Ten years ago, for no readily apparent, reason the Earth began to suffer a plague of very unusual weather conditions, earthquakes, volcanoes and unexplained solar eclipses which devastated wide areas, causing tens of thousands of deaths and mystifying the scientific community. Even the Moon shifted out of its orbit, moving closer and closer to the Earth. Only Dr Hans Zarkov, previously of NASA offered an explanation - that the world was under attack from an extra-terrestrial source. He was dismissed as mad by the world. Then, within hours of the time when it had been estimated that irreversible damage would be caused, the strange events stopped as suddenly as they had started. It was later found that Dr Zarkov had apparently died in the final day of the events - his house was demolished by both a meteor storm and by an aircraft which was found to have crashed on it, and the remains burned to the ground.
The world recovered surprisingly fast after the strange events stopped. Although many governments fell, there was surprisingly little violence as people concentrated on survival, and in fact it has led to something of an unprecedented era of peace as peoples and governments were forced to co-operate, everywhere having been hit to roughly the same level.
Several months after the end of the strange events the Earths first superhuman, the Rock, appeared when he single-handedly took over the government of the Central African Republic by force. Since then nearly five hundred superhumans have been recorded worldwide. In less developed countries many of these superhumans, either singly or in groups, have seized power, while in the developed world, where the armed forces are much more of a match for superhumans, many of them seem to have turned to crime of various types. In response to these super-criminals what have become known as super-heros have also appeared. Most of them seem to exist primarily to combat super-villains, but a few seem to take in interest in the more mundane problems of normal people, combating such things as terrorism and drug smuggling, while a few others, who seem to be superhumanly intelligent, seem to be devoting themselves to developing new advanced technologies.
In the last few weeks the strange events of ten years ago have begun again - unexplained solar eclipses, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tidal waves and strange weather conditions have been occurring all over the Earth, and the Moon is, once again, moving from its orbit and spiralling slowly but steadily in towards the Earth. So far damage has been limited but already thousands of people have died and millions more are threatened. Faint rumblings in the distance can often be heard; there are many storms sweeping across the world, and meteor showers have become a significant threat to anyone going outside.
All of the PC's have been involved with helping out in the aftermaths of various of these disasters, but like the rest of the world have been unable to do anything to stop or explain them.