THIS IS NOT A WORLD SUCH AS OUR OWN. This is a world where - in the year 2025 - an indeterminate amount of people possess powers, some of them mundane but some of them - at the higher end of the scale - strong enough to level a city block without breaking a sweat. This is a world shaped by the actions of superhuman individuals, known scientifically as Homo Anoteros and known to the public as metahumans. This is a world continually in a back and forth battle between those who would like to use their abilities for the good of the people and those who would like to simply dominate. Frequent street clashes between heroes and villains cause untold amounts of property damage on the regular, some of the most well known and loved organizations in the world are dedicated to fighting crime, and warfare is no longer the same - with each side now fighting not just with guns and rockets, but with both direct and indirect powers.
This is the world of Living Legends, an RP which explores this world from different angles and perspectives. From the most well known professional heroes of the world, the faces that millions from every country look up to and follow, to lesser known vigilantes fighting it out on the streets with both metahuman and ordinary criminals, to corporate trained metahumans offering their services for the right price, this RPG offers an in depth jump into the setting. This world is the backdrop for a number of stories, both connected and disconnected from each other. Below, you’ll find more information on just what these stories are about - and more details about their epic backdrop.THE POWERS BEHIND THE LEGENDS
The phenomenon of Homo Anoteros, better known by the much easier to say and remember term of metahuman, is one that began in the years during and following World War Two. It’s believed the date is something of a coincidence. No one actually knows the reason why metahumans appeared on Earth. What is known, however, is that metahumans are capable of in some way using powers that reach beyond regular human ability. All metahumans, regardless of what their power is or the way their power works, have genetic differences that sets them apart. The differences, however, seem too advanced to be a simple mutation that could have happened by accident. The genetics of a metahuman are different in a number of places, but the idea that metahumans were created artificially has largely been ruled out by experts on the subject. There are, after all, no traces that such a thing happened.
People began displaying signs of powers approximately in the year 1946. This happened around the world with different regions reacting differently to the new phenomenon. Many of the early metahumans were immediately captured by governments to be experimented on, with hopes of finding out the source of their abilities and replicating it to help the war efforts. This even happened in some of the world’s most free countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. In other areas, the appearance of powers was a realization of local religions, and metahumans became revered figures - while in other places, the opposite reaction happened and they were seen as something along the lines of demons and monsters. The early years were rough for metahumans. However, in the next decade or so, basic human rights would at least be extended to them by many countries, and in 1951, by the UN. While this was only in official terms and some persecution went on unofficially, it was a step forward.
All powers can be divided into two categories. Traditional powers make up the majority and they can be anything, as long as the power is not magic based. Telekinesis, super strength, elemental control, enhanced reflexes, and other abilities would all be counted as traditional for classification reasons, for example. Magic abilities are different because of their power source. While traditional abilities are something that the user can do naturally, similarly to using a muscle, magic uses energy known as mana to power an ability. The main difference between the two is that while traditional powers are mostly fixed, with someone being able to improve the powers they have but only very rarely end up with completely different powers after developing their original set, magic is more flexible and users of magic can learn how to use magical energy for different things. A fire mage, for example, can put in much time and effort and learn how to use magical energy to control something else such as water or metal. The main downside is that magic takes much more time and practice to improve at and to initially learn, while traditional powers more or less develop on their own - at least in their basic stages.
Powers tend to improve with use but this happens over a long time period - one shouldn’t expect, for example, to train for a couple of months and to double their strength from it. Powers are very much like a real muscle, a physical part of the body. Dedication and consistent training generally brings good results, and oftentimes, this rather than power types is what separates the dangerous metahumans from the rest. Someone might, for example, have enhanced strength but if they don’t train their power and hone it, they likely won’t be able to deal too much serious damage. Metahumans who can get by on talent alone are considered prodigies.
It’s also common for powers to occur on top of each other but these tend to come in two types. The first is secondary powers that are related to the main ones. For example, someone that can control plants may also be able to control rocks, something else seen in nature. The second type is ‘passive’ powers that exist in the background. These are things like enhanced strength, enhanced speed, enhanced stamina, and the like that are not strong enough to be powers of their own but still exist in the background. Many metahumans have this kind of enhanced condition in some way or another - but those who do have it generally lack the other type of secondary ability and outside of their passive abilities mainly focus on doing one thing.WHAT MAKES A HERO
The first superheroes weren’t exactly glamorous - after World War Two, many metahumans were brought into militaries. This was where the first seeds of metahumans acting as public servants were planted, but superheroes wouldn’t take off until the 60s, which was the first decade of many where they would start to dominate pop culture. Most of the original superheroes were former soldiers who had gotten out of the military and were looking for new work. Security and police work eventually turned to fighting crime, and as time passed, these heroes began to take their work more and more seriously. The end of the 60s was when the first flashy costumes showed up and when heroes began to take on names for themselves outside of their true identities.
