G. Brett Williams #1 – CYCLONE

G. Brett Williams | November 1, 2011 | 0 Comments

Cyclone’s origins are a bit embarrassing to admit, but here goes; Cyclone was created as the central villain of a LARP my friends and I developed in high school. Over the years I sat on the characters in that world, letting them stew in the ol’ brainpan until they became a delicious dish of genre tropes and sci-fi weirdness. Recently I revisited the setting and its characters for a Mutants & Masterminds campaign that never came to fruition, but I had so much fun working on the story that I thought I’d share some of it here.

Cyclone was the most powerful of the original Evos, a group of evolved teenagers who manifested super powers sometime in the near future. The US gov’t. jumps to the forefront of Evo study and policy, going so far as to collect the first of the discovered United States Evos into a special strike force meant to win more hearts and minds than actual battles. The race for Evo supremacy is something of a new cold war and the relative mystery surrounding the teenagers, their powers and their numbers throughout the world makes for a rather prominent threat of mutual annihilation. Therefore, the US Evo team is as much a publicity stunt as anything else.

Cyclone, a young pilot already ingrained in the US military, is the natural leader for the group. His control and understanding of his powers surpasses all the others and his natural charisma and level-headedness make him a natural leader. He’s a good soldier, but there is more to him than just a simple follower of orders.

The world and its people try desperately to evolve as quickly as its residents appear to be. Eventually Evos end up involved in direct combat and the world begins to warp around this powerful new force and regular, non-evolved humans begin to wonder after their place on the rapidly advancing planet.

As the world reaches its boiling point, a race of faceless aliens who communicate completely through telepathy launch an invasion from space. They control a race of Lizard Men that they have subjugated from a world in deep space, using their telepathy to guide the weaker brained reptilian race to fight their wars for them. The devastation is swift and catastrophic and the world soon cows to the will of these invaders. But there is resistance. Resistance, which at it’s core, is led by Cyclone. Cyclone’s resistance learns that the Faceless are actually a highly evolved form of psychic humans who left the world millenia ago and who share similar genes with telepathic Evos. The coalition forces managed to break the control over the Dragon Soliders (Lizard Men) and turn them against their former masters, a move which ultimately allows them to end the war.

The world is desperate for leaders in the wake of the war and they find none better than the war’s greatest hero, Cyclone. Cyclone wisely allies himself with the remaining humans, using them as a police force and being careful to make sure that those among them who have not evolved maintain a feeling of importance in his new world. There are still enough humans left alive that he needs their support to buttress his new administration. Cyclone sets up warlords of his own choosing throughout the world’s decimated continents and rules over the long rebuilding process. Â His desire to protect humans, who he still views as his people, and his fear of losing power lead him to start a campaign of genocide against any psychic Evos. Cyclone believes that, if allowed to continue to evolve, those psychics would become as dangerous as the Faceless before them. For the most part, he employs Dragon Soldier death squads for these (less than) secretive campaigns against the telepathic and telekinetic Evos. It is this campaign, this abuse of power, that eventually leads Cyclone to his own end at the hands of a human/Evo coalition much like the one he originally formed to repel the alien invaders.

Sorry for the crazy long post, but trust me, with Cyclone it could have been WAY longer. haha In case you’re wondering, Cyclone has powers similar to those of Storm’s and is easily the most powerful and evolved Evo on the planet.