Five strangers were enjoying the last night of Carnival in Venice in Spring of 1998. What they didn’t know is that just a few hours previous, a terrible disaster had occurred in orbit. The Galeatea an orbital space station broke apart and dumped a significant amount of a peculiar kind of radiation into the atmosphere. Within hours, all around the world people began ‘erupting’, as it was later called. People began exhibiting extraordinary abilities: the ability to absorb energy or to fly. These five strangers were rounded up in an investigation about a strange occurrence that night. What transpired thereafter bound the five together for the rest of their lives.
About The Setting
Super powers in Aberrant come from an individual’s ability to manipulate energy at the “quantum” sub-atomic level. Since individuals who can do this have an imperfect understanding of quantum mechanics, their powers are limited by their subconscious and usually follow a specific “path” or are linked to a specific focus. For instance, all the powers of the nova called Anteus revolve around nature; he can teleport by stepping into a tree and out of another tree of the same type somewhere else, create new species of animals, or alter the normal course of life and death for plants and animals. All his powers follow his focus of nature. Other novas have other foci such as plasma, fire, water, shapechanging, or invulnerability. As a nova’s ability to manipulate the quantum fabric of the world grows, he begins to experience Taint, the side effects of channelling larger amounts of energy. Taint is the ‘non-humanness’ side of quantum manipulation and at higher levels novas begin to show either physical or mental defects. These defects vary widely; examples might include a tentacle growing from one’s stomach, sociopathic disorders, hair made of flames, odd skin composition (such as rubber), a power that is “always on”, megalomania, or continual radiation.
Aberrant is unique among the publisher’s game-lines for having no particular castes or character classes. Aside from this, it shares with many other White Wolf games a tendency to embrace “shades of gray” morality and reject the traditional superhero trope of “heroes vs. villains”.