History

With the first appearance of metahumans in 1945, the world changed. The world of Trinity's Children is one like our own, but forever changed (some would say, scarred) by the events surrounding the rise of the metahuman phenomenon - some things for the better, some things for the worse.

The calendar below gives the date in standard format (CE) as well as the Extra Virorum calendar used by Helix, Ex Humanitas and other metahuman groups. The Extra Virorum calendar (trans. beyond mankind) counts from the year of the Trinity atomic test.

The Radiance of a Thousand Suns
The beginning of the metahuman age
1945-1950 CE : 1-6 EV

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.
The Bhagavad Gita

The Trinity Test marked the beginning of the metahuman phenomenon. Even though science has refuted any direct link between radioactivity and metahuman mutations, the first atomic bomb is still inexplicably linked to the beginning of this new age, for reasons unknown.

History begins to deviate in the months following the Trinity test. As Hiroshima and Nagasaki were engulfed in atomic fire, reports throughout the American Southwest and from the Los Alamos laboratory revealed the first instances of metahuman phenomenon ever recorded. The American government became aware when several members of the Los Alamos team reported manifesting strange abilities or unusual events occurring throughout the research facility. As more and more reports started appearing, the knowledge leaked into the general populace. Even so, it was not until early 1946 that the United States government revealed what it knew about the new 'supermen' who were appearing throughout America and Mexico. In the years following, metahumans began appearing throughout the world.

Trinity is Formed
(1946 CE : 2 EV)

During this time, concern over the use of atomic weapons and the ramifications of their work on atomic weapons gripped the scientists of Los Alamos. A large number of scientists on the team had developed metahuman abilities - the only known case of spontaneous development of metahumans and a great mystery to metageneticists throughout the world. Other newfound metahumans had come into contact with members of the team, seeking answers to what happened to them. It is unknown how many on the Los Alamos team were metahumans, as it is suspected many of them hid the development of their powers as official interest increased.

The first metahuman group Trinity was formed under the informal leadership of Oppenheimer, a normal human, as a coalition of human scientists and metahumans to deal with the new problems of the Atomic Age, which the Los Alamos team saw as an age that held the destruction of all mankind. In 1949, Oppenheimer declared in a letter to Congress and the President that the sole mission of Trinity was that of a brotherhood of peace, seeking to save metahumans from exploitation 'in pursuit of mankind's worst and most hateful excesses' and to help save mankind from its worse excesses.

Fear And Folly
The break of the first metahuman wave
1951-1962 CE : 7-18 EV

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

After the initial burst in the American Southwest, metahumans began to appear throughout the world. Disorganized, untrained and facing societies unprepared for them, they were met with fear, persecution and suspicion.

Meanwhile, Trinity attempts to confront the Cold War, unwilling to let great nations decide the fate of the world and watch from the sidelines. Their choices remain controversial to this day.

The age of McCarthyism was an age of distrust and paranoia. As the clanging bell of Communist infiltration was less and less effective, American politicians called upon the American people to help them stop the new 'threat of metahuman subversion', fearful of empowered humans serving the interests of hostile foreign powers within the United States.

The Special Committee on Metahuman Deviance
(1953-1954 CE : 9-10 EV)

As the hunt for communists in the United States raged in the era of McCarthyism, several members of Trinity were exposed to have cooperated with the Soviets in revealing the secrets of atomic weapons. Facing allegations that Trinity as a whole had masterminded the Soviet atomic espionage in an effort to equalize power and deter war. This combined with growing sensational stories about metahuman crimes against normals, the most terrible of which included telepaths with strange powers taking control of the minds of others, caused a general panic on metahuman activities.

In reaction, Congress created the Special Committee on Metahuman Deviance, which began a witch hunt against metahumans who assisted Russia or plotted their own schemes to "subvert the democratic traditions of these United States." The Congress subpoenaed members of Trinity and called in law enforcement officers that gave graphic accounts of metahuman crimes. To Trinity, it became increasingly obvious the Committee was a vehicle to discredit and destroy their group, backed by a military-industrial complex that did not appreciate Trinity's efforts to reign in the Cold War.

