#a destination for cheap knockoffs of the supernatural in a town in which the supernatural is VERY real

[first-ex-wife]

while I am a strong advocate for characters being allowed to just kinda suck just cause, I do also love when you learn something about a character that just explains why they suck. like everything sort of clicks into place and it's like,,, oh yeah, of course you'd Be Like That

[atopiarp]

A:/Atopia/Full_Disclosure

Our world, our home, Atopia. The technological olympus, the perfect society, the perfect habitat, the perfect war-less record of our history—Atopia, our sanctuary.

Sometime in our past, history tells us that we rebuilt our civilization from the ground up. We were fighters. We came back from near extinction and took control of our world. We didn’t just come back. We made our world better, stronger, more habitable, an ease of living that we had never experienced before. The aftermath left us with one continent upon which to rebuild ourselves, and we did just that.

Atopia is our planet. It is all around us. It is our continent, it is our skin and bones, our blood and souls. We are Atopians. This new lease on life for our people gave us hope. Atopia was a dream. We aspired to become perfect. We fought for that.

The continent was divided into districts, each one had a capital city. They were divided into quadrants: north, east, west, south. The cities became the center of civilization and around them, smaller cities were built, then around those, smaller towns, until all that connected one district to the other were empty, lonely, long roads. Winding in and out of mountains and forests with ports and towns here or there. Ports allowed visa for passage; visitors were well documented. Where you came from said a lot about you. We didn’t have racism, and we only discriminated against those who came from the big city or the small towns. Folks like those were either too wired, or not at all. It was easy to tell the difference. They always blamed fate or karma.

In our perfect world, and for generations, we lived—in harmony, in unison: no war, no famine, no disease. We lived long and prosperous lives. Life expectancy rose from 90 years to 125 in just a few decades. We truly were creating something special, then it happened. What none of us could have expected, so we’re told. Hitchkin’s Illness. It infected on the genetic level and was impossible to cure. The medical and scientific community simply didn’t know how to treat something they didn’t understand. 

When a person was born with this disease, upon coming of age, they exhibited strange and unusual abilities of the supernatural. Telekinetics, levitating their school bullies. Hydros with their water-whistles. That trend came and went, and then there were the Pyros. They were the worst. They always wound up being the guy or girl from the wrong side of town. It wasn’t long before Atopia’s brightest minds went public that this was no illness, it was a divergence in species. 

A genetic mutation that took root and continued to spread like a virus. Before we knew it, they had even given people with this disease their own name, Vessels. What began as a freak sickness, became a way of life. Vessel-only-jobs, sprang up. Competitiveness between those in the workforce. Then, Vessel-related crimes, and subsequently, their own policing force: EXO. The Senate had their hands full in the early days. There was a problem, Vessels were getting stronger. Organized crime with Vessels spread, too. Next thing we knew, there was talk about a web of organized Vessel-only crime-rings, this web had its own name too. The Underground. 

Any Vessel would deny its existence. Some of the most powerful of their kind ruled that land of make believe. I’d be scared too. EXO spread as quick as the Vessels did. At the end of the day, there had been a newly erected department in each of the major cities and some in the minor sister-cities also. The Senate eventually started a categorized census of our society. Normals were the ones who had no abilities. The ones who were immune to the Vessel bug. Vessels were the lucky ones, and just when we thought our world had become somewhat comprehensible, Synths. Technology did a lot for us in the days of old. They were dealing with some next-level stuff, and from those bright minds, who couldn’t understand the genetic mutation, came Synthetic technology.

 Augmented tech that replicated Vessel abilities: super strength, speed, sight, hearing, reflexes, etc. Everything they were born with, tech could give those who weren’t. It did more than just that. The Synthetic market blew up overnight, it seemed. It was all the rage in the Normal communities. Protests began after that. What was fair? What was right? Pride and hatred. Vessels were the devils we knew, Synthetics were cheap knockoffs and the Normals were the first, the pure, the immune. Right before our very eyes, our world fell apart. Sometimes, I ask myself if we’ll ever get it back. Things just keep getting worse for us. We’re destined for our history to repeat itself. Another great doom is coming. We’d be stupid, blind even, to ignore the clear signs.

—a_Vessel_kid.