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MYTHKIND & MYTH POWERS
MYTHKIND & MYTH POWERS
Myths are the invisible beings that live out of sight of most humans. They are usually the most visible to Believers, children and teens.
In the far distant past, the first myths were spirits that gained shape, form, and greater power due to the belief of prehistoric humans, or were created whole-cloth by their belief. The very first myths were created from or empowered by the stories told around the fire, and the various beliefs that sprung from these stories. Belief has continued to create and empower more spirits through the ages since then.
Many myths have come into being, gained power, and faded away or died, over the thousands of years humans have existed.
Many spirits and magical species came into being before humanity. This includes most foundational nature spirits, like Mother Earth, her daughter Mother Nature, and Mother Nature's now-dead daughter, the goddess of Light and Spring, Eostre.
Human belief has has shaped the form of some of these nature spirits into something humanoid, though a few nature spirits, like the North Wind, are sentient, but remain formless and still invisible to other myths, only occasionally communicating in word or action.
Being a spirit or being born to a magical species is a source of being a myth, but an already magical being can gain far greater power and greater longevity through cultivating belief in humans, especially children. This is the case of Bunnymund, born to the mystical pooka bunny fairies, and Toothiana, who is descended from the bird-like spirits of the air, the Sisters of Flight, through her mother's side. They started mystical (or half-mystical in the half-human Toothiana's case) and gained further power and longevity when they became believed in.
The myths who started human gained immortality and power due to their legendary reputations making them start to become far larger than life, with many people believing in their legends. Nicholas St. North, also known as Santa Clause, was a Cossack adventurer who performed so many legendary feats he eventually became immortal and physically powerful.
Humans changed to myths may find themselves gaining physical changes or having the ability to magically alter themselves. North, for instance, has naughty and nice tattoos on his arms that shift and allow him to read his naughty and nice lists and look up anyone to see where they are on his lists.
As time has gone on and many humans have adopted less animistic beliefs and belief in myths, there are far less myths in the world, as myths can slowly fade and disappear if they're no longer believed in, even if their stories are still told. It is often the belief of children and teens that helps tether them to the world.
Fleeting moments of belief, such as the belief children have when reading folk stories or myths, have allowed some like Anansi the spider to still exist. But others, like the great Gilgamesh and Enkidu, are read about more by adults who don't actually believe in them, so they have long since faded from existence.
The process of fading is at least natural and not painful. A fading myth grows more invisible and intangible to humans and children, until they go into a permanent sleep and fade away from the world into the afterlife.
Some myths prove more resistant than others to the process of fading due to quirks of their origin or their own willpower. Pitch Black is no longer believed in, spoken of to children as if he doesn't exist, but clings to the world out of pure spite. Before he became a Guardian, something that tied him more closely to the belief of children, Jack Frost proved resilient to fading despite having no believers for 300 years due to his nature of being revived from death and converted to a myth by the Man in the Moon, as well as his joyful nature making him want to experience the world.
A myth with no believers can be somewhat powerful but never gets any stronger.
The Guardians, on the other hand, have taken a binding magical oath to protect children. This magical connection to children's belief grants them greater power than other myths, but makes them at greater risk of fading. As the belief in them fades, they get much weaker than other myths would if they lost believers. If all belief in them faded, if the very last believer stopped believing, they would fade out.
PCs will find more flexibility in their state as myths. They will have decent powers with no believers, and get much stronger as they gain them. They won't fade out if they don't have any believers, though they will start invisible and intangible to humans. That said, they won't become as powerful as they could be if they'd taken the oath.
It will not be recommended that they take the oath, however, due the greater risk of fading without believers and concerns they might be tethered to the children of the Guardians' universe and never get to go home. Jack will refuse to offer the oath unless someone is dead set on it and the situation is truly dire.
