Section 20 (new setting)

[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?

[Shroom Man 777]

I like it. It's focused and nowhere near as freakishly gonzo as Comix that's all over the place, which can cause epileptic seizures in some.

I hope this thing can help inspire me and kick my ass to do more Comix.

[Nevermind]

Oh, jeez, believe me, he's been working on this for a while, almost nonstop. It's full of cool stuff.

Now all you need to do is get moving on the current plot. Get moving! Start drawing!

Nevermind.

[Dakarne]

I'm moving, I'm moving. Here's a bit more on the history of Section 20, detailing World War II.

History of Section 20 - WWII

Outbreak of War
Section 20 was established in 1939 as a response to the rising threat of Nazi Germany's so-called Overman Project, or Ubermensch Project in which they were attempting to build an army of perfect 'master race' individuals; post-humans with powers beyond any ordinary man or woman. This threat was originally considered to be an empty one, in 1935, until more public reports reached the United Kingdom of a bulletproof man in America with amazing strength, among several other proven reports of magicians who could alter reality and people who could turn invisible. Britain's response, at the immediate behest of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, was to found another section of Military Intelligence, which was labelled Section 20, specifically geared towards dealing with the new threat of post-humans. Originally referred to as MI20, the organisation was headed up by the now-famous biological and paranormal researcher known as Dr. Quentin McKelvey. His solution was to match fire with fire, but not to play with eugenics as the Nazis were attempting to; he very immediately recognised that individuals with incredible abilities were naturally-occurring.

In 1939, he began the first stages of what he called Project Aegis, in an attempt to find and assemble a group of people who could perhaps work as an elite force against the first waves of the Nazi threat. Though many super-humans were already undoubtedly at service in the military, he focused on finding a group that would work best to combat the specific threat of the Overman Project, and all of the deadlier results that it would generate.

His first discoveries were the twins John and Jane Davies from Swansea, Wales. John, calling himself Thunder, possessed greatly superhuman strength and resilience, being able to resist everything up to and including artillery shells; and Jane, calling herself Lightning, had the ability to run and react to danger at greatly super-human speeds. Between them, they had formed a 'superhero duo', dedicated to battling ruffians and criminals on the streets of their home city. Quentin met with them, seeing their potential, and hired them immediately to be the first two major members of the team, which would simply be recognised later as Section 20. Though they were young, at seventeen years old, they accepted their new duties with perfect willingness to involve themselves in the defence of Britain against the Axis superpowers.

His next two discoveries were a little more odd. Word of the project had spread, and he was met inside his own locked office by a beautiful blonde woman and a tall, aristocratic man with crimson-coloured eyes. The blonde woman introduced herself immediately as Miranda Ferguson, explaining that she was a powerful witch looking for a way to assist the war effort, and she introduced her colleague as a demon who had been active on earth since the early 16th century. In addition to choosing her codename of Hecate on the spot, as well as labelling her colleague Lord Belial, she gave Dr. McKelvey information on where he could find a fifth and final member of the team. And the very member of the team who would serve as leader.

She gave his name as Roger Kingston, a little-known artist from West Sussex. It was revealed that Kingston had the ability to generate and shape a form of 'solid light', and was able to use it for a number of things up to and including bolts of energy that could annihilate a tank with a single shot, and personally-generated flight. When approached, Kingston was originally leery of joining the organisation, being unwilling to take part in anything particularly unethical, but when offered the job of leadership he became quite happy to accept. Even in his rebellious mind, it was better to be in charge of the beast than to be uninvolved with it and let it run rampant. He was given, to his chagrin, the codename of Union Jack, which is not the name he wished to be given as it defeated the point of him being something of a rebel, but he accepted the codename begrudgingly and began to acquaint himself with what was to become his team.

