Roleplay / Project Prometheus

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Ever since the corpse of a supermassive alien called the Leviathan crashed into the Brazilian island of Marajó, the city of Horizon has been home to superheroes, supervillains and megacorps alike, all existing in an uneasy equilibrium around the Leviathan's corpse.

…well, at least until the Leviathan almost woke up and dozens of metahumans died. Now it's a scramble to fill the power vacuum, as Lady Leizi, the last survivor of the superhero team Justice Unlimited, has to claw her way out of the wreckage, rebuild her team and seek answers. It's a good thing that with her old friend's last invention, Project Prometheus, she'll be able to create new superheroes!

Project Prometheus is a Forum Quest hosted on Sufficient Velocity.com written by Bitterman. Set in his original world, it both examines grief and serves as a tribute to the superhero genre.

All spoilers up to Fill-In Issue #2 are unmarked! You Have Been Warned.

This Quest Contains Examples Of:

• Action Girl: Pretty much every metahuman can kick ass if they have proper powers, with gender not being a factor. Notably, Justice Unlimited's new generation is mostly comprised of various types of Action Girls— Lady Leizi, Mona, Maddie, Opale and Ellie come to mind.
• Ancient Order of Protectors: The Horae Guard act as this for Elysium Station. 
• Big Bad Ensemble: There's a few.
  • POWERS/Dominion Security Enterprises, a group of "heroes" available as mercenaries for hire, seeking to expand after the power vacuum. Also the chosen hero team of Scarlet Maturity, a power booster with earth shattering super strength.
  • The Hand of Mysteries, a mysterious cult seeking to covertly take control of the world.
  • And on a greater scale, the Four Voices, who can all seriously affect the Stage and might all end the world in different ways.
• Bioweapon Beast: Dr. Ibis' focus is to create animals with enhanced intelligence, strength, or other abilities.
• Breakout Character: Scarlet Maturity, despite originally being an arc villain, becomes extremely popular after interacting further with Mona. Turns out, he's just Sour Outside, Sad Inside, trying to make up for his tragic past by refusing to get close to anyone weaker than him.
• Captain Patriotic: Miss Patriot and Mr. Washington are two American metahumans.
• Cast Full of Gay: Where should we start?
  • Mona is bisexual, Rhys is gay, while Opale is trans. 
  • As for outside Justice Unlimited, Mendicant is nonbinary, while Dreamcatcher was confirmed by Word of God to be trans.​
• City of Adventure: Horizon. One might think that a city next to a dangerous alien corpse wouldn't be very big. But it also has no central government or police due to being ruled by a not-exceedingly-competent United Nations. Therefore, lots of people and money find stuff to do there.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Algernon-types experience rapid mental aging when they use their powers, so most algernons tend to specialize in exactly one field of study.
  • ​Nora Kim, Valiant Silver, specialized in Metahuman Powers
  • Dr. Mammoth Ibis specialized in Genetics
  • Steelheart specialized in Robots
  • Vulcan specialized in Metallurgy
• ​Deal with the Devil: The appropriately named Faust's power is to create unbreakable contracts.
• Deity of Human Origin: Upon using Module Dynamite and calling on the shades of Heavenly Astrologian, Red Huntress and Justiciar in the Stage, Valiant Gold, Ellie Han, temporarily ascends to become Red Iustitia, Blind Judge of Heaven.
  Nora Kim: Oh shit! I'm a fucking god! She's a fucking god! I'm a fucking god who helped make her a fucking god. 
  • The Hand of the Mysteries is strongly implied to have been Human once.​
  • Rosemary begins to approach apotheosis when she releases control and creates millions of drones. As each drone contains a copy of her mind, her psychic potential multiplies exponentially and reaches the stage, almost on par with the Four Voices.

• Destructive Saviour: Novalight, multiple times.
  • Novalight irradiates large parts of Horizon trying to take down Valkyrie. Those areas remain inhospitable decades later.
  • Novalight kills her own ally Master of Disaster via collateral damage from radiation when fighting Apiary.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Mona attacks and hurts Hand moments after gaining her powers. Somewhat retroactive, as readers only find out how strong Hand is later.
  • Yara, shortly after partially awakening to her powers, also repels Hand from her mindscape, though Hand is badly injured at this stage. Seems like a pattern. 
• Don't Wake the Sleeper: The premise of the story is that despite being dead, something disturbed the dead Leviathan's 'sleep', causing it to create countless Behemoths, which nearly destroyed the whole city of Horizon. And it's still quite possible that his sleep will be disturbed again.
