The EXTREME EARTH Development Team

Artwork and Original Concept: Jon GibbonsAuthor: Joe Bardales

Introductory Adventure Merchants of War: Adrian SmithEditor: Kristen PerkinsLayout: Craig Williams

Project Manager/Publisher: Mike Lafferty (Fainting Goat Games)

RPG System Converters and Character Creation Rules

BASH!: Ben NormanBulletproof Blues: Brandon Blackmoor (Kalos Comics)

Champions/Hero System: Steven S. LongCold Steel Wardens: A.P. Klosky (Blackfall Press)

Fate Accelerated Edition: Stacey MontgomeryICONS: Joe Bardales

Mutants & Masterminds: Steve Perrin & Adrian SmithSavage Worlds: Tom Bisbee

SUPERS!: Walt Robillard (HAZARD Studio)

Special Thanks:

Joseph Bloch (BRW Games), Dan Davenport (RPGNet), Alyssa Faden (The Torn World), Chris Groff (Accidental Surviors Podcast), Christopher Helton (Dorkland! Blog), Stephen J. Holodinsky (Aethercon),

Chris Lotspeich (GamerXP), Tim Mollen, Kate Murray, Javier Palenzuela (Aethercon), Fraser Ronald (Accidental Survivors Podcast), Michael Satran, Morgan Stjernström, Josh Thompson (Dorkland! Blog),

Dr. Jason TondroExtreme Earth: A Dystopian Superhero Setting is © 2015 Jon Gibbons and Joe Bardales. All Rights Reserved.

This product uses, SUPERS! Revised Edition, By HAZARD Studio Ltd. The game is available at www.hazardstudio.net. SUPERS! The Comic Book Role Playing Game and all associated logos and marks are

copyright © Walt Robillard and Andrew Collas. Used with permission. Walt Robillard and Andrew Collas make no claims as to the content or quality of this product.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One: Welcome to Extreme Earth

Foreword 7

What is Extreme Earth? 10Running on Empty 10Super Talents 11The Future is Now 11

Extreme Earth as a Superhero Campaign Setting 12Grounded in Realism 13The Rise of the Anti-Hero 13Nothing is Black and White 13Trust No One 14Skills and What You Know 14Lethality 14

Timeline of Major Events 15

Extreme Earth Today 23Afghanistan 23Africa 23The Arabian Wastes 23The Asia-Pacifi c Impact Site 25The Black Gold Campaign 25Canada 25The European States 25India/Pakistan Water Confl ict 26Israel 26The Mackenzie Impact Site 26Mexico Quarantine Zone 26The Pan-Asian Alliance 27The People’s Republic of China 27Russia/Chechnya Jihad 28Sino-Russian Border War 28The United Kingdom 28

Character Creation 28Who Am I? 28

The Man: Agent of FIST 29Off the Grid: Pantheon Resistance Fighter 29FIST is Knocking at my Door 30

Why Do I Have Super Talents? 30Genetic Engineering 30Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Substances 30Cybernetic Enhancement 31Power Suits and Other Technology 31

Using SUPERS! with Extreme Earth 33Backgrounds and Origins 33Creation Pool 33Resistances 33Aptitudes 33Powers 33Advantages 34Disadvantages 34Recovery Check - Resistances 35Death & SUPERS! in Extreme Earth 35

Chapter Two: FIST

History and Background 37

FIST Today 39

Leadership and Command Structure 40Nathan Cooper 41Catherine Morello 42Dean Cavanagh 42Paul Brennen 42Julian Jones 42

Agents of FIST 43Investigators 43Response Units 43Heavy Hitters 44

The Wolfpack 48Team Background 48Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Knox (Codename: Gunner) 48Tommy O’Sullivan (Codename: Hammer) 53Alex Fairfax (Codename: Punchbag) 57Kordell Washington (Codename: Mojo) 62Liya Zinnemann (Codename: Nightshade) 66

The Guardians 72Team Background 72Oliver “Ollie” Franklin (Codename: The American) 73Dr. Susan Blythe, PhD (Codename: Destiny) 77Rock Hamlin (Codename: Stockade) 82SCOPE 87

The Pit: Crownpoint Supermax Federal Penitentiary 87

Chapter Three: Extreme Adventuring

America: A Psychological Dystopia 90The Corporations 90The Government 91The Media 91The Police State 92

Campaign Models 93Agents of FIST 93The Resistance 95Rattler USA 95

Enemies of the State 96MANTIS 97The Pantheon 98The Sicari 99The Freakshow 100

Introductory Adventure: Merchants of War 101Part One: Assault on Acantilado del Norte 101Part Two: Into the Cold 115

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forewordThis is a story about how I was wrong. But before I tell you this story, I have to tell you another story, really quick. It's a story about Mike Mignola, John Byrne, and Hellboy.