Guardians have a "center," some foundational part of their personality and something they protect in children. Even those who haven't taken the oath will have a center, and figuring out what it is will allow their powers and reputation as a myth to get stronger. Examples of this are Bunnymund bringing hope after the darkness of winter, Santa bringing wonder with his toys, The Sandman bringing dreams, Anansi bringing and encouraging stories, the Tooth Fairy protecting memories, or Jack Frost cultivating fun for children.
Characters may find that their center is something from childhood they forgot mattered to them like creativity, artistic expression, or kindness. Or it may be a more adult sentiment like courage or honesty. Atypical, unfun centers can even exist, as long as they offer something children need, like having a center that involves teaching children caution.
As there are only so many personality traits that exist, multiple characters can have the same center. It is not that they're making that thing their domain, so much as understanding what they bring to the table and what matters to them and the children they protect.
Players can assume their characters are taken aside by Jack shortly after arrival and explained the concept of a center so they know to start figuring theirs out.
All myths have powers of some kind, but a few tend to be universal.
PCs can have other powers alongside these basic myth powers. Players can give their character additional powers without having to opt out of the basic myth powers, but can choose to opt out of some or all of them based on preference.
Powers can often be conditional based on what children believe. For instance, Jack Frost once gamed the system to gain a few extra abilities to defeat Old Man Winter in some challenges by getting kids to spread stories that he was the same Jack that climbed the beanstalk and the one from the Jack Be Nimble rhyme. This allowed him to climb a mountain (like a beanstalk) in a race, and successfully jump over a volcano (like a reaaaally big candlestick).
That said, these are the most typical ones:
Immortality: Though this may look like different things than just never aging, as some beings may undergo death and rebirth. All characters in the game will stop aging from their point of entry, except for children and teens, who will continue aging towards adulthood. Were they to continue living in the Guardians' universe they'd eventually stop aging when adulthood is reached.
Hardiness: Myths don't need to eat or drink, though they still may have cravings for certain things at times. Though they can eventually overheat or get too cold, it takes time, allowing them to survive temperature extremes much longer than humans. Most myths still need to breathe, though their endurance is far greater than humans and they can hold their breaths much longer.
Healing: Barring exceptions based on player desire, characters will have a minor healing factor, allowing them to survive extreme injuries with longer recovery time, or minor ones through short recovery times. The more severe the injury, the more likely they'll pass out and fall into a sleep they can't be roused from as they heal.
Mild Invulnerability: Myths are slightly more resistant to injury, able to be knocked around a bit more before taking on injury, though this power tends to be slightly less universal than healing.
Invisibility: Myths that have no believers yet are invisible and intangible to all humans but can still manipulate their environment. Once they get believers, their default state is being invisible and intangible to adults and tangible and visible to children/believers.
However, they can make themselves be seen to adults or invisible to children with some effort. For adults, the adult will often forget they have seen the myth after the encounter. However, prolonged contact, if necessary for a plot, will allow them to remember the myth at least until the plot is over. This memory effect will not affect adults in other dimensions during shard missions - they'll always remember the characters, if players want.
Here are some examples of power sets that can exist alongside the base myth power set, to help players figure out what level powers can be scaled at. Keep in mind, this is the final resting place the powers should reach, that need to be worked up to over IRL time. Players should expect to take at least 6-12 IRL months to work a character up to the full powers they intend a character to have. The process will require the acquisition of believers and a character finding their center to reach full power.
PCs can have many powers, though we suggest capping off the number at 5 or less. We also recommend making powers weaker the more powers a character has, or causing their growth to full strength to be slower the more powers they have, to help balance having so much versatility.
ONE POWER:
CAPTAIN AMERICA: From Marvel's cinematic universe, Captain America would could reach a state of having his full supersoldier physique (moderately enhanced strength, reflexes, agility, etc.) completely intact.
DEADPOOL: From the movie Deadpool, Deadpool's healing factor is extremely potent, but has downsides in that it isn't instantaneous and doesn't free him from pain. The mix of extreme usefulness and limitations mean it could be kept fully intact, though it'd take time to grow to that level.
