Aberrant 2.0: IDOLNOV@

The year is 2029. It is a time of great innovation. It is also a time of chaos and conspiracy. Guys with shiny black robot arms and floral-print trenchcoats stalk the world hunting for evidence of grand overarching conspiracies which have controlled the world for decades.

Which is completely irrelevant for you, because you're not fighting for the ancient chessmasters of Aeon, nor fighting to make your voice heard as one of the Aberrants, nor working with one of the PMCs out there, nor even fighting for Nova independence as a Terat. No, you're a young, up-and-coming nova with ambitions and a semi-promising resume, found by the latest N! show, IDOLNOV@, an experiment to directly capitalize on the popularity of these incredible superhumans.

Background

The World of 2029

A Bright Future

2029 is a year of nigh-unbridled optimism, tainted with dark things lurking in the alleys. Standard of living inequality is the lowest it's been since just about anyone can remember. Nations considered to have long been worthless hangers-on to the global community are finding their feet and their voice, while the problems that plagued humanity merely two decades ago-peak oil, global warming, ecological disasters, seem all in the distant past. The Earth is becoming ever more habitable, extinct species are being reintroduced, biodiversity is up, and even as industry expands, its total emissions are going down due to more environmentally friendly and efficient technology.

Yet for all that novas have done, there is a dark shadow that the bright light has made even more difficult to ignore. The structural problems that led to the crises are still existent. Investors still play risky shell games, corporations still try to maximize profit margins and to hell with everything else, crime still exists, dictators still oppress random countries, the US is still invading people for poorly-thought out reasons, etc. But they're improving! And maybe with all this awesome technology we won't need to fix them, right?

The Singularity

A few decades ago, a visionary named Ray Kurzweil defined the concept of the 'singularity', where it would be impossible to predict the technological development of the future and where strongly superhuman intellects would rule. This is the Singularity, and humanity is caught up in the midst of it. Concepts thought to be science fiction, or even science fantasy have rapidly become commonplace, or at least extant. Even further out-there concepts have been shown off, gadgets which have no place in a rational scientific world and make more sense in fantasy.

Theory is often advancing at a rate so fast the limit of what technology trickles down to the common man is market saturation and the fact that novas commonly invent systems so complex the tools to the tools to the tools to make the systems do not exist.

The People Of The Hour

Political

General Xinlong Zhou, People's Liberation Army

A powerful cyberkinetic and one of the leaders in the increasing digitization and advancement of Chinese governance and military command, very few people know what he's capable of except that he is a confirmed cyberkinetic and an academic who is almost certain to have superhuman intellect. His hobby, which he makes most of his money off of, is literature and linguistics, and he has said in a rare interview that he plans to write at least one novel in every human language, including several dead ones.

President Abdul-Haafiz Cassar

The first Arabic and the first nova president of the US, Abdul-Haafiz Cassar is a well-educated, well-spoken nova of fairly considerable power. Best described as a 'liberal technocrat', he has been booed by humanists for his elevation of many, many novas to high-ranking advisory positions and his opponents are quick to accuse him of being alternately an Utopia toady and a Teragen sympathizer. Abdul-Haafiz's powers are largely unknown, although it is known that he possesses a forcefield and danger sense due to an unsuccessful assassination attempt.

Chancellor Jonas Luchs

A powerful mega-intellect, Jonas Luchs is credited with Germany's explosive economic growth and its rapidly expanding internal markets, as well as its position as leader of research and development in the EU. With high popularity ratings domestically and abroad due to his economic insights, social program funding, and leadership-by-example in the fields of science and engineering, he is almost guaranteed to retain this position for the forseeable future. Divorced once, during his political campaign, he met Theresa Marian, a fellow nova, and fell in love. They have one daughter.

Corporate

Anna DeVries

The CEO of the DeVries company, Anna DeVries is a radiant woman who looks to be in her mid-20s (despite her actual age being over 50). Ruthless in business and competition yet extremely likable in person, public opinion of her is quite positive, with the media focusing on her personal life, donations to charity, support for novas, and scholarship opportunities rather than her ruthless corporate warfare attitude to business ventures.