The five of them were trained in group tactics from the August of 1939 to the July of 1940, by which time they were deemed ready for active duty. After dealing with a few minor cases of infiltration, Section 20 finally revealed themselves to the world some months later, in the middle of November, by publicly thwarting an attempted attack on London during the Blitz by a small group of the Overman Project's creations. Lauded as heroes, they began from that point on taking the fight to the enemy, using their powers to track down and defeat the more villainous aspects of the Overman Project. At first, they were entirely successful, tackling many different foes throughout the Nazi-controlled portions of Europe, with the assistance of several of France's own superheroes. In the beginning of 1941, they were joined by Sophie Archer, the first incarnation of Britannia to join the group.

Many of the projects found were based off of creatures from Hitler's heavily favoured Germanic mythology, such as a trio of women with psionic powers who were called the Norns and a deranged Nazi magician who went by the name of Woden. To begin with, the projects were easy enough for the team to defeat, but a few of them had a habit of vanishing before they could be properly dealt with.

Grim Horrors
Their first truly disturbing case came about in 1942, when the team encountered the infamous Project Valkyrie. A sixteen-year-old girl, known only by the name of Claudia, was found in a heavily-guarded laboratory in western Austria, just outside of Innsbruck. She was at the time being experimented upon by the scientists there in one of several attempts to create the perfect superhuman. Section 20 attacked the laboratory, and sought to free the girl from her prison, as well as finding out what they intended to do with her. Though many of the files on the project were burned before any of Section 20's members could properly read them, what they managed to find out was that Claudia, codenamed Valkyrie, was meant to represent the pinnacle of the advancement of womanhood, to be a suitable bride to another, greater, project known as Ubermensch Prime.

When they tried to rescue her, she was confused and scared, reacting with a violent outburst that literally sent Thunder through a brick wall. But after that one moment, she calmed down. It seemed quite evident, when the girl displayed various feats of flight, superhuman strength, superhuman speed and various superhuman senses - including a limited precognition that allowed her to predict actions before they were made - that the effort of creating a superhuman was at least partly successful.

Excepting the occasional outburst of anger and various emotions, Claudia went with them relatively willingly to their home base in London. Through interviewing her, they managed to discern that she had no memory of her life before Project Valkyrie, but also that the conditioning to make her perfectly subservient to the Nazi party and the mysterious Ubermensch Prime was without total success. As was put by Hecate, 'The pages of her book have been blanked, but not yet rewritten.' It was ultimately the decision of Union Jack that Valkyrie be put under the care of Section 20, and she was made an official member, though was not allowed to join in official field missions just yet. The time came, however, roughly a year later when she was ultimately needed to aid the group.

In 1943, Ubermensch Prime came looking for his wife. The crazed young man revealed powers far greater than any of the actively fighting members of Section 20, and managed to decapitate Lightning with a single blow to the neck. The synchronised nature of the twins' latent telepathic powers caused Thunder's brain to shut off completely, killing him. Ultimately, with Valkyrie's unexpected help, the group managed to win out and wound Ubermensch Prime badly enough so that they could escape his wrath, but at the cost of two valued members of their team. Though they wouldn't encounter Ubermesnch Prime again for quite some time, the experience had sent them reeling, and they spent some few months focusing on only strategic attacks on the Ubermensch Project, as opposed to outright battling against it.

The Japanese Front
In 1944, the remaining members of Section 20 were officially transferred to Japan in order to help their American counterparts, the Association, battle against the forces of the Tagawa Clan. Section 20's place in Europe was was taken by a minor continent of the much larger Association, headed up at that time by Gladiator. Styled as a private clan of Samurai warriors, and led by their namesakes, the Tagawa family, the Clan was Japan's own answer to the Section 20 and the Association. Their operational methods were similar in style to their American and British counterparts, made up of those who had been hired as opposed to those who had been abducted or appropriated in order to be experimented upon. Section 20's battles against the Tagawa Clan were often more cynical, with both sides knowing in a way that neither side was truly a puppet, and merely fighting for their side, in a sense; the Tagawa Clan was far more like Section 20 than Project Ubermensch, and in a sense it could be seen from a long distance that they would not walk away from this with as much of a grudge.

