DShomshak

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

IIRC the Justice League teleporters only moved characters between tubes: You stepped in one tube and zap! appeared in another. Sounds like Fixed Points to me. So, buy Fixed Points but Limit the power that it only moves characters between those locations. (-1 Limitation if the target points are truly fixed, -1/2 if any locations are mobile, i.e., Floating Points.)

(Note: If you see a lot of “brs” in angle brackets, it’s because the forum software eliminates my paragraph breaks. I’m trying to restore them by hand using HTML markers. If that doesn’t work I’ll try something else.) That’s a good question, LL, because it touches on how I created the metaphysical underpinnings for the Mystic World. I did not start with a set of metaphysical premises and work out the necessary consequences. When you make up a fictional universe, no consequences are “necessary.” Instead I start with the kind of story I want and backfill the metaphysics to provide pseudo-justification. In this case, the reason is to preserve the threat of dimensional conquerors when humanity’s Imaginal Realms include hundreds of entities built on thousands of points each, who by a strict accounting of game mechanics could squash Skarn or Tyrannon like bugs. Like the Ban, the gods’ inability to affect Outer Planes entities through their magic is a bit of hand-waving to explain why they don’t dominate the CU setting. It’s to keep the focus on humanity and its heroes. So the question is, what story do you want? Then adjust the reasoning to fit. For instance, suppose you want the Land of Legends to be hosed if Tyrannon invades. In that case, Tyrannon and his soldiers are immune to all the magic of the mythic entities, from the high sorcery of Isis to the little glamors of dewdrop fairies. The creatures of myth can only fight the invasion physically. Okay, so “physically” includes dragon-fire and the strength of Heracles, so maybe they aren’t completely hosed, but the Land of Legends probably still needs help from the heroes of Earth. Cue the PCs! But that kind of sucks if the PCs include a faerie knight, a warrior angel or some other mythic entity. Only an idiot GM would declare that most of a PC’s powers, which they paid good character points for, don’t work against a major foe because of mere internal consistency and logic! But lucky for you, Logic is a slut who’ll do anything for anyone. In that case, maybe the inability is specifically limited to gods. The strongest spells of Vainamoinen, Isis and Hermes splash off the Signifers swarming into the Land of Legends, but tengu illusions, satyr panics and troll-hag curses work just fine and Tyrannon has a real fight on his hands. Why should this be so? Umm... It’s the downside of receiving power from worship. This binds the gods to humanity, and the realms of human imagination, to a greater degree than the lesser entities. Ironically, the lesser entities receive greater metaphysical freedom precisely because humans don’t care about them as much. Don’t like that? Okay, go back to the first option, but observe the ways that gods work around the Ban. Gods and other spiritual entities can use similar means to work around their inability to act beyond the Inner Planes. Like, the West African god Ogun can’t fight Tyrannon, but his empowered namesake the hero Ogun can. A projected avatar such as Dion Bach can affect Tyrannon because he’s a quasi-mortal creation of Dionysus, not Dionysus himself. The demigod Chrysaor can fight Tyrannon because he’s a new entity who never received worship or became the subject of myths. Really, any circumstance that can turn a creature from myth to PC can be twisted into a justification for why the character can affect Outer Planes creatures. Even having a Secret Identity as a mortal, or acknowledged membership in a hero team in the mortal world (or a villain team!), might “humanize” a mythic entity enough. Play around with options, see what fits your campaign. Any “official” answer would certainly be wrong for someone’s campaign, so there isn’t one. Dean Shomshak

