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Fair Climber
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The walk back to the Stone is quick and no one else seems to be out on the streets. After reaching the premises you notice there’s a decent amount of people in both the outdoor and indoor drinking areas just relaxing and chatting with their friends. You wave at Oriel as you come in and she gives you some finger guns in retaliation. You dodge the imaginary bullets and she laughs. Upon reaching the room you pull out the terrarium and place it on the windowsill with a SWEET inside, cracking the window open just enough for Roach. He doesn't seem to be in your bag anymore, so he must’ve headed out on his mission. So, you head over to the bed, strip, and get to reading.
Awakenings and their impact on Metahumans by Don Kwang. (published this year)
1. What is an “Awakening”
2. Natural and Induced Awakenings
3. The most common powers and applications
4. Long term studies and Genetic Predisposition
5. Dungeons, Monsters, and their impact
6. Continental Class powers and the power singularity
7. Awakening’s impacts on society.
You decide to read the first chapter to get a feel for the book, maybe the next time you give it a read you’ll skip around and pick a chapter that interests you more based off of what you read.
1. What is an “Awakening”
It’s hard to believe it’s been 40 years since the Awakening phenomena has begun. We’re already seeing second generation awakened and a very young third generation appearing, with expectations being that they’ll awaken even earlier in their lives. Just astounding how this works, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Hello reader, my name is Don Kwang, the foremost (as of this publishing) researcher on Metahuman Studies! This book is a compilation of my research and works in the field in the hopes to give you a broad understanding of this topic. Most people know the basics, but I hope to get you to a deeper level of understanding through this text, (And maybe help out any people that might have transmigrated from another dimension or planet, as we’ve distinctly proven they exist at this point) but I digress.
What is an Awakening, is a common enough question that I feel it needs addressing. To put it simply, Awakening is when an entity, be it a metahuman or creature, breaks the genetic constraints on their body. Historically this has happened in the past to a smaller scale, historians sometimes note individuals in the past with extraordinary powers or the capabilities to manipulate the natural energies in the world. These individuals went on to found their own societies, kingdoms, and the like, and this became the foundation for our world around 2000 years ago. But the reason why we call this a phenomena now is because it’s happening en masse. Individuals across the world 40 years ago just started waking up and were able to manipulate fire, sprint at super speeds, fly, create technologies that went far beyond conventional means, and the like.
At first this was seen as a blessing, many of the individuals seeking to better metahumanity. But then more people began awakening with each week that passed, and eventually this led to conflicts and the beginning of the third world war, with powered individuals at the frontlines. Escalations such as these and the addition of Dungeons were what eventually caused the destruction of the continent of West Fluxtopa. It is currently a wasteland where life is inhospitable. This is also the site of the first dungeon break, which we’ll cover more in chapter 5.
35 years ago, just a few years after the Awakening Phenomena began, Awakened were burdened with another gift, the gift of the status window. This let them know their birth name and the name of their power, fun fact, even changing your name legally or through marriage doesn't do change it, but some people have found ways to change this through magical law. Some Awakened even reported the ability to see more info on their power, it’s uses, limitations, etc. But these were rare and most individuals had to practice and discover their own limitations. It was at the same time, on the same night, that 9 towers of magnificent height grew from the ground at various landmarks across the world, one on each Continent. Only one tower had an active population of Supers or Awakened nearby, and they went inside to investigate. This first expedition led to the deaths of more than half of that group, but they emerged with trophies, weapons, and books. Some of these artifacts could even induce awakenings on individuals, which will be covered in chapter 2. But the most important thing to note about this were that these places, that we ended up calling Dungeons, had terrifying creatures inside. More frequently than we would like these monsters would wander from the depths of the dungeons and cause havoc on the citizens. It wasn’t until much later that we discovered a pattern surrounding this and countermeasures.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. A lot of research has gone into this subject, and I’ll briefly touch on chapter 2’s contents here. Awakenings are unpredictable, sometimes they can be induced by trauma, sometimes they’re complete lotteries, other times they are artificially induced using artifacts, but we believe them to be the next step in the evolution of metahumanity.
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