Challenger Accords

With the emergence of parahumans came the arms race to weaponize and control them. Human rights took a back seat as all of the major powers started programs to cultivate and control their own super soldiers. The United States and the USSR believed that they could achieve a higher yield in their parahuman cultivation through advancing space travel, this resulted in them continuing a space race. During the race there were several incidents of alleged espionage and eventually sabotage.

On the morning of January 28th, 1986, an unknown cape, now called Bird Strike, intercepted the Challenger shuttle during its launch, killing its entire crew. Bird Strike was thought to be a well known Russian cape, Sokol, and so allegations and suspicions began to pile up and hostilities started to brew between the two countries. Eventually using some intel as pretext the United States mounted an assault on a parahuman development institution in Chernobyl. During the assault the world experienced its first encounter with an Endbringer. The United States withdrew after losing over half of the deployed troops, leaving the Russians to fight the Endbringer alone. Both sides blamed each other for the monster and video footage of the events was brought forward by both parties.

Because of public outcry and the concern of other countries, a series of peace talks that would lead to the creation of several treaties began. These would come to be known as the Challenger Accords. Through these treaties the use of parahumans in wartime has been strictly limited and safeguards have been put in place for the treatment of parahumans in general. Unfortunately due to the nature of parahumans the scope of the safeguards ended up being rather broad, and this lead to some loopholes.

In the case of People v. Hutmacher, Hutmacher was able to appeal his death penalty and establish case law that even if they commit a felony parahuman civilians are still considered non combatants under the accords. This led to repeated incidents of mass murderer capes getting life sentences, breaking out of jail, going on killing sprees, and surrendering before repeating the process. People were outraged and through lobbying by the parahuman victim support network a facility was funded. Named after a generous donation made in his name, the McNair Indefinite Detention Center for Parahuman Offenders was designed to specially hold parahumans in such a way that they could not escape. The facility took in its first resident in 1992 and the rest is history.