[M&M3E] A World Too Far

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Davies
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[M&M3E] A World Too Far

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Introduction: A (Very) Brief History of Superhuman Activity

The Thirties

As far as most people are aware, supers first became active in the 1930s. For the most part, they were initially regarded as urban legends and tall tales, but by the end of the decade it was pretty clear to most people that they were real. The first large-scale battle involving multiple supers was fought in 1938, during that year's attempted invasion from Mars.

The Forties

While the supers of America and Britain assisted in morale-boosting efforts and fought spy rings (which were generally usually composed of "wannabes" rather than actual agents of the enemy powers) they never became involved in the fighting. (As far as most people are aware, at least.) Matters were different in occupied territories and in Nazi Germany, where every super who could be found was immediately either executed or used as a weapon in the army. It didn't help matters any -- no matter how powerful they were, the Reich's super-soldiers were neither immortal nor invincible, and were either captured or killed by enemy firepower. Russia, which had no supers of its own, began trying to replicate a number of German "super-soldier" experiments during and after the war, with predictably disturbing results.

The Fifties

The Atom Age saw many of the first generation of supers start to retire, less due to outside pressure than due to simple aging and the fact that there weren't really a lot of threats to face. (Aside from spy rings now composed of "wannabe" Communists.) Threats to have the aging heroes called before the HUAC never panned out, mostly because it was impossible to issue a subpoena for someone whose real name was unknown. This actually had some interesting consequences, and resulted in the current legal status of a costumed identities as a separate person who can be sued and held accountable for his or her actions. Also during this decade, some took note of the increasing extraterrestrial interest in the planet's activities, as well as the increasing frequency of mutation in the populace, and the increasing frequency of horrific magical phenomena...

The Sixties

A burst of new heroes arrived on the scene at the start of the decade, and many of the older ones came back as well, revitalized by contact with their younger counterparts in a parallel universe. But the initial optimism the newer heroes would be sorely tested by the events of the decade to follow. In particular, mutated heroes would discover exceptionally sinister activities undertaken by various factions of the United States government involving them.

The Seventies


Horrific events in both their personal lives and professional ones drove many of the newer heroes into retirement at the start of the decade. The older heroes, however, having been revitalized by various events, kept active, and were joined by some of the first of a new generation. Even they would be rocked, however, when they suffered their first major losses.

The Eighties

In the early years of the decade, more of the children of the first supers became involved in their activities, but that came to a screeching halt in the middle of the decade, after a horrific catastrophe on the parallel world. The greatest hero, the Ultimate, was missing and presumed dead, and most of his companions decided to call it quits. The younger generation continued for a while, but most gradually found other things to do with their lives.

The Nineties

After eight years, the Ultimate returned, but after saving Detroit from being totally destroyed (leaving it only mostly destroyed, to be rebuilt over the next decade) he declared that it was time for him to retire as well. The United Nations granted him the sovereign power status he sought, and he settled on an island he raised in international waters. Many people concluded that the day of the supers had passed ... but the first of yet another generation began to make their presence known towards the end of the decade.

The New Millennium


In the last, trying decade, new heroes have begun to emerge, no longer content to maintain a status quo. "We cannot allow the world to be this way," was their rallying cry after the destruction of the Twin Towers, and since then the Alliance and other teams have sought to make a difference to the world, not just fight supervillains and other criminals. How well they have done is open to question ...

The current year is 2012.

(While taking some plot elements and characters from the 5th and 6th editions of Champions, as well as various GURPS game worlds and White Wolf's Scion, this setting should not be confused with any of them.)

Index to Follow
"I'm sorry. I love you. I'm not sorry I love you."
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Davies
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Re: [M&M3E] A World Too Far

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Miracle

Image

In the blink of an eye, in the speed of the night,
I hold the universe up, I'll make your planets collide,
I'ma strap on my boots and I slip on my suit,
You see the vixen in me becomes an angel for you.

Some days I'm a super-bitch,
Up to my old tricks,
But it won't last forever --
Next day I"m your super-girl,
Out to save the world,
And it keeps gettin' better.

"Keeps Getting Better" (Lyrics by Christina Aguilera and Linda Perry)

Real name: Karin Adams (legal name; actual name is unknown even to herself.)
Date of birth: Unknown (apparent age 29.)
Identity: Secret.
Occupation: Entrepreneur.
Base of operations: Mobile.
Affiliation: The Alliance.
Height: 5'11''.
Weight: 135 lbs.
Eyes: Blue.
Hair: Reddish-blonde.

It was 1996 when they found her. At first, the team of scientists believed that the only mystery would be how the poor girl had ended up a perfectly preserved corpse frozen inside a block of ice within a glacial rift. Then they thawed her out -- and she started breathing. While alive, she was comatose for nearly a week, and the physician who cared for her didn't hold out much hope that she'd ever awaken. She surprised him. She surprises a lot of people, a lot of the time.

She awakened with no memories of any previous existence. Indeed, she awakened without language skills -- though she learned conversational English in record time. (Some of the idioms still trip her up from time to time, and she has a unique accent that she has learned to suppress while in her secret identity.) During her retraining, it became fairly obvious that she possessed super-powers, though an understanding of their origins would elude every researcher who examined her.

