DShomshak

Kastchei's male. His most famous appearance probably is in the ballet "The Firebird." There's he's rather demonic. Other descriptions suggest he's a skeleton: Perhaps "Deathless" would be better translated as "Undead"! He's less well defined than Baba Yaga, though. This is one case where the folklore gives you less guidance. The tales agree, though, that Kastchei is terribly powerful and utterly evil. (In my old Champions campaign I had notes on Kastchei as one of the original vampires created by the Dragon in ancient times. Stalin dug him up in the 1950s. I never used him, though.) Who or what was the Dark Lord? I can think of a few possibilities: * The Dark Lord is one of the scary, powerful entities from folklore such as Kastchei, Eblis, the fomorian king Balor, or the troll-witch Angr-boda (mother of the Fenris Wolf and Midgard Serpent -- and why not a Dark Lady, hey?) Possibly the Dark Lord's regime was more of a junta, with him or her as chief. * There was no Dark Lord. He was a figurehead created by the junta of his supposed lieutenants, who'd formed an Unseelie Axis to conquer everyone else and divide Earth and Faerie into spheres of influence. They still keep the secret because they have their own ambitious underlings: It's useful, especially with their power reduced on Earth, to hint that they still have extra powers granted by the Dark Lord. * The Dark Lord was formerly a minor figure -- create your own or pick some mythic villain you think is cool, regardless of power -- who obtained a power-up that let him push around badasses like Kastchei and Eblis. Maybe he found one of the great talismans of Ultimate Power such as the Rhinegold, the Tablet of Destinies or the Book of Thoth. Everyone who knows about the true source of the Dark Lord's power searches for the talisman, if only to keep it away from enemies and rivals. * Or some other form of power-up. For instance, Hindu mythology has several asuras who somehow become powerful enough to threaten even the gods... but always with one flaw in their omnipotence or invulnerability. Ravana performing austerities for 10,000 years to extort a boon from Shiva is probably the most famous example. * The Dark Lord was an entity from a plane even "higher" or more powerful than Faerie -- an actual Evil God, which is why he can force other powerful, evil and ambitious entities to work together. What you choose should probably illustrate the themes of your campaign. Like, if you want to emphasize conflict between Fae who want to assimilate into human society and the aristocrats who want to retain the authority they had in Faerie, you might go for the "Fake Figurehead" option. There's no need for the PCs and players to know the truth, though. At least not at first. Whatever you choose, you can introduce other options as rumors or hoaxes. Dean Shomshak

I'd never heard that until I saw houris listed in the "varieties of jinn" links at the bottom of the Wikipedia page. Following the link, the "Houri" page says that mortals and jinn can both be transfigured into houris in Paradise. (Which was news to me. What can I say, I'm more interested in jinn mythology than Muslim theology.) Another possibility is that someone, some time, used "jinn" to mean all kinds of supernatural entities. This sort of linguistic sloppiness is common among people who don't realize that gamers will come along later and insist on well-defined categories! Whatever the reason, houris still seem to be creatures of Heaven rather than of Faerie. At least that's how the description and explanation feels to me. On other matters, did you know there's a mountain range in Norway called the Jotun Fjells? Literally, the Mountains of the Giants. This seems just too perfect as a place for the dwarfs, trolls, frost giants (hrimthurssar, if you want to distinguish them from other giants) and other Nordic faerie-folk to invade. Dean Shomshak

"Having a type of jinn for each elemental type makes a certain sense. I was previously only aware of Djinn and Efreet, not the water and earth types." I think this may be QM's own notion, not folklore. It's a plausible notion: Tradition says that some jinn live on Earth (they favor tombs, deserts, ruins, neglected gardens, and other derelict places), deep underground, in water, or in the upper air. However, God made all jinn from smokeless fire. One oddball classification divides jinn into those with wings who fly, jinn who appear as snakes or dogs, and jinn who travel constantly. But no other source pays any attention to this classification. If QM has a source that isn't from a game (D&D and, Wikipedia says, at least one video game have jinn of the four elements) I'd like to know of it. Share, man! Jinn are also called Efreet (Afrit, Ifrit, other variations), Marid, and other names. According to Sir Richard Burton's notes to the Arabian Nights, though, an "Ifrit" is just an especially powerful jinn (and likelymalevolent), while a "Marid" (Arabic, "Contumelious One") is just an especially bad tempered jinn. Getting back to laws and magic, I don't think there'd be special all-spellcaster juries for cases of magical crime. At least not in the US. That would come very close to the "Blue Ribbon" juries composed all of professional people and pillars of the community that the Supreme Court found unconstitutional. Dean Shomshak

