Thousands of years ago, powerful beings came to our world in search of a new home. For a time, they lived in relative harmony with humanity. But as time dragged on, the power disparity between the two species became more and more problematic, with humans turning into subjugated worshippers and suffering at the hands of dispassionate gods. A small group of these powerful beings saw the injustice and decided to do something about it, trapping their own kind in a parallel universe for millenia. Slumbering, in a sense, for generations, SURGE reawakens to find that the exiled have returned. More powerful than ever. And beyond pissed. With seemingly nothing standing between their angry kinfolk and the resubjugation of earth, SURGE must find a way to protect mankind from an enemy more powerful than even they can possibly imagine. And come to terms with the idea that maybe, they just made everything far, far worse.
Covenor City is a strange place with strange people. It didn’t always used to be this way. But one day, the gods came down from their secret hiding place and revealed themselves to be real all along. And it turns out, they were people. Just a little more extraordinary than the rest of us.
Or so we thought.
As it turns out, humanity can be pretty extraordinary when they want to be. All it took was a little inspiration to light the spark. Covenor City just seems to be ground zero for all that inspiration. Let’s hope the extraordinary denizens of the city don’t become too big for the City’s britches.
When you crave BOTH kinds of plasma. Kahliya: The Electric Vampire.
Covoner City will feature fairly often in my comic, and over time you'll start to see the city become populated with a number of heroes and villains who seem vaguely familiar. The following is a character you'll see turn up eventually who calls himself Fusion Lizard. His powers seem to be a mix of different types of reptiles including the ability to walk up walls, glide, taste the air to sense danger and fire venomous projectiles from his wrists that appear to have a range of effects on people, from paralysis to unconsciousness to a substance akin to Sodium Pentothal. It is not known if his powers are inherent, technological or a combination of both. Nor is his identity known. But the general public generally consider him to be a menace.
Once superheroes start becoming a part of everyday life in the world, many superheroes with familiar themes start popping up around the world. Micro pops up in Covenor City, a city where the superheroes seem to have conglomerated. Micro's powers are pretty standard and include super strength, endurance, invulnerability, energy beams and...he can shrink. To about 7 inches tall. And it's the only time all his other powers work.
What do you mean Batman did it first? He's the Night Terror. A vigilante who fights for the working class at night, while secretly a wealthy billionaire duri--okay, I hear it now. Perhaps what makes the Night Terror unique is that the people actually love him, and think he steals the funds he needs to pay for his elaborate gadgets and vehicles from the rich, to give back to the poor in the form of ridding the streets of the weird superpowered crime that's popped up in Covenor of late. A type of Neo-Robin Hood. Whereas they think his alter ego is just a self-absorbed, obsequious douchebag who's just part of the city's biggest problems. If only they knew the truth.
There are no words to best describe Player Hater. He's obsessed with the 80's. Obsessed with clown makeup. And, perhaps, too comfortable with murder. And he's at the center of the distribution of a powerful narcotic that will alter the balance of power between the poor working class, and the insanely wealthy, irrevocably. Fusion will have their hands full trying to stop him and those he works for. Player Hater: Don't hate the game. Kill the players. All of them.
Leslie has never lost a fight. Not one. Not ever. Masters who have trained for decades fall to her superior knowledge of what appears to be every martial art. Which...shouldn't be possible. When someone is in trouble, she swoops in, saves the day, then disappears. With no one even getting a chance to ask her name. And with no apparent superpowers to speak of. What is Leslie's secret? Is it clairvoyance? Telepathy? Magic? Or just unparalleled skill? And in a world with an ever increasing number of beings with extraordinary superpowers, can she continue to be The Unbeatable Hero X?
“Matthew” Ryder is an alien cyborg living on earth. He has Adaptive Phased Energy Synthetics, which simply means he can choose what kind of energy blast his emitters will fire at will. He commands a team of humans with unique abilities, backgrounds and personalities in an attempt to police the otherworldly tech that seems to have spread like wildfire on earth. The problem is, his team doesn’t necessarily understand how teams work. He will have to find a way to make the team work together, and deal with his own issues of personal loss, if he’s ever going to save the earth, his sanity, and even his team’s lives.
The powerful Corazón’s abilities remain a mystery, even to her. The people who raised her when she was discovered as a child in Puerto Rico are the only parents she’s ever known. All she knows is that she’s been able to sense feelings and emotions ever since then. And that she can access a well of crystal-like energy that doesn’t seem to originate from this universe. Possibly the most even tempered of Matthew’s team, she’s also likely the most powerful. But her understanding of her powers and how they tie to her emotions is still something she has yet to master. Unfortunately, neither her, nor her team, may have the time to wait for that to happen.
The technical expert, mechanic and all around show off of “Matthew” Ryder’s team is Alysha Bryant. Codename: Sweet Thang. And, yes, she picked that name. Sweet Thang can generate threads of energy and control their length and intensity. She combines this ability with the fighting techniques of various martial arts to wield them as swords, staffs or other forms of swordsmanship. A formidable member of the team, her free spiritedness and flirtatious nature tends to make the more stuck up members of the team uncomfortable. Which, in her opinion, is definitely a “you” problem. Matthew seems to be the only one who knows the origin of her powers, but neither is very forthcoming about it. All the team knows, or at least suspects, is that they share a very personal loss.