Fast forward to the 1980s and superheroes were a phenomenon around the world, on both sides of the iron curtain. In the west they represented a capitalist dream, living flashy lifestyles and giving regular people something to aspire to. They sold a lot of merchandise, appeared on TV practically every day, and became cultural icons. In the communist bloc, superheroes were shown as representatives of the workers, as role models who had all the power in the world but used it to serve the people and the greater good, even if in reality many of these eastern superheroes had little choice but to obey. Even with metahumans being guaranteed the same rights as the rest of the population, many countries looked at them with suspicion. It wasn’t entirely out of paranoia, either. Even back in the 1980s, a number of smaller countries had already been toppled just by the actions of metahumans. Terrorism would become a world concern much sooner as groups such as the PLO, Red Army Faction, the IRA and their offshoot groups, and the Japanese Red Army began to use metahumans in their tactics.
The 80s presented a landscape that was a patchwork of different teams - national teams who worked with governmental authorities and received their paycheck from the government, city teams who usually helped local police departments, independent teams, teams for hire, vigilantes who had to deal with both criminals and the authorities. There was little communication and cooperation between these teams. Arguments about jurisdiction happened daily, there was rarely coordination to catch criminals who fled to other areas, and there was no one organization to act as the face of heroes in the world. That changed in the year 1983, when the United Nations very narrowly passed a resolution laying down the groundwork for an organization known as the Hero League - one which would try to act as the central authority for all heroes, hopefully improving the cooperation between teams.
Fast forward to the modern day and superheroes have become a part of modern pop culture. They act as celebrities on television, they trend on social media, they have their own brands and their voices can affect the tides of popular opinion. It’s a great job for many, but also one of the most stressful because of the same things that make it great - the modern hero, or at least the modern big team hero, doesn’t just need to think about fighting crime but also needs to balance that with keeping up a certain, perfect image. One that can easily shatter with one wrong move, especially in the age of cancel culture and social media.ORGANIZATIONS OF THE WORLD
The world has a number of organizations influenced by metahumans, both hero and villain teams and otherwise.
The Hero League, which acts as a governing body of sorts for heroes with a rotating council of five acting as is leadership, is possibly the most notable of these organizations. The League pays the bills for a number of teams, handles their branding, and also runs academies around the world which turn raw and inexperienced young metahumans into members of sanctioned teams. The League is also directly responsible for the fight against some of the most dangerous and terrifying metahumans the world has ever seen - while a number of the League’s teams cover a smaller geographic region such as the area around a major city, or the entirety of a small country, the League also operates Aegis, an international team meant to deal with the biggest threats that the world has to offer.
Aegis itself isn’t one unified team but rather is split up across multiple locations. As of now, the team is split up into New York and London divisions. Aegis, however, covers much more ground than most teams and makes use of supersonic travel to get to destinations quickly. Thanks to the Hero League’s vast resources, for example, an Aegis team could theoretically cross the Atlantic in about three hours to respond to an ongoing situation. While transatlantic flights don’t happen much for Aegis teams, the teams have traveled quite a bit to deal with problems outside of their main area - ranging from both metahumans who are too strong to deal with conventionally, to more mysterious beings of a magical nature, to international terrorism and related matters.
Besides Aegis, the strongest teams in the Hero League are the ones based in major cities, as these tend to have the best funding and equipment. The Hero League is quite the profitable organization, charging local jurisdictions for its services, and this money is often invested back into the organization to pay for the finest technology that money can buy. It’s often said that before even the militaries of the world manage to get new technology in service, the Hero League will already be working with it, and at times, the League has funded the development of technology that they believe will help their causes.
If there’s such a thing as a counterbalance to the Hero League, it would quite possibly be the Paradise Consortium, a deceptively named organization which is not trying to bring about a paradise but rather is one of the largest criminal organizations in the world. The name comes from Paradise, Nevada, which is home to most of the iconic buildings of Las Vegas. It’s also where the Consortium was founded back in 1986 and it’s only grown since then, the leadership changing a number of times to the point where it’s hard to keep track of who has been the leader and how long. Like any large criminal consortium which spans a massive geographic area, the Paradise Consortium has a problem with infighting, and only a few leaders have been able to hold onto their position for an extended time.
