Gallerra

Gallerra (pronounced /gəˈlɛrə/ ) is an alternate Earth in which all the world's nations have been taken over by supervillains. With the reins of the governments firmly in their hands and with many superpowered underlings helping enforce their rule, these cressarchs have, for the most part, established stable if despotic regimes, and are quick to quash any dangerous dissention. Nonetheless, some heroes do exist who fight against the ruling order, though they labor under the constant threat of imprisonment or execution if the cressarchs capture them.

As with the names of most alternate Earths described in the Wongery, "Gallerra" is only a name used here for reference, and not a name actually used by the world's residents. (The name is a portmanteau of "Gallery", as in "Rogue's Gallery", referring to the common term to refer to a collection of supervillains, and "Terra", meaning Earth.)

History

Gallerra is a super Earth of long standing, with supers having existed at least since the 1930s. The first major event setting Gallerra on the road to its current domination by superpowered dictators was the sudden takeover of the United States by the supervillain Overkill in 1992. Almost simultaneously, in Asia, another supervillain named Ten Thousand Years seized China and some of the smaller surrounding nations. These two events, occurring in such quick succession, destabilized the balance of power in the rest of the world as well; the Earth's economy and political structures were thrown into chaos, and other supervillains took the opportunity to make grabs for power of their own while the heroes were busy dealing with the fallout of the conquests of China and the U.S. As the newly empowered supervillains made use of their new position to try to exterminate those superheroes they couldn't subvert to their side, this left the way open for yet other villains to overthrow governments unopposed by any similarly powerful defenders, and over the course of the next twelve years every nation fell to superpowered usurpers, the last holdout being Singapore, which was finally subdued in 2004 by the Goldsmith. The period of the rise of the cressarchies, between 1992 and 2004, is sometimes called the Deconstruction; the following period, the New Golden Age—though obviously the cressarchs' opponents dislike this latter term.

Politics

Though some of the initial cressarchs have been overthrown by other supervillains, every inhabited area of Earth is now under the cressarchs' rule. The political boundaries have changed somewhat; the Diva, for instance, has brought parts of several nations of Europe under her united rule, while, conversely, Australia now is split into several different nations. As another example, while Overkill originally took over the United States, he has since spread his domain into parts of Canada and Mexico, while part of New England is now ruled by the Grey Dreamer.

Other Supers

The cressarchs do not rule completely unopposed; many people work to overthrow their regimes, including a number of superheroes. Of course, given the cressarchs' vast power, these heroes must work in secret, and are subject to arrest if caught; nevertheless, most do assume a heroic identity, complete with costume, the better to improve the morale of the people they fight for. So far, none of the cressarchs has been overthrown without another arising almost immediately in his place, and the prospects seem dim, but the heroes continue to fight.

There are also some supers who neither work for the cressarchs nor fight against them. Given the cressarchs' dislike for loose ends, such neutral supers have to either be extremely powerful or, more likely, be useful to the cressarchs in some way; many, for instance, while not officially in any cressarch's employ work for the cressarchs as freelance mercenaries.

Names

Though the cressarchs and their servants have little need for secret identities, and the heroes working against them almost as little need for public ones, nevertheless both sides have maintained the tradition from the days before the cressarchies of the use of "code names" for their super personas. Those who were alive and previously active as superheroes or supervillains have generally kept their old code names, though some heroes have chosen new names to try to avoid letting the villains connect them with their previously known identities; those who have only taken upon themselves the mantle of a super after the Deconstruction have come up with names according to the old patterns.

Supers generally choose code names, of course, in their native languages, though sometimes they choose code names in foreign languages for the exotic sound, or in languages more widely spoken than their native languages on the worldwide stage. Nevertheless, well-known supers are often known by translations of their code names into the speakers' native language. The convention in the Wongery is to refer to foreign supers by the English versions of their code names, except when their code names are usually used in their original form even in the English-speaking world (e.g. Fimbo, Shōnen, Shōjo).