Likewise, I would implement it as various Disadvantages for particular supernatural creatures. To exploit these Disadvantages, though, characters might need traits such as extra PRE (Only for making declarations of faith), and/or Psychological Complications such as Religious Devotion (Common, Strong). Though some creatures might be harmed or hampered by consecrated ground, religious symbols or the sound of church bells without the need for a person of True Faith. It depends on how you want to set up the metaphysics of your world, and how easily you want PCs to exploit religion. In this case, I'd recommend giving the Fae weaknesses against active expressions of faith (it's a feature from many stories) but not against symbols or other paraphernalia. Demons are under perpetual sentence of condemnation, and know it; the Fae are defined in part by their liminality, neither human nor inhuman, blessed nor damned. Even the most terrible Unseelie are forces of Wild Magic, "neither of the Light nor of the Dark nor of Men."

Folklore note: In Russian fairy tales, Baba Yaga hardly ever appears as the villain. (Only once in Afanasyev's collection, which is to Russian fairy tales what the Brothers Grimm are to German.) Instead, she functions as a "reluctant helper": Hostile, but when the hero overcomes her he obtains something that helps him or her defeat the real villain or otherwise solve the problem that got him into the story. A heroic prince might wrestle her until she promises to give him a magic sword, a steed faster than the wind, or whatever. A little girl might receive three difficult tasks to perform in a short time, but succeed through the help of animals to whom she showed kindness. OTOH the character Kastchei (or Koshchei) the Deathless is pure villain. In your world, it might be Kastchei who created the plague but Baba Yaga got blamed, or she did it but as a mercenary. PCs who venture into the Blight Zone might still need to find Baba Yaga and extort some favor from her in order to defeat Kastchei or some other agent of the Dark Lord.

And supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies seem well established through observation. Though if I understand the theory, they wouldn't emit significant amounts of Hawking radiation. Clearly, physicists must build a super--duper collider powerful enough to create quantum black holes for study. There'd be some danger to this, I know, but this is for Science! Besides, once we have a black hole, we can throw Justin Bieber into it. That prospect might help line up the funding. (Hwy, I'd contribute to the Kickstarter.)

Quark stars? I've read speculations about collapsed objects that are sodense the neutrons get squished into a big fluid mass of quarks and gluons. It might be strange matter, too.

As soon as the existence of vampires becomes known, every goddamn billionaire in the world starts looking for a vampire to "turn" them. Same with the world's dictators. A warm liquid protein diet and staying out of the sun are small prices to pay for added centuries of life. Whether this means legal protection for vampires is debatable. The new vampire elite probably doesn't want to dilute its advantages by having too much competition. The ideal situation might be laws that vampires are legally people and entitled to civil rights, but turning humans into vampires is illegal and harshly punished. (Except in a few of the sort of small countries that function as offshore havens for gray finance.) Dean Shomshak

I've encountered the suggestion -- not entirely serious -- that Marxism should be considered the fourth great Abrahamic religion. According to The Wild Rue: A Study of Mohammedan Magic and Folklore in Iran by Bess Allen Donaldson (1938), Tututash is the king of the Jewish jinn. Masidus is kin of the Christian jinn. Mohammed himself converted the jinn kings Abdur-Rahman and Abdul-Kadir to Islam. The book also mentions kings named Talu Khush and Masitash, but if their religion was given it didn't make it into my notes. It is said of Masitash, however, that he has 300,000 slaves, each a king of other jinn. In related beings, Iblis rules the evil Divs and Malik Afshan rules the benign Peris. Dean Shomshak