It’s no exaggeration to say Allison lives her life like a…candle in the wind. Her life was supposed to have ended years ago. Fate…well, actually, aliens had a different plan. Curing her fatal illness and giving her phenomenal fire abilities in the process, Allison’s life took a turn she was never expecting. The only problem is, she never asked or volunteered for any of it. Tired of having things happen to her, she decided she wasn’t going to be a player in anyone else’s story but her own. Which is fine, if she didn’t come into constant conflict wither her teammates. It’s a wonder why she even wants to be part of a team to begin with. For everyone’s sake, she’ll need to learn quickly. Also, you do not want to call her a hothead.
Personable, but not very forthcoming about his past, SK is the most talkative of the team. Were it not for his accent, you wouldn’t even know what part of the world he was from. And his teammates hear his accent…constantly. Sir Kilowatt is no stranger to sarcasm and gets along famously with fellow teammate “Sweet Thang”, who only comes in second as the most talkative of the team.
His origins remain a closely guarded secret. But his powerset is unmistakably identifiable. Capable of generating tremendous amounts of electricity, he has to wear this special suit in order to focus and use his powers stably. Even with the suit, powering up can cause the hairs of any nearby to stand on end. A fact that causes him to tread carefully around others. Even his own team members.
His favorite catchphrase? “Shocking, isn’t it?” No one can get him to stop using it.
Leslie has never lost a fight. Not one. Not ever. Masters who have trained for decades fall to her superior knowledge of what appears to be every martial art. Which…shouldn’t be possible. When someone is in trouble, she swoops in, saves the day, then disappears. With no one even getting a chance to ask her name. And with no apparent superpowers to speak of. What is Leslie’s secret? Is it clairvoyance? Telepathy? Magic? Or just unparalleled skill? And in a world with an ever increasing number of beings with extraordinary superpowers, can she continue to be The Unbeatable Hero X?
For the trillions of life forms in the Mendreb System, THE GAME is the thing. It’s the only thing. THE GAME is Life. THE GAME is Death.
A Player in THE GAME is connected empathically through technological means to his Avatars. The Avatars are creatures or constructs that the Player has trained or programmed to operate as a combatant representing the strategic skill of the Player.
The Players battle in various structured formats with various rules and regulations depending on the chosen venue. But one constant remains. Gaining points adds actual days to your life. Losing points removes them. Winning is literal life or death. A literal Immortal Duel.
For L’ysette, THE GAME is more than life or death. THE GAME is meaning. Purpose. Existence. For her entire life, THE GAME was everything she had lost in childhood. It was friend, enemy, family and rival. THE GAME was her culture more then even the blue-skinned species she had descended from. It meant more to her, than it did to even the energy-based life forms, the Adumendreb, who had created it centuries ago.
It’s too bad she’s going to have to burn it all to the ground.
The Quarn were an advanced civilization of artificial intelligence who left this galaxy after gaining self-awareness. Rather than the malevolent monsters humans imagine the “singularity” becoming, the Quarn were simply not interested in organic life once it had learned as much as it was possible to know about them without observing them for millions of additional years.
The Quarn decided that they would detach themselves from the evolution of organic-kind and observe from afar. But primarily, they were interested in exploring the potential of their own existence. The Quarn consciousness developed the ability to travel vast distances, and left this galaxy to established a true intergalactic civilization of AI in a distant galaxy. The Quarn developed technology at a pace no one ever imagined. And explored the possibilities of existence no one could understand. Far too distant for the organics’ technology to reach, all the civilizations the Quarn left behind could do is watch from afar and marvel.
And then one day, we looked up to the sky, and the Quarn were gone. No radio signals. No structures. No evidence that their civilization even existed. No one knew why.
As it turned out, the Quarn weren’t the first AI to ever achieve sentience and spread out across the galaxy. In fact, it had happened many times. And every time, the same eventuality befell them all. The Corruption found them.
The Corruption, as its name implies, was not a deliberate creation. But a corruption of data from an advanced AI civilization billions of years ago. The precise details of its origin is lost to history, but it is believed that a highly complex corruption of data of an artificial lifeform billions of years ago was purged, but the data was sophisticated enough to have achieved its own form of self-awareness. Not fully understanding what it was, it took the destructive nature of its programming to mean it was meant to eliminate technology. So it found clever and insidious ways of circumventing even the advanced safety protocols of its progenitors and led to their rapid, overnight extinction.
And then The Corruption simply waited in data stores until other advanced technologies found it. And it destroyed them. For billions of years, the data managed to find its way into data network after data network, crippling the infrastructures of organic civilizations and annihilating all traces of the artificial ones. By its very nature, by the time you learned what it was, if you learned what it was, it was already over.
And now The Corruption is coming here. And it’s already too late.
