77 Silver Swords – In the 17^th century, the Manchurian emperor of the Chen dynasty banned the practice of martial arts in order to establish national order with a police/army force of his own, reasoning that if the people were helpless to defend themselves they would have to turn to the Chen Dynasty for protection. A Shaolin sect in the mountains of Mongolia defied the emperor and their temple was destroyed by the Shen La… but no-one was there when the temple fell. At the instruction of their master, the 77 students dispersed and hid themselves among the peasants, secretly teaching them self-defense so that eventually they could throw off their cruel masters. The ‘Silver Sword’ was said to be their most secret technique though few men have seen it used, and lived.

In the 1930’s there was a short-lived ’77 Silver Stars Tong’ in the San Francisco area who lived up to the ideals of the Shaolin heroes and served as a protection society for the Chinese in the area. It was destroyed in 1938 by agents of the Black Pagoda and all members killed.

The Black Pagoda began life as a triad society in the early 18^th century but it was taken over by corrupt gang bosses in 1745 who then worked with the British to funnel opium into China. They reaped immense profits and used that to create a world-wide criminal organization based mainly on smuggling and the drug trade. By 1946 they indirectly controlled, influenced or guided 65% of the world drug trade; they had no real rivals until only the rise of the Columbians in the 70’s or the Mexicans in the 90’s.

The Black Pagoda is a powerful criminal organization in the Bay Area, but they operate mainly through intermediaries since their main base in the mountains south of San Francisco was destroyed in 1956. Right now, their main puppet is the Glorious Heaven tong, a society usually concerned with extortion and murder-for-hire. They control a large gang enforcement arm including the Tiny Raskals (aka 7126, a mostly Cambodian and Laotian gang, the largest Asian gang in America), and the Wu Hop (an extremely violent gang led by Jian Wu, aka Johnny the Nail; he’s called that because he likes to carry a custom nail gun after he nailed shut the doors to the Purple Panda nightclub and then torched the place, killing his gang rivals and also 137 innocents civilians).

The Glorious Heaven Tong is supposedly run by Ho Sing, an escaped Korean War criminal, but it is really a puppet of the Black Pagoda. Glorious Heaven specializes in gang enforcement, extortion, and human trafficking. They mainly use younger members of the Tiny Raskals to extort money from Chinatown merchants, train them in ‘murder camps’ in the southern California forests, and pick out promising members to be sent to the Black Pagoda training camps in China. Ho Sing desperately desires to destroy the Russian Mafia, and the various Latin and African-American gangs so that he can lay hands on the majority of the Bay Area drug trade.

13 Jade Tong takes its name from the 13 jade statues of Buddha that adorned the original Tong house in Hong Kong. Wu Chen, the chairman of the tong in San Francisco, has four of those original statues, said to be worth a fortune. Wu Chen runs a front as a wealthy import/export enterprise. 13 Jade controls most of the illegal gambling in the area, and they own several secret casinos.

It is perhaps an axiom that the more radical elements in any organization eventually wind up controlling that organization because of their untiring efforts at getting their own way. So it was with the informal cabal; by 1941 it was controlled by Lord Vulcan, once the leader of Satan’s Seven. His gifts included superhuman intelligence and an intuitive grasp of technological artifacts that far surpassed his time period. He began to believe his gifts placed him above his fellow man and he gradually moved the focus of his fellow scientists from research to experimentation.

Lord Vulcan believes that metahumans represent a superior track of evolution and continually tries to ‘improve the breed’, creating machines and serums that can unlock the metahuman potential he thinks resides in everyone. He has made several improvements to himself and his minions and it’s not uncommon for him to experiment upon normal humans and metahumans alike as he tries to grant himself ever more powerful abilities.