Oppenheimer himself testified before the Committee, only to find non-Trinity comrades from Los Alamos were also waiting to testify against him and his activities with the Trinity group. Various attempts and schemes discussed in the early days of Trinity to seize control of the science of atomic weapons were revealed, along with Oppenheimer's past associations with socialists. In the end, many foreign-born members of Trinity had their citizenship revoked, Oppenheimer lost his security clearance along with any chance of further work and influence in government, and Trinity fell into disfavor.

The Special Committee hearings crippled the first wave of metahumans, leading to strict laws against telepaths and laid the foundations of stricter enforcement laws during the second wave decades later. The members of Trinity went into seclusion, while minor groups of metahumans throughout the country started forming mutual protection groups. These small and secretive 'metahuman cells' would be the foundation that later groups such as Helix, Ex Humanitas and the Promethean Movement would build upon.

Trinity itself went into seclusion. Oppenheimer spent more and more time in the Caribbean, and de facto Trinity operation center moved to St. May's Island, a US territory, where Trinity built and maintained a small compound on land owned by Oppenheimer. From here, Oppenheimer fostered academic interest in the metahuman phenomenon and began making contacts with doctors, geneticists and physicists interested in the area.

The Strike on Cuba
The last gasp of the first wave
1962 CE : 18 EV

At the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies.
Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense

Not content to wait for a potential nuclear holocaust, a faction of Trinity took matters in their own hands in one of the most tense moment in the Cold War. The repercussions of their actions shake the world, and cause the first use of nuclear weapons since the bombing of Nagasaki.

With the end of the McCarthy era and the election of John F. Kennedy, anti-metahuman sentiment waned. The rate at which metahumans were being born and discovered was found to have drastically reduced since the initial burst, and the decline in the metahuman birth rate lead some to think that the entire phenomenon was temporary, however unexplained. Trinity and other minor groups throughout the world relaxed a little, while still cautious and wounded.

However, the Cuban missile crisis reared its head, and for the first time, the world looked ready to engage in thermonuclear war. Oppenheimer and senior Trinity members vehemently opposed intervention, but a large dissenting minority existed in the diminished Trinity group. Acting on their own, two dozen metahumans took their own steps to protect the modern world from atomic annihilation.

Striking at dawn on October 27th, a rogue Trinity strike group attacked the Cuban missile silos in an effort to remove the cause of the international crisis. Within one hour, all the Cuban silos were under metahuman control and the missiles disabled. However, Cuba responded quickly with nuclear-tipped short range missiles provided by the Soviets. Believing the metahuman group a prelude to an American invasion force, the Soviet defensive missiles were fired on the Cuban missile sites, enveloping them in nuclear pyres. There are no known survivors of the rogue Trinity group.

In the ensuing chaos of the invasion, both Moscow and Washington scrambled to discover what happened. Moscow was aware that the nuclear explosions were the result of their own missiles, but did not know whether or not the supposed American invasion of Cuba was under way. A confused White House was unsure whether rogue factions in the Pentagon had ordered the strike on Cuba. Communiques between the two capitals ran like wildfire, and both nations prepped their nuclear arsenals. Only by deft diplomacy and excellent communication with Soviet commanders in the field was the true sequence of events found.

The strike was disastrous for Trinity. Accused of masterminding a direct subversion of American foreign policy, Oppenheimer and almost all senior members of Trinity went into hiding. Oppenheimer disappeared in the issuing scandal, and Trinity became an underground society held up by word of mouth. The Cuban strike cemented the international impression of metahumans as arrogant and power-hungry individuals who act at the expense of others.

Burning Times
Human revolutions find metahuman soldiers
1963-1977 CE : 19-33 EV

Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire.
Kurt Tucholsky

As the numbers of metahumans dwindled, metahumans sought comrades from each other as well as from other larger discontented groups in America. The war in Vietnam, punitive laws following the strike on Cuba, a draft that targeted mutations and the formation of Omega Force furthered a backlash against the state by the decentralized metahuman groups.