The organization operates throughout North and South America but also has a large presence in Europe. Its large size is because it’s more of a conglomerate than a single gang. There’s a large amount of groups under the banner f the Consortium and at the end of the day it’s often more profitable to be with the Consortium than against it. The group operates in everything including robberies, scams, drug trafficking, arms and human trafficking, and drug production. Furthermore, a number of the higher ups within the group are metahumans, as well as the top enforcers in the field. This has caused authorities around the world to have trouble handling the Consortium, and has given them a reputation as one of the more violent criminal organizations out there.
Despite campaigns by both governments and the Hero League to stomp the Consortium out each group that is destroyed tends to be replaced by another one, keeping the group from truly shrinking. If anything, it’s influence has been growing over recent years, which is concerning for both heroes and police officers alike.
Unlike the flashy Hero League and the visible Paradise Consortium, Pyramid is an organization that operates out of the shadows. There’s hardly anything known about Pyramid, period. The locations of its bases are a secret, many employees don’t even have any idea where they are, and the group’s interactions with the outside world are handled through front companies of both the civilian and military type. It’s hard to say what Pyramid wants because the organization doesn’t reveal its own goals - even to those within it. However, Pyramid does have something of an urban legend status because of the theories of it owning a number of front companies and sending metahuman mercenaries around the world to handle any job ranging from security for dictators to deposing those same dictators for rival governments.
The inside of Pyramid is a hidden world which few will get a chance to see. Metahumans here are not just born, but engineered for use in the private militaries owned by Pyramid. Experiments are conducted frequently, both relating to powers and relating to other causes. Some of those experiments involve humans themselves - Pyramid is not a moral organization, despite internally claiming that every single act the organization takes is for some grand plan for good, one that hasn’t been revealed yet to outsiders or to the boots on the ground and doesn’t make much sense outwardly because of it.
Nothing is known about the leader of the group, at least nothing concrete. Conspiracy theories and urban legends claim that the leader of the organization is a metahuman known as Khnemu, who is revered within the organization as a supreme being who will lead Pyramid and its ‘employees,’ as well as metahumans in general, into a brighter future. Just how bright that future is and what it entails remains to be seen. After all, Pyramid is very much in the business of war right now, with Pyramid front company mercenaries taking part in most ongoing conflicts on one side or another.
There’s a large number of hero teams around the world and not all of them are as famous as Aegis or the others that make up the ranks of the Hero League. Most of these teams, however, have some kind of importance in their own way. The claim to fame for Team Next is that they were founded in 2024 by Amalia ‘Psycher’ Huerta and Dakota ‘Monster’ Vernon, both of whom had dropped out of Hero League academies at different times to find their path as heroes elsewhere - Huerta because of her rebellious behavior and Vernon because his powers are too dangerous.
While Vernon is 26 and generally acts as the team mentor, Team Next generally only recruits members under 23, with the idea that the younger generation doesn’t have everything as wrong as older ones might expect. This unconventional team, of course, is unsanctioned by the government and by the Hero League, making their work illegal. However, the daring nature of the team and its founders meant that the illegality of their work was only considered something that would add to the challenge and the adrenaline rush of it.
The team is based out of Oakland, California, which is one of the most dangerous places in America. The Bay Area has an abnormally large metahuman population for reasons which have not been uncovered, resulting in a spike in crime rates and some areas even becoming no go zones for police. In some of these areas, heroes and vigilantes are the only ones who can be relied upon to enforce the law. In the case of Team Next, they immediately managed to reduce crime in their local area before expanding their operations and acting as a team all around the San Francisco Bay, from San Jose all the way up to San Rafael to the north of Oakland.
With the team gaining a following on the internet for their daring actions and their rebellious attitude as well as their abnormally young age, it looks like this illegal team may just be on the rise. But there’s also a lot of pressure on this young team. With the team members being high school and college students, leading a double life as a vigilante isn’t an easy task. Nor is trying to stop crime in one of the most dangerous cities in America while keeping up a secret identity - with the knowledge that the secret identity getting out could result in arrest by the authorities or in retaliation attacks by criminals. Few people would accept such a challenge. But Team Next? They aren’t exactly normal.CORPORATIONS & INTRIGUE
As metahumans offer tremendous individual power and are effective as both enforcers, shadow agents, and sometimes even frontline fighters, the governments of the world have also taken note of the metahuman phenomenon. In the west, the largest organization responsible for metahuman affairs is the Bureau of Metahuman Control, often known as the BMC or just as the Bureau. This organization is based in the United States but was founded in 2003 by the governments of the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, and Brazil to give the local agencies of these countries an overarching organization to coordinate with and to establish more consistent laws across all of these countries. Over time, the BMC would grow to replace the local regulatory bodies in these countries, and its membership would expand to include most of NATO and a select group of outsider nations.
