Avenger Assembled

Super Freaks The ‘Super Freaks’ are a loose term for a pan-religious movement that began on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1960s. Inspired by hippie culture, the New Age movement, and the general alienation of the period, members of what was sometimes called the Super Movement or the Super People USA argued that metahumans were the divine manifestation of the Creator (who or what that creator was was open to a significant amount of debate - and remains so to this day) on Earth and should be worshiped as such. One would expect this to be open to abuse given the period - and indeed despite the widespread success of the movement, Super Freak groups were often highly vulnerable to infiltration, subversion, and co-option by metahumans eager to embrace either the idea of their own divinity or simply to exploit the gullible. In several high-profile cases in Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere, Super Freak communes were exposed by the press, raided by the police or superheroes, or otherwise destroyed. In the 1980s and 1990s, it looked as though the movement might die out altogether. But religious movements have a funny way of sticking around and the Super Freaks are no exception. The sects run by outright villains have mostly been shut down - putting the movement in a new direction. There are Super Freak communes today still in Washington, Oregon, California and other parts of the United States where people live in harmony with nature and each other, working to build a better world and unlock the native powers within. The Pinnacle Path in Freedom City today is loosely affiliated with the Super Freak movement - and in recent years Path members have Walked their way out to several communes and back, the hippie lifestyle now having re-entered the mainstream now that it’s more associated with a grandparent’s style than real radicalism. The largest such commune (with about 1200 members) is in northwestern Oregon, far enough from Emerald City that it’s not on the map but close enough that members of the Galactic Army of Light can travel into town to run shops, sell their wares at artisanal stores and farmers’ markets, and otherwise be a part of the city’s structure. (It may seem odd that the center of the Super Freak movement is so far away from a large superhuman population, but as any Freedomite will tell you, familiarity can often breed contempt - and it's hard to maintain the worship of a god you see every day. The days of hippies following the Centurion around to try and gain a share of his power are long-since passed) While a few metahumans have been born on Super Freak communes (like Third Eye, the most famous hero of the California/Oregon border region), or have had their powers awakened by sweat lodges, scarification, and other rituals, for the most part the Super Freaks have proven no more or less likely to gain powers than the average citizen. That’s okay, they firmly assert when questioned - they take their enlightenment on faith. Super Freaks tend to be vegetarians but are rarely teetotalers - after all, there are so many interesting ways to expand the mind, some of which may give you metapowers, maaan. They are usually pacifists but those with metapowers will defend their commune if attacked. In story terms, a Super Freak commune is a potential story point for both good and ill. No more or less likely to be run by charlatans than any other religious sect, a commune may be run by a council of democratically elected sincere leaders, an abusive megalomaniac, or anything in between. A crisis at a commune could run from an outbreak of anti-vaccination sentiment, a takeover by a supervillain who has ‘seen the light’, or even just too many bunnies eating their organically grown crops. A hero’s childhood on a commune could be anything from a horrific hellhole they escaped - or simply a unique upbringing that sets them apart from their peers.

Wisconsin laws about superheroes [Bedlam] It’s hard to be a superhero in Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s state laws are much less friendly towards superheroes than New Jersey’s are - which after all were largely written in deference to decades of superheroes active in Freedom City. (Wisconsin also lacked the high levels of fifth column infiltration that led to so much worry about secret Axis attack in both the Pacific Northwest and the East Coast.) Individuals may not testify in court, be paid a salary, or own property in a costumed identity. In other words, one may wear a mask and fight crime - but their mask is not a legal identity, and in general a crime-fighter must follow the same laws as civilians. Wisconsin courts are also much more hostile towards super excess than New Jersey courts- a superhero who inflicts significant property damage during a battle may expect to be served (with the understanding that they will unmask in court or be forced to unmask and go to jail for contempt), just as one who commit any serious crime while carrying out their duties may expect a criminal case. While inhabitants of Freedom City might expect that this would lead to significant superviolence, in fact Wisconsin as a whole has a relatively low rate of meta-crime. (Of course, as many a legal scholar has pointed out,, Wisconsin also has a low rate of metas in general - but is that because the laws against superheroing encourage emigration to other states? These are the sorts of dispute that help legal scholars make their careers.) Superheroes in Wisconsin have gotten around these laws in several ways - by being careful in the laws they follow, maintaining a public identity as part of their costumed one, or by working with very friendly law enforcement. Bedlam’s Hammer of Justice has typically benefited primarily from the last one. As Hammer of Justice is not well-liked outside of his native city, this typically means that efforts to change Wisconsin’s super laws are branded as encouraging vigilantism.

