Lord Liaden

Among the many creative creature concepts Dean Shomshak fully wrote up for The Super Mage Bestiary, he included a few variant elementals unlike the traditional four, spawned from environments and substances created by Man rather than Nature. These elementals would be highly suitable to use in any urban environment where magic is present, which includes cities on Champions Earth, and most especially Babylon. __________________________________________________ Smog Elemental A smoke elemental generated from smog becomes a somewhat different sort of spirit: a smog elemental. This elemental looks like a cloud of evil-smelling, yellow-brown fog. Wisps and eddies of smog suggest arms and a distorted face. A smog elemental attacks by wrapping itself around its victim and forcing its stinking, corrosive substance into an opponent’s lungs. Despite being made of vapor, smog elementals can affect solid objects: they can grab and lift a man, shove, punch, and throw things with their foggy arms. In most ways, smog elementals are no more intelligent than other elementals. They have a low cunning, however, at making their way through the cities where they can be summoned; hence, they have Stealth and Shadowing skills. Smog elementals have some weaknesses common to many spirits, and one unique weakness: they need to stay in at least moderately polluted air. Genuinely clean air actually causes them harm. They also cannot enter water because they have no way to push it aside. Lightning Elemental Lightning elementals shine blue-white. They move with incredible speed — their teleportation — and can hover or slowly drift through the air like ball lightning. They shock whoever touches them, of course, and can throw bolts of lightning. They have an innate connection with all electrical machinery: by casting a thread of their own current into a machine, a lightning elemental can animate and control it. [This is done via 15 STR TK, Only Vs Machines with Significant Electrical Parts, to manipulate their controls.] A sorcerer can summon lightning elementals in stormy weather with the help of a lightning rod, or from any strong electrical source. Lightning elemental have little patience — they have to stay on the move, doing something. While grounding can destroy lightning elementals, their greatest fear is water, which disperses electricity. Plastic Elemental Those wacky technomancers may have finally discovered something useful: the plastic elemental. These are pretty poor fighters compared to other elementals, but very good workers. Given a few hours in which to putter, a plastic elemental can mysteriously pick up any Professional Skill at all, from Aardvark Wrangler to Zymurgist. Born of the one common substance that is entirely manmade, plastic elementals seem to be able to access the entire range of human skills. A plastic elemental won’t be a great carpenter, violinist, or financial analyst, but at least it will be competent. In its true form, the elemental looks like a humanoid figure made of plastic — whichever plastic the sorcerer used to summon it. The elemental can take the form of anything with the same mass and change its color to fit. Plastic elementals never get textures exactly right, though: they always feel like plastic. Their solid plastic bodies resist most sorts of damage and heal with incredible speed; they survive environments that rapidly degrade other elementals. Fire, however, can easily destroy a plastic elemental. If a heat or fire-based attack does BODY to a plastic elemental, it catches fire and continues to burn. Until it somehow manages to extinguish the flame, the elemental suffers another 1d6 of Killing damage each Turn thereafter — and its Regeneration won’t help until it stops burning. Plastic elementals enjoy being useful. Left without direction, a plastic elemental will take some useful-seeming-form (which may or may not fit in with the surroundings) and just sit. Unlike other elementals, they never spontaneously dispel themselves. In theory, a plastic elemental could remain on Earth for thousands of years.