But still, war is war. The fights were still ferocious and still brutal, though none of the members of Section 20 were killed. Not at first. In 1945, however, some months before the war ended; the Nazi supervillain, Ubermensch Prime turned up once again to battle Section 20, and attempt to perform what he saw as a rescue of his wife from the evil British lies that had corrupted her. He was, however, met by not only Section 20, but by members of the Association as well. Joined by the heroes known as Lady Liberty (an American equivalent to Britannia), Archangel (a powerful cosmic entity), the Winged Avenger (a man who had wings strong enough to carry him through the air, and who was skilled in the use of a magical bow) and the Phoenix (an immortal who could transform into fire), Section 20 managed to fight off Ubermensch Prime more easily, but still at a great cost. The battle took place over the oceans between the islands of Honshu and Shikoku, and less than a minute into the fight, Union Jack, the leader of Section 20, was hit hard enough by Ubermensch Prime that he lost control of both his flight and his shield, and plunged straight into the ocean. And then Ubermensch Prime turned his attentions to Lady Liberty before snapping her neck. Though they ultimately defeated Ubermensch Prime - still not managing to kill him - the losses to both the Association and Section 20 were quite severe.

Attempts to find Union Jack proved useless, and Hecate eventually, and reluctantly, took up the mantle of Section 20's leadership, and declared that Roger Kingston had obviously been killed in the fight, or had drowned afterwards. Soon afterwards, the war ended, and Section 20 found itself back in Britain, with nowhere to go and seemingly nothing to do.

[Shroom Man 777]

Now this is really cool stuff. It gives us a very good impression on what the war must've been like, and this metahuman arms race comes off as rather well-done. You look like you've got ideas for stories all over the place, particularly with the Overman Arc. Goddamn that Ubermensch Prime must've been a real hardass.

The Avenging Aryan!

EDIT:

I like the fact that the Germans really did go through with their eugenics thing by trying to CROSSBREED their Overmen and Overwomen! Excellente!

[Dakarne]

Britannia
Britannia is an entity that selects a single female ''Chosen One'' from Great Britain to be granted nigh-infinite powers in order to protect the land itself. All of the incarnations of Britannia since 1941 have been members of the Section 20 group, beginning with Sophie Archer. The only exception to this is, perhaps, the brief tenure of Lord Monarch in which he possessed the powers and assisted the group, but his membership was not officially reactivated.

Powers and Abilities of Britannia
All incarnations of Britannia have possessed some variation on a central theme of powers. These powers are sourced from cosmic forces beyond the edge of reality, though are not entirely mystical (as in to say that they do not utilise the aether) as they do not have any added effect on someone like Hyperion, who is a little more vulnerable to magic than some others. The powers are also shown to have problems affecting the vastly similar powers of the Archangel and vice versa, and it is rumoured that the powers possess a similar source. There are always some similarities between the many different incarnations, however, with the most central and constant powers being supersonic flight, plus extraordinary strength and resilience. Almost all incarnations are able to survive in almost any environment, immune to the common needs for sleep, sustenance or oxygen, and the ageing process is halted.

Various other abilities also stem from the cosmic powers of Britannia, which vary from individual to individual, but have featured several overall powers. The common powers that incarnations have been able to tap into are blasts of focused cosmic force, generating blinding flashes of light, telekinesis and force-field generation. The incarnation of Britannia with most control of her power so far, Elizabeth Winters, was able to use her powers to create complex structures out of solidified cosmic energy, use her power to heal others, teleport over long distances, change her own shape and even travel through hyperspace.