Theresa Marian-Luchs

CEO of DataDyne Technologies, a telecommunications and information technology developer that was instrumental in the updates to the internet with the advent of eufiber-based-telecom infrastructure. At the forefront of the integration of all communications infrastructure into the internet with their 'Omni-purpose Network' or 'OPNet' project, she has made the Time's top 100 people of the year and is almost a household name in the same way Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were.

Entertainment

Tommy Orgy

The one-man rock band and one-man sex scandal, Tommy Orgy is gay, out, and proud as hell of it. Many teenage girls and young women are fans of his outrageous antics, amazing good looks, and (surprisingly!) competent musical talent, as well as his little-known acting career.

Jake "Dragon" Korelli

Tommy Orgy's close friend and ex-Elite, Korelli retired from mercenary work for DeVries four years ago to pursue an acting career, starring in many Hollywood kung-fu epics and having guested in the XWF using his Elite 'stage name'. He has implied that he may become a permanent fixture XWF fighting, to the cheers of many of his fans and the XWF in genera.

Team Tomorrow

Caestus Pax

Caestus Pax is one of the most powerful novas in the world, with literally earth-shaking power. The leader of Team Tomorrow, Caestus Pax plays superman on camera, but rumor has it that he is much less likable in the flesh when he's not giving prepared speeches or dealing with PR. He is also not invulnerable, as he has been wounded by Totentanz once, and a second time by Pursuer, although the latter had every major bone in his body shattered in the retaliatory attack.

Elites

Totentanz

Totentanz is DeVries's most famous Elite and possibly one of the most dangerous novas in the world. With nearly a hundred confirmed nova kills, and very little known about his life before eruption, he has many fans (who he completely ignores) who follow his actions obsessively and overanalyze every scrap of information they can get on him to figure out who he was before he was famous.

Famous Organizations

Supranational

Project Utopia: Ostensibly an arm of the UN, Project Utopia is for all intents and purposes independent, although it follows UN resolutions as closely as possible. With an extremely large number of novas and Caestus Pax, they may be one of the most powerful militaries in the world despite their lack of a country backing them up. Famous for their terraforming of Africa and their environmental ventures which led to the elimination of global warming and pollution problems, as well as plans to reintroduce several extinct species to the world, as well as for their support in toppling several nova dictators, they are a powerful force for (seeming) good in the world.

Teragen: Nova supremacists tend to band under this label, although there is only one "official" Teragen group. The Teragen believe in the scriptures of Divis Mal, and increasingly they see him as a distant god rather than just a very powerful and enigmatic nova.

N! Entertainment: The global media giant that has become, increasingly, the unofficial PR agent for novakind in general, N! is your employer (in a sense) in IDOLNOV@, as they are hosting, producing, and funding the show. They constantly feed a stream of nova-related news and entertainment to the public, and are also a nova talent agency which provides nova models, spokespersons, and actors to organizations in need of them, as well as business consultations on attracting or retaining nova personnel.

Technology

Consumer

Smartphones have gotten smarter and more capable. Most people use a smartphone with more processing capability than an entire computer lab had in 2011, with the ability to achieve photorealistic real-time graphics, flexible OLED screens that can unfold to allow for immersive movie and game experiences, self-healing impact-resistant casings that can do anything short of take a bullet and stay unmarked, and batteries with active lives measured in days.

Larger computers can often run programs with near-perfect voice and character recognition and the ability to pass Turing tests (for brief periods of time) and parse natural human language. Dumb AI 'wizards' and 'agents' are increasingly taking workload off of humans, giving them more time to focus on high-level design and planning rather than the nuts and bolts of a project. In many technical jobs, the human sets up the parameters and the overall design, the AIs finish the specifics.

In fashion, smart clothing is common in the first world and increasingly in countries such as China due to proliferation of novatech and low-cost electronics fabrication. With low power consumption and the ability to recharge via solar exposure, shirts and pants which integrate various sensors and features such as video playback or even background-generated fractal art (a derivative of military active camouflage systems). The highest end of smart clothing uses synthetic (or even genuine!) eufiber with 'implanted' control nodules, and are sought after by the rich and novaphiles. Everyday smart clothing commonly can change patterns, thermoregulate to a minor extent, and monitor vital signs, with many models coming with integrated emergency beacons that automatically send information to authorities and other contacts in the event of injury.