• Drone Deployer: The Paper Module of the Exceed armour can deploy multiple drones.
  • Mass Drone Swarms are Steelheart's preferred method of combat. ​During the Hunt for the Defiance Unit, Steelheart deploys millions of drones and controls them so effectively even Moon River, a Technopath, is unable to contest him.
• Eldritch Abomination: The setting has several.
  • The Leviathan itself, which draws inspiration from the Cthulhu Mythos, as it is both dead yet also somehow still "dreaming", and its mere blood would be capable of destroying the planet if improperly handled.
  • The Catch-22, which appear to be 22 humans, who individually are nearly-mindless. However, when they get within 100 yards of each other, they start a Hive Mind and their intelligence grows exponentially. No-one knows what would happen if they all get together, but they were basically Reality Warpers at 13/22, the furthest seen. They're dedicated to finding each other and lethally hostile to anyone who gets in the way. And unfortunately, they're not only incredibly tough, but if you do manage to kill any of them, the one that was killed just reappears somewhere else on the planet in a different form.
  • The Frozen Throne, a frozen warped space which just appeared on Horizon one day and which has since been slowly growing bigger each year by inches. It appears to be sapient, and seeks to lure individuals to enter it so it may 'feed' upon them (by having them sit on an actual frozen throne) until they die. The space within can also constantly change and expand, making those trapped within truly miserable.
  • The Hand, a… thing with apparently tremendous psychic powers, which rules over a cult that is bent on global domination. It is described very briefly as being fetid and disgusting, with a voice that is cunning and deluded, with the implication that its mere appearance is an affront to sanity. Most disturbingly, it's also very heavily implied that it is formerly human.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Socialite Butterfly is unable to understand, why Yara is willing to help her in Red Iustitia's court. She believes Yara wants something from her, not understanding that Yara acting out of pure altruism.
  "why are you doing this? What are you trying to gain from me?"
  "Nothing. I just . . . want to help."
  "Why?!"
  "Because . . ." Yara starts, before swallowing. "Because you don't have anyone. And no one should be completely alone, y'know?"
  It's clear from her eyes she doesn't.
  "But what do you want?!" she screams, "What do you want from me?!"
  Yara bows her head. It's apparent that Socialite Butterfly doesn't—cannot—understand something as simple as . . . altruism. 
• Fantastic Drug: Lethal Anodyne's power is to create this— a drug that only he can make. He works as a crime lord served by drug addicts, but he also gets high on his own supply.
• Fantastic Rank System: The Horae Guard is led by "Hours" ranked 1 to 12, with 12 as the leader. Junior members are called "Minutes" and their cannon fodder are known as "Seconds"
• Fate Worse than Death: Hand appears to have the ability to control others by giving them something which modifies their very DNA to be utterly loyal to him, shaping their minds 'like wet clay'. Rosemary, even in a near-suicidal state, vehemently rejects the Hand's offer even though it might have eased the pain of her transformation.
• Flying Firepower: A relatively common powerset. Justice Unlimited's Black Swan, New Dawn's Novalight and the Defiance Unit's Crimson Soprano are all archetypal flying artillery.
• Forbidden Zone: Many areas around Horizon are essentially forbidden under severe (or guaranteed) risk of death (or worse).
  • The Quarantine Zone around the Leviathan's body is off-limits to everyone. Intruders are dealt with by the R-Train.
  • The Frozen Throne is an area of warped space that is impossible to map out or escape from. It expands slowly.
  • The Creature's Den was subsumed by the behemoth A'tuin of the Infinite Horizon, who has been dormant since the Movement. Nobody likes to talk about it. You can go in there if you like. You just can't come out.
  • Valkyrie's Fall in the old industrial district was so heavily irradiated by Novalight's radiation attack that even decades later, nothing can survive in it.
• ​From Bad to Worse: Most missions Justice Unlimited undertakes.
  • ​Who's Left Behind starts with the Four Seasons betraying Justice Unlimited. Then Scarlet Maturity shows up.
  • Hero worship has Crusade interrupt and attempt to take Yara Oliviera with them. As soon as Crusade is handled, Socialite Butterfly appears with as many clones as Justice Unlimited and Crusade together, including clones of powerful metahumans like Uiara, Automne, Man o' War and Scarlet Maturity.
    • Lady Leizi, Chatelet and Yara are trapped inside the Frozen Throne at the conclusion of the mission. Technically, it went from Bad to Worse to A Lot Worse.
