May 20, 1950
At the coming of the Super Age, the panic-stricken world waited upon what they believed would be the end of the world; the coming of the rapture, the call of Gideon’s trumpet, the decimation of the human race. Others believed simple paranoia was a greater threat than any cosmic reckoning on what was widely believed to be Judgement Day. On that morning, the minds of all mankind were stricken with fear: families huddled in basements, fanatics wailed in agony through the streets, and the panic-stricken awaited on the hill for the rapture to come. No great signs came; there was no great flash of blue, no bursting forth of the heavens above, no eruptions of black fire. Overhead, the pale sky quietly fluttered unabated as chaos reigned below. The day passed, for most, as usual: only in the dead of night did televisions blare with news of the strange and unexplained. 

On that day, something in the fabric of our world ruptured; some still believe The End occurred as a result of the apprehension in humanity’s collective unconscious that day, anticipating in quiet peril what end awaited their race. Above the Indian Ocean, Apollyon hovered silent in the grim night, still as the twirling moon, methodically making its way towards Madagascar and Southern Africa. Beneath this nation-sized Titan, the oceans split and lands crumbled into dust, annihilated with a viciousness that shook the planet to its core. Apollyon traveled over large portions of the Australian and African continents, and between Europe and North America through Greenland on its path of destruction until splitting the Arctic circle evenly down its center, arriving at the pole of the Earth, and, as the world awaited in terror, Apollyon ascended upward, by seemingly no visible means of propulsion, and disappeared, its massacres and continental decimation seemingly as purposeless as they were deadly. The slow movement of Apollyon allowed many to escape its path, but not all were so fortunate; the death toll is estimated to be in the range of 30 million, and the damages incurred were immeasurable. Aid to the affected regions by the United Nations continues to this day.
 
The question on the world’s mind became where the next disaster of such a magnitude would strike next. Fortunately, the coming of Apollyon has never been replicated, and is considered to be the deadliest 100 hours in the history of mankind. For a time, a sort of painful quiet overtook the world; a year passed, and the planet licked its wounds. Another year passed, and the world exhaled at last. To the survivors, life returned to a semblance of normalcy. Humanity was not unaccustomed to massacres, and it had endured yet another, and would continue to endure.

Stranger still, the world seemed to be at peace in more than simply the cessation of most international conflict at a universal threat; natural disasters ceased to occur, and the Earth tempered its wrath against mankind. For the first year on record, not a hurricane, typhoon, flood, or earthquake was experienced. Recovery efforts were swift, and populations recovered. Though disease still existed, cancer, Alzheimers, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses fell dramatically, survival rates increased, and God seemed to look upon mankind with mercy for a time. Of course, no mercy can last forever. Two years later, on a dark December evening in 1952, the first of the Titans laid waste to Dalian on the eastern coast of China, dubbed Pallas after the fact. The fear of another Apollyon event frightened the government of China so greatly that they decimated the evacuated city from orbit, eventually forcing the dread Titan back to whatever planes it originated from. The study of anomalies became a government-funded priority the world over, for the fear that Titans could spell the end of humanity if our race remained unprepared. Vicious and otherworldly, though humanity knew not why the Titans targeted undefended, populated areas, why they left livestock and fauna unharmed, and why they seemed dead-set upon causing as much death and fear as possible, they knew now that they could fight them with sufficient force. Developments in weapons technology skyrocketed, and, again, humanity adapted to the new threats looming over their shoulders. International tensions rose as nuclear arsenals became bloated with payload after payload of mechanical death given form. 

Though a distinct time cannot be pointed to, it is estimated that this time period roughly marks the emergence of the superhuman. So small were their numbers, in that time, that they remained in secrecy until 5 years later, when during a Titan attack in India, a blind man, with a wave of his hand, likened unto the splitting of the seas by Moses, swallowed up the monstrosity in a mountain to rival Everest.

August 14, 1957
This singular date marks the greatest social, scientific, cultural, and economic shift of the era; humanity, for a time, was blessed with superhuman protectors against anomalies beyond their comprehension, and from that point, the role of the superhuman was set in stone; Supers were meant to protect mankind from the Titans and the unknowable from beyond the veil. Over the next 5 years, the population of superhumans would skyrocket from 1 in 50,000 to 1 in 20,000,000 and with this boom in population came the obvious question concerning humanity’s relationship to the Supers; certainly not all of them would prove to be benevolent protectors, and at that, the danger they presented to daily life began to ring in the field of politics. Should one who could blow up cities with his mind be allowed to use public transportation, or for that matter, exist at all? Should one who can telepathically control the opinions of his constituents be able to hold political office? Should one with the ability to cure cancer with a touch be obliged, whether against their will or otherwise, to aid those in need? Humanity, for a time, was uniformly infatuated with the godlike image of the superhuman, a golden age of balance between good and evil, when the enemy was obvious and the friends of humanity wore capes and looked like you and I, unmasked and known by name. 

That time passed when riots, political rallies, and outright brawls between Supers and their human counterparts broke out at the dawn of supervillainy. For nearly half a decade, humanity had trusted Supers, with all of their god-granted powers, to protect them unconditionally and selflessly against otherworldly threats. Some used their powers for money, for sex, for political standing, for reckless entertainment; others used them in brash displays of sadism against the powerless ranks of humanity. The image of a divine protector was shattered, and replaced by an image of an invisibly-armed bystander who simply couldn’t be disarmed. In some cases, these individuals were no more dangerous than a gun owner; in others, they could wield high-output explosives with a thought. Government policy shifted its focus towards the fanaticism and fear of the public, stabilizing views towards superhumans somewhat and creating entire branches of government dedicated to the management of the Supers. In the United States, they have S.W.O.R.D, or Securing World Order with Reconnaissance and Defense; in the more conservative Australia, this is the SPC, or Superhuman Population Control program, instigated to limit the population growth of Supers as much as can possibly be achieved.

July 25, 2045
The modern age of humanity, and the new era of Supers. Powers have improved considerably from the previous century of WW2, now being easily categorized and manageable into Power Types and domains, as well as a ranking system for Supers. During this time, those who were strong enough to hold off and fight against the Titans, were a part of a special, worldwide group created by the United Nations, dubbed the Hands of Humanity. These elite men and women were time tested and proved to the world what Heroes can truly accomplish. That humanity can fight and defeat these gigantic monstrosities. On that subject, only two Titan attacks have surfaced in the 21st century: one during Russia in 2012 and another in South America in 2036. The world has now been at peace for these 9 years, but its countless Heroes will be ready to face whatever threat comes.