Oh, another important difference between humans aliens: Although advanced alien races can easily grant individuals power comparable to standard superbeings, they only operate through one or two modes of power. For instance, Zetrians use advanced technology, especially gravity-tech: Officer Pax's space armor and grav-gun are standard for Zetrian cops, and Zetrians wear flight bracelets like Americans wear wristwatches or carry cellphones. OTOH, the Cryon hero Snowmaiden is a saint of her people, equipped with a panopy of miracles. Anyone who visits a Cryon space station can understand everyone else through a miraculous "Gift of Tongues" blessing. The Volantids use sorcery of great power: Common Volantids access potent enchantments through simple mudras they way humans access technology by plugging it into the wall and pressing a button. (Well, the mudras are simple if you have 12 tentacles.) The Arans developed martial arts so powerful that their sifus and senseis can travel in Qi-powered starships... if they don't just karate-chop space to open a portal to another world. But no Zetrian in 10,000 years ever cast a spell or had a prayer answered, while water-wheels are the upper limit of Aran technology. (Cryons are sort of weird, since they blend religion and tech in a powerful theotechnology: psalms and sutras micro-engraved on computer chips, angel-powered starships, and they reshaped their home planetary system into a ringworld that's the biggest freaking prayer wheel in the universe.) Earth is the first pan-paradigmatic world that anyone's ever seen. This gives the great galactic powers reason to be wary. Clearly, Earth's reality is unstable. Yes, this connects to the reason for the sudden genesis of the Superheroic Age -- as the PCs are just beginning to learn. Dean Shomshak

1) I had aliens in my old campaign but never did much with them. When I shifted from "general supers" to my Super-Mage playtest campaigns, aliens got completely ignored. Aliens are an important part of my new campaign setting. OTOH, I'm trying to tone down the mystical: been there, done that. 2)No. And no need for one. I have it that by the time an alien race reaches the stars, they have solved most social problems (as they define them) and have no grounds for conflict with anyone else. The exceptions are nasty little backward cultures -- galactic North Koreas -- or insterstellar Mafias or cultish groups. None of them get very far against their mightier neighbors. Earth attracts their notice because it's still primitive and weak enough that it might be bullied or robbed. This gives rise to the occasional alien supervillain. A few superheroes, such as Officer Pax, are alien cops who see Earth as a chance to do real crime-fighting instead of writing interstellar parking tickets. 3) My aliens range from "bumpheads" with no meaningful difference from humans (such as the Zetrians, who have blue skin and feathers instead of hair) to radically nonhuman (such as the Volantids, who are big intelligent aerial jellyfish, or the Omniac Sphere, which is nanotechnology and may be a single hive-mind instead of a race). As mentioned, the biggest difference is that most aliens live happy, contented lives in happy, contented Utopias. This does not necessarily make them harmless to humanity. 4) The alien robot hive-mind called the Monad (see Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies) has seeded itself on Earth and is a major, ongoing threat to human existence. As part of the setting background, the "Slaver" sect of the biotech-oriented Hyadans tried to subvert humanity (parasitism is a highly successful ecological strategy, after all). When their plot was exposed, the Slaver Hyadans tried to convince human leaders that humanity would still receive net benefit from being enslaved and exploited, and found human rejection puzzling. Hyadans think like the perfectly rational consumers of Classical Economics, dispassionately calculating material gain, risk and loss: They don't understand emotional concepts such as freedom or dignity. Other invasions may happen in the future. Dean Shomshak

Japanese mythology has lots of cool inspiration, including wonderful ghost stories. Kitsune -- fairy foxes -- are also common in Japanese legend and weird tales, but maybe a little too well known? (They can still be part of a Japanese character's background. The legendary onmyoji [mystic] Abe no Seimi supposedly was the half-mortal son of a kitsune.) Also remember that there's more to Japan than the Japanese. There are also the Ainu people of Hokkaido. Bears play a sufficiently important role in Ainu culture and religion that an Ainu werebear might make an interesting character. If the character is a hero, his relationship to Japanese society will be... complicated, as the Japanese have a long history of bigotry against the Ainu. Dean Shomshak

Many years ago when I was but a lad, in an idle moment I wtoe lists for various Alternate Avengers teams. For instance, the All-Science Avengers (Iron Man, Dr. Pym, that sort, the Mystical Avengers (Dr. Strange, Brother Voodoo, Black Knight -- he can be on the Scientific Avengers too, bizarrely enough), the Spinoff Character Avengers (War Machine, Giant-Man II, etc.) My favorite, though, was probably the Backworld Avengers, for an alternate Earth where the well-known heroes were villains and some of the villains were heroes: Radioactive Man, Blacklash, Baron Zemo (atoning for his Nazi father), and so on. Dean Shomshak