So I read the article Michael linked to, and the previous article that *it* linked to about the "Firewall Paradox." Frankly, I can't understand what makes a region of high energy contradict General Relativity: There's only a paradox if the "firewall" around a black hole means you can tell the difference between accelerated motion and a gravitational field, or if it in some other way creates a privileged frame of reference. The math is probably just too difficult to explain to a layman. The upshot of it all seems to be that black holes create problems for both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics until someone figures out quantum gravity. Polchinski, Hawking, et al. have just found new levels of problem. It's all just playing with math until someone comes up with a prediction that can be tested through observation or experiment. I think it's a bad sign that most of the physicists cited in the articles are also called out as string theorists -- another area where physics seems to have gone off into mathematical La-La Land. It's why despite Hawking's fame with the general public, I hear other physicists don't consider him or his work terribly important. At least not yet. The top-ranked theoreticians are the ones who predict something that is then observed: P. A. M. Dirac predicting antimatter, Wolfgang Pauli predicting the neutrino, Peter Higgs predicting his boson, etc. When someone detects Hawking radiation, he gets to join the pantheon of physics greats. Not before then. Dean Shomshak

Many years ago when I first tried to sign onto the forum (and could not tell if I had done so), someone asked for an alternate history in which the Roman Empire fell during the life of Jesus. Various suggestions were made, mostly involving connections to Arthurian legend. Alas, I could not post my own suggestion. This thread reminds me of it, though, so I can finally pass it along. What luck that I still have my old notes! Any resemblance to a well-known Fantasy epic is purely intentional. We have two conditions: The Roman Empire collapsed when it was barely begun, and Jesus was important enough to be remembered 20 centuries later. The collapse isn’t too difficult. Just let Julius and Octavian/Augustus have a few more problems. The nascent empire can tear itself apart in the reign of Tiberius, during the life of Jesus, or in the reign of Caligula if you want Jesus to live longer. Now for Jesus himself. Since comic-book universes have real supernatural forces, the Crucifixion still happens eventually and Christianity spreads: That’s a Divine Plan. It could take a different form, though. So here’s a scenario for an alternate Christianity, bringing in the Arthurian suggestions other people made. In 33 AD, an empire that’s already crumbling strands Pontius Pilate in a three-way power struggle with Herod and the Judean religious establishment. Pilate decides not to give in to the bloody natives: If they see him back down now, his authority vanishes. He pardons the popular street preacher who has everyone in a tizzy. And anyway, the Romans often tolerated foreign religions so long as they dis not oppose the Roman state, and Jesus had said to “Render unto Caesar what is due to Caesar.” Curious, Pilate talks more to Jesus. He likes what he hears. Pilate gives Jesus a secretary to write down his actual words. Several years later, however, Pilate faces rebellion within his own ranks from underlings who think he listens too much to the Judean preacher. The Crucifixion happens through a cabal of Pharisees and Roman rebels. Pilate, Joseph of Arimathea and a group of Jesus’ other disciples, both Roman and Judean, sail west all the way to Britain with the Holy Grail. Joseph plants his staff on Glastonbury Tor and it blooms as a hawthorn tree. Beneath the white flowers of the miraculous tree, Pilate declares, “I came from across the great sea to create a new kingdom. Here shall I abide, and my heirs, to the end of the world.” In the coming decades, Pontius Pilate lays the groundwork for the first Christian kingdom, with the Grail and the Tree as tokens of his divine right. Back east, the Apostle Peter takes the Spear of Destiny to Rome and founds another church, though with opposition from the rump Roman government. When Peter heals the charismatic and well-meaning young Emperor Gaius of a terrible fever, though, Gaius converts and makes Christianity the official religion of Rome. He is remembered as Saint Gaius and revered for his commitment to justice, good government and the welfare of the poor. No one remembers his the nickname he gained from a childhood spent in military camps: Caligula. The rest of Europe and the Near East breaks up into petty states ruled by Roman governors, invading barbarian chiefs, or former tributary kings such as Herod. The nascent Christian churches face less systematic persecution than in our history, but more competition locally from kings who make Mithraism, the cult of Isis, or other late Classical faiths their state religion. Further east, the Parthian empire expands for lack of serious opposition. Worst of all, a false prophet arises: Simon Magus, the Proto-Heretic, who twists the teachings of Jesus for his own vile cult of sorcery and personality. The Apostles balk Simon in Europe and the Near East, but the Parthian court welcomes him. Simon’s Gnosticism becomes the state religion of Parthia, and he becomes the power behind the Parthian throne. Six centuries later, Pilate’s descendant Arthur inherits a kingdom in turmoil from the machinations of Simonist sorcerers. Arthur proves equal to the task once his knights recover the Holy Grail, the sacred emblem of harmony and fellowship. As a war-leader, Arthur defeats several enemies on the European mainland. His campaigns take him all the way to Rome, where he pulls the Spear of Destiny from the stone where Peter drove it centuries before, thus proving himself the true King of the West. Many pagan kingdoms convert -- and some of the faerie-folk, too. Arthur’s dynasty marries into elven and merfolk royalty. At the end of the 7th century, the multi-species Holy Alliance crushes the decadent Parthian Empire with the help of a new player, the prophet Mohammed, who was guided by Gabriel to a third sacred relic, the Crown of Thorns. For a short time, East and West are united. It doesn’t last, but the world remembers this as a Golden Age. The early primacy of Britain gives this history’s Europe a stronger pull to the Atlantic than to the Mediterranean. Maritime trade among the British Isles, Scandinavia, Gaul and Hispania eventually leads to the discovery of Iceland, Greenland, and the New World. The Native Americans fare a little better than in our history. As long as the Grail is available, peaceful assimilation is possible, and works both ways. The Iroquois Confederation unites with European coastal colonies to form the United States of Avalon -- as the Arthurian British call our North America -- as a melting pot of cultures and races, human and otherwise. On the other hand, first contact with the Aztecs leads to a transatlantic crusade -- and Old World diseases still devastate the native populations. At the start of the 21st century, however, the world is again in dire straits. Simon’s wizard-cult has seized power through much of the Middle East. Some say that Simon himself has returned as the Dark Lord of the new empire. The Grail, Spear, and Crown are all lost. The White Tree of Britain is dead, poisoned by a Simonist sorcerer, and the line of Pilate and Arthur was overthrown long ago. The churches of Joseph, Peter, and Mohammed bicker while the faerie races recall old grievances against Humanity. Simon has empowered thirty champions through dread sorcery and swathed them in ebon cloaks clasped with one of the silver coins paid to Judas. The Coinwraiths ride unhindered throughout the world, spreading terror and destruction. In this alternate Earth of swords and sorcery, heroes from two worlds must unite to stop the Shadow of Simon from overspreading the world. They must unite the Free Peoples of the West to turn back the armies from the East and recover the Spear, Grail, and Crown -- uniting the emblems of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- to end Simon’s power forever. And finally they must restore the Heir of Arthur -- one of this world’s superheroes (would it be too heavy-handed to call him the Ranger?) -- to his rightful throne, to bring peace and justice once more. At least, that’s one way you could do it. There’s no shortage of other possibilities! Dean Shomshak

