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I read your argument. My original point was that purely hereditary political power was not universal. Your point was apparently much broader than political power alone, which I noted later in my post and disagreed with in other ways.
Superhuman-Fantasy: A weird ass setting idea
- Thread starter Donald Darf
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- Worldbuilding
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- superhero
I read your argument. My original point was that purely hereditary political power was not universal. Your point was apparently much broader than political power alone, which I noted later in my post and disagreed with in other ways.
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Well, there's another direction to think in - how do you put the fantasy in superhuman fantasy? Sure, you can explore the sociology of people with superpowers to get the broad mechanics of how the settng works, but what makes it memorable is the themes that filter down through the specific details. I also think a degree of mystery and ambiguity (though not too much) can be beneficial.
For one I'd have there be setting elements that hint at stories for where superpowers come from, but which are contradicted by equally compelling alternatives. If some people think superhumans are the reincarnations of gods and demons, well, maybe there's more than superstition to support that idea. Maybe someone claims to remember their past life as a god-king deva and they're digging up ancient ruins to regain their old regalia. Are they alien hybrids? Same, but the ancient ruins are full of strange metal objects. Are they the next rung of spiritual evolution? Perhaps there's a monk who awakened theirs using meditation, or a mad scientist who used drugs and surgery. Are they parts of a greater whole? Some superpowers combine together in unexpected ways.
One big thing you can do is reconstruct fantasy tropes using the mechanics of superpowers. Worm did this all the time, with Lung the Dragon and Ziz the Angel and Nilbog the Goblin King and so forth. You can throw in some monstrous threats as a background to human vs. human conflict, whether it's people who got mutated by their superpowers until they don't look or think human anymore, or things that got created and went out of control. In most fantasy settings the wilderness is full of danger, after all.
Already did something like that with my ideas like Mammo, The Daemon Army, and the Screaming Mountain
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As a precedent, in the comics there was Mystic-IIRC her mutant power showed her to control magic. And well, mutant powers are essentially magic anyway.
On the other side, Shadowrun had both magic and goblinization enacted by specific complex arrangements of DNA, which made "motors" in Astral space.
But really, if you really want to put the fantasy on all this, change your terminology. Instead of mutants, call them "God Touched" "Spelltouched", "The Cursed", "Demonbreed" or the like.
On the other side, Shadowrun had both magic and goblinization enacted by specific complex arrangements of DNA, which made "motors" in Astral space.
But really, if you really want to put the fantasy on all this, change your terminology. Instead of mutants, call them "God Touched" "Spelltouched", "The Cursed", "Demonbreed" or the like.
I mostly call this a fantasy setting cause I wanna imagine people with superpowers in a world that isn't just modern or future earth, or WW2
And just because we're calling them mutants doesn't mean the people in setting do, it's just there are so many possible things to call them based on the various beliefs of people across the setting, that I don't think a singular name would be agreed among the majority of everyone on that planet
But if you really want a different term I could use "The Weird-Folk", the term will probably be used by a small amount of people in setting but its the best I got that fits into almost every possible view on powers in the setting
And just because we're calling them mutants doesn't mean the people in setting do, it's just there are so many possible things to call them based on the various beliefs of people across the setting, that I don't think a singular name would be agreed among the majority of everyone on that planet
But if you really want a different term I could use "The Weird-Folk", the term will probably be used by a small amount of people in setting but its the best I got that fits into almost every possible view on powers in the setting
How about this for an inhuman Outside Context plothook, the effects of superpowers last beyond the death of the super who created them and therefore, there's a steadily increasing amount of land rendered permanently inhospitable by the consequences.
A superhuman who'd made a fortress only they, with the capability to create and dissipate forcefields, could breach, who then died leaving essentially Stephen King's Dome. The ecosystem within the forcefield has since collapsed, with the field radius full of corpses, ruins and anaerobic bacteria mats.
A superhuman with gravity manipulation and an area where gravity has been significantly increased, lethally impassible to anyone but the strongest of strength-enhanced superhumans.
An enormous crater which causes everyone who comes too near to sicken with what nobody in-setting can recognize as radiation poisoning.
Nilbog's fiefdom of Ellisburg with the serial numbers filed off, a pseudo-hive of rapidly reproducing monsters lethally defending a ruined castle with a corpse in chitinous armor on the throne against all intruders.
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These are solid ideas for specific locations, but mutants with the ability to get rid of them would probably also exist so it wouldn't be an existential 'the world is always getting worse' kind of thing. Not in the long term, anyway.
Monsters (either generated ex nihilo or modified creatures) would definitely be a thing, though, and become just a standard part of life if they breed true (or don't age) and outlive their creator. Non-human (or modified human) sapients would probably be among them, too.
Looks like we've got a protagonist's power and backstory. They weren't identified in the local Tourney as a child since their power is only noticeable when acting against other powers so they were raised by peasants and they'll be able to defeat otherwise-unstoppable warlords and reclaim otherwise-irrevocable land.