It's varied a lot. My Dark Champions gadgeteer Repairman was no faster than his motorcycle could carry him, but he relied on sniping from ambush anyway. At the other extreme, the demigod Chrysaor could fly around the world in less than an hour; but he was in a very high-powered campaign. The fastest character in any campaign I was in (another player's PC), Sky Marshal, was "the living embodiment of flight" and could be anywhere in the world in minutes. Campaigns I've run or been in also vary. While there's usually a home city, some have featured a lot of travel. The Supermage playtest campaigns routinely bopped around the world and through other dimensions: Thanks to multiple characters with EDM, and generous use of Babylon as a shortcut for travel around Earth, these were probably my gaming group's most mobile campaigns. I hope for my new campaign, Avant Guard, to feature a lot of travel. One theme for my new setting is that the world is a lot less centralized in the 21st century: Just as economic/political divisions such as "Developed World" vs. "3rd World" are breaking down and multiple centers of power are emerging, heroes and villains can arise anywhere and go anywhere. The super-action isn't focused on a few hot spots like the US, let alone a single city (the way Marvel tends to focus on NYC). Sure, villains tend to follow the money, so the US, Western Europe, Japan and other wealthy regions see more than their demographic share of action; but many heroes and villains stay home, too. In particular, India and China have their own heroes, and plenty of villains for them to fight. Dean Shomshak

Thank you for answering, LL. I never answered because I never saw the question: For the last 6 months, my forum access has ranged from Extremely Limited, to None. But yes, no magic is required to craft a working Spider Sign. The line between science and magic becomes very blurry when you deal with Edomites: The creatures just don't fit within the categories that humans understand. (Or *think* they understand.) I'm not sure of the context for the Elder Worm question. AFAIK (from Champions Beyond), the only gods they summoned were Edomite and Qliphothic horrors, which do not occupy the same metaphysical category as the gods of Earth such as Tezcatlipoca, Mephistopheles, St. Albert or the Emperor of Babylon. The Ban has no effect on creatures from the Outer Planes, and Qliphothic entities qualify. I haven't read the Book of the Empress, so thank you for the quoted passage, LL. I would imagine that whether alien races have a Ban depends entirely on how they imagine their gods and spirits -- if any. Quite possibly, some species never imagined spiritual entities, and so never created any. At the opposite extreme, some species may never have pushed their concepts of divinity into Otherworlds and sealed them away. In the new campaign setting I'm building, one of the more powerful alien races, the Cryons, possess a hybrid theotechnology: Their starships run on psalm drives, all species can live comfortably on their space stations and communicate without impediment through a continuous miracle, and they restructured their planetary system into a ringworld that's the biggest goddamn prayer wheel in the universe, giving their pantheon sufficient power to drop-kick the likes of Tyrannon into a black hol if he showed his mug around them. Fortunately for the rest of the Galaxy, Cryons are very nice people. Dean Shomshak

5th ed Galactic Champions has the story on page 28. They left to fight some fungoid psionic hive-mind aliens that reproduce like mad strip planets bare like interstellar locusts. These aliens had already ravaged other galaxies and the Milky Way was next on their route. The fight did not go well for the Mandaarians. Dean Shomshak

For some reason, the forum only shows me the first page of anything: Only the first page of threads, and the first 30 posts within a thread. Doesn't seem to be a button to click to reach later pages. (It's probably 'cause my software's obsolete. Oh, well.) Anyway, this concern's Assault's Aussie Champions project. NOVA has been showing a series of programs on Australia's geological and biological history. Apart from scenery porn (gotta put a super's base in the spectacular sandstone cliffs of Sydney Harbor), I particularly noticed the big Mesozoic meteor crater deep in the Outback, and the opalized fossils dug up at Coober Pedy. Story Seed: The Devil's Advocates use the meteor crater as a giant summoning circle in a spell to return Australia to Jurassic conditions. Opal fossils are among the ritual components. Suddenly, the country's all jungle and sarming with dinosaurs. Seismosaurs in Sydney! Therapods in Canberra! That should shake things up a bit! Thing is, would the Aussies want to break the spell and return the continent to its contemporary condition? I mean, the current plan for dealing with the giant saltwater crocodiles is Croc Awareness classes: The beasts eat people, sure, but they also bring in tourists. An insouciant people, Australians. Dinos wouldn't be too big a step. Dean Shomshak