Today, Hellboy is an institution. It is one of the most success-ful creator-owned books ever published, a smoldering red sun orbited by spin-off titles and crossovers which forever expand its universe. It has video games and feature fi lms. It has Ron effi ng Perlman. Mignola has said he could tell Hellboy stories for the rest of his life; every story he wants to tell, he could tell with Hellboy. But twenty years ago, no one knew any of that would happen and Mignola was not confi dent in his own writing skills. When it came time to make a full-length story for Hellboy, Mignola went to a friend and colleague, John Byrne, and asked him to write it. And Byrne did write it, and that's how we got Seed of Destruc-tion. But at the end of that series, Byrne wrote a brief afterword in which he explained that he refused to ever write Hellboy again for one simple reason: Mignola did not need him. Byrne insisted, in public, right there on the last page of Mignola's own damn book, that Mignola was plenty good enough to write Hellboy and, more important, it was Mignola's character. His world. He shouldn't let anyone else write it. It was his baby.

And Mignola wrote the next book himself, and would continue to do so until Hellboy and the BPRD had gotten so huge that he couldn't keep up with it any more.

The fi rst time I saw Extreme Earth was years ago. Jon Gibbons sent me a big fat packet of digital art and asked me what I thought. I told him I thought it was amazing. And then he asked me if I would help him write it. Now, Jon's world is incredibly vivid, and it reaches out to grab you by the throat in a way that only a creator-artist can convey. Writers out there, you know what I'm talking about. When a writer pitches a book, it takes pages and we have to beg our audience to read it. Jon didn't need any of that. He could show it to me, all the props and in-setting reconstructions and everything. I saw a rich, deeply idiosyncratic Iron Age world. And that was the fi rst thing that made me hesitate. Because I'm not really an Iron Age guy. Don't get me wrong; I've read Watch-men a thousand times and I've even taught Dark Knight Returns and Year One to classrooms of students, but for about fi fteen years just about every comic you read on the stands were trying to imitate those books and, well, I don't want to insult anyone's favorite comic, so I'll just say that those imitations were not always to my taste. "Dark and gritty" are buzzwords I avoid. Jon needed a writer who had real passion for the genre he was swimming in. I didn't have that, but what I did have was enormous respect for his creation. Jon is a guy who was raised on the bitter satire of 2000 AD. His critique of America -- our society and our politics -- shares that British perspective that both Moore and Dave Gibbons had when they made Watchmen. That's a perspective that the bulk of the Iron Age catalog not only didn't have, but didn't even realize it was missing.

So when Jon asked me to help him write this book, I told him the John Byrne/Mike Mignola story. I told him Extreme Earth was his Hellboy, and no one should write this book but him. He was physi-cally able, it was his baby, and he was absolutely the only man for the job. And Jon very politely thanked me for my confi dence in

him, he told me he would think about it, he hung up, and then he called Joe Bardales and asked him to do it instead.

And that was the perfect thing to do.

I fi rst met Joe when we were working together on Stark City, a setting project for Icons also published by Fainting Goat. We were each developing different neighborhoods in Stark, and quite liter-ally my fi rst impression of Joe was what a great collaborator he was. As each of the writers on the project turned in their sections, Joe would go back to his draft and work in references to everyone else's neighborhoods. We all wanted Stark City to make a coher-ent whole, but none of us went to the lengths Joe did. Now, we live in the world of the selfi e, a world in which our favorite super heroes get rebooted on the big screen every few years because directors aren't interested in working with someone else's version of Spider-Man or Batman; they want to do it their way. We live in a world where our favorite comics get renumbered once a year or so; no one wants to write issue three-hundred-and-something, they only want to write number one. And as I saw what Joe was doing on Stark, I realized this was a guy who wasn't just in it to tell his own story, he was also in it to help everyone else tell theirs. You have no idea how rare that is. And as I read his work, I real-ized it was just really excellent stuff. Joe kept his eye on the ball; he gave us a place that needed heroes, with engaging NPCs and environments which could not only sustain a campaign, but which become so much a part of your setting, so much a fi xture, that you seek out those NPCs every session just to talk to them. You go to that underground nightclub every session because there's always something interesting going on there.

So, with its copilots on board, the Extreme Earth project took off. But before it could really come in for a landing, there was one more person that had to stow away. That person is Kristen Perkins, who edited the manuscript you have in your hands. Editing is a thankless task which, again, requires great humility, because the best editors are the ones who are never noticed. At the sight of the fi rst proofreading error to slip through, the comment section lights up with someone saying, "I wish it was better edited." Edi-tors massage every paragraph of a manuscript, page after page. And on Extreme Earth, that's a lot of pages. The world that Jon and Joe have made is strange and shocking, enough unlike our own world that Kristen had to fi gure out how to even talk about it. We had late night conversations about the difference between Super-Talent, super-talent, super talent, or just "talent." That doesn't sound very romantic, I'm sure, and that's why you never want to be an editor. Editors do that work so you don't ever have to notice it.

So when Jon reached out to Joe and the two of them joined forces to make Extreme Earth a reality, they proved me wrong. The fi nal team on this book made something better than anyone could have made alone. It was a long struggle of collaboration, and although it required great humility, it has turned out to be some-thing of which they have every right to be enormously proud.

You're gonna love it.

Jason Tondro

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