Capeworld Comics

Princes of Dawn

One of the earliest works on the subject of superhuman anthropology by Dr. Hercules Stone. The work’s comprehensive depth allows for it to be assigned in a variety of classes from history to psychology to mirabology. Few students finish Martin’s having read the entire monster of a book, but no student finish Martin’s without having read some of it.

In 1933, the world’s superhuman population had finally grown to the point that it could be studied like any large group of humans. The world had questions that anthropology could answer. Did superhumans from different cultures act differently? Did their powers alienate them from human society? Did a superhuman born with his or her power behave differently from one that developed his or her power later in life? And what was the world to make of the increasingly common masked mystery-man phenomena? 

Princes of Dawn, named after the winged and horned skeleton unearthed at a cave in Ariège, France taken to be the oldest superhuman and named the Prince of Dawn, was written to answer those questions.

Princes of Dawn is an enormous, comprehensive tome covering superhumanity from all disciplines of anthropology–cultural, biological, and archeological, but the ultimate point of the work is that super powers were not corruptive as many feared. Rather, super powers created a positive psychological change through what Dr. Stone termed “the challenge of duty.”

A nascent hyperstatic experiences polarized emotions. The raw potential of his powers make him feel elated. He can do the impossible. He can bring his dreams to life. In situations where basics would fear social reprisal or the natural elements, he does not. He laughs at the mob and the thunder. Dr. Stone called this the Adam state, as Adam existed free of society and at peace with nature.

But the Adam state is met by another state that is as limiting as the Adam state is liberating. The hyperstatic is crushed by feelings of responsibility. He may even feel guilty being given a power over those they believe more worthy. Before his hyperstasis, he chose his way in life. But afterwards, his power decided. Dr. Stone called this the Christ state, as Christ was burdened by the duty of his divinity. He asked for the cup to be taken from him, though it would not be.

A nascent hyperstatic is torn between the Adam state and the Christ state. That tension is the challenge of duty, and rising to it by striking a balance between the two states resulted in a stronger and more virtuous man in touch with what Stone called his true will–though the term was borrowed from Crowley.

Most of Princes of Dawn is spent exploring the ways superhumans solved the challenge of duty. Dr. Stone believed that every solution to the challenge of duty consisted of two axis. The first axis was the axis of action. This was how superhumans used their powers with the main categories being willful basics, who denied any expression of their powers, superbuilders, who used their powers to advance civilization economically, scientifically, or philosophically, or superheroes who used their powers to safeguard the wellbeing of civilization.

The second axis was the axis of identity. This was how superhumans developed their personalities and social facades to interact with others with the main categories being benevolent shadows who used their powers in secret and silence, archons who used their powers publicly and thus accrued power and influence, and mystery men who lived two lives–one a basic and the other a colorful, larger-than-life character.

It was the mystery men that Stone felt achieved their true will most completely. Both their identities fused the liberation of the Adam state with the duty of the Christ state. The basic identity was liberated from the burden of power, and the character identity was liberated from the burden of weakness. The basic identity took on the duty of social conformity, and the character identity took on the duty of individuation. The mystery men created a complex balance through which the true will of the individual could work. Unlike previous experts, Dr. Stone anticipated a steady growth of mystery men for decades to come because of its psychological benefits.

Previous experts attributed the rise of mystery men throughout the 1930’s not to psychological factors, but social factors. The National Recovery Act of 1933 legislated what superhumans could do with their powers. It legislated where they could work, how they could work, and how much they could charge for their work. The 1930’s also saw the rise of the “super gangster” which basic police forces were powerless against. Before Dr. Stone, the NRA and super gangsters were given as the chief reasons for mystery men. Mystery men came about simply to hide from the crooks on the street and the crooks in Washington, and when they didn’t have to hide, the masks would come off. But Dr. Stone saw the double identities of mystery men as proactive forces stemming from psychological growth, not reactive forces stemming from social factors, and he predicted that the world would continue to see a rise in mystery men, be they superheroes or superbuilders, well after the NRA and super gangster problems were solved. That is exactly what was observed after the Worlds War of the 1940’s, and Dr. Stone’s prediction being proven led to Princes of Dawn being reprinted for decades after its initial publication.

But since the 1980’s, the world has seen a sharp decline in mystery men. Superhumans began using double identities less and less, and the archon response to the challenge of duty vastly overtook the mystery man response. Dr. Stone would write Mystery Unmasked to explain this change in superhuman culture while examining modern superhuman cultures.

Mystery Unmasked is often included with copies of Princes of Dawn as an addendum, and taken together the combination results in an awfully large textbook. Students have often joked that Dr. Stone got his name because his books were like rocks.

Princes of Dawn is technically a work of anthropology, not mirabology, but several ideas in the book have influenced mirabology such as Stone’s power and Stone’s law. Dr. Hercules Stone never formally studied mirabology, but due to Princes of Dawn he was awarded  an honorary degree by William Quan Judge college.

Non-psychological concepts from Princes of Dawn

Stone’s Law

There is a superpower that breaks any preconceived notions, defeats any force, eludes any observation, defies any classification, and overcomes any limitation.