She was, first of all, biologically human in every respect -- not an extraterrestrial, not any of the known extradimensional humanoid species. She had no cybernetic implants, nor any biological modifications that a fairly exhaustive set of x-rays and MRIs could detect. She did not register on psi sensors while using her powers, which also did not detect as magical. All attempts to neutralize potential illusions which could have been given producing incorrect data failed. How she does what she does may remain a mystery forever.

All of these failures -- and the occasional irritation that the researchers expressed at her for her "failure" to reveal anything to them -- gave her something of a complex. Her search for her own origins continued long after all the scientists and scholars had given up. She sought out anyone who could possibly shed some light on them, in the process saving a few other lives and solving a few minor problems. (Minor to her, at least -- to those whose lives would have been ruined by the problems, they were rather more major.) No one could ever help her, not even the Ultimate, whom she very bravely sought out in hopes that he might reveal that she was somehow related to him. He disabused of her of the notion, but fairly gently.

Eventually, she entered therapy to deal with what even she realized was an unhealthy obsession. As part of her therapy, she adopted a civillian identity. In this she was helped by a generous bequest from one of the researchers who'd discovered her; having died a wealthy bachelor, he decided to settle a large portion of his assets on her. She became Karin Adams, a moderately wealthy entrepreneur who soon became a very wealthy entrepreneur thanks to her keen head for business. But this didn't help her to come to terms with her obsession, and eventually the therapist admitted that he'd never thought it would, but that her having a regular address made his business run more smoothly.

That did it. She had finally had enough, and she soared up into the air, flew to the edge of space, and started shouting. Okay, so she didn't know who she was or where she'd come from. Did anyone? Really? She didn't know why she could do the things that she did. So what? What mattered more was why she did them! "Who am I?" she concluded. "I am who I want to be!"

And there was a long silent moment. In a novel, this would have been when she got the answers she'd been looking for, after she'd finally stopped looking for them. This being real life, none of that happened. Instead, she found the inner peace that she'd thought would only come from knowing her origin. And it felt really good.

She returned to Earth a much calmer woman. Soon after, she joined with other heroes in forming the Alliance, and has found herself -- somewhat to her surprise -- in a position of leadership. While her new-found self-confidence can easily be mistaken for arrogance, she's learned how to pass that self-confidence on to others, convincing them that the situations they get into aren't actually that bad. (Even though they generally are that bad, if not worse.)

As the only member of the Alliance who's actually met the Ultimate, she naturally views him as the worst threat to the team. She's never had any close encounters with the Cabal, the Loi, or any of the other conspiracies, villains or hidden peoples that the other members of the team have described to her. It's not that she doubts her teammates, it's just that she wonders whether those they describe have ever faced anything like the Alliance -- and she knows for a fact that the Ultimate has, and that he was always more powerful than any collection of heroes assembled, no matter how powerful.

Miracle can hold her breath effectively indefinitely, as long as she retains consciousness. (Just how she does this is another one of those mysteries.) She is highly resistant to the effects of temperature variations and radiation levels, as well as the majority of diseases and poisons, and can endure exposure to vaccuum and high pressure for lengthy periods. Her most remarkable advantage is the fact that no nullification or power draining effects, regardless of their origin, have ever been able to affect her in any way. This does have its downside, as attempts to enhance her abilities, regardless of the enhancement's origin, have also constantly failed.

While Karin believes that she has completely moved on from her earlier obsession with learning the truth of her origins, in at least some ways, she's kidding herself. She has a prescription to deal with the obsessive tendencies, and is diligent about taking it. Should she ever stop taking her meds, however, and be confronted with the possibility of learning "the truth", she might suffer a relapse and abandon everything to pursue it. This would be a complication; if she's an NPC, it could also be a reason that she's not present for the adventure, or a plot seed.

Karin is not presently in a relationship with anyone. When dating someone who doesn't know about her secret identity, she will be forthright and upfront about the fact that she may have to make quick exits and have unexplained absences that she can't talk about because of her work. If anyone were to deduce that she is Miracle, and ask her, she would confirm it, hoping that anyone able to work it out for themselves and direct enough to ask will have enough integrity not to do anything with the knowledge.

If, on the other hand, someone were to guess her secret identity and then engage in gambits intended to prove it, a playful, almost flirtatious side of her personality would come forward. She'd match them trick for trick to keep her identity a secret, only breaking from the game if lives are in danger. And she can be very creative when she wants to be.
A Secret Unknown to Miracle Herself wrote:Miracle is not simply from another dimension, but from another set of dimensions. In analogical terms, she came from a reality composed mostly of images with some text and arrived in the World Too Far, which is composed mostly of text with some images. The method by which this happened involved the powers of the Canadian psychic warrior known as Cutter, to be discussed later. Miracle's obsession actually has very little to do with her 'childhood' trauma and everything to do with the fact that she's unconsciously aware that she is different in kind as well as degree from those around her.

It would be possible for her to return to her original multiverse, but not to her actual point of origin, which was destroyed by the contact between it and the World Too Far.
Stats are here.
"I'm sorry. I love you. I'm not sorry I love you."
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