Campaign created Friday, May 21, 2010 08:36:20 PM by novi

Welcome to the prestigious Kurtzberg Academy. Here we help minors with superpowers to understand and control their abilities

Why have you never heard of us before? It's part of our many strategies to defend the school from those who wish the students harm. You wouldn't want someone from Humanity First! finding the school, would you?

Stuff happening. A little bit.

Hero 6th Ed, 250 points, with 60 matching complications
CV 4-8
DC 4-10
Def/rDef 10-24/5-15
The default character is showing up for 9th grade, but it can very based on the background.
Distinctive Features: Mutant - There are functioning hand-held mutant detectors, sort of. A large number of mutants (and radiation accident survivors) emit a noticable amount of T-rays, an obscure part of the electromagnetic spectrum between radio and infrared. While short ranged, mutants are one of the few sources of T-rays on Earth, so a T-ray scanner will allow one to detect nearby mutants.
If the character also has obvious distinctive features, like being made of rock, he only gets to take DF once for the biggest complication.

The Kinnison Institute is a non-profit, non-governmental research center, focusing on the paranormal. It is located around Kinnison's Rock in Woodland Township, New Jersey (look for Chatsworth in Google maps). It was founded in 1893 as a lodge for bored New York socialites to practice magic, but grew into an actual research institution by the 1930s, just in time for the explosion of paranormal activity that happened in World War II. This made it into the defacto national center for paranormal studies, a distinction it holds to this day.

The Kurtzberg Academy is located on lands adjacent to the Kinnison Institute. It is named after Solomon Kurtzberg, one of the founders of Kinnison. While there have always been a number of research subjects at the Institute, the 1960s saw a growing number of teenage mutants staying there. It hit a point where the number of tutors and students around had turned it into a school in all but name, so a new facility was built away from the main research labs. It has been expanded many times over the years.

The site is notable for two unique features. The first is Kinnison's Rock. It is a segment of bedrock that has been thrust upward through the sedimentary plain of the Pinelands. While only about 100 feet high, it stands out in the relatively flat area. It is also perfectly suited to tunneling into and building underground areas. The second unusual feature is that the site is covered in a Ward of Mundanity, otherwise known as a "somebody else's problem field". Some unknown group altered the ambient magic of the area to create the ward, which is why it has lasted so much longer than the typical ward. It is the school's best defense, keeping out most unwanted visitors. It also keeps the school safe from the media, since it never seems like a story worth pursuing.

The school itself is home to about 750 students from around the world, though mostly the US. While most of these students are mutants, a significant minority is made up of young Mad Scientists, sent here to keep the world safe from their machinations, and other teens who have either suffered radiation accidents or found themselves with magical abilities.

The world has an uneasy relationship with superheroes and mutants. They were welcomed during World War II and looked upon with awe. Things slowly decayed, but the big shock was in 1967 when Bangalore was practically leveled when a mutant manifested into unstoppable, raging hulk of destruction that was stopped only when he died from a heart attack the next day. 200,000 deaths occurred either during the rampage or in the aftermath. The eventual revelation that he was only one of hundreds or thousands of mutants emerging around the world created a panic that has long soured people's opinions of mutants, and often superpowered folks in general. Mad Scientists actually saw a boost in public opinion, since they were regular humans, not rampaging monsters. The initial mutant panic has died down, both as time has passed, and as superheroes are often the only thing that seems to be able to stop supervillains.

180X	German chemistry student Victor Frankenstein succeeds in his experiments to revivify dead flesh, creating the monster "Adam". This is later regarded as the first great act of mad science. Several years later, Mary Shelley learns of this during a trip to Switzerland, which she dramatizes in her famous novel.
June 30, 1908	The Tunguska Blast - An explosion happened in the skies over Siberia. Evidence suggests that it was nothing more than a stray meteoroid encountering the atmosphere. However, all known people in the modern era to gain superpowers were conceived after it. This is probably just coincidence.
July 16, 1945	First test of a nuclear weapon at White Sands in New Mexico. In another instance of coincidence, all known mutants were conceived after this date.
June 6, 1967	The Day of Kali - The city of Bangalore, India, is essentially leveled when a mutant enters into a rage feedback loop, growing increasingly stronger the more he destroys. Despite the efforts of the Indian military and local heroes, the rampage only ends when the mutant suffers a fatal heart attack.
September 11, 2001	Members of Al-Qaeda stage a terrorist attack and fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The shock and surprise is not much in a terrorist attack on US soil, but in that there were no superpowered people involved and that it was just about killing people and/or religion. No one seems quite sure how to react to the revelation that supervillainy doesn't require mutant powers or Mad Science.