One of the great curiosities of Eroica City is its only Crime-free neighbourhood, surrounding the headquarters of the Pepple Bros Cat Food Company. Uniquely, Pepple doesn’t hire any Heroes – instead, it earmarks a quarter of what a normal firm would pay for posthuman muscle, and uses it to provide healthcare, amenities and foodstuffs for the inhabitants of surrounding blocks, whether they are employees or not. Strangely, Baddies don’t touch Pepple territory, and what the company loses in revenue from advertising on Hero costumes it more than makes up for in savings on property repair.
Famous Heroes and Baddies
The enormous Kaptain Krinklems is head of the Finesnax Five, the beloved superteam charged with protecting the Finesnax Food Conglomerate. Clad in bright green armour, she is emblazoned all over with the logo for Krinklems, Eroica City’s premier baked corn snack. And with her telekinetic rending powers, not to mention her full-throated battle roar of “Enjoy baked corn snacks!’, she’s beloved by children across the city.
As headline guardian for the Eroica Petroleum Corp, Petrolyna has had a bit of an image change in recent years. After her sponsor was vilified for a disastrous oil spill upcoast, her previous incarnation – a menacing, masked creature in heavy black industrial gear – was quietly retired and replaced with a cheerful oil worker in overalls, who takes a day each week to clean the muck off seabirds.
A few years ago, Skeleton Key was one of the most popular Heroes in the city, with his eerie skull face and his ability to make his fingers change shape at will.[10] But when he was caught using his powers for inappropriate purposes – in the intimate company of a competitor Hero, no less – he was stripped of his sponsorship. Inevitably, Key turned to Crime, where his grim visage and lockpicking ability has made an even bigger name for him as a Baddie.
The Crab Sherpa is a man of very advanced years, who combats Crime by patiently and methodically guiding a large number of crabs to the scene. He can’t control the crabs directly, but he certainly knows how to chivvy them along. Unfortunately he’s not much good as a Hero, as by the time he arrives at a trouble spot the Baddie is either long gone or immediately begins stamping on the Sherpa’s charges, while he stands to one side weeping and mouthing, ‘my crabs.’ Nevertheless, he is seen as a delightful underdog by millions, and so the Nebsworth Paper Company keeps him on the payroll.
The dastardly Gravy Jones is one of the city’s most notorious Baddies, and travels around in the Gravy Boat, a 26-ton road tanker full of piping-hot gravy. He can also shoot boiling-hot gravy from his hands, and briefly turn his own blood to gravy to enter one of his famous Rages. Several of the city’s major gravy brands are rumoured to have approached him with lucrative contracts, but it seems his heart belongs to Crime.
Staying Safe
On the one hand, you can’t ignore the fact that Eroica is constantly being terrorised by Baddies. On the other hand – if we’re honest – it’s pretty easy to stay safe from them. Nine times out of ten they’ll be focused on robbing a bank or raiding a storage depot, with minimum civilian injury. The problem comes from the subsequent fights with Heroes – once a proper ruckus starts up, it tends to ricochet around the city like a ball bearing in a washing machine, levelling buildings as it goes.[11] And while I’d love to assure you that you’re guaranteed rescue by a noble Hero should debris tumble your way, you’re better off stacking your odds by standing near an advertising billboard if trouble kicks off. Companies will tolerate a certain amount of human collateral damage, but they won’t stand for their branding being damaged.
As a general reassurance, it’s worth noting that, even for baseline humans, it’s incredibly hard to die here. For some unfathomable reason, falls that would end a person elsewhere just leave light bruises here, and blows to the head that should cave in skulls simply clonk people into a gentle sleep. Minor injuries[12] can be forgotten about in a matter of hours, and barely any injury is fatal. It’s got to the point where the Heroes find it hard to take funerals seriously anymore. Four times out of five, the departed Hero returns somehow.
Eating and Drinking
If you’re into enormous portions then one of Eroica’s Hero Buffets is the place for you. At these cavernous dinner barns, food is cooked in industrial quantities and carried out by the bucketload to be guzzled by ravenous Heroes on breaks between missions.
Alternatively, if you can scare up the right underworld contacts and fancy roughing it, you might be able to join one of the street cookouts regularly thrown by Baddies, where an entire neighbourhood will be treated to the spoils of a dastardly raid. I wouldn’t lower myself to this sort of thing, but Eliza went and said she quite enjoyed it.[13]
If you’re really flush, treat yourself – and perhaps a date – to a five-star meal at Excelsior, the rotating restaurant atop the Grundlinger Typewriters tower. It’s where Eroica’s CEOs go to toast their daily successes, and rarely a dinner service goes by without an attempt by a Baddie to storm the restaurant from the outside, and their subsequent foiling by one of the Grundlinger Seven. It only adds to the fun: after all, nothing quite sets off a romantic meal like two titanic figures battering the paste out of each other in the sky beside your table. It’s like meat fireworks.
— TESTIMONIALS —
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