is one of the most legendary and highly fictionalized acts of covert warfare in history, a five year campaign that ended with more than two hundred thousand Chinese dead, and the Iron Dragon slain by one of his own lieutenants. China was so weakened after the “Dragonslayer’s War” that it was easy for the Sovjet Union to absorb it – and the countless metahumans left in the wake of the Iron Dragon’s terror – after Weisswald’s fall, thus contributing in large parts to their modern-day power.

The Godking of Mars

Emyr Blackhill. An author of science fiction novels and short stories. Born to a baker and a professional dancer from London, emigrated to America at the age of twelve. Straight A student, but too lazy to really do much with it apart from writing stories. His parents died in an accident when he was eighteen. He had no close friends. When he was twenty-two, he vanished.

Five years later, scientists were elated when they observed activity on the surface of Mars, using Earth-based telescopes. People couldn’t believe it, but there seemed to be intelligent life on Mars, after all. And it was building something big on the surface. Bigger than any human city, and it seemed to be a single building.

A mere five months after construction began, a structure could be seen. A single grand building, a palace, perhaps, bigger than the State of California.

Five weeks later, the Martian Army invaded Earth, striking simultaneously across the globe, their ships appearing out of strange rifts in space.

Five days later, Emyr Blackhill, self-proclaimed Godking of Mars, had conquered the Planet Earth, with only a few pockets of resistance left (the biggest led by Lady Light and the Dark).

A desperate final plan was hatched, and Lady Light and the Dark attacked the Martian headquarters on Earth (stationed in Roswell, New Mexico) – but it was only a distraction. A small, elite team of heroes and villains hijacked a Martian ship and took one of the rifts to their homeplanet – and to their god’s palace, Gran Gyagas, a building so massive it dwarfed any mortal construction in history.

Five hours later, his people began to fade, their impossible technology falling apart, their very bodies turning into… nothing.

The details of the battle are shrouded in myth, for there were no survivors, but this is known: Gungnir, a young supervillainess under the command of the Dowager, managed to penetrate the Godking’s defenses and slayed him, paying with her very life.

Nothing remained of the Martian Empire but the massive, sprawling palace, and the Godking’s corpse, transfixed, to this day, to his own throne by Gungnir’s spear.

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Registration

The following rules apply to the members of the PATO; specifically the U.S.A (since 1951), Canada (1934, used as a model), Great Britain (1951), Brazil (1959) and the European Mainland members (1960) and Japan (1951):

There are two levels of registration – the Basic Registration is required for all metahumans and simply means that they notify the government that they have a power, that they can control it and that they don’t plan to use it in an unlawful way. Their power will be registered, rated and kept completely confidental – for example, the United Heroes wouldn’t be given access to this data, unless they were suspected of a crime involving their powers.

Extended Registration is required if:

1. they wish to use their power on someone other than themselves (healer)
2. they want to use their power on other peoples’ or public property
3. they want to open a business or perform a job based on it (teleporting courier)
4. their power is inherently uncontrollable and/or dangerous to people and property (Gloom Glimmer, Tyche).
5. Your power falls under the S-Classification.

It requires a metahuman to go through extensive testing, psychological evaluation, basic training (usually three months spent in governmental training facilities OR United Heroes’ training facilities) and agree to certain extended duties and restrictions:

1. They must notify airport officials if they wish to travel by plane (and might not be allowed – for example, there’s no way any commercial airline would accept Tyche on their planes) – and must be available for emergencies, if their power is applicable (and might get a reduction in travel fee – Gadgeteers or inherent fliers and such are very well-liked).
2. If they travel into another country, they must notify their particular office for metahumans beforehand that they’ll be entering (and might be denied permission – for example, Tyche might be denied access to a country on the grounds that power is uncontrollable and might cause widespread damage).
3. If their powers are combat-applicable, than they have to be ready to help during S-Class events, though they are only forced to participate if a government official or UH-approved superhero asks them to.
4. They are not allowed to knowingly associate with supervillains or habitual criminals in any way and must report them to the nearest lawperson or superhero at the earliest possible time.

Exceptions for using your powers without having to go through the extended registration process are:

1. Emergencies (like someone using their power to help save people out of a fire or heal the victim of a car crash), so long as it is not habitual – if they keep doing it, it’ll be interpreted as not just chance behaviour but a pattern, and they are thus required to register and gain training (even if they swear never to do it again)
2. S-Class Events – they get a free pass on those, no matter what
3. Self-Defence – if they attack you first, you are allowed to strike back. If you kill them or cause permanent damage, then you have to make an extended registration.

Metahumans who undergo extended registration are given certain tax breaks, so long as they hold to the rules and restrictions of such.