Incarnations of Britannia

• Unknown Yorkshire Woman - Britannia until 1939
  • The identity of this incarnation of Britannia remains unknown, but it is known that she possessed an accent typical of West Yorkshire, had red hair, and was extremely capable. Her first and only public appearance was in the city of York, in the August of 1939, in which she was ultimately killed in a fight with a recently released demon, after a local cult was flirting with some darker matters than typical witchcraft.
• Sophie Archer - Britannia from 1939 to 1954
  • The first major publicly visible Britannia, who emerged a very short time after the death of her predecessor. Her identity was secret at first, though was revealed some short time after her death in 1954 at the hands of a re-emerged Ubermensch Prime; she was, as incarnations of Britannia went, probably one of the most powerful. She was the first to join Section 20, and formed a great bond with the rest of them, particularly with Union Jack, who she was rumoured to have fallen in love with. Her death, along with the deaths and retirements of many other members of Section 20 surrounding the Ubermensch Prime Incident has been recognised by the British government in a monument that was erected in Hyde Park nearby the Holocaust Memorial.
• Elizabeth Winters - Britannia from 1954 to 1970
  • Liz Winters was chosen for the duty of becoming Britannia in 1954, at the age of eighteen, just after the death of the previous Britannia. She had the powers of all other women to bear the title; strength, speed, flight, resilience, and access to a wide variety of cosmic powers over which she had some modicum of control. She was easily one of the most powerful women to have bore the title, having unlocked an array of extremely versatile variants on the typical powers, but was ultimately forced to give her life for the cause during the alien invasion of 1970, and the powers went on to the next woman, Janine Pritchard.
• Janine Pritchard - Britannia from 1970 to 1972
  • Janine Pritchard's tenure as an incarnation of Britannia was a brief one as she disliked her possession of power and ultimately gave it up and let the powers be passed on. She was, however, a valued member of the team despite being at odds with the idea of being a superhero. She survives to the modern day, though remains rather inactive and obscure, treating her life as a superhero as a distant and unpleasant memory. As a side-effect of her having bore the Britannia entity, she has barely aged, only collecting a few grey hairs in the forty-seven years since her retirement; at the age of seventy, she often feels like she's still separated from the rest of humanity.
• Amelia Rosenthal-Desmares - Britannia from 1972 to 1984
  • Amelia was the first Britannia of the twentieth century to have married and had children. In 1977, she married fellow hero and Section 20 member, Hyperion, the son of earlier hero, Gladiator. She retired to a less-active role for a short time in that same year, after becoming pregnant with their son, but resumed duties as soon as she was able to without endangering herself, her child, or others. She was also the first incarnation of Britannia to have become the official leader of Section 20. She held that position for four years until she was killed in action against the traitorous necromancer Gordon Montieth, thus causing the Britannia entity to be reborn into Katherine Miller. She was survived by her son, Martin Desmares (Gladiator II), and husband, Samuel Desmares (Hyperion).
• Katherine Miller - Britannia from 1984 to 1991
  • Receiving the powers of Britannia in a Thatcherite era, Katherine Miller's heavily anarchistic leanings were at immediate odds with the organisation that most every incarnation of Britannia prior to her had been a member of. Almost immediately, she denied their offers of membership, and struck out on her own as a solo heroine who worked heavily with the common people. She relented after three years of opposition, but her particular political outlook, coupled with her position as the first Britannia to be openly lesbian, still put her somewhat in opposition to Section 20 as she saw them as tools of a corrupt government. She eventually mellowed out, beginning to view Section 20 as an exception to the rule, and the last two years of her tenure as Britannia were more effective as a result. She died in a fight with the Jahn'Khin, in the explosion of their vessel, characteristically defiant to the end; the last anyone ever saw of her was the silhouetted hand-gesture she was making towards the Jahn'Khin's leader. As she died outside of the United Kingdom, her powers, rather than going to the next recipient as they were supposed to, went to the last person to see her alive; and that was James Iveson.
• James Iveson - Britannia in 1991 (temporary incarnation)
  • A hero formerly known as Lord Monarch until his depowerment, James Iveson was present during the untimely death of Katherine Miller and was selected to briefly bear the powers of Britannia in order to fulfil the duties until they could be passed on to a second host. Unbeknownst to him at the time, the presence of the Britannia entity reawakened the existing energies within him and restored his suppressed ability to transform. He held the abilities for a little over two months before he found the intended recipient of the entity, and is so far one of only two men in human history to have ever bore the powers of Britannia, with the other being Arthur Pendragon.
• Farah Khan - Britannia from 1991 to 2005
  • Farah Khan was the second Britannia whose social position caused some mild controversy. She was a Pakistani-descended Muslim, the daughter of an immigrant, whose world was changed by her acceptance of the powers. Though she wasn't a fully traditional Muslim - having been raised by a single mother, Farah originally developed a certain distaste for having powers as she had always seen her life, as something that would ultimately involve having children and an art-related academic study, but then she began to see them as a gift, or burden, given to her by God as a weapon with which to defend the innocent. Unlike her immediate predecessor, Katherine, she was quite willing to join Section 20, seeing them as the best guides available to her. She was the first Britannia since Janine Pritchard to give up her power willingly, as she realised that even with her powers suppressed, she was able to absorb and project energy, as well as fly; she discovered that her unknown father had been a member of an alien species with energy-manipulation capacities, specifically an offshoot of the Khin races. She decided, therefore, to seek them out, and left Earth on a borrowed ship, stating that while Farah Khan needed to be elsewhere, Britannia needed to stay behind; and that Farah Khan didn't need to go on being Britannia.
• Gwendolen 'Gwen' Morris - Britannia from 2005 to present
  • Gwen is the latest in the Britannia line; a Welsh woman from Swansea who was selected at the age of twenty-one. Originally, she stuck quite closely to the image of a classical superheroine; donning a cape and classically-styled armour emblazoned with the Union Flag, as well as bearing a circular shield which is similarly adorned, though notably with the addition of the Red Dragon of Wales. She also, for a time, bore a trident as in classical images of Britannia. Gwen has become a little more disillusioned with the world as of late, however, given the rise of the so-called Enforcers in America and also the realisation of a far less simple world than she originally imagined. There are also some rumours going about the headquarters of Section 20 to the effect of her perhaps being a lesbian or bisexual, though she has never been open to the discussion of her personal life.