The fallout of the Cuban debacle hit the metahumans hard. Calls for required registrations acts, limitations on travel and forced internment were rife. Reactionary senators successfully pushed through reforms to the draft that made metahumans preferred candidates in order to indoctrinate them into state service. The same act created Omega Force, a military pigeon hole for any metahuman who joined or was drafted. Hoover's FBI opened a special office to spy upon metahuman groups, and police began adding 'Special Criminals Units' to their rosters with federal funding, special weapons teams dedicated to tracking metahuman criminals and dealing with disasters they create.

In reality, Omega Force was a hard-edged indoctrination program, meant to send young metahumans in and get loyal servants of the State out, a blatant attempt to place a generation of metahumans in psychological servitude. Similarly, the Special Criminals Units had little to do other than monitor and harass metahumans and their sympathizers, and overreact to the slightest situation involving mutations. These factors lead the once unorganized protective groups of metahumans to through their lot into the growing civil rights and anti-war movements.

The Rise of the Prometheans and Phoenix
(1966-74 CE : 22-30 EV)

The social discontent of the Sixties, as well as resistance to a compulsory draft into Omega Force, lead to the integration of metahumans into human social efforts to overturn America's social injustices. Black metahumans joined the non-violent resistance of African Americans throughout the South, though there was also instances of white Southern mutants attacking blacks in retribution - hate spares no one. Similarly, metahumans began associating with revolutionary groups like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen during this time.

As the anti-war movement became more violent, many metahumans started to voice a philosophy that became known as the Promethean Movement. The Prometheans believed that mutations gave metahumans the advantage and the ability to finally overturn and bring justice to homicidal and power hungry tyranny. The Promethean Movement to this day follows a system of leaderless resistance, small cells held together by a philosophy of chaos, violent disruption of the System and extreme personal freedom. Prometheans lended their power to bank robberies, riots and anti-war demonstrations. These revolutionaries saw themselves as mankind's saviors from a world gone mad with the threat of nuclear annihilation and perpetual warfare.

While the Prometheans fought for a brave new world, others were not so sure a new world would come about in time to avoid the violent fiery destruction of the old. More staid metahumans, along with many associated with the underground Trinity, began reaching out to members of human society in hopes of creating the relationships and resources necessary of surviving the collapse of society and creating a new one in its place. This hopeful group saw a future of metahuman and human cooperation after the great conflagration and dubbed itself Phoenix, that which rises from the ashes. While they resolved like Trinity before them, to fight against humanity's tendency to destroy itself, Phoenix saw this as only delaying the inevitable.

After the withdraw from Vietnam, the draft was universally ended, including for metahumans. The fighting spirit of the metahumans faded with this, even though many of them faced hatred and punitive laws at home. However, the number of discovered metahumans per year was steadily dropping since the early Sixties, and it seemed more and more that mutation was not the next step, but some sort of unexplained aberration. By the late 70s, most radical Prometheans were under arrest or dead, while Phoenix still operated in secret, waiting for the day the bombs started dropping.

The Bear and The Dragon
Turmoil and cataclysm in the East
1978-1987 CE : 34-43 EV

All people of the world unite, to overthrow American imperialism, to overthrow Soviet revisionism, to overthrow the reactionaries of all nations!
Chinese propaganda poster, 1969

The late 1970s and 1980s are dominated by the conflict between the Soviets and Maoist China, rather than NATO and the Soviet bloc. The West nervously looked on as the two great Communist nuclear powers played a brutal chess game across Asia and Africa, one that ended with a catastrophic draw.

As the Vietnam War seized the national dialogue in the United States, a new war had been brewing in the East. In 1978, the Soviet Union moved into neighboring Afghanistan and waged a radically successful campaign against counter-revolutionaries that threatened the newly established Soviet-friendly government. Using new anti-guerilla tactics and special metahuman units created by their till-now secret forced registration and testing for metahuman abilities, the Red Army crushed the Islamist rebels and made Afghanistan a full satellite state of the Soviet Union.

