What Is Xerno?

Xerno is best described as a living comic book world in novella format. With that premise in mind, we aim to inherit all the things we love about the superhero genre! Bombastic battles, slick costumes, secret identities, large scope adventures, epic rivalries, and more! However, while Xerno is in many ways a love letter to superheroes, it is also a subversion. Or more so a refinement, bringing back the genre in a modern and contemporary way. Our goal here is to essentially modernize the hero away from the “Keepers of the Status Quo” that taints the genre nowadays, popularized by the fear of change amongst its writers and editors. Tackling themes of distrust towards authority brought on by the Information Age in our world, but injecting it with the power fantasy that is the Superhero Tale. Here in Xerno, we possess larger than life superheroes that causes REAL change. Border changes, new political systems, societal upheaval, and more! The status quo is non-existent in this universe. We are, solely, creator-driven. 

In conjunction with that core principle, we are also infusing the western superhero myth with the energy and lasting impact of Japanese Shonen anime and manga to appeal to the modern demographic that western comics are continuously failing to grab the attention of in this day n age. As a creator driven superhero Roleplay, we have a responsibility to take big swings here. We try to avoid approaching the genre thinking of things to rehash that we’ve seen before, even if they were admittedly really cool. That isn’t to say we deconstruct the genre, but rather reconstruct it in our own ways. If we are vying for the attention of members who both are and aren’t big superhero fans, we have to prove our worth and show where we differentiate from other franchises. If we have a Roleplay where we can say “Wouldn’t it be cool if?” and have the ability to actually make that happen? Then we have a moral responsibility to be doing it at every turn. This can be done by flipping character or story tropes on their heads, subverting expectations placed on us by previous incarnations of the genre, or exploring new concepts and themes rarely if ever shown in superhero media. The possibilities are limitless. While we may want to pay respects to the genre being represented, we never have to be restricted by it.

And lastly, an important feature within Xerno is its practicality. There’s a famous quote by prestige comic book writer Grant Morrison, which reads: “Kids understand that real crabs don’t sing like the ones in the Little Mermaid. But you give an adult fiction, and the adult starts asking really fucking dumb questions like ‘How does Superman fly? How do those eye beams work? Who pumps the Batmobile’s tires? It’s a fucking made-up story, you idiot! Nobody pumps the tires!” While there is value in a soft worldbuilding approach like this, here in Xerno we aim to create a layered world with history, systems, and functionality on the scale of J.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, brought to the superhero genre in a new invigorating way. That is the purpose of this website; to build a world that feels larger than the characters inhabiting it. A world that feels real and lived in, just waiting to be explored.