[Dakarne]

HYPERION

Real Name: Samuel Desmares
Other Aliases: Teen Gladiator (formerly)
Gender: Male
Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana; United States of America
Nationality: British-American (formerly also French)
Date of Birth: 31st May, 1946
Height: 6 ft. 5 in. (195 cm)
Weight: 230 lbs (104.3 kg)
Allegiance: Section 20, United Kingdom; Association, United States

Biography

Origins
Samuel Desmares was born on Tuesday, 31st of May, 1946, in the city of New Orleans, where his father had been an active superhero for some eleven years, since 1935. His father was the then-extremely-famous superhero known as Gladiator, with the secret identity of Alexander Desmares, who had become something of a symbol of the United States and all that it had begun to represent following the war. His mother was a French woman called Camille Toussaint, and she was a superhero in her own right, with powers of superhuman speed and agility, as well as more than enough in the way of durability to withstand moving at hypersonic speeds. It was therefore only natural that Samuel himself would begin to show signs of power, though they sought at first to shield him from his own superhuman abilities, fearing that they would spoil him or – indeed – accidentally get someone hurt.

Another thing that his parents feared was a societal reaction; someone born of a black man and a white woman, even given the public influence of their publicly affectionate alter-egos of Gladiator and Vitesse, their position in society was marginalised. Their public identities did, however, accelerate the growth of civil rights, with segregation being more or less gone by 1950. Samuel, fortunately, was only occasionally teased by others for his interracial background.

For the first seven years of his life, Samuel was relatively normal for a child his size. He displayed a lot in the way of greater than normal strength and something in the way of greater than normal speed, similarly to his father, only at a much lessened rate of growth. Soon, his parents began to fear the opposite; that he would not truly develop powers, but instead become just a little stronger than his peers, ever to live in the shadow of his parents accomplishments. Still, this didn’t mean much to a young boy who had discovered the joys of old adventure stories, which he spent most of his time absorbed with. Samuel did quite well at school, showing a fairly decent aptitude for mathematics and literature, often coming top of his class, though he didn’t often show much interest in the sciences. At the age of eight, however, a few things changed for him.