Business
As mentioned earlier, earning money with a power requires the extended registration no matter what. Furthermore:

1. Metahumans must be trained for their chosen profession (a healer would need to study medicine, though with a different curriculum than a normal doctor, depending on the particulars of their power)
2. They have to prove that they can use their power safely – a teleporter who wants to make a courier service (they exist, yes; one of those very profitable metahuman jobs) would have to prove that he or she can use their power reliably and safely – so no accidental portal cuts, no “ups sorry I ended up within your private property” mishaps and so on.
3. They have to make it clear that they use powers for their business – a metahuman can’t pose as a normal doctor and secretly use their power for the job, even if they are have the proper registration and training – your clients/patients/customers have to know.
4. They need a special, more expensive insurance than usual. On the upside, since this insurance is managed with exceptional care, they don’t have to deal with the usual insurance claim problems.

Due the rarity of metahuman powers, metahuman-specific business is very rare and very lucrative, but since it has to be open, it is also subject to prejudice – and vandalism, if opened in the wrong location.

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Individuals

Lady Light

Yes, she rates an independent entry. This is the Queen of Superheroes, the Mother of Metahumanity. Even if she wasn’t one of the most powerful heroes, and certainly the most experienced, the raw symbolic power she holds cannot be understated. She is considered a goddess in some parts of the world, a messiah or angel in others. Even Sovereign does not forbid her from entering his realm, and even the Sovjet Union always made it clear that they’d welcome her with open arms if she wished to change sides (not to mention that she often spoke before the Red Council, advocating peace and demilitarisation). She also often visits Queen Madeleine for tea and talk.

Beyond that, the United Heroes still see her as their ultimate leader, even if she has relinquished any official power she ever held, leaving the actual leadership of the group to her Shining Guardians and the Board of Directors. The Forresters revere her as one of the creator’s of metahumanity, etc.

Unfortunately, all this responsibility (and then some) has taken a toll on her life, and she spends most of her time teleporting (or, if she really needs to relax for a little, flying) from crisis to crisis, trying to save as many people as possible. However, 1999, she took a three year leave from her work. The results were immediate, with villains everywhere getting uppity – until the Dark declared that he’d ‘chastise’ anyone who tried to exploit her absence (he didn’t demand that anyone stop their crimes, just that they didn’t make her feel bad for taking a break). Unfortunately, it didn’t hold long and she had to return after only two years absence (neither she nor the Dark appreciated those who forced her early return; said criminals are no longer an issue). She’s pretty much gone back to her 24/6 schedule (She rests on Sundays, having been brought up in a traditional Christian household).

The Dark

Yeah, him. Despite how nice and personable he may appear, he is the King of Supervillains, as well as the Father of Metahumanity. He rules the Dark Five and the Syndicate, making him directly or indirectly complicit in nearly 60% of all metahuman crime on the planet.

While he does have certain rules he enforces with extreme prejudice (the so-called ‘Code’), this is only in part due to any nobility on his side, and mostly because they keep things from escalating, allowing the ‘game’ to keep going smoothly and largely unchanged. Preserving the status quo.

On the other hand, he does keep things mostly civil. Families are protected – ‘Don’t bring family into it’ is one of the core rules of the Code, and he enforces it by way of extreme, extreme violence and creativity – and most villains (and heroes) refrain from using lethal force or taking certain liberties with defenseless opponents.

During World War II, he fought on the side of the West, first due to the Nazi’s stance against Jews (mostly, he just helped smuggle Jews out of Germany, provided funds and equipment for saboteurs and sabotaged a few of their operations himself), then he fought against Weisswald both due to disgust at his monstrosity and, most importantly, because Weisswald had declared it his goal to ‘claim’ Lady Light as his mate – with a very archaic definition of claiming in mind.

Queen Madeleine

Yup, she rates an independent entry, too. Madeleine died on January 11th, 2000 after a spectacularly horrendous life (being tortured and maimed were some of her least worries). She was not near death, she was not just milliseconds away from braindeath, she was well and truly dead. She was reborn moments later as one of the most powerful beings on the planet. While she does not have a single transcendent power, she does have seven distinct God-Tier powers, not counting her Chimaera Physique. One of them is an apparently unlimited reincarnation, rendering her invincible in the long term.

She conquered an entire continent within two months, then completely pacified all pockets of resistance within a few more and installed a metahuman nobility to help her rule her realm. Finally, she built a magnificent palace that now hovers above Ayer’s Rock, a testament to her power.

Within her realm, she rules by the law of “Don’t make me come over there.” It is very efficient.

Internationally, she follows a doctrine of “Don’t mess with mine and I won’t mess with yours.” So far, it has proven quite efficient.

