Post by METTLE on Oct 26, 2021 21:06:13 GMT
Heroes' Trail
According to every poll taken by major outlets, superheroes, love 'em or hate 'em, have had more impact on the world than any other force in the last one hundred years. They outdo the internet by an entire quarter of the vote. These iconic costumed warriors are angels to some and masked menaces to others, but none could deny the extraordinary efforts they go through, the battles they succeed in, and frequently, the terrible sacrifices they make.
Heroes' Trail, which leads through the open areas to the south of the New York Botanical Garden, has been a fixture of the borough for ages, memorializing brave superheroes who gave their lives in combat in the face of overwhelming odds. Originally built in 1977, it included statues of famous figures like Contrail, Firebird, Magnusaur, and the American Fighting Man. The project was expanded in the eighties to include Black Bat and his many sidekicks, though this controversial change brought about an onslaught of vandalism from his former foes and gang members who routinely defaced the statuary.
Eventually, the cost of defending Heroes' Trail from nightly acts of vandalism came to outweigh the benefits of publicly celebrating these figures' lives. The city quietly abandoned the project, more or less, and no additional names or statues were added to the park for quite some time, despite the boom in superhuman activity in the end of the nineties and the dawning of the so-called "Super Century" in the 2000s. The square was permanently cordoned off and the land was sold to developers who shelved the project, essentially creating a tiny dead zone in the Bronx where nothing was being done. Speculation abounded that the park had been bought by ex-rivals of these heroes just so that nothing would be done with the property.
Several years after the alien conqueror Surgath's attack on Earth was repelled by a large coalition of super and non-super forces, public interest in the park was renewed. A new backer - Leiter Construction - offered to renovate the park area and install a host of new memorials with a cost totaling tens of thousands of dollars at the end of the day. The city awarded them the contract and new development began in the area for the first time in over a decade.
The paths around the main square were expanded and more drains were added to accommodate heavy weather. A full restoration of the statues was ordered, and the roster was vastly expanded to include heroes who had recently given their lives in the line of duty, or vanished from the public eye, never to be seen again. A nearby brook was rerouted to flow through a section of the park that had formerly been in complete disrepair, and a new bridge was built over that area, connecting the path to the main road. Coincidentally, after this project concluded, the park was declared off-limits for any and all criminal activity by the Mettle Gang.
A large statue of Quiver now stands in the North square at the end of the trail, commemorating the sacrifice of the SOS' most prominent archer in order to save the town of Middlefeld, Iowa. This statue rests at the end of the trail and is considered the centerpiece of the walkable monument. An additional, small statue of local New York hero Total Experience sitting on a bench was added to the South square.
In memoriam
Contrail
Faceless Man
Chevron
Invictus
Hector "Akhilleus" Williams
Axiom
Capacitor
Axiom
Capacitor
Total Experience
Quiver