What if an elemental gets loose? Read "Operation: Salamander," in Poul Anderson's Operation: Chaos. In other matters, have any all-Fae nations appeared and sought UN representation? Selkies and other sea-fairies (and there are many different kinds!) might seek to claim sections of ocean as sovereign territories. Or the jinn might try claiming the Empty Quarter in Arabia, sections of the Sahara or other deserts as territory for their kingdoms. (I especially recommend the lost city of Ubar in Arabia as a breach-point, and a great place for one of the jinn kings to place a capital.) Several Muslim countries might side with the jinn in this political effort: The Koran includes a chapter addressed to the jinn, and Muslim doctrine holds that many jinn are Muslims. (There are also Christian, Jewish and pagan jinn, which could add some extra excitement to Middle Eastern politics.) Dean Shomshak

Historically, it's always taken 40-50 years for new technologies to go from "lab curiosity/prototype" to economically valuable, widely-used technology. (See history of electricity, automobile, nuclear power, computer.) So while you might have magitech power follow a faster course for reasons of romance, it might be interesting to have this revolution still be ongoing. Fossil fuel-producing regions are seeing their economies collapse *now,* and ditto the companies that were slow to adapt and shift their business plan. Which means, for instance, the rulers of Middle Eastern petro-states are going bugnuts as they see their chief form of influence melting away. Environmental groups will love magitech generators. The movement has always been hampered by seeming to want a magic energy-producing box with no environmental impact of any kind, which does not exist. Now apparently it does! Now, nothing is ever truly easy or cost-free. Magitech energy will have costs and problems that don't seem obvious at first. (Remember the law of the goblin market. The deal that seems too good to be true, is. The price that seems right may be very, very wrong.) Being human, when the true costs of magitech power come out, environmental groups will use all their political influence (now much magnified), media voice and outright deceit to cover it up -- just as the fossil fuel industry and its defenders try to discredit climate change. Or are the supposed costs just an elaborate hoax crafted by the desperate fossil fuel industry in a last-ditch attempt to save itself? Or for even greater complication, is there both a hoax campaign and a real, deeply hidden cost waiting to be discovered? Dean Shomshak