Doing some research in The Ultimate Super Mage, I discovered another element to Babylon that wasn't reprinted in The Mystic World. I can imagine and sympathize with the possible reasons why it wasn't included, but IMO it has potential for some very interesting adventures spanning both Babylon and Earth. So I'll transcribe it below. ___________________________________________________ Red Gold Society This secret society flourishes in most of the Chinese districts in Babylon: Imperial Beijing, Pulp-Era Shanghai, Modern Hong Kong and Chinatown. The lone exception is Mao Industrial Park, representing modern Communist China, and the Red Gold Society is working hard to make inroads there, too. The Red Gold Society is both a cult and a political conspiracy, with a triple purpose. First, it fights Communist influence in Babylon. Second, it seeks Chinese domination of Babylon (and eventually Earth as well). Finally, it promotes traditional Chinese culture and religion. Most of the Society’s leaders are sorcerers and priests of the Chinese gods. These leaders often have public lives as businessmen, bureaucrats or aristocrats, although a few (like The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu) stay hidden at all times. The remaining leaders are Chinese gods themselves: either they pretend to be human or stay behind the scenes (except during worship services) as “silent partners.” No cosmic entities are involved in any way. The Red Gold Society controls or allies with several other Chinese groups such as Tongs and Triads, using street gangs for muscle. Front groups include the Three Rings Triad, the Black Phoenix Tong, and gangs like the Blue Turbans, the Tiger Fists and the Jade Daggers. The Society, however, has no monopoly on Chinese organized crime in Babylon. Not all the members and operatives of the Red Gold Society are human. The Society has recruited a variety of Chinese spirits and monsters from the Land of Legends and the Netherworld, including Chinese vampires, goblins and ghosts. The Red Gold Society has already set up regular contact with Earth. The Jade Empress, an aged alchemist and last daughter of the Manchu dynasty who runs the Silver Scorpion Triad in Hong Kong, has been made a full partner in the Society. _______________________________________________________ Most obviously, PC heroes could track drug or slave trafficking, theft and smuggling of Chinese historical and art objects, or the like, back to the Silver Scorpion Triad, but find themselves opposed by supernatural agents of the Red Gold Society, carrying the fight to Babylon. I could readily see the Society allying with Dr. Yin Wu, since their overall goals are similar, and their combined magic and resources may be enough to bring them about. Some of the gods Yin Wu worships could even be members of the Society. The Red Gold Society could also be introduced through conflict between the Silver Scorpion Triad and the international criminal gang called the Red Arms, secretly run by operatives of the Cult of the Red Banner. As the conflict escalates, superhumans from both sides could be called into service, attracting superhero attention. The Cult may even try to subvert the Society in Babylon, to gain an astral beachhead from which to try to free their god, the Dragon.

I often wonder what drives someone to become the leader of a country. Nothing is ever simple, every day brings some new crisis, there's always someone mad at you, and you can never take a day off. It has to be the most grueling job in the world. Unless you golf through it like Donald Trump, or nap through it like Ronald Reagan.

The aforementioned purple orchid might hold tremendous medicinal potential. And if someone accidentally or deliberately loosed a disease from the Valdorian Age on the modern world, the orchid could be the only cure. EDIT: I found a spell of black magic in The Valdorian Age p. 127, "Kiss of Pestilence," which summons a plague-bearing demon to infect a victim with its bite. The "plague" can have varying effects, which linger for months, but isn't potent compared to most superheroes. But that's in a time of low magic. On modern Champions Earth the spell might summon a horde of such demons, or maybe the essence of the infernal plague itself.

It just occurred to me that you could craft some similar time-travel adventures in the CU by using Nero Astrolabus, whom I mentioned above in connection with Invictus. The parallels with Simon Magus are striking: they come from nearly the same era; both were powerful sorcerers who curried favor with a Roman emperor (Nero for Simon, Constantine for Astrolabus), but overreached, and paid with their lives; both lingered as spirits seeking to regain physical form; they even both hate Christianity. Astrolabus presented himself to David Sutherland as the god Sol Invictus, and his background text implies he stole some of his god's power, so ambition to achieve true godhood doesn't seem a stretch for him. Nero Astrolabus' history asserts that he didn't succeed in manipulating mortals or finding a willing host until Sutherland summoned him; but maybe that's because heroes thwarted his past attempts.

Trump's top hiring criterion appears to be sycophantism, so I could see him going for that.

If Cruz is as competent a trial attorney as he is everything else he does, I would welcome that.