If superheroes are a rapid response force to clean up with problems as they happen, the BMC are the detectives who are responsible for handling behind the scenes investigations and helping to prevent things from happening in the first place. The group conducts investigations into metahuman criminals and terrorists and attempts to uncover their identities and current whereabouts, arrests some troublemakers before they can commit planned crimes, and is the organization responsible for the imprisonment of metahumans within NATO countries. BMC prisons are specifically designed for holding metahumans, although their escape rate is still very high compared to regular prisons. It’s because of their status as the metahuman jailors of the west, as well as their role as investigators and the watchful eye that attempts to prevent metahuman terror before it happens, that has cemented the BMC into the fabric of this world.
Governments are not the only players in the global game when it comes to metahumans. Corporations, too, have begun to use metahumans for certain things, some of those things shadier than others. Metahumans for hire have been a thing since the 1980s, but in the 2000s this trend would grow until there was a large market existing in a legal gray area, for mercenary metahumans who didn’t side with heroes or villains but instead offered their services to anyone who would pay up. These mercenaries tend to operate under the banners of companies, oftentimes lesser known subsidiaries of larger corporations. Companies such as Amazon and Lockheed-Martin have jumped into the business to offering metahumans for hire, but few would recognize immediately the ties between these parent companies and their mercenary subsidiaries, Tacoma Security Services and Corsair Security respectively.
Corporations are also at the forefront of technology, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. There have been whispers and rumors about corporations attempting to replicate metahuman powers, knowing that whoever could do this would have all the money and the power in the world. However, projects such as this have had little to no success. At least, little to no public success. The internet is filled with rumors and conspiracy theories that claim some of these projects have been more successful than the public is allowed to know. But by the nature of these theories, most of them have little evidence behind them.
AI is another trending topic since the 2010s, and it’s said that intelligent AI could become common by the end of the 2020s. Of course, that’s a very optimistic prediction that assumes that AI will explode in use in the next five years. However, AI has seen more and more use and has increased in intelligence over recent years, with some governments even experimenting with using AI enforcers to conduct the same jobs as heroes that would normally be done by metahumans. This has resulted in mixed opinions - backlash from those who claim that automation can’t do the job of a person, and that a person’s mind will always be smarter than an AI, as well as praise from others who claim that AI is the future.
While there’s a number of benefits to AI, many speculate that the bubble will burst soon when someone finally uses an AI for malicious intents, something that would cause tremendous damage in a digitally connected world. There’s also rumors from the internet that AI is already being used in this way by bad actors, such as the Paradise Consortium and even other groups who are more secretive in their activities. Until something major happens, however, the AI and robotics bubble will likely continue to grow.AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD
The world of Living Legends is not one thread but a few different stories which are connected to each other to varying degrees. This allows you to explore different things without being rigidly stuck to one idea or relegating interesting ideas to a side arc that will be drowned out by the rest of the thread - each IC stands alone and can be set at a different date, although it is entirely possible for them to collide or for things that happen in one IC to directly or indirectly affect the other IC threads. Below, you’ll see the available IC threads to join. To visit one of the threads, just click on the banner.
TEAM AEGIS. One of the most well known superhero teams in the world, split between New York City and London and given the goal of protecting hundreds of millions of people from anything that might come their way - Team Aegis is on the forefront of the global fight against crime and terrorism, but life on this team is anything but easy. The press, unrealistic expectations from the public, strict regulations, and being thrown against some of the most dangerous villains in the world are all factors which play into that difficulty.
While things are mostly calm in New York City, however, a number of dangerous plots are happening around the world - rogue AI, secret societies, extraterrestrial interference, and evil megacorporations should all be expected. In the background, the secret society known as Pyramid looks to uncover truths using its legions of metahuman mercenaries. In the foreground, rapid developments in AI and technology could see the world itself threatened by its own creations. Will YOU be able to handle the pressure and save the world as a member of Team Aegis’ NYC team?
