Parahuman
Humans that have been chosen as hosts by the power-granting shards of certain multiversal entities.
Affected Groups
Parahumanity tends to appear in young adults who are facing life-defining physical or emotional crises, and especially among individuals who are predisposed towards conflict. Parahumans are almost universally traumatized in life-defining ways, and their powers usually reflect and remind them of those traumas.
History
Parahumans are, as of this writing, exclusively native to Earth Bet and several of its parallel Earths. The first parahumans began to appear in Earth Bet's early 1980s, with the first and greatest being the silent "golden man" who came to be known as Scion. It wasn't long before parahumans started taking up the roles of "superheroes" and "supervillains", with the full range of costumed parahumans coming to be collectively known as "capes".
The rise of parahumans and "cape culture" proved to be a terrible thing for humanity. The "Golden Age of Parahumans" was brief, ending in 1989 with the death of the hero Vikare after he was bludgeoned while trying to quell a riot at a basketball game. The first of the Endbringers, nigh-indestructible city-destroying monsters, appeared in 1992, beginning a regular cycle of devastating attacks. Villains outnumbered heroes at least three to one. Governments increasingly lost their monopoly on violence. Humanity faced a future of slow destabilization and decay.
By 2011, there were three Endbringers, Africa had largely been taken over by warlords, South America was claimed by the cartels, China had been replaced by the Chinese Union Imperial, and the rest of the world powers were too busy struggling with internal strife to engage in international adventurism. Parahumans were increasingly common, up to about 1 in 8000 in urban areas. In the United States, the Protectorate hero organization and the unpowered Parahuman Response Teams did their best to keep the peace...
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