Becoming a Hero
Samuel was in the middle of town with a friend of the family when a drive-by shooting suddenly took place; several bullets struck Samuel, in the chest, head and neck. Not a single one of them managed to do so much as pierce his skin or bruise him. This confirmed to his extremely relieved parents that their son was, in fact, superhuman. They didn’t, therefore, particularly worry the same about his baby sister, who was born in that very same year. Samuel’s powers only continued to grow from there, and they began to develop at an alarming rate, especially in the summer. By the age of twelve, Samuel Desmares had very clearly begun to develop the same powers as his father, but he was also faster, a little more like his mother. Also notable was that it had taken his father until he was thirty-three to be able to fly, and that Samuel was soaring above the clouds by the time of his fourteenth birthday.

Eventually, taking up the title of the Teen Gladiator, and fashioning a costume that was similar to his father’s, Samuel began to follow in his father’s footsteps, becoming something of a sidekick. For three years, he helped the helpless, averted accidents, rescued people from falling off of buildings, fought off occasional criminals, and lived as a superhero. After that three years, what changed was the name that he used, as the fast-growing mind and power of Samuel Desmares didn’t warrant staying within the shadow of the original Gladiator. His mother suggested the name Hyperion, after a Titan of Greek mythology; to a seventeen year old Sam, the name sounded impressive, and he adopted it.

His civilian identity had begun to grow as well, by this time beginning to show an interest in writing and poetry. Though he was a poor hand at the latter. He wasn’t, however, particularly interested in attending a college or pursuing an academic career; life, to him, had already offered the first pathway that he would take. He was a superhero, born with great power, and thus he would take up his great responsibility; he felt somewhat beholden to do so. But the rose-tinted view of life for him would very soon break. His father was being hounded by the government for not being active enough against the perceived threat of the Soviet Union in his costumed identity; and he was also hounded by several of the local supporters of HUAC in his civilian life for ‘mysterious behaviour’. Samuel himself toned down his activities as Hyperion, not wishing for his own ‘odd behaviour’ to be noticed and reflect badly on the family; his sister, Agatha, and now-inactive mother didn’t deserve to be unfairly peered at. By the time of his twentieth birthday, he had almost completely abandoned the life of a superhero, focusing instead on his civilian identity.

When Gladiator finally faced off against some of the Communist agents, he encountered the duo known as Hammer and Sickle. Both possessing rare amounts of superhuman strength, speed and a level of what might be termed superhuman cruelty, they literally tore Gladiator apart. Alexander was just days away from his fifty-ninth birthday, and Samuel himself was only barely twenty-one years old. For the first time in his life, Samuel was both scared and bereaved.

His father, the one who showed him the meaning of heroism, was gone. His father, an immortal and unstoppable champion, was never coming back. Hyperion had often believed that his father was very completely invincible; but now there wasn’t even enough left to warrant a matchbox. But there was an overwhelming sense of duty and justice flooding into the now-published adventure writer; a world without Gladiator was a world without hope. He knew that he could never bring Gladiator back, but the world needed a hero. With an avenging promise in his heart, Hyperion was reborn, and ready to take his father’s place as the country’s premier hero. Or at least the best he could manage.

Almost a million people turned up to the state funeral for the man whose real name none but a few actually knew.

Early Career
Though heroic activities were nothing new to Hyperion, with his having been an active hero for seven years, being a solo hero was a little different. As a fully-fledged hero in his own right, he didn’t have the safety net or sense of backup that his father had provided, and he didn’t think his thirteen year old sister was ready quite yet to take up a costume and title of her own. Therefore as the protector of New Orleans, he stood alone; though he knew that he could call upon the help of the Association if he needed to. He was nervous about doing the job badly, but he managed it well for a long while, and rapidly earned the trust of those around him. He was Hyperion. To everyone, he rapidly became the Titan of Gold, with skin of steel and the strength of a thousand men. He just often wished he felt quite the same way.

Like most superheroes, he very soon acquired his fair share of enemies, and many of them were the same old enemies of his father’s; with Blackstar chief among them. Foremost amongst the ones he counted as enemies, however, were Hammer and Sickle, nicknamed the Soviet Sociopaths by the local newspapers. They were what Samuel was afraid of; superpowered people who were truly willing to go to any ends for their own sick amusement. Next to them; the once-terrifying Blackstar, who had yet to cause a single death outside of an accident in 1949, seemed more like a joke. But much to his chagrin, he didn’t encounter them often enough for the opportunity to deal with them to present itself – so he waited.

