SuperhumanAbilityModule:Extropy

Extropy, also known as Project Keytar, was going to be a Superhuman Ability Module which made the user able to regenerate their injuries almost instantly and adapt to any condition or attack, under the guise of "negative entropy".

Anyone who knows how the New Real will last forever would call BS on that, but unfortunately there are no laws against the creation of a SAM like Extropy. Or rather there weren't, until Uniqus tried to register Extropy with the EMRB. The result was... controversial.

The SAM was barred from being sold on shelves by the Council of the Descendants after being given an EMRB effectiveness rating of 100, more than Nullify's power rating of 99. Under normal circumstances, this would have meant that the SAM would be modified to be balanced better, but for unknown reasons Uniqus chose to scrap Extropy entirely.

Unfortunately, a Uniqus employee by the name of Joe Donn absconded with a shipment of Extropy, and applied one of the SAMs to himself before selling the rest for vast quantities of Hex. The problem with handing out justice was the history of the offending employee; he had been hired by Uniqus under a false name (without the awareness of any other Uniqus employees) and seemingly has connections to the organized crime syndicate known only as the Underworld. To this day, no one is 100% sure who Joe Donn really is, only that he exists and is in hiding somewhere in the caverns of Gaia.

The end result was that a lot of dangerous, overpowered modules are unaccounted for. The remaining initial supply was destroyed, and SAMs are now more closely monitored to prevent the Extropy situation from ever occurring again.

While Extropy is not officially banned from HeroiCon, anyone who purchased Extropy will have done so via secure channels using Hex to pay for the purchase; Even the police don't know where the Extropiates are, so of course the HeroiCon comittee doesn't know who to send invites to represent Extropy at the convention.

Extropy as a Word
There are rumors that Leonardo da Vinci and the Illuminated Brotherhood once created abilities known as "Words of Power" a few centuries ago, each of which supposedly had the capability to manipulate an entire aspect of reality.

The rumors state that Extropy was not originally a Virtue, but one of the Words created by the famous polymath or the Illuminated Brotherhood he founded, and that the banned SAM Extropy was meant to be one of these outdated Words made compatible with the Superhuman Ability Module API. Supposedly, Words had no names - only a word in Latin that was considered synonymous with the mundane uses of the word - because each was one of a kind, at least until after SAMs were created.

While this sounds like a conspiracy theory, the Illuminated Brotherhood is known to exist, and has generally been involved in efforts to remove corruption from various organizations. This includes recent efforts by the Brotherhood to track down the stolen copies of Extropy, as well as adding restrictions to them and reapplying for an EMRB rating.

Most who believe that Extropy is part of some sinister agency that seeks to secure and contain Powers to use them on an unsuspecting population are regarded as crazy, while those with more moderate theories - such as the Illuminated Brotherhood owning secret warehouses full of mostly harmless oddities that resulted from the creation of the New Real, or that the Brotherhood just likes playing the part of the Men in Black or of a secret society of geniuses with an obligation to help humanity - are generally taken more seriously.