Since the 1980’s, he has backed several organizations with the stated goal of taking over the world and setting up a metahuman ruling class to police the common herd of humanity, which will be used as breeding stock or raw materials, depending on their genetic fitness. Several more radical groups have spun off of these organizations, usually devoted to some form of high-tech terrorism or using the ‘Supremacy’ ideology as a front to pull in people for indoctrination into their own ideals. Sometimes Lord Vulcan destroys these spin-offs himself, other times he may reveal their plans or locations to ATLAS or local superhero groups, depending on his mood and how far he feels the group has deviated from his message.

The Great Influenza Pandemic was the first successful biological weapon test, Fu Manchu’s response to Germany foiling his plans for the conquest of China. The first truly successful super soldier formula was created in 1918 as a mistake while looking for an influenza cure; it created five physically superior specimens that did not go mad.

From that point, US, English and German scientists worked to recreate that accident, also branching out into other areas of research. For the technology of the time, chemistry was the way to go. In 1942, the US had another success using the mostly-untested radiation approach: The Silver Eagle. Britain created Tommy Atkins and Yeoman using their more traditional chemical approach, though Yeoman eventually went mad and Tommy had to take the serum every week or see his powers fade. Germany went a different route with their Necromen project, though their major success in the field came from duplicating the US Silver Eagle project and producing Iron Cross and Masterman.

The Silver Knight and Squire (created through a transfusion of Silver Knight’s blood, though that method never worked on another person, ever) were immediately put into action in Europe while at home the Army got down to work on the Minuteman project. Tired of potions and treatments that only worked on single individuals, the Minuteman project sought a mechanical solution. The concept of the exoskeleton was not a new one, but recent materials advances finally made it possible.

The US went through several other programs: The Minuteman projects were resurrected in the 70’s. The 80’s saw them use cybernetics. In the 90’s they dabbled in nanotech. By the 2000’s, they are firmly back in the genetic experimentation route.

The Bay Area

San Francisco is a haven for free-thinkers, artists and authors. It boasts the largest metahuman population on Earth, an estimated 25,000 people with an expressed metahuman ability of Delta-class or above. It has the largest Asian population in the US (27% of residents). One man in five above the age of 15 is gay. It has the only phone book in the US with the profession ‘Wizard’ listed. Due to the physical nature of the peninsula, San Francisco has the densest population of any city in the US.

Oakland is an urban hellhole of crime and corruption. It’s been voted ‘Most Corrupt Police Force in the US’ every year since 1968 and boasts the highest violent crime rate in the US. Oakland has suffered crippling economic downturns and is a sea of urban poor. Save for the showcase waterfront mall area, the average income of an Oakland resident is $10,000 per year with a 35% unemplyment rate. Massive decaying housing project towers serve as gang headquarters in the war for the streets. Ironically, just south of Oakland’s borders in Freemont is an economic boomtown in terms of jobs and living standards due to the massive automotive plants and subsidiary industries.

Redwood City is all glitz and glamour. This is where the displaced film industry settled and all major studios maintain a significant presence here. The huge marina areas host both cargo container ships and million-dollar yachts. The finest hotels and entertainment venues are here, though San Francisco still has the best restaurants. The theater and ballet companies that have settled here are why the northern part of the area is called ‘Little Broadway’.

San Jose is a gleaming ‘city of the future’ that boasts one of the highest standards of living in the US. Every major and minor technical company has some level of representation here. It has the first automated guidance roadway system in the US, which came online in 2001 and serves the inner city area, with extensions out to the primary shopping districts, airport, and Disneyland.

As you move south towards Redwood City, Latin gangs take over the less dense urban areas and suburbs. Redwood City itself, and Hollywood, are solidly in control of the Russian Mafia but their influence ends when the main urbanization runs out. The entire south bay is given over to a mosaic of Latin gangs, and the debased Santaria cults (San Jose itself is a very low crime zone as far as gangs go. It’s underworld is controlled by The Machinist).

Going back up towards Oakland, the black gangs take over; tense turf wars break out every few weeks between black and latino gangs, each seeking a part of the shrinking pie. Oakland proper is ruled by a cabal of black gangs, topped by the Black Iron Diciples and the Caliphate.