Luther Black, aka the Edomite, founder and secret leader of DEMON, had specific plans for Babylon in connection to his apotheosis scheme, as laid out in DEMON: Servants Of Darkness p. 40: ____________________________________________________ In the plane of Babylon, man’s secular ambitions find their embodiment. The city of cities, grown great and huge over the last few centuries, is the echo of all the worldly cities man has built — or at least those mankind remembers. Its inhabitants are inordinately proud of this monument to man’s industry, artifice, and skill. They brag it is the greatest creation in all of Creation, and some even suppose that some day it could grow so great as to challenge the gods themselves. Luther Black is of a different opinion. When speaking of the City of Man, he is fond of quoting from the Book of Revelation, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!... Alas! alas! thou great city, thou mighty city, Babylon! In one hour has thy judgement come!” And if allowed to carry out his plans, Luther Black shall be the judge, jury, and executioner of Babylon’s many crimes. Black realizes the truth behind the claims of Babylon’s greatness. He has lived in cities for most of his two hundred years and knows them well. A city is nothing more than a dirty, grimy machine dedicated to glorifying mankind’s sins — an engine that empowers the prideful, gluttonous, and greedy among the ruling class, fueled by the toil and suffering of the helpless chattel who serve them. So it has been since the first cities, even in those times before man ruled the world, and to topple a city is no difficult matter. One must only give the power to commit violence to the disenfranchised. Black’s plan for Babylon is twofold. First, he will send Morbanes to proselytize among the downtrodden who inhabit the Rookeries, the vast slums in Babylon where all the evils of one man’s dominion over others find a home. With promises of power the Morbanes will bring worship of demons to the masses of secular Babylon, making it, as predicted in the Revelation, “a dwelling place of demons, a haunt for every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul and hateful bird....” Second, he will have the Black Scientists rediscover ancient Ril’Syssor, now frozen in time below the Antarctic ice. In an age before history, mankind lived in servitude to the Elder Worm and his suffering was beyond comprehension. The discovery of Ril’Syssor, plus the proof of its antiquity and inhuman rulers — and, most importantly, mankind’s place in that city — will consume the hearts and minds of many people in the modern day, shaking their belief in mankind’s dominance of the world. With Ril’Syssor remembered, the other-dimensional analogue of the city will return to Babylon and corrupt it, transforming it from the City of Man to the City of Man’s Slavery. As for why Luther Black is willing to go to so much trouble in the case of Babylon: if he allows the city to continue unhindered, it and its inhabitants will work to prevent him from bringing the Kings of Edom into the world. Such an event would spell doom for Babylon, and the city possesses enough power to oppose him if not neutralized first.

And here are the conurbites Dean mentioned, from The Supermage Bestiary (also in the Hero store): _____________________________________________________________________________ The conurbites are a new magical race emerging in Babylon. Just as the elves of Faerie embody the unpredictable influence of Nature, the conurbites personify the urban environment. They dislike natural surroundings and unprocessed foods. Unlike the elves, who cannot understand any machine more complicated than a water wheel, conurbites love technology. Every conurbite has some technical skill such as Mechanics or Electronics, or a craft skill such as Blacksmith, Weaver, or Painter. The innate magical powers of conurbites emphasize the control of force and matter. All conurbites can “morph” part of their body (usually a hand) into some sort of tool or appliance that they can also use as a weapon. (They can also “morph” their hands into the ordinary hand tools they would use in their chosen Professional Skill. For instance, a conurbite auto mechanic could shape his hands into wrenches, a carpenter could make hammers, screwdrivers, and small saws, while a painter would turn her hands into normal brushes or airbrushes.) Every conurbite also has at least two other magical abilities. Like the elves, conurbites live forever (unless slain) and lack souls. Also like elves, they tend toward amorality. Conurbites, however, tend to be mercenaries rather than tricksters. Their attitudes to human religious codes range from casual ignorance to biting contempt. Instead, conurbites follow a general code of professional ethics: to do a good job, without regard to the nature of one’s client. Some conurbites are friendly and some are truly vicious, but almost all of them are company men, even when they are self-employed. Conurbites look very human, mimicking the features and coloration of all the major human racial groups. Conurbites are all good looking, but their features are a little too regular, their skin too smooth, like plastic store mannequins. Their ears are flattened on top. In the last few decades, some conurbites have appeared with small amounts of metal, glass, ceramic, or even machinery in their bodies. A conurbite might have TV screen eyes, teeth made of cut glass, a circuit board with tiny winking lights set in the forehead like a third eye, or nails of polished metal. The appearance and abilities of conurbites may well change in the coming centuries. The race has not yet reached its final form (or forms), and no one knows what that form will be. Conurbites dress in the high fashion of every district of Babylon, from Roman togas to power suits to acidwashed jeans with $100 sneakers. Some of them hybridize fashions, producing combinations such as business suits embroidered with Chinese dragons, silk cravats worn with studded leather jackets, or turbans with togas.

