Humans wielding magic, and extra-dimensional beings with magic
bloodlines, find themselves in battle with and against each other. Some
call them Super Heroes. Some call them Super Villains. Most call them Strange Gods.
STRANGE GODS: Main setting info.
Origin & Inspiration
C'mon, it is super heroes! What more do you need to know about inspiration? OK, fine, truth is, inspiration for this one came from some obvious sources, and some not-so-obvious ones. Starman, Justice League Dark (both from DC Comics) were the obvious inspirations. The not-so-obvious inspirations came at the same time. I was also mixing in my DVDs of the TV show Justified and the Hatfields & McCoys mini-series. Blending those two into the mix is obvious once you read the setting.
Really, like every setting I do, I wasn't satisfied with it initially because it was too...generic? Mostly because as much as I love Superheroes deep in my bones, it is always silly to think of all the ways someone gets powers. It felt all so "been there, done that".
What I came up with is reasons for certain power groupings and those reasons being the different magical bloodlines. And that helped inform the cosmology of the setting (the point of a future document).
Faerillia are the stand-ins for Speedsters and some stealth-based characters (eg Flash). Imbral are your high-tech battle-suit or gadgeteer types (eg Batman or Cyborg). Kao are the shape-shifters and stretching heroes (eg Plastic Man). Neran fill the role most animal-based heroes (eg Beast Boy or Vixen). Skoltek are of course the Bricks (eg Solomon Grundy or Big Barda). Humanity offers the traditional Green Lantern role, but with the source and theme coming from anywhere. Finally, Fracs offer a way to combine those roles to create more nuanced and versatile heroes.
From there, everything else was just filling in the details.