The Punic Wars would be a good time for a Champions campaign. During the wars themselves, you have a "Golden Age" campaign, with Rome versus Carthage instead of Allies versus Axis. In between, the style could be more "Cold War." Carthage makes a worthy replacement for the Axis or (for more Silver/Bronze Age campaigns) the Communist countries: Phoenician religion was big on burning children alive as offerings to various gods. (The Phoenicians and Carthaginians left very little written material to present their POV, but archeologists are pretty sure the human sacrifice was real and not just enemy propaganda.) Hannibal as Red Skull or Baron Zemo? Dean Shomshak

Getting back to Roman history... In 100 BC, the social trends that lead to the Republic becoming an Empire are already pervasive. With the destruction of Carthage decades before, Rome faces no great threats from abroad... so there is no check to the ambitions or hatreds of parties and leaders. In this period, the highest levels of political conflict are often resolved with assassination and street violence. The popular reformist Gracchus brothers have already been murdered by their political enemies (in 133 and 121 BC). Rome's most recent major war, the Numidian Campaign or Jugurthine War (112-105 BC), was a case of "sorrows of empire": An allied king gets overthrown by his brother, appeals to Rome to honor its treaty obligations. The war was fought with bribes in the Senate as much as by the legions in Africa. The Roman commanders, Marius and Sulla, defeat Jugurtha -- and begin a rivalry that will later tear Rome apart in civil war. Marius, a low-born Roman who married into the aristocracy, leads the Popular Party. Sulla is the favorite of the patricians. When their conflict boils over into civil war in 90 BC, Sulla's forces win and drive Marius into exile. At the same time (91 BC), the cities of southern Italy rebelled against Rome. Technically, these remained sovereign allies, but were treated as subjects. Sulla's forces also defeated these rebels in a conflict sometimes called the Social War, though it was as much political as military: Cities were split from the alliance by promises to grant them full Roman citizenship and rights. The Popular Party regrouped under Marius' son, leading to another civil war in 82 BC. Sulla won and was declared dictator for life. Though he resigned from dictatorship in 79 BC, he set the precedent for Julius Caesar and Imperial rule. All this seems well suited for a Roman Dark Champions campaign. The greatest danger to Rome comes from within. Dean Shomshak

I can't take too much credit for the Coinwraiths. Various writers have used Judas' 30 pieces of silver as powerful, malign magic items: Notably, in Jim butcher's "Dresden Files" series, each coin is a conduit for a demon. Whoever touches a coin can be possessed by the demon and take its form. The "Order of the Blackened Denarii" could be ported into a Champions setting as a supervillain team, easy-peasy. (Though, do you want a team with up to 30 members?) Dean Shomshak

The .pdf loaded for me, and it looks extremely useful Thank you! Dean Shomshak

Back in 2005, someone posted a request for an alternate history in which the Roman Empire fell during the lifetime of Jesus. Some people made good suggestions about working in Arthurian legendry. I would have liked to contribute, but couldn't get the forum of that time to let me post! So I never got a chance to share this little bit of foolery. It may supply some loosely-relevant inspiration for a Roman Champions campaign, though ------------ Somebody had a good point about the need for the alternate history to be good for a supers game. So let’s see what sort of alternate 21st century we can get that’s suitable for an exciting adventure. How about High Fantasy? 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, and 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, Pontius Pilate is stranded by a crumbling empire and caught in a three-way power struggle with Herod and the Judean religious establishment. He 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. Curious, he talks more to Jesus, and likes what he hears. He 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 Jesus. 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 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. The rest of Europe and the Near East break 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. He 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 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 somewhat. 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!