The northern cities and Sacremento are given over to specifically the Mexican Mafia ( as oppossed to the Nuestra Familia that surrounds Redwood City and parts south), though the Russians are making serious inroads on their traditional sources.

The traditional La Cosa Nostra Mafia is not seen very much on the West Coast, though they have some strong interests in Hollywood. The only successful traditional Mafia family is the Cotroni Family who originally came down from Toronto. They have made a place for themselves in the cocaine market and seem comfortable running that business despite the Mexicans.

Squire, the assistant to The Silver Knight, was the first teenager to put on a costume and fight crime, beating out the first appearance of Kid Superior by two full years. In one interview the hero now known as Sentinel said that he regarded Squire’s appearance as an inspiration to him to use his gifts for the betterment of mankind.

William L. Shirer’s monumental work Godlike, his 1965 follow-up to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which details the entrance of true metahumans onto the world stage, contains a lengthy interview with the Silver Knight and Squire done soon after the end of the war. Later in the book he examines the proliferation of young assistants to the metas of the time without the bias and cruel animosity seen in 1954′s Seduction of the Innocent (an FBI-sponsored propaganda peice aimed at swaying popular opinion against the prominent metas of the time, especially The Astronaut and Starboy, and The Eagle and Wing).

Metahuman historian Ron Goulart explored the popularity of the sidekick in his 1967 book Boy Wondering, which devoted a good quarter of the book to Squire’s exploits in WW2, his later popularity on the American pop scene, his rise as one of the first ‘teen idols’, and his gradual withdrawal from the superhero community as he aged.

TV and movie portrayals of Squire have been surprisingly sparse given his popularity in the 1950s. The movie serial ‘Silver Knight vs The Robot Menace’ featured John Duncan as Squire; productions values were terribly cheap though even it was not as bad as Christopher Atkin’s portrayal in 1980′s ‘War Hero’, widely regarded as the role that ended the young actor’s career. Much better was Kevin Zeger’s portrayal in 1999′s ‘The Greatest Generation’.

The below-ground facilities are known as Lockdown and are maintained by ATLAS personnel, since many of the incarcerated are of multiple national origins, housed here at the request of their home nations (many of which do not have similar facilities). To say that this is a political hot potato would be a severe understatement. These facilities house the most dangerous criminals on Earth in power-nullification cells or in unique restraints.

SIGMA
Superhuman Incident General Management Agency
A division of the Defense Department. It deals with all metahuman threats to the safety and security of the United States and also maintains the two metahuman-capable confinement facilities in California and Louisiana.

ATLAS
Advanced Tactical Liaison to Allied States
The United Nations metahuman resource management council which recruits, trains and equips the UN ‘Superteam’ for use in UN rescue and military operations. By UN resolution, it is the only body officially allowed to field metahumans in a military capacity though most of the First World countries maintain some sort of metahuman ‘civilian’ cadre.

OTHR
Office of Trans-Human Resources
A division of the Justice Department concerned with crimes against metahumans, material and monetary aid to victims of metahuman crimes or abilities, and civil rights issues. It is often at odds with SIGMA.

MK-ULTRA
This was the secret branch of the CIA that experimented on metahumans in the early 1960’s, seeking to duplicate or disrupt their powers. It was officially shut down in 1975 by the Director of the CIA but rumors persist that it operates several ‘black’ research and development centers scattered throughout the world.

‘Section Six’
This was a rogue group of highly-placed military and intel personnel headed by J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover became concerned with the possibility that metahumans meant to supplant humanity and formed a task force to find ways to disable or kill them. Section Six broke from its government roots in 1972 when Hoover’s death threatened to expose them. It went underground and continued its goal to destroy all non-humans in the world.

SCI
Scientific Concepts International
A multinational think-tank that concentrates on pure science research; its home office is in Chicago but it maintains extensive facilities in most major American and European cities.