[Article] Introduction

Moderator: Dakarne

Post Reply
User avatar
Dakarne
Posts: 578
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 5:00 pm
Location: England. :(
Contact:

[Article] Introduction

Post by Dakarne »

Some of you may, or may not, have noticed that the name of the Crimson Chronicle forum has changed to the reveals-absolutely-nothing name of Section 20; well, let me tell you that the Crimson Chronicle is as of now effectively and officially dead. I'll don't think I'll return to working on it, or a similar setting, in the foreseeable future. Though I'm not going to say it's a 'never again' because to be honest I may come up with some new grand design for the Crimson Chronicle based on turning it back into a world with vampires and weirdness going on in the background. It just won't be any time in the near future. As a side-note, some recognisable aspects of the Crimson Chronicle are likely to turn up in this. I don't believe in wasting every aspect of a dead setting, and some things, names, places and concepts can always be reused if they didn't fit something else at an earlier time; but I digress, this is supposed about Section 20... so let's get on with the show, shall we?

Overview
Section 20 is, like many of my other settings, based on a fantasy genre. It's based around, primarily, the idea of superheroes and is influenced primarily, but not wholly, by the work done on them by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and other such writers. But I'll say outright that I'm not going to deconstruct the genre; that's been done before. I'm going to perform a bit of a reconstruction on the whole genre, but explore, perhaps, the consequences of what everything means. Rather than pick it apart, I'm going to merely explore and nudge it. Specifically, I've been influenced by Marvelman (Miracleman to the yanks), Sandman, Watchmen, and Alan Moore's run on Supreme. The latter of which sort of spun the setting away from being an utterly and irretrievably dark one.

Half of the origins of this setting can be traced back to a few ideas I had way back when, and that I still intend to explore.

The biggest one of these would be the exploration of duality; and how it pervades the human psyche. This was originally going to be represented via a series of fights and disagreements between a pair of very, very powerful heroes called the Professor and the Archangel respectively, one adopting the theme of a rationalist and scientist, with the other adopting the theme of a spiritualist and theologian. It mostly stemmed from me watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and thinking as a consequence about the dual nature of humanity, and the concept of thought versus feeling. I felt the idea was too big, and required too much meddling with the world at large to apply it to the Comix setting, and I didn't really know much about Comix at the time (and still don't). I didn't feel it was enough to build a whole setting out of, though. Not yet. And then I thought back to the very little work I had done on Comix. Of the characters that were minor, out of the way, but fundamentally what I thought were interesting concepts to explore; the best one, I think, was Rusalka, a sorceress brutalised and scarred, constantly seeking her revenge and constantly seeking to fix her broken features using magic, but finding that her own broken mind was far too fractured for her to be able to cast the spells.

This snowballed a bit, as you can tell, and some few months later I have a new setting to play with. Now, outside of a few concepts, I haven't really given you any details about this. Ah well, where else better to start? History!

History
Thousands of years ago, in the gladiatorial pits of the Roman Empire, there was one slave whose life would eventually change the world. Not immediately, not within his lifetime, and not even within the lifetime of his children. It would take a very long time for him to change the world. An Egyptian called Ikeni, the slave was easily the weakest, and most likely to fall; a worshipper of Atum-Ra, he prayed every living moment for his release, as many of the prisoners did. But his prayers, unlike the rest, were answered the night before he was to go out into the coliseum and prove his worth as a combatant. Ra appeared to him, and spoke words of kindness and imparting a gift before he suddenly vanished into oblivion. Ra gave the secret of his gift only as thus; 'I assure you, Ikeni, that the key to your freedom will come with the dawn's light, as it touches you.'

Ikeni was suddenly awoken from his slumber by heavy footsteps moving towards him, and he mistakenly dismissed the events of the night before as a dream. But when he was shoved into the brightly sunlit arena with a professional gladiator, who had become locally infamous, though his name is not as famous as what happened when his spear struck the skin of Ikeni in an attempt to run him through. It didn't even scratch his skin, and the slave, shattered the spear's shaft into splinters with but a single light blow; he then promptly killed the opposing gladiator by shattering his neck with a single punch holding more power behind it than a stampede of wild horses before declaring himself a free man who would not be held any longer. With a single bound, he leapt up to the box where a high-ranked patrician had become a spectator, no less than the height of a six-floor building, then declared himself free of tyranny, as would be the other slaves in the gladiatorial pits. But he didn't make it to the box before several dozen Roman soldiers could train their arrows upon him; they let loose, and he knew instinctively that it was not a fight he could win without killing many people. So he ran, with the arrows barely six feet away from him; and most of them would have hit, had he not completely outran them.