• Gravity Master:
  • Radiant Silvergirl controls gravity by creating miniature black holes or white holes. The former attract, the latter repel.
  • Chatelet can create fields of directional gravity within her shields. The strength of the gravity is inversely proportional to the size of the shield.
  • Black Swan flies by controlling the direction gravity acts upon her core.
• Grey Goo: The Leviathan's blood, also known as 'goldnine', is effectively this - any amount of it transforms biological matter into more of itself, and so on and so forth. Part of the reason why there is a quarantine zone around the Leviathan's corpse is because it spawns forth Behemoths, but the true reason is that goldnine is dangerous enough to destroy the entire planet if enough of it gets out and self-propagates.
• Heroic BSoD: Rosemary suffers a heroic BSOD after seeing the members of the Defiance Unit getting killed in front of her. This prompts her to create more and more drones until she loses control of herself and would have consumed the planet if not stopped by Scarlet Maturity.
• Hold the Line: The objective of every superhero in Horizon who answered Uiara's call at the Movement, in order to keep Behemoths from escaping the Quarantine Zone. ​Uiara and Umibōzu are killed holding the line against the aquatic behemoths. Radiant Silvergirl and Automne play a pivotal part in holding the line. When they are killed, the Behemoths almost overrun the rest of the heroes.  It is later revealed Radiant Silvergirl was specifically targeted by the Americans, and she was captured instead.
• Identity Amnesia: Eve has no memories of her identity or location before she met Nora, three years prior to Nu Gen's formation.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The story has many mysteries that it doesn't immediately answer, such as why the Leviathan woke up, where the "evil Valiant Silver" evidence came from, what the Hand of Mysteries want, and how the Stage and Nora's interactions with it work.
• Kaiju: Though they vary in size and power, the monsters that spawn from the Leviathan and its blood, called Behemoths, are effective Kaiju.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The Stage is a metaphysical area those with strong psychic abilities or sensitivity are able to reach. All metahumans have a connection to the stage, even after death. An audience is referred to as watching the metahumans on the stage several times, but it is still unclear who the audience is.
• LEGO Genetics: To create a new metahuman via Project Prometheus, there is a need to mix together the DNA profiles of deceased metahumans so that the new metahuman may effectively have a mix of those powers, sometimes even combining them into newer aspects. This means that the newer metahumans (informally dubbed "Prometheans") are far more likely to have more complex powers than their predecessors.
• ​Magnetic Weapons: One of Valiant Gold's ultimate weapons is a Railgun. Using it deactivates one of the three modules in the EXCEED armour.
• Mass Super-Empowering Event: All superheroes date to 22 years or more after the Leviathan fell. Here's some backstory.
• Militaries are Useless: Global Justice, a superhero proxy of the Americans, often deploys mundane troops alongside metahuman support. Predictably, it ends poorly.
• Meet Cute: Châtelet & The Giant Slayers' meet-cute happened during a bounty hunt for the Defiance Unit.
• Mundane Utility: Valiant Silver used her technological genius to improve the local infrastructure like power transmission, transportation, farms, etc.
• Neglected Sidequest Consequence: Like most forums quests, this story is designed such that the player characters cannot do everything available to them at once, and some missions expire after a certain amount of time. It is guaranteed that not all of them can be done, with consequences for not taking a certain action. Notably, not taking the "Olympus has Fallen" mission caused the hero Stockpile to effectively become a major antagonist, who was convinced by unseen-evidence that Justice Unlimited were the ones who caused the Movement.
  You rub your aching head and wish you had a hundred of the people at this table and a hundred hours in the day. Then, maybe you could handle everything on your plate.
  But you can't. It's a bitter truth every hero learns:
  You can't save everyone.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Stockpile accuses Valiant Silver of awakening the Leviathan by experimenting with Psychic powers.
• Nominal Importance: In-universe example: Behemoths are only given names if they display atypical powers.
• Not Quite Dead: Issue 3.7 reveals that Radiant Silvergirl, thought dead in the Movement, was actually just captured by the USA and just lost an arm. Unknown if she lost it in the battle or elsewhere.
• Obvious Rule Patch: The in-universe creator of Project Prometheus warned against giving the same combination of DNA to two candidates, or it will cause "ontological resonance" and vaguely-described bad stuff (generally assumed to be both people dying). On a gameplay level, this prevents players from just finding one ultra-powerful combo (e.g. what Black Swan received), then making an army from it. You also can't use DNA from a living metahuman or, again, "ontological resonance".
