Tabletop Game / The Origin

Do you remember when the Earth died?

The Origin is a campaign book for Cypher System by Bruce R. Cordell, published by Monte Cook Games. It provides a modern superhero setting where recent events have led to the sudden appearance of metahumans with supernatural abilities.

Note: the campaign as provided is built around the idea that the players are discovering the changed setting at the same time as their characters. Because so much of the setting information would be considered spoilers:

ALL SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED AND BEGIN IMMEDIATELY BELOW.

In 2020, an interstellar object was detected crossing the solar system. It was captured by the sun and entered a highly-eccentric orbit; it was jokingly given the name 'Nibiru' after a mythical Planet X that was supposed to have collided with Earth in 2003. As nothing else interesting happened with it, and it was the second uninteresting interstellar object in 3 years, what little attention it got from the news cycle faded quickly.

Except that, for some unclear reason, some people remembered it differently. They remembered Nibiru suddenly breaking out of its orbit and making a beeline for Earth as it if had engines. They remember it crashing into Earth and destroying everything. And, somehow, they remember these things even while still living on Earth, which has not been destroyed.

Two years ago, when this supposedly happened, a number of people remembered it then. Since then, people have continued to have the memory arise - by now, just a handful of people every day.

Every person who remembers this gains metahuman abilities of some sort. Some of them die testing out their new abilities. Some choose to ignore it and pretend it isn't there. Some become heroes, or villains.

The existence of metahuman abilities is not publicly known and is considered to be the province of conspiracy theorists and cheap tabloids.

---

Tropes found in The Origin include:

• Acid Attack: The Bear Butte Monster can spit a gobbet of its especially potent stomach acid.
• Alternate Timeline: There appear to have been multiple, many of which have been destroyed or nearly so. Objects from them sometimes appear as cyphers.
• Apocalypse How:
  • The Crash was Class X, from the Colony Drop.
  • The Collectors triggered a Class X-5, destroying multiple timelines, in their attempt to rewrite reality, leaving one base timeline.
• Armless Biped: Crawler is a human-sized, two-legged figure with no arms.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: The Bear Butte Monster is a bison bull with a weirdly carnivorous maw that preys upon animals.
• Badass Normal: Zach Harms, head of the Union's field operations. He isn't a metahuman, but is as close to human physical perfection as possible.
• Beast Man: Agnes Fergusson has the ability to transform into a giant furry humanoid beast.
• Blessed with Suck: You've got superpowers! You also probably have trauma from remembering the world exploding, there's a decent chance you'll kill yourself learning how to control your powers, some powers may cause health issues like radiation poisoning or adrenal exhaustion, and both The Men in Black and Eldritch Abominations are after you.
• Body Horror: Bonebox's power is controlling bones. Both his own, which he can form into glider wings or tools, and other people's, which he can form into a casket that will slowly crush the victim to death.
• Boomerang Bigot: Isidora Kulikova is a metahuman who acts as bodyguard to Karen Howard, head of MAD. After she was forced to do horrible things by a mind-controlling metahuman, she went to Karen, who started the formation of MAD, in an effort to bring the metahuman threat under control.
• Born Lucky: Lucky Sleeper can control probabilities, which she uses to protect the House of Nibiru.
• Captured Super-Entity: Sobrenatural has a captive Collector, which they keep sedated and attempt to get information out of.
• Chameleon Camouflage: The Beast of Barrington Road, also known as the Abominable Gecko, is a monstrously large gecko that can change the appearance of its skin with unbelievable alacrity and blend into its environment almost completely.
• Charm Person: Colette Fabre's metahuman ability, which she used to take over the Houston Firm and turn it into a criminal organization.
• Civilized Animal: The talking animals of Mothwood Lake live in human-style houses, although it's unclear just how animal-like their general actions are.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The ultimate goal of the Collectors is to get enough metahumans who remember the Crash together in an attempt to flip the timeline back to the one where the Crash happened.
• Clock Roaches: Chronophages lurk in Subworlds, and like to eat Collectors, with metahumans as a close second.
• Covert Group with Mundane Front:
  • The Metahuman Affairs Department is hidden as a subagency of the Department of Energy called the Office of Breakthrough Innovation.
  • The Houston Firm is a law office that acts as a front for a mind-controlling metahuman and her crime syndicate.
  • The Union of Concerned Citizens is a charity claiming to support police officers. It's actually a secret organization devoted to eliminating all metahumans.
• Dying Race: The Collectors are the remnants of a race that tried to rewrite the universe, causing a Class X-5 Apocalypse How that left just a few of them to attempt to fix the problem.
• Eco-Terrorist: Mysteria was one even before she remembered the Crash, and now she uses her metahuman abilities to be even more effective.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Collectors are all horrifying shadowy creatures with indistinct edges and vaguely insectoid forms.
• Evil, Inc.: Babbage Industries is a large corporation whose efforts include medical research, insurance, and kidnapping metahumans for use as experimental subjects.
• Extranormal Prison: The Slab, the site where MAD holds metahumans without trial.
• Fantastic Recruitment Drive: The House of Nibiru posts flyers with the message, "Do you remember when the world ended?" with a link to their dark web site. Due to efforts of a metahuman with probability control, people who work for The Men in Black or similar fail to notice these flyers.
• Fighting from the Inside: One of the mind-controlled partners of the Houston Firm has been caching evidence of Colette's illegal activities on those occasions when he can break free for a bit.
• Flash Sideways: The basis of metahuman powers - visions of what happened in the Crash timeline create a power flux across the timelines.
• From a Single Cell: If even a single spore of Ephraim Scheben survives, he's able to come back.
• Genre Shift: The starter adventure begins with creating normal modern-day characters who suddenly gain superpowers partway through, possibly as an Unexpected Gameplay Change.
• Giant Animal Worship: A small cult has sprung up around Katari, a boa constrictor that earned supernatural abilities after the Crash. These cultists believe the being is a manifestation of an ancient sacred spirit, and do what they can to keep it hidden, even though it sometimes eats them.
• Harmful to Touch: The Usher wears protective clothing such that none of his skin is showing, because contact with his skin can kill any living thing.
• Healing Factor: Many metahumans have enhanced healing; a notable example is Edmund Albert Bigby, who heals 10 health per round.
• Hunter of His Own Kind:
  • Adam Umbra is a metahuman who hunts metahumans who have gone "bad". (Exactly how he defines "bad" is unclear.)
  • Cryptid and Edmund Albert Bigby are metahuman MAD agents assigned to track down and capture other metahumans.
• Hunter of Monsters: The Union has a goal of eliminating all metahumans as a blight on God's Creation.
• I Have Your Wife: Shanice Stokes hates what she's doing to metahumans at Axe Handle, but Zebulon Babbage has made it clear that her partner and daughters will suffer if she doesn't continue.
• Intrepid Reporter: Zehra Eris is busily investigating the existence of "changelings" (metahumans) for the Clearwater Register, after having seen a veterinarian suddenly transform into a giant furry monster.
• Judge, Jury, and Executioner: MAD has the authority to arrest and indefinitely detain metahumans without a trial, merely for having powers.
• Life/Death Juxtaposition: Claud Michelberg is a doctor whose metahuman ability is to heal or harm people with a touch - he can cure disease or inflict it.
• Limited-Use Magical Device: Manifest cyphers are residue from alternate timelines, such as bus passes to non-existent places, and grant one-use abilities of an extraordinary nature.