Hyperion was soon offered membership in the Association, and accepted the position, widening his horizons as a hero to cover more than the city of New Orleans. At first, he was a marginal member in a group with everyone from the Archangel to Lady Liberty, not really standing out on a global stage or being defined as a member standing out on his own. When he was twenty-four, however, during the first invasion of the Jahn’Khin, he realised how integral he was in an incident where he managed to defeat the leader of the invaders single-handedly and tipped the balance just enough to force them into a retreat. A very short time after the invasion was over, within hours in fact, he found himself confronted by the ones who killed his father; the fight was therefore inevitable.

Though weary from his ordeal, his sudden rage and hatred gave him strength and the sunlight was able to rejuvenate him enough to fight. And what Hammer and Sickle encountered, for one second, was not a man or a hero. Nor a monster; it was, ever-so-briefly, the Avatar of a God; a vengeful, and forceful God who would exact His wrath upon those who had slighted him. First he broke Hammer in two with a kick to the spine, and then he incinerated Sickle with the fiery glare of his heat vision, for an instant becoming far more powerful than even his father had been at the height of power.

Hammer and Sickle were the first people that he had ever purposefully caused the deaths of, and the empty looks in their eyes would remain with him for decades afterwards. In his hands lay the power to deal death, and he swore, on that day, that it would not make him a monster. His career as a hero truly began there; with his first long gaze into the abyss. He was, being one of the few members to have purposefully killed anyone, almost expelled from the Association for his actions, but ultimately the decision was made that the vengeance was justifiable and that Hammer and Sickle were both somewhat dangerous.

Much to Hyperion’s surprise, he was approached by the Russian superhuman known as Redstar, who claimed that she supported Hyperion’s quest for vengeance, and she apologised for the actions of her teammates. It put Hyperion’s viewpoint into a different perspective, and it was one that shaped his view of future events to some degree. And also shaped his actions. What he saw in Redstar was most certainly a Communist and a Soviet, but what he didn’t see was the sociopathic and murderous urges of the monsters known as Hammer and Sickle. He saw a woman who believed in the good of the common worker, and that the unequal distribution of wealth was merely a flawed system that needed to be rectified and replaced as opposed to someone who viewed all Americans as evil. He saw a very reasonable woman, and almost fell in love. Almost. From that point on he developed something of a healthy respect for Redstar, and the Red Guard that she was a member of.

(All information current as of 1970)

Powers and Abilities

Powers
The baseline power of Hyperion is the ability to absorb solar energy and radiation. It is a completely irresistible process that activates the second he is struck by solar energy, which includes many forms of sunlight. He is also, if plunged into the heart of a fusion reactor, capable of absorbing the energy from that as well; it is this solar absorption that gives him access to the rest of his powers. He has been able to expel the solar energy in order to rapidly recharge a solar battery. This ability is mostly mystical in nature and origin, and is believed to originate from a gift given to his distant ancestor by the Egyptian solar deity, Ra. Though some versions give the deity as Apollo or Helios.

His ability to expel solar energy is most commonly seen in blasts or beams of sheer heat or light; his often-seen use of heat vision is a common example of this. He can also expel such light from his body by unleashing blasts of energy from his hands, but this is rare and often tiring for him. He can also unleash the energy in what he calls a ‘supernova’ wherein he expels the solar energy of his powers in all directions and incinerates everything in a wide radius. This often causes him to suddenly lose his powers inadvertently.

The rest of his powers, fuelled by solar energy, are much like his father’s. He possesses superhuman strength, theorised to be a form of tactile telekinesis as larger objects retain their structural integrity; which allows him to catch an aeroplane by its tail or its wing, for instance. His lifting strength isn’t known overall, but it is rumoured to outdo six million tonnes, for a normal load; typically, his strength can also outdo that, allowing him to lift up to twelve million tonnes in conditions where he is exerting himself. He can, of course, achieve much more than this via the absorption of heavy amounts of solar energy, which doesn’t appear to have any clear limit to him. He also possesses the ability to expel large amounts of air, or at least impart enough force with a single exhalation to produce hurricane-force winds, which is considered to be a side-effect of his superhuman strength.