FOUNDED BY YOUNG REJECTS and outcasts, the metahumans of Team Next have to deal with some very human problems of their own. The team is known for its young age - the members typically come from high school and college and the team doesn’t actively recruit anyone over 23, but don’t underestimate them because of it. Team Next burst onto the scene in the extremely dangerous city of Oakland, a place with an abnormally high population of metahumans and plenty of amateur heroes and villains. The team has had early success after its founding in 2024 and began to see an immediate crime reduction in its local area due to their great output, but that success isn’t without trials.
Vigilantism is still illegal and Team Next was never sanctioned. Its members are young, which makes keeping a secret identity and avoiding arrest or retaliation attacks a hard task. Furthermore, with little experienced guidance, it’s quite easy for this team to bite off more than they can chew. As a member of Team Next, will you be able to balance the life of a hero with school or college while getting dragged deeper and deeper into more dangerous situations as the infamy of this group of vigilantes grows with each outing?RULES & APPLICATIONS
Before applying with the applications below, please make sure you’ve read and have a decent understanding of the thread and its format as described above. Now that you’ve done that, you can look below to see the rules and the application. If you have any questions about applying, about whether or not your character will work with the RP, or anything else, feel free to ask them on this thread.
Also, please be sure to pay attention to the format differences between this thread and others, including the others that I myself have run in the past. Time moves quickly in this RP and many elements of the missions in this thread are designed to avoid waiting for others and holding up the thread. That’s not to say that you have to be on every day to be able to play in this thread. With the current mission system, missions happen frequently and there should be something to do on most given days. If you can’t participate in a mission on one day, you should be able to get involved with another one on a different day. In this way, even someone that can’t get on all the time can actually play a role in the team.
Missions are much smaller, usually consisting of 2-3 people, and will be a focus on clearing out missions quickly within a few days using collaborative posts, and not using excessive detail on mundane tasks. It doesn’t aid the RP, for example, to write ten paragraphs about taking down one enemy thug when there’s still an entire mission’s worth of tasks to accomplish. If this format seems confusing, the IC provides examples of just how these missions tend to work. Rest assured however that this format allows for the thread to be held up less and allows for participation to be more flexible - you don’t have to worry about posting daily or bi-daily if the small size of the missions means your inactivity isn’t holding them up. Instead, you can wait and join a mission when you’re actually available.
- 1: You need Discord for this RP. While this isn’t meant to exclude people that don’t use it, collaborative posts take a much larger role in this RP and you won’t be able to participate properly unless you can use Discord to write collab posts with others. Discord also keeps you in the loop with RP updates and missions. Discord is also used for aspects of the RP which use rolling.
- 2: Power levels should make sense in context. Someone on an amateur vigilante team isn’t going to have the same power as someone from Team Aegis, for example. All characters should be beatable and more weaknesses may be needed if a character can do too many different things without any of their own flaws being vulnerable.
- 3: For balancing, all time based powers are banned as well as superspeed over 75 MPH and velocity manipulation (for example, you can’t have a power that would let you throw a small object at a thousand miles per hour like a bullet). Other powers may be scrutinized more if they’re deemed to offer a giant advantage with little drawbacks (for example rapid regeneration, invincibility, etc).
- 4: This is a superhero RP and one that stretches realism, however, plot armor is not an excuse for something to happen or not happen. Mess up, and don’t expect to succeed with your objectives. Mess up enough and your character CAN die. Almost all character deaths are avoidable however and it’s safe to say that by the time a character dies of their mistakes, they’ve likely had a number of warnings about where their current path will lead.
- 5: You may introduce some things to the story such as missions, NPCs, or factions. However, please consult with the thread staff BEFORE doing this, as it will make it much easier to fit potential ideas into the story.
- 6: You are largely free to set the dates for your posts. You may, for example, decide to RP a social interaction on a different date rather than participate in a mission happening on the latest date. Please try, though, to keep all dates relatively close to each other. For example, if most posts are set in October at the current moment, don’t set yours in November.
- 7: As the technology for this RP is somewhat more futuristic than real life, you are allowed to make your own technology to use. Feel free to consult the staff if you don’t know if something is too advanced or not. Also, technology should serve a practical purpose. Examples of good custom technology would be an infrared device that helps in finding enemies, or a jetpack to improve mobility. An example of bad and impractical technology would be adding more barrels to a weapon without changing much, or making a weapon that’s flashy but lacks practical advantages over existing ones.
- 8: Each thread has a specific focus. Generation Next focuses on Team Next and the Great Game focuses on Team Aegis and to an extent, Clover Industries. If you want to play something not connected to the main factions of each thread, it should be brought up and approved BEFORE applying.
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