The event was not, however, the first of its type. Strong heroes had existed throughout history; Heracles, Thor, Cúchulainn, and Achilles all had various feats of tremendous power and strength associated with them. And yet Ikeni's bloodline survived, and found itself living in West Africa; though his descendants had not nearly the power that he had, though they were all stronger than their ordinary peers. It is theorised that at least one of them was weak enough position to have been enslaved, however; a pregnant woman who was taken to the American colonies to serve a land-owner.

Eventually, her line continued on to a man called John Henry, the famous labourer who outdid the steam-powered drill but ultimately died from the exertion of it; the strength was still there, but it wasn't nearly enough to turn a man into a relative god any more.

However, the dwindling strength of the bloodline would dwindle no more. In Tunguska, 1908, an explosion of unknown source, but considered to be of either alien or mystical origin, set fire to the sky and suddenly unlocked hidden potential in hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals across the globe. Also in 1908, the thinning bloodline of Ikeni had reached an obscure Louisiana town, with a couple named John Desmares and his wife Arabella Desmares (née Henry), who had just been given a son called Alexander. This son of theirs grew quickly; both mentally and physically. He was more intelligent than anyone else in their small community, and indeed more intelligent than most people in the country; but what was more amazing about him was his strength, which no one ever truly discovered, and that he kept secret. When he was at the age of nineteen, he bore witness to an attack on his village by the Ku Klux Klan. Choosing not to break the secret of his identity, he donned a big hooded coat that obscured his features, and leapt into action against the Klansmen, who retaliated with a hail of gunfire.

Their bullets bounced off of his skin, or were too slow to hit him. He bowled through the Klan like an express train, causing them to flee from something that they assumed was some sort of monster. Desmares tracked them back to their church and, as a symbol of his contempt, lifted up a car and hurled it through the front doors. He then leapt to the top of the now-crumbling church and proclaimed loudly, though evenly; 'I am the guardian of the people, whether black or white, and a warrior who will fight you at every turn; I am a warrior you cannot fight, cannot hope to murder and cannot hope to terrorise; you cannot hurt me. Never plague the communities of Louisiana again, or you will face the wrath of the Gladiator.'

The only person who died that night was the Grand Wizard, who died of a fear-induced heart attack. Alexander attended his funeral, from the shadows, and almost regretted having to have caused someone to die in order to protect people. He felt an in-born sense of right and wrong, and to kill was wrong.

All around the world, stories of similarly courageous and amazing feats began to emerge: among these there was a woman in the United Kingdom who could fly, had great strength, and could unleash bursts of searing light from her hands defended a girl from a rape-gang in South London; a man in Australia able to sprint from Gladstone to Sydney in less than half an hour foiled six different robberies in as many minutes in Perth; a man from Germany who possessed enough in the way of intelligence to make men look like apes began working on a series of grand scientific theories; and a woman in Japan with superhuman agility and strength ultimately decided to throw her abusive husband out of a window. It soon became quite clear to many that there were going to be many changes to be expected over the coming decades. The world had been thrown down a particular path, and it seemed to be having no chance of stopping soon.

When war came to Europe in 1939, a series of men and women were selected by a now-famous British scientist, Dr. McKinley, to take part in what was later referred to as Military Intelligence's most defining endeavour; Section 20. The Nazis were building various eugenics and super-soldier programs, particularly one that was referred to frequently as 'Project Ubermensch'; a primary project to harness the growing number of people with powers beyond ordinary human advancement. Section 20 was to oppose the rapid growth of 'super-powered' Nazis, and for this task they were immediately suited.

The original members, referred to later as the Core Five, were Roger Kingston, a man who could manipulate solid light energy; Miranda Ferguson, a powerful and nearly immortal sorceress from Scotland; John and Jane Davies, Welsh twins with super-strength and super-speed respectively; and Lord Belial, a rather unstoppable demon slaved to the will of Miranda Ferguson. Section 20 became famous in their own country, a testament to the will of the Allied nations, and the first line of defence against those with superhuman powers. They each took code-names; Roger Kingston became Union Jack, Miranda Ferguson became Hecate, and John and Jane Davies retained their earlier superhero monikers of Thunder and Lightning. Lord Belial kept his true name as was, though was occasionally referred to as 'William'. Section 20 was also joined by a few additional members over the following years; first came the woman who defended another woman from rapists, Sophie Archer, who was revealed to be the latest in a long line of people who bore the title and powers of Britannia, the defender of Britain, and then next came a teenage German girl called Claudia, a confused amnesiac with superhuman abilities who was rescued from one of the primary arms of Project Ubermensch; Sub-Project Valkyrie.