Dean mentioned The Ultimate Super Mage (which is in PDF in Hero's online store). Here's the background of an NPC included in that book with origin in Babylon: Artifex (Created by James Ganong). ___________________________________________________________ Billy Doyle hated his miserable life. It wasn’t easy being a smart, sensitive kid in a South Boston slum where a musical car horn was most people’s idea of an uplifting cultural experience. There were only two points of light in his gray neighborhood. The first was the library. It was small and as dingy and beat up as the neighborhood, but it had a few books on art that weren’t too badly defaced. The second was Uncle Button, who walked barefoot in the Boston winter and covered his stained and faded clothes with tassels, ittle mirrors, and buttons. Uncle Button made and sold buttons from bits of metal, wood, and plastic he scavenged from dumpsters. He also told wonderful stories: stories from history, from mythology, from books, or all three mixed together— like how George Washington crossed the Styx to rescue Minnie Mouse from the Grand Inquisitor. One day, when Billy was thirteen, he asked Uncle Button where he got his stories. Uncle Button answered, typically, with a story. He told how once upon a time a young man, who had been rich but now was poor, had wanted to understand his own story, and if he might change its course. He walked the cold, unfriendly streets of his city, looking for meanings as much as for work and food. One day he saw a street that looked more inviting. In it were jugglers and costermongers, children playing, merchants weighing gold dust and women haggling over fish. That street led to another street and another. He found a whole city, secretly woven into the city he’d known before— a city called Babylon. From Babylon he traveled to many other lands, and in the fullness of time he discovered where stories come from. Uncle Button waved his hand. “Here.” It was sort of a disappointing ending for the story. A few days later, Billy heard unfamiliar sounds from an alley. He followed the sounds to a street he’d never seen, bustling with fantastically varied people. “Hey, what city is this?” he asked a pushcart vendor. The vendor looked at Billy like he was crazy. “The only city there is,” he replied. “Babylon!” Billy quickly looked back over his shoulder. The alley was gone. Billy’s life in Babylon could fill a novel—one by Dickens. It was not an easy life. He saw Babylon’s rookeries and workhouses more than its palaces. After a year, though, Billy found himself as an apprentice to a conurbite mask-maker and then things were better. Two years later, Billy discovered the Fool’s Parliament and was accepted as a student of the Great Art of magic. Billy proved an enthusiastic student. He didn’t miss South Boston a bit. As a dweller in Babylon, as a prospective member of the Fool’s Parliament, he invented a new life for himself, right down to a new name and a new appearance. Now he called himself “Art Long.” He looked forward to becoming a full member of the Fool’s Parliament and helping to build a new and spritelier world. And then one day his master, Mr. Lowjink, threw him out. “You’re a damn yes-man, Art! You’ve got nothing in your head but what I put there! Get some experience! Get some ideas of your own! Get a life!” Well, that was a bit of a shock, but Art got over it. He now divides his time between apartments in Babylon and Los Angeles, taking advantage of the currency exchange rate between worlds. He manages a modest living by making fanciful, high-quality masks; he’s had a few exhibitions in a Los Angeles gallery and is a familiar figure in the L.A. art scene. As Artifex, Master of the Cosmic Craft, he also does his bit to build a new world of freedom and Artifice where everyone can make the life they please.

But he's not explicitly excluded, either.

Everything great in life has drawbacks. That shouldn't keep you from experiencing great things. Often even the drawbacks can teach you something to make your life better.

Once people have embraced an initial lie, when faced with contradictions most will invent bigger and bigger lies to rationalize their belief, rather than admit to themselves they were duped.

You mean you don't want to split every hair down to its finest implications? What kind of Hero gamer are you?!

I'm afraid that can't be said with any certainty. Takofanes' own history in Champions Villains Volume One notes that over the millennia the Undying King's tomb prison was brought closer to the surface by the repeated cataclysmic upheavals the world experienced. It's hard to believe that as the continents shifted, the Archlich's tomb only moved vertically.

