World of the Shift

The world of the Shift is a changed world. A strange, singular event occurred in the mid-1970s which triggered transformations in a small handful of people the world over. Since then, the ripples of that original energetic Shift have criss-crossed again and again, resulting in Echo Events - localized spikes in strange energetic phenomena, resulting in devastation, injury, loss of life...and the gaining of powers. The powers of science and industry have found occasional (often accidental) ways of repeating these spikes, investing their chosen agents with power. These three kinds of folk - the Originals, the Echoes, and the Empowered - are called the Changed.

This is not a world of superheroes. This is a world of people with powers, carefully monitored, shepherded, but also protected by a government agency. Changed that wish to save lives lend their power to philanthropic and relief effort organizations like the Golden Cross, or to emergency response teams on the local or federal level. Those that wish to stop criminals join law enforcement task forces, and those who wish to defend the nation from its enemies are recruited into elite military units. Government and corporate sponsors pay top dollar to the Changed with the talents to aid them in their efforts, and these days, becoming one of the Changed means living lives of discretion and avoiding using one's abilities, or they mean using them for someone paying them for access to their gifts.

It is a federal crime to engage in vigilantism, and has been since the Denisov Measure of 1993.

The Shift

April 24th, 1974
To this day, the world's scientists cannot answer exactly what it was that Shifted - only that something did. Unprecedented spikes in readings from nearly every known kind of scientific gauging implement registered. Electrical, radiation, temperature, tectonic, meteorological - name the device, and if it was around then, it went crazy, detecting a violent upswing in something that somehow touched on all of those spectra without the normally discernible environmental factors that accompany such spikes.

Forty years ago, something Shifted, and a handful of human beings around the globe were suddenly gifted with immense power. Each one of them seemed to be consumed in the weird energy emissions that accompanied the shift. "Shift Emanations" to scientists, but "the April Fires" to the media and popular cultures, these burning, prismatic flames overtook the small handful of people affected by the Shift, and remade them. The flames blinded those who watched (in some cases permanently, if they got too close to the manifestations), and left strange darkened patterns on the environment, similar to the post-nuclear shadows burnt onto the wall of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The people who emerged from the April Fires were the first of the Changed: the Originals. Though exact numbers are not known, these extremely potent Changed are thought to number in the low-twenties in total, though misfortune and violence have claimed some of their lives since the Shift. Those that remain, however, show little aging and retain superhuman levels of health and vitality.

The Echo Events

1978 - Present Day
According to scientific theory, the Shift caused ripples in whatever energetic spectrum it spiked in. Occasionally, like multiple ripples in a body of water converging to form a wave pattern, these ripples come together again to create miniature, localized Shifts. These are called Echo Events.

The first of them occurred in 1978, at Mount Rainier, Washington, in the United States. Since then, there have been nearly 150 of them. Though each one is different, they do have a few traits in common.

• Warning Signs: A few minutes before an Echo Event triggers, ringing in the ears, a sudden onset of pressure headaches, and nose- and ear-bleeds suddenly occur in a majority of those in ground zero for that Event. Today, most people know to look out for these signs, though that time to evacuate isn't always enough - it can be difficult to get far enough from the Event's epicenter for crowded or large Events.
• The Shift-Storm: Energetic fields in the area of the Event surge wildly. The exact manifestations of these levels can vary based on the location and its environment, but the result is usually absolute elemental chaos: roaring winds, sudden fires, lightning storms, earthquakes, and all manner of similar expressions of energetic fluctuation. It is these manifestations that cause most deaths and damage in an area.
• Aftershocks: Once the manifestations in the area have gone wild, they "settle down" in a very strange way, often "grounding out" in odd and unexpected displays of power. The Department of Transformed Persons Affairs have drawn connections between these manifestations and the powers that Echoes at that event develop. Indeed, the DTPA suspects that these aftershocks are simply the newly-imbued Echoes whose powers are wild and out of control in the wake of the Event.

Echo Events are classified as natural disasters the world over, with relief organizations, rescue operations, charitable foundations, and everything else that interacts with that notion applied to these Events, just as with any hurricane, typhoon, earthquake, or wildfire.

The Experiments

Dates Unknown
Since the Shift first occurred, scientists and researchers have attempted to pierce the mystery around it and the subsequent Echo Events. Though devices can detect its periphery, modern science doesn't even know what kind of spectrum or phenomenon makes up these sudden surges in devastating power. This has not stopped governments, corporations, criminal organizations and anyone else with the money to attempt it from trying to recreate these events under controlled conditions.

Most are unqualified disasters, claiming the lives of not only those volunteering for the empowerment process, but often the researchers, staff, and even those living adjacent to the facility in question. It is very rare that these attempts bear fruit, and none of them have resulted in repeatable, reliable processes, or even any solid information about what occurred. Scientists have lamented being stuck in the dark, without the means of even seeing the lack of light, but less doing something about it.

As a result, those who gain their powers in this way - the Empowered, as they are called - are not quite as rare as Originals, though they come damned close. Almost without exception, they continue to work for the organizations that paid for their transformation, trapped in legal loopholes and binding contracts that keep them well-paid (if sometimes unwilling) employees and agents.

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