Together, they led British forces to victory against the menace of German super-humans, and were occasionally assisted by various American forces such as the ones led by heroes whose names were given as Uncle Sam and the Patriot. But tragedy did eventually befall them in 1943 as both Thunder and Lightning were killed in action as the team encountered the one foe who turned the potential threat of superhuman powers into a reality; a powerful Nazi superman called Ubermensch Prime, who was the ultimate goal of Project Ubermensch. They only ever managed to subdue Ubermensch Prime long enough to escape, at that, and were unable to hurt him properly.

This nearly broke Section 20's resolve, and they were inactive for almost a month whilst attempting to recoup their losses. A large chunk of Section 20's most valuable membership had been annihilated, and they were reduced to five members once again. They didn't have very long, however, before they were sent out to Japan in order to assist the American forces against the Tagawa Clan - Japan's own answer to the rising superhuman presence throughout the world, and their presence in Europe replaced by an American group led, quite progressively, by none other than the very same hero known as Gladiator who had thrown a car through a Ku Klux Klan church. By this time, he had developed powers of flight, able to sail through the air faster than any plane of the time could possibly carry someone. Before they set out, Section 20 did have an opportunity to work with Gladiator, who influenced them greatly; he was clearly in possession of the same level of power and ability that Ubermensch Prime was, and yet was not a monster. He was a man who was simply strong and could fly. They didn't feel any regrets leaving him there to work against the Nazis.

Following the war, Section 20 was, officially, shut down and no longer considered a government project. Unofficially, Section 20 continued on, still receiving the funding of the government, in exchange for their protection. They lasted straight through the twentieth century, and are active still in the modern day, having battled Ubermensch Prime once again in the 1950s, and battled an alien invasion in 1970. By the end of the 1970s, Section 20 had even begun to appropriate several of its members from overseas territories, such as Hyperion (Samuel Desmares), the far more powerful son of the now-late Gladiator (Alexander Desmares).

In the modern day, Section 20 is still active, with eight active members: Lockheed (Adam Yeung), a man who can run as fast as the speed of light; the latest incarnation of Britannia (Gwen Morris), a woman with various cosmic powers; Oya (Nyana Adwoa), a Ghanaian woman with the power to control fire; Lodestone (Graeme Stewart), a Scotsman with electromagnetic powers; Colossus (Nicholas Moore), a man with a mind like a supercomputer and touch-telepathy; Raven (Shona Moore [née O'Leary]), a woman with various powerful psionic powers such as telekinesis and telepathy; Gladiator II (Martin Desmares), the son of Samuel Desmares and the prior incarnation of Britannia known as Amelia Rosenthal, in possession of similar powers; and finally Lady Occult (Natalia Al-Sharani), the powerful sorceress who leads the group. Their current base of operations is the HMS Glory, a Valiant-class AAC (airborne aircraft carrier), manned and crewed by the Royal Navy, and donated to help them protect Britain, and the rest of the Earth, from outside invasion and threat that a conventional military might not be sufficient to take care of.

Further Notes
Okay, first things first on these 'further notes'. This is not Comix. This is not actually all that much like Comix, as far as I'm aware. It's more a result of my own single-person ideas, and a shiteload of comic-book references that are all just twisted a wee bit and explored that bit further. Secondly, I have far, far, far more information than what's up there. It's all just a bit disorganised at the moment, and I didn't want to detail the entire history of Section 20 in a single post. Only its World War II origins, the vague origins of super-heroes in general, and also a bit about the background of some of the primary focal characters such as Hyperion, and Britannia. Thirdly, I sort of intend to turn this into a comic, and prose literature is actually going to be a secondary goal. That's why I've been learning to draw, and attempting to refine my craft a little bit. Fourthly; Nazi Germany, despite being instrumental in the beginning origins of Section 20, will not be appearing all that often.

And for a fifth point, I did say at the beginning that this setting will be retaining something of the Crimson Chronicle. Just about everything in the mystical underworld is that which has been retained, except for the proliferation of one feature; in 1949, vampires, based out of New Orleans, attempted a rather public uprising in which they attempted to conquer the world. By this time, Gladiator (who is, if you haven't guessed, powered by solar energy) had figured out how to emit solar energy as beams of focused light. For the vampires, this was like Superman invading a red-sunned planet made of kryptonite and covered in magic-users.

Vampires, due to heroes who can manipulate solar energy (and it's quite common; sunlight generally is) have been rendered either benign, or rare. The most prominent vampire is a superhero called Bloodwing, who's actually quite superheroic, and doesn't generally go in for being an anti-hero, despite his possession of a Dark Age Supername.


Any questions, comments or criticisms?
Image
'For the moment, mortal, they find the thought of killing me more desirable than that of killing you.'
'And what are their chances?'
'The answer to that is evident in how long they've been hesitating, wouldn't you think, mortal?'

-Anomander Rake and Ganoes Paran in Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
Post Reply