• Living Dinosaurs: Some Subworlds, such as the one Axe Handle is in, feature dinosaurs such as deinonychus and tyrannosaurus rex.
• Living Shadow: The Collectors are described as looking like holes in space.
• Living Ship: The Zodion, the ship of the Collectors, is a giant living starship.
• Lurid Tales of Doom: The Clearwater Register specializes in this sort of thing, but their newest series, "Do They Walk Among Us?", is actually documenting the real existence of metahumans, who the Register calls "changelings".
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: The goal of the Collectors, to destroy the Earth and recreate the universe where they were the dominant race.
• Mandela Effect: Invoked Trope, as leakage between multiple universes is considered a reasonable explanation for the Crash and other timeline issues. Notably, people who remember the Crash tend to remember variant histories of other sorts, such as a different list of US Presidents.
• Masquerade: The existence of metahuman abilities is not publicly known.
• Mass Super-Empowering Event: The Crash is the ultimate cause of all superpowers, although they don't all manifest at the same time.
• The Men in Black: The Metahuman Affairs Department (MAD) is the covert law enforcement agency in charge of protecting the US against metahumans. They do this by tracking, capturing, questioning, and imprisoning them, on the grounds that any metahuman not working for them is a threat.
• Mission from God: The Union considers their goal of destroying all monsters to be one of these, removing a blight from God's Creation.
• Monster Modesty: Damián Flood, a being made of water, is depicted wearing just a pair of pants.
• Mushroom Man: Ephraim Scheben was a mycologist who became a metahuman in a divergent timeline, and is now a vaguely human-shaped fungus.
• Mutant Draft Board: The UK's IRID prefers this over MAD's Extranormal Prison.
• Not Wearing Tights: As superpowers are hidden by the Masquerade, wearing a normal superhero costume is likely to draw too much attention. Explicitly discussed by Ultra in the "Joining the House" adventure.
  Ultra: You'll be like superheroes. Only completely secret ones without Lycra bodysuits and capes.
• Paper People: Flat Thomas's metapower is to make himself two-dimensional, which he uses to sneak in to places through the tiniest of cracks.
• Playing with Fire: Firedove's main power set, including surrounding herself with fire as a defense and throwing flaming missiles.
• Pocket Dimension: The Subworld is made of pieces of dying timelines that attach to reality like cobwebs, and are accessed by unusual entrances.
• Power Copying: Wild Child can copy up to two powers that she sees other metahumans using.
• Power Nullifier:
  • MAD Suppression Cuffs disable metahuman abilities and most other higher brain functions.
  • Zebulon Babbage's metahuman power is the ability to neutralize other metahumans' powers.
• Power Parasite: Diane Cousineau's goal - she's working on technology to let her transfer the powers of all the metahumans in Axe Handle to herself, with the goal of then taking over from Zebulon Babbage.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Babbage Enterprises uses captured metahumans to enable fusion power.
• Reset Button: Wild Child can wander down divergent timelines for a few moments, then jump back to the original, potentially bringing something back with her.
• Scam Religion: The Fellowship is a nice little church that preaches about the coming enlightenment when the Sleeper awakes. It's actually a front for Babbage Industries, used to find new metahumans to use as research fodder.
• Self-Defeating Prophecy: Hangman is able to foresee the deaths of himself and others; he can use this to avoid that death, or to cause it.
• Self-Duplication: One of Ultra's abilities, handy for the person in charge of meeting new people for the House of Nibiru.
• Shock and Awe: Electric Boogaloo's metahuman power is lightning attacks on people and devices.
• Spider People: Jessica Li has a human-spider hybrid form, which most people find disturbing.
• Summon Magic: Cryptid has the ability to summon creatures that never existed, including Bigfoot, Chupacabra, and Kraken.
• Super-Empowering: The Confer Crash Memory cypher causes somebody to share your Crash memory, boosting the power of someone who is already a metahuman and possibly granting powers to someone who is not. Wild Child also has the ability to induce memories of the Crash.
• Talking in Your Dreams: Lucky Sleeper's primary way of communication. She can even connect multiple people into the same dream for a "conference call".
• Technopath: Shibboleth uses her supernatural control of machines to steal large amounts of money from major corporations.
• They Would Cut You Up: Particularly unlucky (or troublesome) prisoners at the Slab may get sent off to a corporate partner (such as Babbage Industries) to be dissected.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Rizeen Nour has the superpower of being able to create up to 10 pounds of sugar. Fortunately for her, Collectors happen to be especially vulnerable to sugar.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: The standard way a metahuman gains powers - they suddenly remember the Crash, and gain random supernatural powers that fluctuate until they gain control of them.
• Vigilante Man: Deconstructed Trope with Adam Umbra, who kills "bad" metahumans as he defines them. Every metahuman group aware of him advises its members to approach him with extreme caution, because there's always a risk that he will decide they are "bad".
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • Colette Fabre is a well-known philanthropist; she's also a mind-controlling metahuman who runs a major criminal syndicate within the veil of a legal office.
  • Zebulon Babbage is the respected CEO of a company working to give the world inexpensive fusion energy. He's also a metahuman who is trafficking and abusing other metahumans to make that fusion energy happen.
• The Watcher: The job of agents of Sobrenatural. They are sent to observe metahumans and related phenomena such as Subworlds, but not to interfere with them at all.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Collectors are vulnerable to sugar.
• Western Terrorists: The Freedom Fraternity is a domestic terrorist group with a stated goal of bringing down the US government and replacing it with what they term "pure liberty".
• X-Ray Vision: The Terahertz Scanner is a half-helmet that gives the wearer the ability to see through most interior walls, normal clothing, or normal bags and briefcases.

---