Pursuing the war across the Pakistani border with the claim that nation was assisting anti-Soviet insurgence, the Red Army soon stood on the Indian border. This combined with the Soviet deposement of Pol Pot, a China-friendly dictator, with their own pro-Russian government is Cambodia, provoked an alarmed reaction from longtime rival Communist China.

Seeing these manuevers as an attempt to surround China, the Communist Chinese reacted in force. Pro-Maoist forces seized control of Vietnam, while China occupied North Korea to prevent Soviet intervention. China expanded its influence over Oceania, masterminding the establishment of one party rule by the popular Indonesian Communist Party and establishing strong military alliances with the newly formed People's Republic of Indonesia. However, China still lagged behind the Soviets in both technology and maneuverability.

The Chinese Civil War
(1984-1987 CE : 40-43 EV)

When China began gathering forces on the border of pro-Soviet Mongolia, Russia unleashed a masterstroke that would change the world. Having used its newfound influence on the western borders of China, Russia provoked an armed Stalinist rebellion against the Maoist government of Beijing. Armed with Soviet tanks and armaments streaming over the western borders, the rebellion soon developed into the Socialist Republic of China and engaged the Maoist People's Republic in open warfare. With China occupied with this new conflict, the Soviets consolidated their rule over much of Central Asia.

As the civil war trudged into a stalemate, an increasingly frustrated Chinese military demanded strikes on Russia, which Beijing refused to do at risk of fighting a nuclear war that the Soviets were far more prepared for. In early 1987, a military coup brutally seized control of the Beijing government with much popular support riding on promises of a swift and victorious end to the war. This 'swift end' came to be known as the disastrous One Day War.

The Eagle

While China and Russia had their wars in the East, America's eyes were drawn mainly to problems in the Middle East. The Ayatollah's rise to power in Iran and insuing hostage crisis caused the rise of Ronald Reagan onto the national stage, much like in our history. The trend of fewer and fewer metahumans seem to have leveled out to a rate of 1 metahuman per 100,000 births, far lower than initial rates of mutation. Reagan renewed calls to 'contain this dangerous phenomenon', playing to the calls of the conservative Moral Majority which brought him to power.

The conformist bent of the Eighties in America caused a hateful backlash in metahumans who were growing increasingly frustrated and tired of being treated as anathemas. Fearful of the rise of conservative Christian politics, and general hostility of such groups to metahumans, Helix founded itself as a coalition of metahuman cells in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles in response to several acts of anti-human violence throughout the United States, swearing "to protect the metahuman community from any enemies who seek to control, label, attack or enslave those blessed with superior faculties and abilities". But before the second wave, Helix was a small and ideological group, noted little by the public.

The One Day War
In less than 24 hours, over 8 million die in nuclear fire
1987 CE : 43 EV

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Albert Einstein

Falling the coup by the People's Red Army in China, China prepared to take a more aggressive stance against Russia. The new military-backed Chairman proclaimed a 'quick and awesome victory for the people of China'. He was only partially right - it was quick and awesome, but not a victory.

Within thirty days of the military takeover of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese military was given authorization to use every force necessary to eliminate Russian support for Soviet China. Using information on Russian bases and supply centers, including several in major cities, the People's Army unleashed tactical nuclear strikes that decimated the supply lines of the Soviets and vaporized large portions of the Soviet Red Army in the early hours of April 2nd, 1987.

Premiere Gorbachev, who had only months before made the possibility of a Chinese peace a key issue, acted as the Chinese had hoped, refusing a reprisal strike on Red China out of fear of escalating the conflict and causing irreparable damage to their Soviet Chinese allies. The Kremlin and KGB quickly moved quickly and staged an 11th hour internal revolt, replacing Gorbachev with a hardline Kremlin puppet who immediately ordered the nuclear decimation of the People's Republic.

With the threat of full strategic nuclear war and the possible destruction of the entire Soviet Union, the Russian military moved in to reinstate Gorbachev as Premiere and overthrow the Kremlin government in the early morning. The ensuing events had the world on the edge of its seat, as tanks rolled into Red Square and military commanders revolted against their Kremlin masters. While the army did not act quickly enough to stop the initial nuclear strike on Beijing, the reinstated Gorbachev established communication with the overthrown Chinese leaders and negotiated a quick peace and an end to the world's first nuclear war.

