ARE THEY MAGIC, THOUGH?
Technically, Superheroes are magical, since there’s no viable scientific explanation for anything they do. But since Eroica is a technological destination, they’re uncomfortable seeing things that way, and so tend to excuse their astonishing abilities away with vague alibis involving mutations, radiation or animals. It’s fair enough – they’re just being modest.
But budding Heroes are faced with a huge question: do they join the city’s ranks of licensed defenders or renounce decent society and fight as a Baddie for the forces of Crime?
The Good Life
Each day, the forces of Crime try to steal from the decent businesses working in the name of Good,[4] and each day the city’s Heroes fight back. It’s a battle with no end, and who knows what would happen if the forces of Good were ever beaten.[5] Luckily, each company employs a stable of salaried, licensed Heroes to protect their property from Crime. These consummate professionals wear astonishing costumes corresponding to the brands of their sponsor, and constantly patrol company premises, on the lookout for wrongdoing.[6]
FRANCHISE REBOOTS
Often, when multiple companies have property in the same district, several different stables of Heroes will have overlapping turf. In these situations the different stables will never interact – to the point of actively ignoring the presence of another company’s Heroes – out of sheer respect for their sponsor’s intellectual property rights.[7] IP is everything in Eroica: when one of a company’s Heroes retires, the firm will usually hire a new hopeful to take on the mantle, refreshing the costume design and livery to suit current marketing objectives in the process.
Most companies hire Heroes on the open market, with the most powerful individuals going to the firms with the deepest pockets. Nevertheless, some CEOs – despite having no powers themselves – insist on joining their teams in person, often wearing fancy armour of their own design. This always seems like a good idea for PR purposes, until an actual combat scenario occurs – at which point the executive will usually talk over all the actual experts before hammering the whole endeavour into the ground with a series of appalling tactical decisions.
Baddies
Some Heroes are too twisted or foolish to earn an honest living for Good. These lost souls inevitably turn to Crime, becoming known as Baddies in the process, and waste their lives stealing cash, food and medical supplies from Eroica’s economy, before distributing it to the criminal underworld.[8] Baddies can be just as powerful as Heroes, but they’re universally idiots. I mean, they’d have to be, wouldn’t they? Everyone knows Crime doesn’t pay – and that’s not even a platitude here. It’s literally the case. Baddies don’t get a salary at all, and anything they steal they immediately give away. Nihilistic dunces, the lot of them.
City Environs
Just outside the city is Liz Fisticuff’s Home for Muscular Children, one of Eroica’s oldest and most prestigious Hero Colleges. Taking in orphans and troubled waifs from the city’s stinking tenements, it educates dozens of new Heroes every year under the watchful, beefy eyes of Liz herself.[9] As a private enterprise, the Home costs a fortune to attend, so students can only complete their studies with the help of scholarships from potential sponsors, which they pay back after graduating and getting hired. It can take decades to clear the debt.
At Eroica’s heart is the financial district: a shimmering hive of smoked glass and chrome, where people in colourful braces roar into big phones all day. And at the heart of the district is the Central Bank, a building that has essentially been built into an unassailable bunker after long years of assault by Baddies. It’s said the vaults could withstand the explosion of an atomic bomb in the bank’s lobby, and yet still, year after year, the Baddies find ways in. There’s a fight at the bank on average three days out of five, so be sure to have your wits – and your camera – about you if you visit.
With sixteen-hundred demigods constantly battling each other in the streets, all with instantly recognisable branding, the business of journalism is on permanent overdrive in Eroica. The Newspaper District stretches for a dozen blocks and employs more than a hundred-thousand reporters: a teeming army wearing typewriters down to smithereens in their struggle to keep up with the daily drama of the city. For tourists, nothing beats the hustle and bustle of this coffee-fuelled dynamo.
All Baddies are defeated in the end, either by constant attrition or via a Showdown, and if they are captured they are given a choice: take on a sponsorship contract and become a Hero, or be sent out to the city limits and locked away in Eroica Asylum. There’s no trial and rarely any assessment of mental health involved: it’s simply assumed that you’d have to be mad to choose prison over renouncing Crime and fighting for the good of the city. Visitors can pay a small sum to tour the Asylum, jeering at the Baddies through the bars and mocking them for making poor life choices.
Overlooking the sapphire waters of Eroica Bay is the shining, monolithic headquarters of the Sprodsley Motor Company, the largest corporation in Eroica. On its roof, complete with outdoor pool, full bar and private helicopter, is the clubhouse of the Sprodsley Champions, the most glamorous, high-profile and well-funded Hero outfit in the city. They would probably be the most successful team in the city, too, if
