The Tear appeared many times in recorded human history, creating many of the myths and monsters that populate all of storytelling. It hasn’t, however, appeared as closely or as prominently to the world as it does now. People around the world looked up to the sky one day and saw a large, maddeningly many colored, kaleidoscopic tear in the blue of daylight and the black of night. The Tear solicited many different responses around the world. Some called it a sign from god, others called it different portents of doom, plenty regarded it with small indifference as they went about their lives, and still more needed their curiosity sated.
The ones who needed their curiosity sated eventually sent a probe out into near space where the Tear was located. The world watched with bated breath as the probe drew nearer and nearer to its goal. A giant, colorless hand stretched out from the Tear and caught the probe at the end of its flight. The hand stretched to impossible lengths from the Tear and gingerly placed the probe back on its starting place on Earth and disappeared as quickly. This deeply unsettled everyone who bore witness to it. Some reported seeing a great eye looking down on the earth as the hand stretched from the Tear.
Still, even more phenomena occurred with the Tear’s arrival. The things that go bump in the night, the things from the dark reaches of human imagination, burst forth from the shadows with renewed life and preyed upon whatever unfortunate happened upon them. The Weirdborne, as they came to be known, also heralded the return of magic to the world. Words of power came unbidden to the minds and mouths of some and fireballs, lightning bolts, magic missiles, and more sprang forth from the ether. The words would be collected into dictionaries and put to the use of licensed magicians in the business of slaying monsters and other ventures.
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Ascended Humans would also come to be known in the world, their genes similar to baseline humans but with the added feature of superpowers. With great power comes great responsibility, and with superpowers came superheroes to answer the call. With superheroes comes super villains as well, and even then there are plenty who did not feel the call of either side and used their powers as they saw fit to meet their own ends.
Super science came into the world as well. Great marvels of weaponry, engineering, medicine, and more. Much like magic, it came to the minds of many unbidden. the marvels they built would be put to ends both beneficial and nefarious.
The government, for its part, handled these changes as they came while dealing with more mundane problems. Climate change has ravaged the countries of the world, rending the coastal areas ruined because of flooding, the increased heat killing many that could not find the comfort of air conditioning, uprooting many from their homes as the environment around them collapsed and betrayed them. The world governments tried to reverse the changes with magic and superscience, but try as they might, the resulting wasteland was made worse. This is to speak nothing of the Great Consolidation, wherein populations of people were consolidated to megacities in an attempt to generate revenue and stop the hemorrhaging of tax dollars on rural areas and states.
All of these things happened in the time after the Tear.
It was a time of possibilities.