Disabilities are also largely a thing of the past, with human-emulation prosthetics that have 100% or more of a missing limb's capability. "Wheelchair accessible" is dropping off the map, as human-assistance exoskeletons, pioneered by Japanese firms, give the elderly additional mobility, often possessing enough intellect to prevent the person inside from falling and ensure a normal gait no matter how bad their normal balance is. These exoskeletons are becoming ever-smaller, to the point where many can be fit discreetly under loose clothing.

Cars in the mid-21st century are capable of driving without human control, with several countries giving driver licenses ever-increasing standards. Freight trucks are almost all unmanned, for optimal efficiency. Pollution is also largely a past worry, as hypercombustion engines, fuel cells, and pure-electric vehicles all jockey for a place in the future. Right now, most fueling stations provide all three with service, as nobody knows how the future will leap yet (hint: fusion powered vehicles come along and obsolete everything else).

Clean power from fusion, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal sources is supplanting fossil fuels and fission, and the ever-decreasing size and cost of solar panels is bringing power and modern convenience to the most unlikely places.

Hypertechnology

Nova-derived products which can be reproduced via human hands are considered to be "hypertechnology". Systems of this nature are often capable of doing things previously thought physically impossible, and only Mega-Intellects know why and how, precisely, they work. Baseline scientists can create theories as to how they work, and can parrot their blueprints into working products, but they cannot truly invent new devices of this sort.

Medical

The science of fixing injury has become almost entirely mature, with a handful of hospitals in the US and EU offering cloned transplant grafts. Immune rejection looks to become a thing of the past in a handful of years, with everyone injured capable of having healthy clone tissue replace damaged material. Prenatal screening for diseases and cancers have also increased in popularity, although germline genetic engineering is still heavily restricted and only allowable to correct diseases rather than improve the genome, especially due to a rather incomplete understanding.

Common prosthetics have become 100% functional replacements for missing limbs (they even run on your metabolic functions and can self-heal to some extent!) and the science of artificial replacement parts has developed to the point where as long as your brain is intact, you can probably be salvaged and enjoy a full life. Even nerve damage can be fixed with implants and bypass shunts. High-end milspec prosthetics are such that personnel with them can find significantly increased capability. However, the cyborg supersoldier is largely a myth. Prosthetics are generally only given on an as-needed basis, and the people crazy enough to willingly lose perfectly good limbs are often the last people you want with superhuman ability. The only time healthy limbs are removed for high-performance hardware is in the event where not doing so may cause actual issues, such as enhanced legs and eyes, and even then only done willingly.

Rumors of cloned supersoldiers, bioengineered weapons, cyborg attack dogs, cyborg killing machines, chromed-up full borgs, and other weaponized mishmashes of artificiality combined with nature are probably largely rumors. Probably. The closest thing to 'combat cyborgs' are generally mitoids who require high-end cybernetic cardiovascular systems to keep them from dying of heart attack. Actual (meaningfully) cybernetically enhanced personnel are rare, often equipped with gray or black-market cybernetics, and either members of crime gangs or extreme human-enhancement fetishists. Some forms of augmentation, however, have seen greater use, primarily because they're more useful in everyday life. Direct data interfaces are rare but growing in academia, finance, engineering, and research, and more complex implant computers capable of housing limited-AI wizards are also increasing in commonality. As surgery and recovery techniques become even better, it is likely that more and more people will achieve unity with computers.

On that note, nova-derived drugs allow the impossible to happen. Combat drugs such as Red 7, derived from nova hormones, reliably provide an average man Olympian physical performance for an hour with only short-term side effects. The famous nova steroid 'Mite', harvested (willingly!) from the bloodstreams and muscle tissue of Mega-Strong novas, allows its users to achieve strength levels beyond human maximum, with its longtime users often strong enough to lift pickup trucks over their head at the cost of extreme stress on the cardiovascular system and more often than not, an early death. And there are rumors of Soma, rendered from M-R nodes, that might provide baselines a taste of godhood...

For those who wish for better living via medicine but are too squeamish (or too poor) to lose perfectly good limbs for cold metal in less-regulated countries or take nova-derived drugs, there are always retroviruses. Human Growth Retrovirus, originally intended to reverse the degradation of muscles in the elderly, is common for many, many bodybuilders, providing a boost in physical conditioning with less harmful side effects than anabolic steroids (although reports say that it's like going through puberty all over again). Other bodybuilders prefer complex targeted drug cocktails, which provide the advantage of more reliable improvement.

