I feel like doing something silly, so this happened.
You, and possibly some of your friends, are one of several mercenary / music groups (or possibly solo acts) that have sprung up recently to combat a new threat. Several dimensions have begun to merge with our own, resulting in various creatures and attributes bleeding over and changing core things about how our world works- most noticeably, music is now a powerful force that some would describe as magic.
With properly designed equipment, a chord can become a blast of energy. A pounding bassline can become a tangible wall of force. Keytars have made a resurgence as a highly portable way to play synthetic music, and so on.
Playing these empowered instruments isn't something that everyone can do. The dimensional bleed has impacted some people more than others, and only those that happened to be particularly strongly attuned are able to use empowered instruments to their full potential. These exceptional individuals are our characters.
The threats they fight are extradimensional in origin, meaning they can be almost anything conceivable. Everything from time-lost dinosaurs, genetic cronenbergs and glow clouds have come through, and the only thing that really has much chance at stopping them is the empowered instruments, since they ALSO use energy from another dimension. Weapons from our own dimension are borderline worthless against these creatures, serving to annoy them but hurting no more than a mosquito bite.
The people and groups who use empowered instruments to fight these monsters have become the modern day celebrities, some of the songs used to fight off giant monsters becoming radio hits after the fact.
There is no common theme among the people who have the power to use the empowered instruments. There are people of all ages, genders and nationalities with these abilities, and they can show up in anywhere from big cities to settlements so small they don't even show up on a map. In some cases, the extradimensional energy does seem to have impacted their physiology to some degree, resulting in seemingly random cosmetic effects. These include exotic / unnatural hair or eye coloration, odd music-related birthmarks that look less like birthmarks and more like naturally appearing tattoos, and even stranger things. Exotic / unnatural coloration of parts of the body also occurs, and it can be everything from having blue skin to naturally pink fingernails or tongue / interior flesh glowing a bright orange.
Anyone interested?
You, and possibly some of your friends, are one of several mercenary / music groups (or possibly solo acts) that have sprung up recently to combat a new threat. Several dimensions have begun to merge with our own, resulting in various creatures and attributes bleeding over and changing core things about how our world works- most noticeably, music is now a powerful force that some would describe as magic.
With properly designed equipment, a chord can become a blast of energy. A pounding bassline can become a tangible wall of force. Keytars have made a resurgence as a highly portable way to play synthetic music, and so on.
Playing these empowered instruments isn't something that everyone can do. The dimensional bleed has impacted some people more than others, and only those that happened to be particularly strongly attuned are able to use empowered instruments to their full potential. These exceptional individuals are our characters.
The threats they fight are extradimensional in origin, meaning they can be almost anything conceivable. Everything from time-lost dinosaurs, genetic cronenbergs and glow clouds have come through, and the only thing that really has much chance at stopping them is the empowered instruments, since they ALSO use energy from another dimension. Weapons from our own dimension are borderline worthless against these creatures, serving to annoy them but hurting no more than a mosquito bite.
The people and groups who use empowered instruments to fight these monsters have become the modern day celebrities, some of the songs used to fight off giant monsters becoming radio hits after the fact.
There is no common theme among the people who have the power to use the empowered instruments. There are people of all ages, genders and nationalities with these abilities, and they can show up in anywhere from big cities to settlements so small they don't even show up on a map. In some cases, the extradimensional energy does seem to have impacted their physiology to some degree, resulting in seemingly random cosmetic effects. These include exotic / unnatural hair or eye coloration, odd music-related birthmarks that look less like birthmarks and more like naturally appearing tattoos, and even stranger things. Exotic / unnatural coloration of parts of the body also occurs, and it can be everything from having blue skin to naturally pink fingernails or tongue / interior flesh glowing a bright orange.
Anyone interested?