The One Day War was a cataclysmic event for both sides. Both Soviet and Maoist China suffered massive bouts of radiation sickness and famine due to fallout, while the nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Mongolia were reduced to poisoned wastelands. The Soviet Union, already facing democratic uprisings in Eastern Europe, saw sizable portion of its military might decimated by the Chinese strikes. The Chinese Civil War ended in a pyrrhic stalemate, while the Soviet Union fell apart into its constituent states by the spring of 1988.

The Second Wave
A new and larger generation of metahumans shake the foundations of the world
1988-2008 CE : 44-64 EV

The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.
Huey Lewis

After years of decline, the metahuman birth rate explodes in the years following the One Day War. New fears and violence meet the metahumans, from a world which considered them a problem that had been 'solved'. Metahumans frustrated with the attitude of cooperation left by the first wave create a new generation of empowering, confrontational and sometimes hateful groups.

Having minimized, cubby-holed and monitored them for decades, the world was not prepared for the explosive reentry of metahumans onto the world stage. It began quietly at first, but soon world health officials realized that the metahuman phenomenon was increasing enormously. Random genetic testing revealed a birthrate that had double and tripled. The metahumans were back, and the world was afraid. Operation Humanity formed itself in the early days of the second wave, billing itself a citizen's defense force against metahuman villains. Several instances of "citizen's arrests" by Operation Humanity that resulted in permanent injury or deaths of metahumans, and were consequently ignored by police officers, lended to OH's reputation as a violent and bigoted group.

In the early years of the Second Wave, Phoenix and the Prometheans were instrumental in organizing metahumans in fighting new calls for legal separation, special courts and special laws restricting metahuman activities. Frustrated by calls from social conservatives for incarceration and state monitoring, along with violent acts against defenseless metahumans throughout the world, Helix quickly developed from a small noteless group into the forefront of metahuman culture. Preaching a new ideal of self preservation combined with genetic superiority, Helix's numbers swelled throughout the late 90s.

In the aftermath of several bombings of Helix safehouses and compounds throughout North America in 2002, the Helix Guiding Council split, the more militant half forming Gladius. Gladius announced its presence to the world by a series of attacks on Special Criminals Units and Omega Force recruiting centers. Reprisals from law enforcement and Omega Force strike teams against every metahuman group from Phoenix to Helix resulted in the deaths of two metahumans and dozens of serious injuries. Accusations of vengeance killings and police brutality ran rampant.

Demands from the metahuman communities for official investigations into Omega Force and SCU activites during the reprisals led to a special investigative committee ruling that neither were at any fault. Angry metahumans acted out against local police throughout the country and this resulted in further deaths. When the cycle of violence died out months later, the group Ex Humanitas rose from the ashes. Seeing human government and humans in general as anathemas to metahuman freedom, since they would always be driven by fear and jealousy rather than cooperation, Ex Humanitas advocated the violent destruction of all human government. Through intolerance, mankind had created the mutant faction they had feared from the beginning.

The rest of the period was marked by a national feeling of crisis surrounding the metahuman situation. Ex Humanitas thwarted police and military forces constantly, resulting in such cataclysms as fire elemental Firestorm's attempted capture in 2002 which left 80 dead and hundreds wounded, while perpetuating massive terrorist attacks like the partial stadium collapse at Superbowl XL in 2006 by the blaster Nova that wounded over 500 spectators. President Royce successfully ran campaign in the 2008 election, riding on the support of newly formed 'safety' coalitions based on facing the mutant threat.

The well-publicized but limited actions of Ex Humanitas, a small group compared to the metahuman community, combined with Gladius and Helix rallies and rumors of groups like Majestic and a reborn Trinity operating in the shadows, led to a feeling of great tension between metahumans and the rest of humanity.