• Origins Episode: Fill-In Issue #4: Flight of the Bumblebee is an extended origin episode about Rosemary Ward, known as Apiary, as well as the original formation of Nu Gen (who would later become Justice Unlimited). At the end of the Fill-In Issue, it comprised almost 30% of the story's total wordcount.
• Painful Transformation: The process of applying Ambrosia is often dramatic, as it condenses what would usually be years of power development into a matter of moments.
• Plant Mooks: Printemps' ability is to create fast growing plant minions that shoot seeds like machine guns.
• Power at a Price: "Algernon-type" metahumans have Super-Intelligence, but using it causes Rapid Aging of the mind, to the point of dementia or even death.
• Power Levels: Power levels are typically denoted as Potency, which reflects how strong a power is when used in an Ambrosia sample. Combining multiple metahumans' DNA increases the Potency of a power.
  • ​Potency 10 is the highest any normal metahuman can go.
  • Apiary had a potency of 14. This makes her DNA unusable without further research.
• Powered by a Black Hole: Black Swan fits the definition to a tee - her body is just energy leakage from a core that's essentially a supermassive black hole.
• Professional Killer: Simao "Cain" is supposedly one of these, but Lady Leizi clears up that any killings he did were for revenge and that he's a perfectly valid superhero candidate.
• Puberty Superpower: Metahuman powers often show up around adolescence; a very few outliers instead develop them in childhood or even at birth. Despite this, there isn't a genetic component to metahuman powers - even if one's parents were both metahumans, that does not make it more likely for one to become one.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The story opens with one: the Leviathan's awakening is stopped, but nearly every superhero in Horizon is killed in the effort. Most of Justice Unlimited is killed. New Dawn loses over 35 heroes. Global Justice loses half its roster, along with its leadership.
  • ​The Susurration was also a pyrrhic victory. Valkyrie was stopped, but Valiant Red and Ali Baba died, and Steadfast and Dragonsteeth left New Dawn afterwards. A toddler Nora Kim immediately calls it a "Pyrrhic Victory" when she hears the story from her dad.
• Relationship Revolving Door: Justice Unlimited had two of these:
  • Uiara and Valiant Silver were constantly on and off in the backstory
  "Then what was all that drama yesterday?" you say, "Nora pretty clearly said 'broken up'—"
  "A fight," Zixuan says, her voice tight, "They had a fight. That's what normal people would call it. But, because they are both the most dramatic people in existence, they act like it's the end of their relationship every time."
  ". . . every time?"
  "Every time."
  ". . . they can't do this too often, then, right? Right?"
  Zixuan laughs. It's not a kind thing, but it is filled with pity.
  "Oh, you'll see, dear Rosemary. You'll see."
  • Lady Leizi and Adamant were quietly on and off to a much lesser extent
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming:
  • Lady Leizi is named after Leizi (a.k.a. Dianmu), the Chinese goddess of lightning, fitting her electrical powers.
  • There was a superhero named Antaeus. He had the same power (invulnerability) and the same weakness (lost his power when he's not touching the ground) as the ancient Greek mythological figure. Other characters have commented how dumb it was to adopt a name that gives away your weakness.
  • "Project Prometheus", named after the ancient Greek god who gave fire to humans and allowed them to progress their civilization, is a project where superhumans give superpowers to normal humans. Its chief element is a Super Serum called Ambrosia, named after the gods' food and drinks.
  • There's a Space Elevator called Jacob's Ladder, after the Biblical story of a ladder going to Heaven. At its top is a space station called Elysium, after an ancient Greek afterlife.
• Ret-Gone: This is what 11th Hour of the Horae Guard (The Man with a Boyish Smile) did to Valiant Blue and Yohanna Oliviera
  "If things keep going this way, 12 is going to let 11 off his leash. And if The Man with a Boyish Smile is let loose, I will personally make sure he takes care of you too. Do you want to go the way of Valiant Blue and Yohanna Oliveira?!"
  "I—"
  "Of course not, you don't even know who they are! So shut up and stop fucking up!"
• Sealed Evil in Another World: This was the idea behind Wonderland, Horizon's metahuman prison run by New Dawn. Prisoners would be placed in a different dimension using the metahuman Cisma's powers, alongside a number of failsafes. Unfortunately, Cisma died in the Movement, and the failsafes were bypassed by a powerful inmate's teleportation powers.
• Secret Identity: New Dawn is the only Superhero organization that allows its members to keep secret identities. This forces Heavenly Astrologian to remain a member of the organization despite her conflicts with Novalight, as otherwise her daughter Ellie would be at risk.
