Russia

Mother Russia is very big, and very old. Though she has embraced a variety of political structures over her history, she has remained steadfastly and distinctly Russian. She is home to stoic people who hold deeplyfelt passions possibly because of how little they express themselves. Super-beings from Russia often encompass both sides of this national personality: tough, hardened warriors who do their utmost in the name of a particular cause or ideal.
Though Russia claims to be a democracy, it is in fact an oligarchy run by the rampantly corrupt. This might seem a perfect breeding ground for super villains, but this isn’t the case. Super-beings born or created in Russia end up good or evil at about the same ratio as the rest of the world.
Russia’s sheer size and diversity of people makes the country difficult to encapsulate in a single document. What follows are a few examples of the heroism, passion, and oddity that make Russia of Earth-Prime what it is.

THE PEOPLES’ GUARD

Like most other things in the Soviet Era, the Peoples’ Guard was more about appearances than actual effectiveness. Instead, it was a propaganda team of mid-level, barely effective superheroes. They toured the Eastern Bloc to drum up patriotism and intimidate softer Western powers with their collective might. Touted as paragons of Soviet success gifted with incredible powers, the Peoples’ Guard were actually on the weaker end of the super-powered scale.
This bothered them little during the Cold War, since their handlers assured them all other supers worldwide were no more powerful than they. When the Berlin Wall fell and the U.S.S.R. became Russia once again, all seven members received a sudden dose of reality. For two of them, it was a fatal dose when they were killed in conflict with more powerful super-criminals.
Of the five survivors, two disappeared from public view. Kapitan Proton drank himself to death in Kamchatka, while Tovarisch runs a flower shop in Moscow. Molotok and Serc saw the rising corruption and danger in their homeland and answered the call. After two years secretly operating in Nepal, they returned better prepared to take on the arch- and super-criminals of modern Russia. Today, they work against violence and criminality both within and without the new Russian power structure, trusting their celebrity status to grant them protection others might not enjoy. The last member Noch Ved’m, a descendant of one of the female pilots of World War II called the Night Witches, is an active hero in Moscow and the surrounding area. She operates solo and spends her time patrolling the skies, looking for trouble.

CHERNOBYLAND DER UNTERKREMLIN

The city at Chernobyl housed the facility’s staff and their families before the 1986 accident rendered the entire area unsafe for the next 20,000 years or so. Everybody knows that part of the history of Chernobyl; what they don’t know is that Chernobyl was overseen by German “brain drain” immigrant Dr. Klaus Teufel, a gadgeteer who used the name Kollektivnogo Razuma (Hive Mind). His lair, named Der UnterKremlin, was a highly fortified and protected fortress, hidden in the earth beneath the city’s observation wheel.
Kollektivnogo Razuma did not evacuate after the disaster, and has not been heard from since. Nobody knows if he died or is alive underground pursuing his experiments. Two Soviet, one United Nations, and one UNISON team have attempted to find out in the years since the disaster, but in addition to the ambient danger in the area, the lair is trapped so heavily each group retreated without determining the exact state of affairs.

DER UNTERKREMLIN

Der UnterKremlin occupies at least ten subterranean levels filled with security systems, death traps, and robot guards. The third incursion team found substantial changes made since the blueprints were approved in Moscow, so nobody knows its full complement or size. Superheroes entering Der UnterKremlin to locate Kollektivnogo Razuma or to find some artifact of his genius must come fully prepared for the fight of their lives—and with some way to enter the lab, which has been effectively sealed up for years. Based on the failure of previous incursion teams, the guardians of this complex are appropriate for a series of at least PL 12.

THE TUNGUSKA TUNNELS

What was officially determined to be a meteor strike, and named by conspiracy theorists as a UFO crash, is more bizarre than anyone imagines. The 1908 Tunguska Blast was not the result of something colliding with the earth, but rather an explosion of energy from within the earth.
The crater, which is heavily guarded by Spetznaz commandos, uncovered a large cavern complex with many passages connecting to the Temporal Tunnels. Experts who have studied the anomaly theorize it originated either from an asteroid impact in the distant past or from a cataclysmic war in an unknown future and a portion of that energy passed through the tunnels to cause the explosion in 1908. What other energies may have unknowingly been released with the explosion can only be guessed at.
The Temporal Tunnels are one reason Bogatyr II remains in the wild Russian east. She is aware of the landmark and its potential for abuse. She remains in the area so she can respond if a super villain attempts to abuse the Tunnels.