Pacific Patrol The Pacific Patrol was America’s primary (though not exclusive) super-team active in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. Headquartered in Yankee Doodle’s underground stronghold in Emerald City, Washington, it was active from January 1942 through January 1946, though some of its members were active in the superheroic community on the West Coast in the years before and after the war. Unlike their contemporaries the Liberty League, the Pacific Patrol saw itself as an agent of the US military and took as active a role in fighting overseas as it did in patrolling the homefront. (Yankee Doodle’s 'advanced technology' (which included teleportation) helped substantially there, allowing the Pacific Patrol to quite literally ‘patrol’ everywhere on the Pacific Rim by the end of 1945). Founded after a raid on the city by agents of the Green Dragon Society, the Patrol consisted of Yankee Doodle, a flying strongman from “an all-American future!” in a patriotic costume, Grand Old Flag, a mysterious woman in a full-body American flag costume, the top-hatted and tuxedoed mystic Mr. Mystery, alien visitor The Ambassador, and the crack shot and special agent OSS operative Agent Five. Fighting on the front lines as they did, they suffered casualties when fighting Japan and its special forces. Mr. Mystery was eventually replaced by the California Bear after the former was killed in combat during the Battle of Tarawa, while the Ambassador returned home in 1943 and was replaced by the armored hero Broadside. Despite occasional cooperation with other Pacific front teams such as Canada's western continent, as well as British and Anzac heroes, the team generally preferred to operate directly under US auspices. Though they occasionally fought agents of the Green Dragon Society, the Pacific Patrol typically tangled with forces working directly under the auspices of the Japanese military - most famously the Hōfuku sochi, a team formed in 1942 just after the Doolittle Raid on Japan. Unlike the Green Dragon Society, the Hōfuku sochi, who took the names of Susanoo, Ryujin, and Uzume, remain popular in Japan today - though much of their memory as 'honorable warriors of empire' has been hijacked by Japan's militant right-wing in recent years. As far as the general public knows, at war’s end, the team served in occupied Japan for a few months before returning to Emerald City and going their separate ways - this is one reason why there’s relatively little commemoration of the Pacific Patrol in Emerald city proper - though they defended the city during the war, it was never really their home. Yankee Doodle returned to his own era, Grand Old Flag and Broadside retired to anonymity, Agent Five went to work for AEGIS, and California Bear returned to his home in Redding, California where he continued his super-career until his retirement in 1963. Revisionist historians have in recent years pointed out a number of flaws in the team’s legacy - none of them took a stand to prevent the internment of Japanese-Americans in the Pacific, or to stem the at-times vicious fighting in the Pacific theater. Indeed, by all accounts most of them actively participated in the carnage. The image of Yankee Doodle with a Japanese skull on his desk, printed in Life Magazine in 1944, remains one of the most enduring images of the war in the Pacific - a sign that even heroes could be corrupted by the horrors of the bloody war in the Pacific. Nonetheless, the team’s legacy is certainly not all bad - in addition to their heroic role in fighting the Japanese military and its agents, in the field they saved Japanese lives as well as Allied, and were among the first Americans into Japan after its surrender. Historians have found strong evidence that Broadside was really Jose Trinidad, a Filipino engineer who had escaped along with MacArthur and who returned to his own country after independence to become the hero Magkabaluti, and Ambassador is widely believed to have been a Lor - but the identity of the rest of the team remains a mystery, as does the location of their headquarters, somewhere under Emerald City, Washington. GM Note: [In addition to the secrets mentioned above, the true story of the end of the Pacific Patrol comes in late 1945, not long after V-J Day. Claiming he was always eager to learn about “the Americans of this distant age”, the war had seemed to make Yankee Doodle increasingly unhinged; gradually adopting the worst qualities of his ‘ancestors,’ qualities which spread to much of the rest of the team by example - and if they were honest with each other, because it made things easier that way. Long uncomfortable with his growing racism, violence in the field, and increasingly frequent sexual advances, Grand Old Flag (who wore her full-body costume to disguise her own true identity), finally learned the truth about Yankee Doodle’s nature during clean-up efforts in Nagasaki just after the second atomic bombing there. Left with no other choice, she snapped his neck and used the teleporter at his belt to return to Emerald City. When the rest of the team learned the same truth about their former leader, they reluctantly agreed to leave Doodle’s body in his own vaults - and to never speak of what they learned. His body lies there still, the location of his headquarters forgotten by the general public. The truth about Yankee Doodle, Grand Old Flag, their team, and the reality of the Pacific War is left as an exercise for the reader. A good place to look might be in Agent Five's extensive reports to the OSS - which would later provide a clandestine basis for the investigation into the Liberty League in the 50s - or in the unpublished memoirs of California Bear, still in his family's home in northern California.]