Well, there are potential allies (particularly for evil characters), and there are precedents for how this could be done. Doctor Teneber, as you note, is one good choice, and would probably put a hero in a new body if asked (and if said hero condoned the murder necessary to gain a new body). The adventure, Shades Of Black, revolves around the Black Paladin and his attempt to resurrect his lover, the witch Chantal. That involved a ritual to force the soul out of another woman's body, and transplant Chantal's soul into it; at the same time transforming it to resemble Chantal's original one. Witchcraft's evil twin Talisman assisted in that ritual, and almost certainly remembers how to perform it. I'm sure a bargain could be struck with her to do it again. No few ghosts linger in the physical world after their death, due to traumatic circumstances, expertise in the dark arts, or sheer force of will. An example of the second case is Erichtho McFarlane, a member of the Sylvestri clan of black magicians, and a skilled necromancer. (See Champions Villains Volume Two for more on the Sylvestris.) Erichtho died over a century ago, but even as a ghost she can still cast potent necromantic spells, as well as possess and animate corpses. She illustrates that even being dead need not prevent one from wielding power. Although she primarily serves her clan, Sylvestris sometimes hire themselves out to other malevolent factions and power players in the Mystic World. There's also the ghost of the Roman sorcerer, Nero Astrolabus, who made a deal with David Sutherland to share a body in exchange for Nero channeling the power of his deity, Sol Invictus, through David, thus creating the superhuman Invictus (Champions Villains Volume One). The above examples follow the supernatural path to resurrection you yourself suggested, but the most practical course would probably be scientific. Teleios (also in CV Vol. 1) is a master of cloning, and his own "perfect" body is a construct into which he downloaded his memories and personality from his original brain. He keeps other clones of himself as "backups" should he be killed. Teleios sells his services to many less-than-ethical parties, so I'm sure he could be hired to prepare a spare body and mental copy for someone else.

To your first point, I think it would depend on a Game Master's interpretation and intentions. Let's take a current wearer of one of the Gems, the villain Galaxia. Most if not all of her superhuman qualities derive from the Gem -- she's much weaker if it's taken away. When in contact with it she can wield its power proportionate to her will. Is that something anyone can do, regardless of the state of physics in a given universe? Think of it like radiation. Radiation is a real power in our universe and the Champions Universe, and can be controlled and utilized through technology. In our universe exposure to radiation causes sickness and potentially death. In the CU it causes super powers in rare cases. So, the answer could be whatever a given Game Master thinks will yield a better story for his group. Dean's hypothesis above is not a statement of any official pronouncement, just an extrapolation from precedents and discussion among us fans. But Dean created most of the multiversal cosmology and manifestations of magic in the CU, so his opinion can be considered an expert one.

Only if they ask you to. According to a friend...

Funny story about that meme: There's a widespread belief Kevin Sorbo mistakenly read a direction in the script for the emotion that the line was intended to be said with, "disappointed," as though it was supposed to be said out loud as part of the line. It was so funny that they kept it in the episode. According to Sorbo, he just ad-libbed the word, inspired by Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda.

I'm out of Rep for today, Dean, so I'll have to owe you. But that is both logical and probably the most dramatically fruitful route to take in most cases. But I do have to make an objection to your Defender example in which you characterize his armor's principles as being "wrong." IME in regards to these magic fluctuations, the implication that their super-genius PCs are actually deluded fools really rubs players the wrong way. I prefer to frame it as their taking advantage of the potential inherent in broadened physical laws brought on by higher magic. When that magic drops and their inventions stop working, it's not that they were wrong, it's that the potential they were exploiting has ceased to exist.

Within the historical period, absolutely. Much more problematic to exploit the Valdorian Age, though. It falls within the era between the geography-scrambling magical cataclysms that ended the Turakian Age, and the Atlantean Age. The shape of the continents isn't even recognizable, so knowledge of where minerals will be in the future would be no guide to where they were then.

Hey, don't diss magic radiation. Without it we'd have no Hulk, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and a whole bunch of other cool folks.

Not an easy process for Dr. Destroyer. His armor and weaponry aren't built as Foci. Removing or disabling them require time, sophisticated equipment, and considerable technical expertise. Doable, but DD will have to have been very thoroughly defeated first.

Bernie actually looks rather impressive in that chair. Gives off a bit of a Palpatine vibe.

If you're referring to Rep. Andy Harris allegedly trying to bring his gun onto the House floor a week ago, he reportedly was caught by the metal detectors and turned back. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/capitol-police-probing-whether-gop-rep-andy-harris-tried-bring-n1255237