Both see quite common usage, and despite the best attempts by athletics sponsors and the IOC, are only lightly regulated in most countries. Several US sports leagues have removed the bans against 'doping' and instead merely require documentation, and even the IOC is considering having to revise its famously harsh anti-doping laws by virtue of the unfortunate fact that there are almost no undoped athletes remaining.

Novas in 2029

There are approximately 36,000 confirmed Novas given various UN census surveys, with possibly up to 2 or 3 thousand more unconfirmed due to living and only acting in remote areas. There are a further 128,000 'probables', people whose abilities are extremely implausible yet do not show high-end superhuman feats (for example, having multiple Ph. Ds and having played professional sports by the age of 25 is just implausible, not impossible). Almost all of these probables are actually Novas, given the implausibility of such performance arising from mere environmental and genetic factors, but none of them can be confirmed without lab time, and as their 'eruptions' are so subtle, they rarely report into Rashoud facilities.

UN Response Code Scaling

The UN Response Codes are used by all UN and NATO forces to delineate the potential power of a hostile nova, and the ideal response. They are also used by N! commentators and Novaphiles to discuss the power level of their favorite novas and who could beat up whom, a hobby which will never stop as long as there are people on the internet. These will eventually be replaced by the Aeon Prime/Alpha/Beta/Gamma/Delta/Epsilon/Zeta/Eta scale around 2060, if the Aberrant War still happens.

GODLIKE: Highest Response Code, used for novas whose abilities are potentially natural-disaster level in scale. As of 2027, only 2 dozen novas are classified under Response Code GODLIKE, with Antaeus, Caestus Pax, Divis Mal, and the sand and rock manipulator Mashala "Harmattan" Kader the most commonly known ones.

Nova Employment

Being a Nova is generally a quick method of achieving employment. Governments and Utopia want just about any nova under their thumb, and provide six figure salaries, excellent benefits packages, and more often than not significant benefits and stipends to even family members, for the weakest of true novas. The majority of novas find employment by one of many governments (~38%) or in Utopia (~22%), while the remaining 40% tend to freelance.

Military

As by far the most common stressor inducing eruption is dangerous situations and the second most common is psychological stress (and even a peacetime military has plenty of both), a disproportionate amount of novas have military or paramilitary backgrounds, with over 30% of novas having served time in a nation's armed forces instead of the roughly 2% in the general population. This does mean that many novas, after eruption, find themselves folded back into a familiar world, employed in 'special operations' groups, although as not every nova has the aptitude and skills to become a commando, the moniker is often misleading and used only to increase the prestige of reenlistment, along with sweetening the deal by including incredible amounts of pay and benefits.

For example, a E-1 nova in the EU Combined Forces or the US military often makes significantly more than most field-grade officers, and gets an even larger housing and living allowance than said officers. This does create resentment among members of the top brass, but is critical for retaining soldiers when private contractors such as DeVries, Trans World Operations, and Unconventional Solutions often pay novas seven figures yearly to become mercenaries.

Novas join the military out of many reasons. Unlike being an Elite mercenary, you are likely to see somewhat less combat service and you are almost certain to have far more backup. Not even DeVries can afford a hundred AI-assisted F-41 Maeve battlefield dominance aircraft, or a few armored battalions. Furthermore, the draw of patriotism, prestige, and nationalism are still there, as well as the fact that in the military, many novas can stay close to old friends. The benefits are also excellent, as most governments have much, much looser hands and put fewer roadblocks in the way of novas serving the country.

Military novas are an interesting grab-bag. Mega-Physicals and Mega-Mentals are most common, with Mega-Socials being rare. Combat powers and powerful defenses are also common, but unlike Elite mercenaries, frontline service isn't as much of a requirement.

Government

Non-military government work is, for similar reasons to military employment, also a common place to find novas. The benefits are good, the pay is more than adequate, and the paradoxical reduction in being monitored (governments are quite obviously leery of letting people with main battle tank firepower walk around, a bit less if they work for them) are all powerful incentives to government work. Safety services, such as police, hazmat response, fire rescue, and EMT work are the most common nova jobs in government, as well as contract or university researchers.