Put simply, “There is such a power!”

Since it was coined in Princes of Dawn, Stone’s Law has been applied in different contexts throughout the decades. In the 1930’s, it was used against several ideas coming out of the Axis. Germany and its allies wanted their citizens to believe that they had solved the problem of random primary hyperstasis through “socialized powers” such as the Vril Volkfeld and the Russian Dazrarem. These zones of force were to identify and neutralize any nascent random superhuman while distributing temporary and rescindable superpowers via secondary hyperstasis to the citizens as needed. Stone’s Law predicted failure in the Axis’ search for a silver bullet against superpowers–and failure is exactly what history shows as superhumans proof against the Volkfeld and Dazrarem developed from inside those socialized powers and all but crippled the Axis war effort. Dr. Hans Jugend, who now teaches at Martin’s School, is one such example.

In the post-war era, Stone’s Law was used against the academic scramble for a “unified theory” of superpower taxonomy. The Worlds War brought an explosion in the variety of superpowers and scientists around the world put time and energy into creating increasingly convoluted lists of superpowers in the hopes of becoming the “Linnaeus of superhumanity.” But, just as Stone’s Law predicted, superpowers defied any true classification, and in the present there are many prospective classification systems, particularly in Japan, but there are none that stand out from the crowd in usefulness.

Because of its use in the “unified theory” debate, Stone’s Law is often paraphrased as “powers are described, not classified,” but this is actually a quote by mirabologist Frank Mitchell.

“There is no limit to what super powers can do. The First knew this when they combined our imagination with their mastery. They wanted to transcend all they knew. They wanted to go beyond being creations of the Eye of Light and become creators. Whenever someone speaks of a final theory of superpowers, they are a fool. Those in Europe that say their technology can control super powers and force them to be more equitable are doubly fools. Whatever limit mankind imposes upon superpowers, superpowers will surmount. If you must ask “can there be a superpower that can do this?” know that the answer will always be “there is such a power.””

–Dr. Hercules Stone, Princes of Dawn

Stone’s Power

Stone’s power, also known as silent hyperstasis, is a superpower whose superpower is that it doesn’t appear as a superpower–in other words, a superpower whose power is that it isn’t a superpower.

It’s supposed to be a brain twister, that’s the point. Dr. Stone proposed his power to test the theoretical limits of superpowers. If superpowers could do anything, as his Law stated, could they also do nothing? And if they could, how would we be able to tell? Such a superpower would be impossible to observe let alone examine, but Dr. Stone nonetheless believed that such a power not only could exist but must exist. 

Dr. Stone believed that the First intended for superpowers to be contradictions and that his theoretical power was the fullest expression of this intention. The ultimate superpower was to not be a superpower.

Most of his colleagues took his iron-clad belief in the existence of his theoretical power somewhere off in the vast unknown as just one more of his infamous eccentricities (he was known to sleep in an Egyptian sarcophagus which he claimed revitalized his essence). And yet, when examined through the lens of cosmic history, his theoretical power appears a lot less ridiculous. Metaphysics often manifest in, let’s face it, ridiculous ways–as an eye at the Summit of all Things or a heart at the Bottom of Eternity.

Dr. Stone turned to cosmic history to justify his faith. During the blue dawn of our universe, the First shared their power with the first sapiens in exchange for the experience of mortality and the desires and dreams it brought. This created superpowers, and the Firsts intended for superpowers to be a union of immortal power and mortal imagination, the eternal with the ephemeral. Superpowers were to be something that mortals couldn’t dream of and immortals couldn’t create.

Dr. Stone believed his theoretical “power-that-was-not-a-power” was that something.

Dr. Stone took our inability to observe let alone examine his theoretical power as showing that mankind has a long way to go in understanding superpowers–and their ultimate purpose.

Stone’s Objection

An objection Dr. Hercules Stone made in Princes of Dawn pertaining to what he saw as the tendency for anthropologists to treat mythology as nothing more than the garbled accounts of superhumans and epistrophic journeys into the Astral.

Mythology to Dr. Stone had a value as mythology, as fiction, and to reduce mythology to primitive reporting disguised it’s worth as fiction. He, like his contemporary Carl Jung with whom he would later collaborate with to write Prophets and Heroes which more completely articulated his objection expressed in Princes of Dawn, believed that mythology was a collection of socio-cultural metaphors through which man understood himself and his world. Mythology was how man expressed political, social, and psychological ideas before those disciplines were codified. And in our modern age where those ideas are codified, mythology still had value in taking rational ideas and elevating them through powerful emotional narratives.

Stone argued that in a world without superhumans and extradimensional visitations mythology would have still had formed. Perhaps Hercules was a superhuman in ancient Greece just as fantastic as the legends told. Or perhaps Hercules was a superhuman Dorian with a moderate degree of superstrength whose exploits were exaggerated over time to mythical proportions. Maybe the story of Hercules was formed before the superhuman and applied to him after the fact. But the story of Hercules, however it came about, was a story. It was a story of regret and redemption and stands as valuable on its own regardless of the reality.