Lovecraftian Supers

[Dr Archeville]

The US Navy definitively located and mapped R'lyeh in the 1960's. They raided the city's storehouses of weird and unknowable artifacts, and took specimens of its slumbering inhabitants. The Navy (and its associated private contractors) used a newly developed drug cocktail of lithium, psychedelics, and mild tranquilizers to remain sane in such close proximity to ancient and hideously unhuman creatures.

The pressure was on to secure a defensible and regular source of unconventional assets, as the Soviets Antarctic mission had given them an edge, plus the Soviet listening post in the Dreamlands seriously threatened US security.

The British refused to participate in the mission, though it was offered as a joint operation, as their own access to UA had been secure for half a century via their Insmouth facility.

Experiments began in earnest on the UA stolen from R'lyeh- and measures were taken to secure the city- including mining it with hydrogen bombs, and ringing it with hunter-killer submarine patrols and listening stations.

Efforts to reverse-engineer UA technology proved daunting- the greatest problem simply being identifying the purpose of a given device.

More success was made with the still-living tissue samples. While the soviets had a technical and psychic advantage, the US made phenomenal leaps in prehuman biology, especially when they discovered that the introduction of cthonic tissues into a higher terrestrial form resulted in beneficial mutations and transformations, as the so-called "C-Cells" integrated and enhanced mortal tissues. By the 1970's, human trials had begun.

Special Operations Group 7 (SOG-7) was fielded in Vietnam during the waning days of the war, and the group of enhanced soldiers so bolstered the US forces that the war continued to grind on until 1979.

Since the SOG-7's sensational public revelation, the proliferation of the superhuman has continued.

During the 70's and 80's, the world's superpowers maintained the illusion of 'secret origins'- this superhuman fell from the stars, that one was bitten by a radioactive ferret, this one inherited his father's magic ring. The hideous true origins of superhumanity wasn't revealed until the collapse of the Soviet state in 2001, and the public release of formerly ultra-secret documents. While no official admission was made by the US government, it became an open secret about the origins of US superhumans.

The Nienties and Oughties saw a new trend- superhumans arising without government sanction. The source of their C-Cells remains a mystery- frequently stepped down with rabbit serum to the point where little active cthonic tissue remained, though occasionally with a phial of the pure stuff hitting the streets. Fingers point to the former Soviet state, now an anarcho-capitalistic piranha pit.

The British quietly acknowledged their own program, as did a few other nations with UA locations within their territory. China's operational bases in Leng, for example.

The unsanctioned spread of the C-Cell drug (sometimes called See-Saw, Big-C, or Shank) revealed another previously secret truth about the super- not everyone remains entirely human. Gross physical mutation, mental derangement, and behavioral instability were just as likely as super-powers. With some formulations of the elixir, more common.

From the shining squeaky-clean paragons of the 70's with their costumes and catch-phrases to a lower profile super-humanity of the late oughties, living in a world which suddenly doesn't trust them anymore.

Mix Cthulhu with spies with special ops with counter-culture revolutionaries with drug-culture with criminal enterprises with superhero mythology, blend, and serve.

From this RPG.net thread, which is filled with ideas on how to twist DC and Marvel characters through this lens.

[Dr Archeville]

Someone's been reading that RPG.net thread...

[Geez3r]

Ooooohhhhh. That explains everything. The story lines get so mangled because Cthulu's been munching on them from the margins. It's so simple now.

[Dr Archeville]

From io9: What if H.P. Lovecraft wrote the Fantastic Four?

[KnightDisciple]

That's some crazy stuff....

Sorta sounds like Cthulutech, really.