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ORE Superheroes

Grim War History, Part Two: The mutants have always been around

Written by Shane Ivey

Thursday, 06 August 2009

A few credulous hero-worshippers claim mutation every time a myth describes someone of unusual strength or unnatural prowess. But between the research of Charles Fort (which earned him the post of U.S. Secretary for Unusual Humanity) and a few well-publicized corpses preserved with obvious traits off the baseline, it seems clear that there were superpowered mutants in the past, even if Napoleon and Ghengis Khan weren’t among their number.

They’re rare, but becoming less so. The reason for their rarity goes to the foundations of the phenomenon. There are a number of factors that need to be fulfilled before someone becomes a functioning, metahuman mutant.

First off, they need the genetic predisposition. It’s typically theorized that one person in a million has it. In a population of six billion people worldwide, that means there are 6,000 with the potential to develop a power.

Secondly, the proto-mutant has to survive into adulthood. This is less of an issue in the modern developed world, but historical child mortality rates were high.

Furthermore, activating the genes requires a great deal of biological effort. It’s like bearing a child or recovering from a massive injury. Girls who don’t get enough to eat pubesce later. Children deprived of nutrients grow up stunted. Potential mutants whose bodies are strained just trying to survive and fight off infection have no resources left for a massive change.

Even among someone who gets plenty to eat and has the potential, the powers won’t manifest if the host doesn’t accept them. They can be present, but unaccessible. Someone who is constantly praised and supported as a child is unlikely to develop low-self esteem as an adult without some serious trauma or life-changing experience, possibly not even then. Similarly, someone who lives his entire life as an ordinary man without heat vision is unlikely to try to use heat vision when he’s a theology grad student. The potential is there, but he doesn’t even suspect it. Since mutant powers typically manifest after the end of puberty (if they emerge at all), they used to be found most often in people who were already unstable, or who believed in their ability to do inhuman things, or who were in peril serious enough to jolt them out of their usual self-image.

Ironically enough, this last factor meant that many historical mutants thought they were doing magic, when in fact the ritual trappings of enchantment only gave them a framework for accepting power that was theirs all along.

Sorcery aside, historical mutants emerged in conflicts and amidst great tragedies. At the same time that Spiritualism was popularizing the practice of magic, American belief in eugenics was presenting some primitive clues about the presence of beneficial mutation. The unusual brutality of the Civil War had produced several prominent mutants (the best known being “Stonewall” Jackson, the general no bullet could touch), so American soldiers going into the Great War were psychologically prepared to at least hope they could develop some life-saving power under fire. Between the wars, the surviving war hero mutants on both sides became cultural heroes, as well as objects of intense scientific scrutiny. This process only accelerated in the Second World War, where America’s bountiful and well-defended breadbasket ensured that their well-fed soldiery had the necessary calories to fuel the development of powers, if circumstance put them in harm’s way.

Current Events

Between costumed mutants fighting at the forefront of the Vietnam War while enchanters wormed their way through Grim War espionage, the life of the average person continued remarkably free of the influence of either. That started to change towards the end of the millennium, for both of the very different power types.

The push of mutancy began when developed countries started using hormones on their herds. This increased weight gain, raised milk production, and the amounts that remained in the food products were so miniscule that they were deemed insignificant. But in the last thirty years of the twentieth century, the onset of puberty steadily crept earlier in first world nations, possibly for no reason beyond protein-heavy diets. Whatever the reason, potential mutant powers started unlocking earlier. Instead of becoming available to people in their mid twenties (with fairly developed self-images) they were at hand to teens and adolescents whose identities were fluid enough to accept parahuman power. These same adolescents were also the first generations to grow up with television, and therefore, with televised images of adored and pampered mutants exhibiting their powers.

The mutant population surged, even as many of the teens developing their powers terrified society with their poor power control, or poor grasp of consequences. The race is on to identify the genes controlling mutantcy, but even without a medical test, genetic databases can churn out lists of likely positives. Some people well into their mature years have been informed, out of the blue, that they have at least a 25% chance of being mutant-positive. This pool of potential repressed mutants have plenty of sponsorship offers from governments, corporations and other interested parties with psychological programs designed to tease power out into the open.

Some of the more secretive programs utilize the mind-bending powers of enchantment. While it had languished in the shadows, it remained popular with mafias, smugglers, intelligence agencies, terror cells, cults and other secretive organizations. As computers developed in the 1980s, some of the better-funded and scientifically-minded sorcerers began applying logical and mathematical analysis to the theory and practice of enchantment. They were able to streamline things considerably, so powerful, compact spells were available just as the Internet arrived and made keeping secrets far, far harder.

Leaks were inevitable and, with the media playing up the threat of immature wild mutants (and their rarer but just as dangerous senile counterparts), even some ordinary people started researching a few spells for self-defense. After all, being bulletproof was one of the more common mutations.

Welcome to the Grim War. This is a campaign setting for Wild Talents: Superhero Roleplaying in a World Gone Mad,and it touches on the “Company” rules from the roleplaying game Reign. You need Wild Talents to play, while the rules from Reign can move the action onto a broader level. For more about Wild Talents, see www.arcdream.com. For more about Reign, visit www.gregstolze.com.