He is also superhumanly durable, due to a subconsciously-generated telekinetic force field that allows him to shrug off any attack short of a megaton blast. He has proven to be completely impervious to bullets, ballistic missiles, tank shells and even multi-kiloton nuclear weapons. He has also been shown to be able to resist attacks with greater power than this, but he can be injured by weaponry that is on a multi-megaton level, with a ten megaton bomb theoretically being able to wound him enough so as to render him unconscious. He is also immune to most atmospheric effects, and is also immune to all toxins, diseases and poisons; in addition to this, while exposed to direct sunlight, he can rapidly heal from almost any wound he has sustained, making him extremely difficult to kill. He is also in possession of superhuman stamina, able to fight for a solid forty-eight hours before tiring.

Perhaps one of his most iconic abilities is his ability to fly. The speed of his flight has yet to be truly measured, but it clearly exceeds his father’s speed, as he also somewhat inherited his mother’s ability to move with great speed. It is known that he can move at hypersonic speeds in an atmosphere, and perhaps equal or exceed the speed of light whilst in space. The mechanism behind his flight appears to be similar to the mechanism behind his superhuman strength; tactile telekinesis imparting force in a particular direction. In addition to this, he can think and move at great speed even without flying, and has a running speed that at least equals his ability to fly, and he can perceive the world in slow motion, being able to move and think at what he would consider a normal speed while everyone else in the world is slowed almost to a halt.

He also possesses superhuman senses, being able to hear at almost any frequency, and over very, very long distances. He can hear, for instance, an individual heart-beat in a neighbouring street. His vision is also similarly augmented, and he can view the entire visual spectrum, including enough in the way of x-rays so as to see through objects. He can also see far enough to pick out individual details on the surface of a fly’s wing from a mile away, and he can see microscopically enough to pick out individual atoms.

Abilities
Though possessing a genius-level intellect and some rudimentary knowledge of most sciences, the most formal education possessed by Hyperion consists of a high-school diploma. Despite this, his own natural ability to think very quickly, coupled with his naturally intuitive nature, allows him to adapt to almost any situation. He is also a capable grappler and boxer, trained by several experts so that he might be able to match the rare people capable of similar feats to his own.

Other than that, he is quite knowledgeable about history, current events, and literature. In addition, he is also a skilled writer, and his civilian identity of Samuel Desmares has published at least two novels quite publicly. He also writes as a columnist for some local newspapers, denouncing the evils of superheroes and that they are utterly pointless, highlighting ‘that Hyperion character’ as a primary example. He enjoys the feeling of irony it brings him.

Weaknesses
Hyperion’s strengths are balanced out primarily by his possession of various weaknesses, the first and foremost of which is magic. Magic is a hundred and fifty percent as effective on him as it is upon an ordinary person, and he loses much of his imperviousness when attacked with magic. Sometimes, if he is truly hurt by an attack from a magical source, it can cause him to lose his powers until he can recharge them again. The reason for this is that his own powers are magical in themselves, and the interference of various magical energies can cause the magical energy that permeates his own body to backfire or turn itself in on him, making magical attacks far more effective. A sufficiently powerful magical attack will disrupt his power field entirely, and render him powerless for the thirty seconds to a minute it takes for him to recharge.

Another of his major weaknesses is the requirement for solar rejuvenation. If he goes without contact with direct sunlight or a similar form of energy for more than twenty-four hours, his powers slowly begin to dwindle away, often vanishing entirely within forty-eight hours until he has a proper chance to recharge his powers. These two weaknesses have been exploited by foes who have managed to imprison him before now; depower him using magic and imprison him in a location that lacks contact with direct solar energy.

He is also as vulnerable to mental attacks as a normal human being.