Weisswald

Yeah, this guy. He’s been dead for half a century and some, but he’s still a major player.

First, when he came to power, there were roughly three billion people alive, worldwide. When he died, there were less than two billion left. And that doesn’t factor in all the people killed since his death by his Spiteborn. All in all, he’s personally responsible, directly or indirectly, for more than 1.2 billion deaths, after the most recent estimates.

Second, he destroyed Europe as a world power, maybe forever. Germany, France, Poland, Austria, Denmark, the Scandinavic countries, South Europe as a whole (save for Spain and Greece) have still not recovered from the damage he did, Slovenia is entirely depopulated, and he cut a swath through Russia, forcing the complete nuclear destruction of Stalingrad, as well as killing his way all across Asia and to Japan, where he killed the Imperial family.

Third, his ideology of metahuman supremacy survives to this day. He is one of the biggest reasons why metahumans are still not entirely trusted all over the world, and the followers of his ideology, the Forresters foremost among them, still try to force people to manifest or die.

Fourth, in his last moments, he created the Spiteborn, self-replicating monstrosities that attack major population centers and especially concentrations of metahumans, both to challenge metahumans to grow stronger and to force as many manifestations as possible, with the death of baseline humans as a nifty bonus.

Last but not least, he started the tradition of supervillains going into battle stark naked, having disdained the use of clothing of any kind for himself (he was perfect, after all, so why hide it? Not like he needed extra protection). Many of the worst, like the Savage Six, emulate him to evoke memories of the Naked Tyrant.

Even to this day, and not only among those who were alive at the time of his reign, his name causes true fear and rumors of his return are used as scare stories and threats.

Desolation-in-Light

If there is one individual who rivals Weisswald, Lady Light and the Dark in importance to world history, it is Desolation-in-Light, the Maiden of Terror. Since her first appearance in the late ’80s, she has kept the world on its toes, as she can strike anywhere, at any time.

Ironically, she may very well have done more good than bad, despite the millions of lives she has claimed, for her existence has prevented the PATO and Sovjet Union from going to war. You don’t want to be fighting a large-scale war while the threat of an unstoppable disaster in human form looms over you.

Ember/The Protege

If there is one person who only wanted to help, but ended up causing untold chaos, it is Ember. Apart from the fact that he can heal anything, reverse age itself, each of which would be reason enough to go to war over him, he can raise the dead. Essentially, he can bestow immortality on anyone, keeping them forever young and reviving them infinitely.

World War III nearly broke out shortly after the full extent of his power became known, and only his mental breakdown and subsequent exile saved the world from that fate.

And I’m not even going to go into what he means for all the religions in the world, especially the Christian ones, right now.

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Non-Government Organisations

The United Heroes

The United Heroes were founded shortly before the outbreak of World War II, as America’s heroes had to face the reality that they just couldn’t operate independently anymore and hope to survive – much less make a lasting change for the better.

Formed around the core that was and still is the first and most famous team of superheroes, the Shining Guardians (assembled first in ’26 by Lady Light) and under the leadership of Lady Light and an elected board of directors, they soon spread beyond America into Canada, Mexico and West Europe, and attained international recognition as an independent organisation during World War II.

In the present, the United Heroes are split into five main divisions, each lead by one of the current members of the Shining Guardians:

Doc Feral & the Feral Family (Legacy of original member; North America)

Quetzalcoatl (don’t mess with this guy. seriously, don’t; South America)

Fleur (youngest member, formerly Lady Light’s most recent sidekick; Europe)

Severence (original member, exact powers unknown after nearly a century of activity, Africa)

Lung Xukong (the newest member of the group, and she has the smallest Division; Asia)

Lady Light operates independently, pitching in wherever necessary, and leaves most of the politics to the younger generation, unless she feels herself compelled to interfere (happens often).

Generally, even in countries like Japan and the AMU, the United Heroes are at least respected, if not welcomed.

The Syndicate

An international network founded by the Dark, this is basically a villain support organization. If you have the money and the connections, it provides you with equipment, secret lairs, minions, metahuman muscle, anything you might need. They report directly to the Dark Five, who report to the Dark.

The Forresters

An international group of metahuman supremacists, they follow the ideology of Weisswald. They are the strongest believers in any and all of the countless conspiracy theories that say that Weisswald is still alive, and just waiting for his faithful to prove themselves worthy for his return.

The Drakainas

Canada’s oldest and most famous superhero team, they were founded by the world’s first Gadgeteer, Theresa, who took the cape name “Drakaina”. As the name suggests, they’re all-female, though they do have male meta’s among their support staff.

They operate internationally, less for combat purposes and more for disaster relief (though they can mess with the best if necessary). Have some of the best Gadgeteers in the world in the team, and all field members have customized Power Armor designed to enhance whatever innate powers they have.