PROFESSOR XAVIER: From the X-Men movies, the telepathy of movieverse Professor X is very powerful, allowing him to read and control the minds of others, however, he can't focus it on large masses of people without technological enhancement.
TWO POWERS:
JACK FROST: Alongside the standard myth powers, Jack Frost's powers are flying and controlling ice and snow. His staff is required to effectively channel this power, though he does retain some ice powers without it. Due to growing belief children have in him, his flight is fast enough that he can fly all over the world very quickly, though not enough to cover the globe in one night. He can attain brief supersonic bursts with the aid of the North Wind, his friend, though the North Wind has to be able to fight current weather conditions to do it.
His ice power can be as calm and tame as putting frost on windows as as hugely powerful as freezing a huge mass of enemies and shattering them or calling up a blizzard. He can also unfreeze and thaw ice and cause winter storms to dissipate due to truly embracing his role as the spirit of winter - which includes recognizing when it's time for his friend Bunny to bring spring.
THREE OR MORE POWERS:
NIGHTCRAWLER: Nightcrawler from Marvel Comics has multiple powers that are all relatively low level. He could retain his teleportation, enhanced agility, speed, flexibility, and reflexes, night vision, and ability to blend into shadows.
To show how a single character has multiple options for powersets, here is an example of a single overpowered character and possible powersets based on the previous rules.
SUPERGIRL: From the TV show, Supergirl has many different abilities: superstrength, invulnerability, flying, heatvision, superspeed, super hearing, super vision, and superbreath that lets her freeze things or blow at them with great force. She could regain all of these powers over time, but due to the number of powers it's recommended that the more of them she has, the weaker they are, even when fully recovered. Or that it take her longer to recover them than it would take some others.
Some levels for a few of the powers could be, for instance, heatvision taking several minutes to melt steel instead of seconds, superspeed only allowing her to move at 50 mph, and her super breath taking a solid minute or so to freeze things over.
Some powers will be limited or at least have to be handled a certain way due to the native myth powers in the setting being somewhat limited. While Jack and the Sandman are exceptionally powerful, the other Guardians have a more subtle enhanced agility and so on.
❇ Superstrength. Characters with strength that is more than the extreme end of the human norm are considered to have superstrength and superstrength has limitations in the game. Even if their canon powers exceed it, no character will be allowed to have superstrength that lets them to lift more than 3000 pounds (the size of an average mid-sized car). Magical items and some magical beings can also easily nullify the use of super strength.
❇ Extreme invulnerability. Invulnerability is allowed but has limitations in game. Pure invulnerability is only allowed in limited durations, as a short burst. Characters can be more durable than normal humans and difficult to injure, but cannot have extreme Superman-style invulnerability. For instance, they can shrug off a punch or survive a concrete wall falling on them. The only exception is characters with a natural invulnerability due to their actual physical form, like metal robots or rock-like trolls. These characters can have a slightly higher base level of invulnerability, such as having blades bounce off, but must still be capable of sustaining bashing damage if it comes with enough force. These characters have an advantage in invulnerability to compensate for the fact most characters like this can't self-heal like other characters, and can potentially have parts wear down over the game.
Characters also can't be fully bulletproof. While bullets can bounce off a character, they will cause some bruising and abrasive injuries while doing so.
❇ Extreme superspeed. Characters can be very fleet-footed and run at speeds much faster than human, but not over 100 mph.
❇ Teleportation. Characters can have teleportation within line of sight but not over long distances. For characters with greater than human vision, the maximum teleport distance will be the length of a soccer/football field (100 yards/300 feet/90 meters.)
❇ Powers tied into a powerful source native to a single universe must be internalized if the source can't be brought with them. If the source is a specific dimension they could retain a connection to, it can come in as a canon power (example: Marvel Comics' Speedball gains his powers from a kinetic energy dimension). But if the source is specific to one universe (like the Force in Star Wars), any abilities granted by it would have to be internalized and no longer reliant on that source, created by the belief of the children.