Islands suitable for magic academies? Wizard Island, in Crater Lake, Oregon. Dean Shomshak

Fifty years is a good timescale. A lot of the obvious stuff has been worked out, but not everything. You can still have courtroom dramas and political conflict where some legal issue is being hashed out for the first time. In Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan" SF series, there's a drug called "fast-penta" that temporarily makes a person unable to lie. It's even difficult not to respond. However, people can still misunderstand questions or give otherwise unhelpful answers, so fast-penta interrogation still requires special training. Also, a few people have naturally screwy responses (series hero Miles Vorkosigan is one such, and beats a hostile interrogation by giving free rein to his pre-existing motor-mouth tendencies. Every question sparks such a flood of free-asociation babble that the answers never get out.) Also, people in high-security positions sometimes receive an induced allergy so fast-penta kills them before they can talk. All the possible ways that truth spells could be hoaxed or misused are just variations on the ways mundane forensic evidence, witness testimony or confessions can be hoaxed or misused. The magic makes everything simple if the court system is honest. If it isn't, the magic doesn't matter. For instance, the defense team could include a sorcerer to make sure the prosecution's sorcerer really casts a truth-spell. But if it's the sham trial of a police state, the defense's sorcerer is just another part of the fraud. Dean Shomshak

If you want a literary model for forensic maic and how it might affect criminal investigation, I recommend the "Lord Darcy" series by Randall Garrett. The titles I remember are Murder and Magic, Too Many Magicians, and Lord Darcy Investigates. (Cough), You might also look at pages 176-177 of The Mystic World for some further questions to ask yourself. Dean Shomshak

I've used Mind Scan + Mind Link to represent effects like this. The bonus to the Mind Scan depends on how good you think the Power is at distinguishing between entities, and how hard it is to "localize" entities in other dimensions. If you know in advance that you're trying to contact, say, Athena and ask her advice, what population do you assume for Mythic Olympus? You *might* be trying to pick her out of only a few hundred entities. It's also easier if you don't care which entity you contact, though this involves some assumptions about the knowledge base of random extradimensional entities. ("Oh mighty spirit of Heaven, does King Ludovik plan war?" "Damn if I know, wizard, I'm the Deputy Janitor of the Celestial Palace.") You also might need only enough dice of Mind Scan that you can establish a Mind Link. This assumes that the entity you contact is willing to answer questions. How can you be sure of this? Well, if there weren't entities willing to answer questions from mortals, your GM wouldn't be allowing the spell in the campaign... Add in suitable Limitations such as, "Only Yes/No answers," or a Side Effect that failed Mind Scan targeting results in contact with a spirit who lies, and you're on your way." Gotta say, though, that "Detect Answer" has a certain elegant simplicity that I like. It gets right to the point of what the spell is for. Dean Shomshak

I've never used alternate timelines before because of the cans of worms they seemed to open. I'm taking the plunge with my new campaign. There's still only one Earth and one timeline... but the future changes as time travelers and precogs use their knowledge of the future to change events. The most important NPC, the gadgeteer hero Doctor Future, is both preconitive and has a time machine: He gathered the PCs from various doomed futures to make sure those futures never happen. Meanwhile, several other heroes and villains are time travelers who seek either to create particular futures or prevent them from happening. I'm not sure if this fits the OP's criteria of interest, but I'll describe the doomed futures of the PCs if anyone wants. Dean Shomshak