Brennus has wet dreams about their tech.

The Califate

This is a weirdo among this group. They are technically a nation, as they rule pretty much the whole middle east. The group was formed in the early ’90s by thirteen extremists who protested the reforestation of the Islamic countries and generally the improvement of their living standards by way of Western organisations. As so often happens, a few assholes ruined a good thing for a lot of decent people.

The original extremists all manifested while hidden in a cave after a series of terrorist attacks on schools for girls and Christian hospitals, while pretty much everyone was closing in on them.

One of them got the ability to create a Gestalt out of several people, uniting himself along with the other twelve into the entity known as “the Thirteen Prophets”, or simply the Califate. Each member shares the powers of all members, and so long as one of them survives, all of them do. They also started creating seperate Gestalt units, mostly people forced into servitude as mindless fighting forces, though these lesser Gestalt armies do not share powers among their members, nor immortality (it is unknown why not).

Following the campaign of terror the Thirteen Prophets unleashed, a mass exodus out of the Middle East began, reducing it to less than thirty percent of its original population. Most of those who remained were, either forcefully or willingly, moved to the region around the mountain on the border between the Iran and Irac where the thirteen madmen manifested, where New Mecca was founded, the capital of the Califate, aka the capital of terror.

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Well, with a World War on the way, I thought it’d be useful to present the major player’s on the world’s stage.

Alliances

PATO (Pacific-Atlantic Treaty Organization)

This group began forming after Japan turned against Weisswald in 1951 and joined the Western Alliance to fight him. Soon, Indonesia, South Korea (before it was absorbed by the SU) and New Zealand also pitched in, as did Brazil, Argentinia and several other South American states, at least those which Weisswald’s Blitzkrieg attack on South America had not subsumed to his rule (and even of those, some joined via their exiled governments). Thus, the NATO was restructured into the Pacific-Atlantic Treaty Organization, a union of states founded initially for the sole purpose of defeating Weisswald, marking the turning point of the world war in 1953 – until then, Weisswald had been winning.

After his defeat on February 3rd, 1960, the PATO persisted, though it lost most of its South American members in exchange for gaining what little remained of Western Europe (including Germany). However, the Cold War it entered into against the Sovjet Union allowed it to persist to this day, and the PATO has now become synonymous with the Western World, its organs of power having accumulated enough privileges to be able to actually function as a united power block.

The President of the PATO is widely considered to be the (politically) most powerful person in the world. At the time of the main story, this office is held by Carlos di Sanchez, formerly the representative of America to the PATO Council.

The Sovjet Union

1923 was a very, very good year for the newly formed Sovjet Union, as the victorious Bolsheviks found themselves almost swamped with newly manifested, fanatical metahumans, ready to live and die for the glorious communistic state.

The advances to food production brought by Gadgeteers, as well as other metahuman powers (Red Star’s power allowed her to force grow plants without depleting the soil, allowing for three to four harvests a season) allowed the communist state to work far better than one would have expected, as there was enough food to spare – even enough for a simple worker to get some luxury out of it. By 1950, the Sovjet Union was, in terms of agriculture and food distribution, the most advanced country in the world.

Perception powers that allowed for enhanced planning, structuring and the like allowed the communist machine to work efficiently (not flawlessly, but efficiently) despite the corruption one has to expect from such a system.

Like a steamroller, the Sovjet Union spread across Eurasia, swallowing most of the Asian states, including China, North Korea (later South Korea as well), Vietnam and the Northern half of India. Ironically, it wasn’t the West – which seriously didn’t like the communist powerblock – that halted its advance, but rather Weisswald.

See, the Sovjet Union has always emphasized the need for non-metas to actually be at the top in order to provide a stable government. And, since they made very sure to brainwash their youth into being loyal – and manifestations often enhance such traits – the metahumans were mostly content with that.

Weisswald’s ideology revolved entirely around the superiority of metahumanity. Thus, the Sovjet Union was, for him, an even more personal and important enemy than the West, and he tore through their lands. Many people considered the Sovjet Union dead when Stalingrad fell in 1946, just two years after Weisswald came to power and half a year after he began his campaign against the SU. But they survived and emerged stronger than before, as a new head of the government formed – instead of one man holding all the power, the Red Council was formed, a collection of the smartest, most competent and ambitious (non-powered) men and women from all the SU.

After Weisswald’s defeat, the SU entered into a Cold War against the PATO, even though Weisswald had inflicted grievous losses to them. Over the next decades, they fought a number of proxy wars, and everything was pointing towards open warfare breaking out soon – but then Desolation-in-Light was born and began her rampage, enforcing a brittle peace broken only by proxy wars once more.

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