Elites

Elites are officially 'any freelancing nova', but the name applies largely to nova mercenaries employed by various government or private interests. The Elite lifestyle is far more glamorous than working a government job and much higher-paid, with million-dollar+ contracts common for month-long operations. However, this cost doesn't come without its prices. Elites find that their job is much, much riskier than even Nova military. The assets of a conventional army make it much easier to fight other novas or other armies, greatly reducing the nova's chances of ending up in harms' way. Similarly, they generally have to buy their own equipment and licenses, instead of being issued them.

Consider for a moment that the Joyeuse ATGM in EU use costs over 150,000 Euros for a single shot, this means the multimillion dollar contracts Elites get paid tend to go fast. However, if one has the powers to largely negate expenses and the skill to survive the battlefield with little support, it is one of the fastest ways of making large amounts of cash as a nova-as long as you can stand the stigma of being a soldier for hire.

Elites are interestingly both loved and loathed. The public loves to hear about their escapades, but tends to keep a wide berth in person. They have the soldier-of-fortune glamor, but also there is the understanding that these are superhumanly dangerous men and women, often not quite right in the head, often fighting for the "bad guys", whoever they are. This love-hate relationship with the public is enhanced further by the impressiveness-and the brutality-of many top ranking Elites.

Entertainment

Given the massive cost of Hollywood-level special effects, when it realized that instead of paying 20 million to the actor and another 20 million to special effects designers, it could just pay 25 million to a nova, it leapt at the deal. The special effects studios didn't (and then more powerful software and semi-AI routines came out and they liked the world even less). Being a nova actor is a quick way to an easy paycheck (if you have really flashy powers and superhuman appearance, and can stand the world of showbiz), but requires the panache that all too often novas lack. People don't tend to be imaginative with their fantasies, and the world has seen all too many superhumanly fast, strong, tough, and agile guys who look superhumanly perfect. The field is too saturated, and you need something unique to sell you to the crowd, something flashy, glitzy, glamorous and all too uncommon.

Nova sports is also a burgeoning field, often displacing human sports due to the spectacle of it. The first nova Olympiad was held in 2028 to great success. Given the raw physical ability of novas, the benefit to nova sports is that many, many novas are amateur athletes, playing battleball or nova rugby or fighting in the XWF as a side job or hobby.

The most popular nova "sport" is the semi-staged combat arena of the XWF, where novas fight each other (with rules and regulations to ensure no intentional deaths happen) and make people's fantasies of real life superheroic throw-downs come true, with colorful characters, villains, false origin stories, and even plots. It's all fake, most people know it, and nobody cares.

Business

Corporate business is also a major employer of Novas. Mega-Intellects are at home in finance and R&D, with many, many companies having mega-Intelligent engineers, researchers, and financiers on retainer for their plans. Wall Street has become a mecca for Mega-Intelligent novas seeking to win a fortune in the stock market (or more often, lose one because they overestimated their intelligence and underestimated their competition). But Mega-Socials are also employed by business. Novas of either gender can find roles as spokespersons or models, selling products by associating them with beauty, elegance, and raw sexuality. Mega-Socials are invaluable in corporate espionage, acquisitions, merger planning, and leadership roles. Mega-Physicals find business one of the least welcoming fields, as all they can do is security and bodyguarding, which tend to also require some level of discreetness or personability, or in the case of high-security areas, raw intimidation factor.

On the flipside, government regulators of business tend to have similar intellect requirements but fewer social ones-defending against the charms of a Mega-Social is much easier than charming someone, and fines work a lot better than charm at ensuring cooperation anyways. There have been, of course, situations where mega-physical 'muscle' has been needed, especially when businesses have ties to organized crime, but most commonly those use paramilitary units like E-SWAT or outright military units to back up auditors, and government regulatory agencies rarely keep Mega-Physical killing machines on their own retainder.

The exception are organizations which deal with dangerous high-risk technologies such as the Department of Energy, which has a nova squad for its SRT.

Public Defenders and Policing

With the expectations of 'superheroes' fighting crime and cleaning the streets that decades of western comics (and movies based on them) have created for the erstwhile superhumans who are just so similar to the costumed vigilantes decorating the pages of such books, it was only a matter of time before someone thought of the brilliant idea of deputizing reliable, photogenic novas to work with police forces. And so the Public Defender or City Defender was born.

