forum Sci-Fi Worldbuilding: Origin of Powered Characters?

Started December 14, 2019 by @Moriarty

tune

Salutations, everyone.

I'm looking for someone– anyone– who can offer me some suggestions or support for my universe. Essentially, all you need to know is that the universe is in the future and is sci-fi dystopian. My dilemma, currently, is the origin for powered characters. I wanted to be able to incorporate characters with a wide variety of abilities, and I wanted them to be the minority in this world by a long shot (think X-Men's mutants). That seems simple enough, but the struggle comes when I try to determine where they actually came from. Evolution is a no for a variety of reasons. I don't want it to be simply from experimentation. Magic doesn't exist in this universe. There aren't aliens in this universe, either, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense for them to have alien origins. Besides, I want them to be humans. Completely, utterly, humans. No genetic differences whatsoever; the only noticeable difference is brain activity and the presence of these abilities.
Of course, these characters aren't "just now" showing up, so they're supposed to have been around for awhile, and extremely rare, but I don't want it to involve anything "supernatural" (i.e., demons or magic).

If anyone has any tips to offer me, I'd be extremely grateful. I know this is kind of tricky; I'm at the end of my rope. That's why I'm here, looking to you guys, hoping that one of your wildly brilliant minds can help me out. Even if you don't think your idea sounds "good," you might be surprised, please throw what you've got at me. I'm like a starved dog looking for scraps. Give me your scraps, hoomans. Please.

Any ideas that do not involve the following, please.

• Evolution
• Aliens
• Magic
• Demons
• Anything that causes the powered characters to be anything other than humans

Remember that I'm trying to keep it to fit into the following:

• Uncommon
• "Natural" (i.e., these guys aren't "gods" or "demi-gods." Nor are their powers derived from such)
• A wide variety of different abilities

Anything you can offer me is so, so appreciated. Even if I don't use it, even if you don't think it's good, your effort means the world to me. Thank you guys.

-Misfit

When you say "natural," I understand the idea of not having so-called "godly powers." Then again, what would qualify as godly? Telekinesis? Mind-reading? Flight with wings or otherwise? The ability to move natural elements a la Airbending or Magneto's powers?

By godly powers, I just mean that the characters origin is not said to be from gods, nor are they themselves said to be gods. They can still have basically any of those powers you just mentioned; I'm not so much trying to figure out what kind of powers to give them as I am trying to figure out a fictional origin that has nothing to do with any of the things I listed.

For example: Jimmy is telekinetic, let's say. I don't want Jimmy to get his powers from gods, demons, aliens, magic, or evolution. I want some other backstory that can explain his powers. It doesn't have to be something in the real world, just something that makes sense and is a good excuse for him to still be human.

I have an idea:

The frickin' moon EXPLODED, and the stuff that was found underneath the surface turned out to be a great source of energy that led humanity into a technological renaissance. That same stuff also interacted with certain people, giving them a wide variety of biological and seemingly-supernatural abilities. It wasn't aliens, it was just whatever fictional element found in the moon's core that did it. There could be a whole solar system full of it lightyears away, or a chunk of it hit the Earth as it was still forming to create the moon we know today or something like that.

_{You're a genius. I love it.}

Full disclosure, it's not my idea. I played a game called Daemon X Machina where there was a very similar plot, but the stuff that came out of the moon ended up killing billions of people and leaving a third of the population alone or something like that. Blowing up the moon is always a good idea, though. Just be careful of lunar debris!