Champions X setting information (part 3)
Lang overdue for posting to the journal, here's the last of the setting entries that I have composed at the moment. Enjoy!
To date, few nations have made serious inroads into developing a functional working relationship between the powers of the day and their superhuman citizens. Only a small number of oppressive regimes and rogue states make regular use of the gifted individuals within their borders. In states such as Nicaragua, Bosnia, Iran and Yemen (where avowed Muslim 'ifrits' serve the state), and Belize, to name a few, the government of the day is propped up by a paramilitarised superhuman force. Several of these rogue states have defied UN resolutions to actively recruit superpowered individuals to serve in the various "black power teams" (BPTs) that sustain the regime. Such groups significantly defray the heavy cost of maintaining a military force sufficient to deter other nations from considering working to enact a regime change.
Belize is of particular note as a nation that not only maintains a number of black power teams but is also ruled by a military dictatorship headed by a superhuman. Widely reviled as a villain of the preeminent order, General-Presidente Mordo Belissimo took power over the former President in the mid-2010s and has ruled with an iron gauntlet ever since. He has been likened to the Iranian President Ahmedinijad from the late-20th century, himself finally deposed in 2019 in a bloody revolution. The democratic movement that ousted him has itself had to resort to a superpowered solution to an enforced non-nuclear state imposition from the UN Security Council, ironically by the very nations that supported the revolutionaries.
Belissimo's regime is supported by a number of Zenith and Titan class supervillains, many of whom are granted faux diplomatic roles within the government. Unlike many other nations that rely upon a superhuman mandate to enforce the rule of a corrupt overlord, many in Belissimo's employ are not overpaid mercenaries living fat off the slavery of the oppressed population. A number of them are loyalist supporters of the regime; others serve the General-Presidente more out of fear than respect. In addition to his superhuman might Belissimo also provided, in his newly founded dictatorship, an attractive tax haven that many Megacorporations had sought following the closure or criminalisation of a number of semi-legitimate offshore financial mechanisms. The primary group to accept the arrangement from the Belize-based benefactor was PetroBel, the South American oil, gas, and petrochemical giant.
PetroBel's activities since relocating their corporate headquarters to Belissimo's Belize have moved from the questionable to the overtly criminal. Where once the company's platforms respected the licenses and rights granted by money poor but resource rich nations in the Central American and near-Atlantic regions, they now actively poach oil and gas reserves from nations unable to defend those resources, and publicly disavow any affiliation with various supervillains who engage in terrorist or military actions against forces sent to defend the rights of the victim states. Secure in the defence of Belize's corrupt court system, the corporate's profits continue to soar. Meanwhile the meagre taxes that the Megacorporation pays to its host are more than sufficient to prop up the dictatorship.
Ironically, despite the lack of freedom and democratic rights that the people of Belize suffer from, their lives and living standards have improved drastically under the rule of the General-Presidente. Few other instances of nations who have anything like such an operant relationship between their super powered and normal citizens have achieved such positive outcomes for the normal populace. Those other nations that do employ BPTs are marked by lack of freedom, fascist or totalitarian regimes, political assassination in support of the government, often conducted by otherwise unstoppable super powered assassins, and poverty and disease rampant amongst the underclass.
A number of other supervillains have sought to emulate the power demonstrated by Belissimo but all have eventually been brought down either through conventional military means or through superheroic intervention. Their brief reigns of terror have had a more lasting influence psychologically, upon the former subject citizenry of the dominated nation, as well as upon the collective paranoia of the West that the super powered equivalent of September 11 might one day happen. Unthinkable as may seem the possibility still looms large on the collective psyche of America and Britain, painted all the more vividly by occasional "Columbine" scenarios enacted by super powered, or meta-enhanced perpetrators.
Supervillain activities rarely encompass so grandiose a scope as taking over nations. While some also engage in terrorist activities on behalf of non-state interest groups, be they religious or ideological (eco-terrorism is one 'popular' cause espoused by some secretly corporate-sponsored supervillains, usually seeking to discredit their competition), few are so high-minded as to have a "cause" beyond their own self-enrichment. As such, their criminal activities often encompass the most petty of crimes, such as theft and larceny.
Some reach higher in their scheming, seeking to extort money from cities, corporations or private individuals through hostage scenarios or blackmail schemes. Some seek to engage in extortion racketeering by threatening extensive damage unless paid their demands. Most who choose to operate within specific cities do so carefully enough to select areas not known for locally prominent superheroes who might choose to defend their city, though some villains seek to "fly under the radar" and conduct low-key crimes without catching the notice of heroes who have declared a city (or corporation's holdings) to be within their protectorate.
As such, supervillains might engage in break & entry, kidnapping, blackmail, bank heists, extortion, threatening and enacting extensive property damage. They are also known for threatening lives, through various means, in seeking to extort money from city or state authorities. In the latter case there have been a number of significantly successful schemes enacted, as few elected officials dare to place the lives of their entire electorates at risk, fearing reprisal come the next election day.
Others build upon the fear and twisted adulation of their powers to form radical cults of personality from which they cam readily extort incredible wealth and power. In the developing world such cults can grow to amazing numbers in short order, and local governments there that fail to act promptly can find themselves in difficult straits seeking to curb the growing power of such cult leaders. Such activities are particularly rife in areas with a large population of under-educated, superstitious tribes, as in Africa and South-East Asia.
There have also been several "Jamestown" style incidents on the North American continent, universally mis-handled by the Federal authorities, whether through heavy-handed siege-breaking tactics, or by actively denying superheroic intervention and divisively dealing with two fronts of the same incident. In one famous case, at Osceola, Missouri, 2017, the resultant deaths of three hundred cultists, the psychotropic-emitting supervillain The Jayhawk, five federal agents and state troopers as well as several members of the superhero team The Monitors created a national outcry that may have cost a President his second term, and definitely ended the career of the State Governor.