The Public Defender or City Defender is a combination of superhero, community outreach worker, and PR agent. His or her job is not to duke it out with other novas (risky and likely to cause unwanted collateral damage). Instead, they generally foil "minor" violent crimes and deal with disaster relief, making their presence felt with media and community outreach. They are intended to be shining examples and positive PR more than actual police, giving interviews and 'showing the flag' as it were. Japan has, perhaps unsurprisingly, made a media spectacle out of public defenders, giving them more responsibility to foil crimes than most nations do, and showcasing their escapades on HERO TV. Of course, the public generally doesn't know that at all times there are healers standing on the sidelines in case one of the heroes gets injured, or that there's always an E-SWAT unit in full battle rattle ready in case things escalate out of control, such as the attempted apprehension of Geryon which lead to several heroes being severely injured.

If a nova wants to go into policing to shoot bad guys and duke it out with actual criminal/terrorist novas, the career path for them is E-SWAT, or Enhanced Special Weapons And Tactics. The customers in said groups don't need to be photogenic (although at least one member in every team should be at least personable), they just need the ability to dish out and take a lot of punishment. Semi-common in large cities with high nova populations, E-SWAT's job is to handle things, like Nova Vigilance terror attacks, that standard police forces are utterly incapable of doing. Unlike public defenders, who are generally equipped with distinctive costumes and bright colors (and not uncommonly product placement), E-SWAT is invariably clad in a shade of dark blue to black, has military-style shoulder flashes, and wields very big guns. Their posthuman nature and the potential threats they face give them a lot of armament leeway, and there are plenty of photos on the OpNET of E-SWAT units wielding TOW launchers, 40mm autocannon, and other extremely heavy guns capable of stopping nova threats.

Characters

Ragna Luchs (Shrike)
Rin Yamato (Peel)
Aine (Exhack)
Alex Vincent (Starlet) (Norse)
Yayoi Sakubou (Mal)

Other Stuff

Time Until Swimsuit Shoot: 14 days

As timers go, it's a lot less stressful than "time until the Coalition invades with a billion Spinals" isn't it?

Free Flaws

Because I hate you and everything you stand for, have a 'free' flaw. Well, okay, you can take the BP from it and just buy it off.

Noncombatant (7 points): The character lacks the combination of experience, willpower, and ability to dehumanize the enemy and detach him or herself from the situation to be an effective combatant. Although the character may have the raw skill, he or she lacks the bloody-mindedness needed to put that skill to use. In nonlethal fighting such as cage matches, friendly sparring, and even the occasional bar brawl, the character suffers no penalties, however when fighting in a situation where death may be a serious concern (either inflicting or receiving the condition):

The character must pay 1 WP to make an attack that is potentially lethal (as a rule of thumb, any attack that deals more than 2L damage is considered 'potentially lethal', as are any attacks which deal more than 15B damage) and all such attacks are made at +1 difficulty. If the character fails an attack roll with a lethal attack, the character is considered to have automatically botched. Generally this involves dropping the weapon or losing the turn.

Killing people is wrong! If the character successfully incapacitates a person with lethal or aggravated damage, he or she must roll temporary Willpower. Each success allows the character to retain 1 Willpower point.

Being shot at is scary! The character, if attacked by gunfire or other loud, dangerous weapons, must pay 1 WP or abort to full defense, sprinting for the nearest cover.

When wounded, the character may go into shock, curl up into a ball, or otherwise be incapable of acting. Double all wound penalties from lethal damage. Characters wounded at -2 or below from lethal damage must pay WP to ignore wound penalties if they wish to act.

The character is easily intimidated by lethal implements. Add 2 automatic successes to Intimidation rolls against the character if wielding one.

Note that these penalties are only in lethal combat situations, such as facing down goons with guns, and don't apply to bar brawls, fistfights, and other situations where the fighting is less likely to lead to lethal results.

2.1 Beta Test

We are tentatively moving to the 2.1 Prototype rules for combat resolution to see how well they work. Ignore the weapon damage increases and power alterations for now. Characters gain 1 bonus XP for having a full set of 2.1 stats on their talk page.