The Ex Humanitas Civil War
The world's most violent metahuman group turns on itself
2009 CE : 65 EV

We are reporting live from downtown Manhattan, trying to get as close as we can to the events erupting here.. I see a bus soaring through the air, can you see this back at the studio.. oh god, the children...
Jacob Bentley, news reporter during the Battle of Manhattan

Ex Humanitas' leadership splits, embroiling North America in their internal struggle for power, with horrendous collateral damage culminating in the near-mythic Battle of Manhattan.

When President Royce assumed office in 2009, the Freedom For All Act (FFAA) was passed, giving the government sweeping authority to crack down on metahuman violence, detain metahuman offenders without trial indefinitely, conduct snoop searches of 'militant organizations' and deploy Omega Force and attached military units into crisis areas without congressional or state approval. Using the tools at his disposal, President Royce proceeded to make war on the 'metahuman genoterrorist threat within our great nation'.

While Royce detained hundreds of metahumans, his only true victory in this "War For Humanity" was the death of three senior members of Ex Humanitas, when Omega Force cornered them during a meeting in Denver. Amongst the dead included Horuspex, a telepathic key member in Ex Humanitas internal politics who brought the pro-war and pro-sabotage factions together, and Aegis, a kinetic who was the de facto leader of Ex Humanitas. President Royce soberly declared that "the tide against the genoterrorist menace was turning" in a TV address later that day.

However, this sudden power vacuum had an additional disastrous effect. Infighting and struggle for leadership power in Ex Humanitas immediately broke out as different factions and cults of personality sprang up within the group. Violence prone already, Ex Humanitas began deciding its local power struggles violently, as groups of metahumans with no regard for human life began to do battle in the streets.

The struggle that lasted almost a year culminated with the horrendous events of October 9th, 2009, known as the Battle of Manhattan. Responding to calls for a negotiated peace, the two central factions of Ex Humanitas agreed to meet discreetly on a subway platform on Lower Manhattan. Learning of this through unknown methods, Omega Force moved in to cut the head off the Ex Humanitas hydra. The events that followed were disastrous.

Not only did Ex Humanitas have a larger and more potent group than Omega Force had anticipated, both sides of the negotiations treated the other as if they had sold them out. The insuing battle between of sixty or more metahumans leveled eleven city blocks of Lower Manhattan, including the World Trade Center. As the battle raged on, resident metahumans, either unaligned or members of such groups as Phoenix, Trinity or Helix, joined in on the battle or assisted mortals in escaping the carnage that broke out in the middle of the business day. When the smoke cleared, over three thousand people were dead, including the entire Omega Force strike team, and the wreckage left billions of dollars in damage.

The following months renewed metahuman activities as a grave topic to the American public. Calls for forced registration and a compulsory metahumans-only draft renewed. The only lasting positive effects of the events of 2009 were the memories of the actions of other metahuman groups in countering Ex Humanitas activities and saving human life. A small faction of the human public remember these events, and have begun to vocalize that the only way to defeat metahuman terrorism is to ally with those metahumans who wish to live in peace. Hatred and fear rule the heart much more easily than such rational arguments, unfortunately.

Interesting Times
The current state of play
2010-11 CE : 66-67 EV

May you live in interesting times.
Ancient Chinese Curse

The metahumans dwell in a darkness to deep to even hope of light, but such midnight moments have come and passed before. Reactionary laws, fearful humans and a growing separation of metahumans from humanity harken to dark times ahead.

Since the events of the Ex Humanitas Civil War, more and more restrictions and laws against metahuman activities have been passed. Most laws have been local, passed at the city or state level, requiring mutation registration, establishing areas where metahumans cannot live, and removing metahuman adolescents from public schools to have a separate education.

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Weyland v. Gregory that governments could require special information on metahumans and that schools and businesses could discriminate against metahumans, declaring that "necessary separations" are allowed against metahumans. A growing system of seperate but not quite equal has developed in the metahuman community. As the opportunities for success and a normal career grow smaller and smaller for those unlucky enough to be born metahuman, membership in metahuman rights group, both violent and legitimate, has risen. And other metahumans, driven by desperation for a simple salary, have become subject to a de facto draft into Omega Force, the only place that guarantees them a wage and a living.