Same here. My "Fantasy Europa" alternate-history setting had dozens of countries reaching from the Urals to the Atlantic, plus the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. I used, like, three in the first campaign. Second campaign started in Burgundy, moved to the Papal city of Avignon, and from there across the Atlantic to the Caribbean islands and a war against post-Aztecs. Third campaign was all in part of Italy. I didn't use much of the setting but by God, I knew that world. I was younger then, and insane. I don't generally use "good" and "evil" sides, but may have "basically decent" and "highly damaged in a dangerous way" societies. The post-Aztecs with the floating pyramid-temple barge and magic by mass human sacrifice were pretty nasty. But, hey, mass human sacrifice was an Aztec thing even before contact with European colonists added some deadly new resentments. In my more recent "Magozoic" D&D campaign, the primary antagonist was a ruthlessly conquering empire led by a brilliant, obsessed megalomaniac, but the PCs eventually found that the Evil Overlord was as much a victim as anyone -- a sock puppet for past glories and powers that blindly sought to become real again. They still had to destroy him, of course, but by then there was little of the original man left. For that campaign I designed a region with more than a dozen countries and lots of little enclaves, but only a few of them became settings for PC activity. Dean Shomshak

The three aliens sound like a good setup to let super-detective characters (and mad thinker players) shine, as they pull together clues that the three criminal agencies that seem to compete with each other actually serve the same cause (sort of). Or the reason for the three competing branches of the one agency. It still needs a "cover story" reason for trying to conquer the world. Even if most agents and supervillains are just mercs, the aliens need to tell them something. If I may be so immodest, my old "Megavillains" article back in Digital Hero #3 gives a good list of motivations that can work for criminal super-agencies as well as for master villains. If you don't have it handy, I can suggest a few. Dean Shomshak

Seems to me your first big question to answer is why the leaders want to conquer the world. Second is how they convince a bunch of agents to risk their lives for this goal. Third is how they acquired the resources to become a meaningful threat instead of a tiny committee of nutjobs. "Nazis" has been done already. "Just plain greedy megalomaniac evil" has been done already, and is boring. Look for a new spin. Dean Shomshak

And Giacomo Sylvestri, AKA the immortal Patriarch of his Satanist clan, murmurs, "My work is almost done." Mad egotist that he is, imagining it was all his work that led humanity to this dire condition. But whatever the reason, the Dragon is almost free... Dean Shomshak

Incidentally, toneight's NOVA episode, "Alien Planets Revealed," includes a segment on modeling climates for tide-locked worlds around red dwarf stars. In brief: Windy. Dean Shomshak

At some point I'd like to do something with a world in 3:2 resonance, like Mercury. Days and nights, but very long -- and because sometimes the planet's motion in its orbit is faster than its rotation, you might see the sun periodically reverse direction in its apparent motion across the sky. I imagine a world with day and night each an Earth-month long. Dawn sees your local area frozen. As the sun slowly rises, the land thaws out. The Morning Ecosystem wakes up. For a time the land is lush with vegetation and animal life. But there are also powerful storms as the warming air interacts with the colder air of parts of the planet that are still cold. As the long day progresses, though, it gets hotter and drier. The plants and animals of morning spread their seeds and die, retreat to dens, and are otherwise replaced by the semiarid Noon and desert Afternoon ecosystems. As the sun slowly sets, the land slowly cools and the Evening ecosystem wakes up and takes over. The rains begin, and another band of storms reaching pole to pole. As twilight gives way to night, rain turns to sleet and snow. Gradually the land freezes and the hunters of the Night awaken. And there are tides. Vast slow tides that rise and fall hundreds of feet, sweeping hundreds of miles in and out, so continents change shape over the course of the day. The immense Tidelands have their own cycle of ecologies. Only the swiftest travelers can cross them, either at high tide in boats or low tide by land, before the surging water dooms them. It would be a great setting, I think, but a hell of a lot of work to design everything. Dean Shomshak

No no, red dwarf stars shine longerthan Sunlike stars. It's the brighter, more massive stars that burn out faster. So there's billions of years more for life to form. You probably still need to apply your Divine GM Handwavium to deal with other problems: notably, red dwarfs are almost all prone to gigantic solar flares that can be much brighter than the star itself. What's worse, the blast of charged particles from the flares will gradually blast off the atmosphere. (Unless the planet has a really-really strong magnetic field? Many unknowns here.)(Or yeah, it's magic.) But a very atmospheric Fantasy or Planetary Romance setting. A quest into the frozen Dark Side where the sun never shines, yeah! Dean Shomshak