• Shout-Out Theme Naming:
  • Algernon-type superpowers are named after Flowers for Algernon. Both involve a tragically-temporary boost to intelligence.
  • Goldnine, a deadly substance which converts other matter into more goldnine, is named after the similar ice-nine from Cat's Cradle.
• ​Space Station: Elysium Station, at the top of Jacob's Ladder, is a paradise where the richest people in the world live, protected by the Horae Guard.
• Super-Empowering:
  • The central gameplay mechanic and the work of the titular Project. Basically it goes: Dead Superhuman's DNA + Goldnine + Help of an Algernon-type = Give Someone Superpowers!
  • It's revealed early on that one of the escaped inmates from Wonderland, Le Petit Prince, received some sort of power boost recently, as he can now manage his emotional manipulations on people in a matter of days and weeks instead of months. The booster is unknown.
  • This is also one of Scarlet Maturity's abilities; he can strengthen other people's powers and remove weaknesses.
  • It is strongly implied that the Jacob's Ladder is also capable of empowering metahumans by acting as a massive psychic siphon.
• Super Family Team: The Four Seasons consisted of a woman, her husband, her sister, and her cousin. Their combat skills were good, their familial relations were pretty bad, with the sister and cousin often feeling demeaned and micromanaged.
• Super Gullible: Azure Dragon falls for same trick (Handyman pretending to be Yellow Qillin) twice. Valiant Gold and Handyman note that it should have been an It Only Works Once thing.
• Superhero Capital of the World: Horizon itself. Built around where the Leviathan landed (in Marajó, Brazil), it is the city with the highest amount of metahumans in the world.
• Superhero Speciation: Present in both the in-universe teams and the majority of players' goals for building Justice Unlimited. At time of writing, there are no overlapping powers on J.U., excluding Valiant Gold, who has so many different powers at different times that she can't really be counted.
• Theme Naming: Invoked by les Quatre Saisons/the Four Seasons team, who had three members with powers vaguely related to their season name (Été conjured fire, Printemps controlled plants, Automne controlled wind), but then recruited a Gravity Master as "Hiver" despite that power being unrelated to winter.
  Printemps: "Some clever marketing and no one will notice!"
  Hiver's internal monologue: "Everyone noticed."
• The Alcatraz: The Wonderland, a super-prison built by Steelheart located in the middle of an irradiated wasteland, manned exclusively by remote-controlled drones. Each prisoner's cell is an individual own pocket dimension. Invasive biological testing for identity verification is the minimum security measures needed to get in.
  • ​After Cisma's death leading to all the pocket dimensions collapsing, Wolong begins building a Neo-Wonderland, which is located inside the Frozen Throne, with the help of Baba Yaga, another hero with a similar dimension control powers.
• ​The Cavalry: Moon River acts as the cavalry, redirecting radio waves and satellites at Black Swan to give her enough energy to kill Scarlet Maturity.
• The One Guy: Rakeem Wade, Adamant, is the only male member of the Pre-Movement Justice Unlimited. Moon River lampshades this, calling him "token dude".
• The War Just Before: "The Movement", where the Leviathan almost woke up, a shit-ton of Behemoths started rampaging, almost every hero in Horizon showed up to fight them, and most died in the process. The quest proper starts with a character waking up from being wounded in escape from the Movement. Most of the Posthumous Characters died in this battle.
• Tokusatsu: The first true metahuman hero was Valiant Red, who wore Kamen Rider-esque armor that in-universe, was deemed 'legally distinct' by the Toei Company. His later successor, Valiant Silver, took up a very similar theme.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Metahuman powers typically awaken gradually across the teenage years. Rarely, trauma and stress can awaken them forcefully, or make them mature sooner than they otherwise would.
• Video Wills: The old Justice Unlimited team made these for one another. The conclusion of Issue #1 is Lady Leizi watching these, which among other things holds information she didn't know about hidden foes, the location of an emergency stash of funds and resources, a plea to protect a family member, and information regarding the metaphysical nature of the collective unconscious.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Defiance Unit are a group of Well-Intentioned Extremists, targeting corrupt corporate executives and companies. They eventually work their way up to assaulting Elysium Station.
• Worthy Opponent: Scarlet Maturity declares Black Swan to be a worthy opponent.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Perhaps the most major theme of the story. Lady Leizi was previously Justice Unlimited's spymaster and hatchet-woman, so her becoming the sole surviving member of the organization means she has to step outside her comfort zone and strive to become a better person for the sake of the future, and for the legacy of Justice Unlimited.