The Unending War (SilverMeet Studios/OmniVerse Project)

[Paladin]

I've posted some initial stuff in the Super Builds section, but I've been working more intensely on the official setting book. Some very good questions were raised by my initial posting, and I've been doing a lot of research and reading in order to make my alternate history have greater verisimilitude. To that end, I am posting a preview of the opening section for your entertainment and commentary. Remember that this is just the very beginning part...

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A World – and Universe – at War

It is 1948, and the world has been at war for most of the last three decades. After the brutal crushing of the November Revolution at the end of the Great War, followed by Adolph Hitler's meteoric rise to power in 1923, Germany's renewed expansionist practices went from border skirmishes (in which Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and parts of the surrounding areas were brought under Germany's control) to a full-blown renewal of global hostilities by 1928.

Historically, it all began with the Beer Hall Putsch, the revolution that erupted in November of 1923 as the infamous Kampfbund – the Battle League of allied militias that remained opposed to the Treaty of Versailles and the neutering of Germany's military and its potential – launched an effort to take control of the seats of power in Germany and Bavaria. With the aid of powerful allies and the backing of the very influential (though still secretive at the time) Thule Society, the German government was completely toppled in two days and the * party began to systemically rebuild the entire political landscape of Germany.

In truth, however, this course was initiated shortly after the Tunguska Event of 1908, in which a terrible explosion of truly catastrophic proportions rocked the Siberian plains. Though not known at the time, paranormal experts have since surmised that this was the landing of a giant Shard – one of countless cosmically-powered artifacts not of Terran origin that some experts believe are the cause of paranormal developments on Earth. This particular incident, by many accounts, literally weakened the fabric of space-time, enabling entities from an alternate dimension to infiltrate our own reality.

These beings have since been discovered to be Aryans from an alternate Earth, and the land they live in, though parallel in so many ways to the Germany of our Earth, is called Thule. They are ruled by a magocracy – the Mage-Wrights of Thule – and they have apparently determined that our own Earth is very important to their future plans. Naturally, they've allied with those they most understand, helping to launch a war for control under a totalitarian regime mightier than any in history.

The presence of Shards in this world has also lead to the advent of those beings possessed of preternatural, supernatural, and even cosmic powers – the Gifted. With costumes to inspire, or to protect the life lived behind the mask, the Gifted have forever changed the fortunes of the war as well as the cultural landscape of mankind.

Of course, there are many others (some with powers, some without) that suffer the curse of being terribly disfigured or otherwise altered in such a way as to be rejected by humanity; these so-called Twisted have their own parts to play as the destiny of the world unfolds.

With costumed beings of unnatural power and indomitable will serving both sides of the conflict, as well as the influx of ever-more-powerful machines and devices of destruction born in the labs of superhuman geniuses and the factories of the invasive Mage-Wrights, the global war has grown increasingly destructive and far-reaching. The Allies struggle not to lose Europe and Asia while trying to stem the tide of Axis might across the rest of the planet, and there is no end in sight to the hostilities...

To what has become known far and wide as the Unending War.

[Jukeboxer]

This is a fun alternate history for WW2! It certainly makes more sense than trying to shoehorn supers into the actual history of that era. So now we have to wonder what became of the shard? Are there smaller pieces being smuggled around the war-torn world? Hmmm...