DShomshak

We have spent two years trying to keep Covid out of the house to protect our frail and now bedridden mother. Vaccination, boosters, masking whenever we leave the house. Yesterday, my brother tested positive, with a second test for confirmation. We are now trying to keep my brother as far from our mother as possible, as much as possible, but we can't afford to, like, send him to a hotel for a week. I am terrified. CORRECTION: I just thought of a way to get him out of the house for a week that's in our budget. I hope he agrees, and it's not too late to prevent contagion. Dean Shomshak

mentalists are the other well-defined class of Powers. I'm not sure there's any point to analyzing Energy Projectors, Martial Artists, or Others. Supernatural: 7 characters; 16% Mutant/Mutate: 18 characters; 40% Robot: -- Enchantment: 2 characters; 4% Weird Science: 4 characters; 9% Cyborg: -- Sorcerer: 11 characters; 24% Inventor: 2 characters; 4% Training: -- Weapon: 1 character; 2% Alien: 4 characters; 9% Other: 1 character; 2% Complex: -- Male: 31 characters; 69% Female: 14 characters; 31% Other: -- TOTAL: 45 characters That there would be lots of mutant mentalists did not surprise me. Neither did the sorcerers, since doing things to people's minds is classic magic. But I am surprised at how few sci/tech-based mentalists there are. This seems like a good area for introducing new characters. Dean Shomshak

Is it worth parsing the CV roster the other way? I'll try it first for BRICKS. Supernatural: 9 characters; 12% Mutant/Mutate: 14 characters; 18% Robot/Construct: 3 characters; 4% Enchantment: 14 characters; 18% Weird Science: 17 characters; 22% Cyborg: 1 character; 1% Sorcerer: 1 character; 1% Inventor: 7 characters; 9% Training: -- Weapon: 7 characters; 9% Alien: 6 characters; 8% Other: 2 characters; 3% Complex: -- Male: 64 characters; 84% Female: 10 characters; 13% Other: 2 characters; 3% TOTAL: 76 characters Nothing here surprises me much, given the general shortage of cyborgs and heavy emphasis on magical characters. This time, I took the trouble to not count origins that don't contribute to super-strength, such as Herculan's space armor or the Shadow Queen's sorcery. The Inventors and Weapon users can be combined, as powered armor wielders. Though I would hope a future edition could include more super-strong women. Dean Shomshak

When Nancy Pelosi announced her coming retirement from Democratic House leadership, one of the news programs I listen to said she'd been one of the strongest House speakers of all time, and went into her particular political talents that earned her this rating. Like, she knows everything about everyone in her caucus. Discussing Kevin McCarthy, I have heard that Pelosi has been openly contemptuous of his political skills, or lack of them. I would guess that if he gets the speakership he has sought so long, he will be one of the *weakest* Speakers of all time. Dean Shomshak Of *course* they want to gut the ethics office. <eyeroll> Dean Shomshak

Since we're discussing campaign creation, I'll be immodest enough to post a link to the thread I did about my own Champions campaign setting, the Millennium Universe. I am not sure how useful this is, since I create most of my own material, but it's an example of how someone else did it. https://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/94135-millennium-universe-overview/ Some things here you probably should *not* do, like the timeline. It amused me to create it, but I have never seen a setting timeline that was any use to players or GMs. As Duke Bushido says, most players *do not care.* I am not sure a timeline is even useful to GMs, as a way to keep the world internally consistent. Because players probably aren't paying attention closely enough to notice any inconsistencies. A lot of this is just for my own amusement. I also hoe that a few of the dossiers helped players get a feel for the setting. I now think that illustrative anecdotes are more helpful than facts and figures about how many supers are in the world, or things like that. My players know there are other supers in the world, heroes and villains; but most of them will never need to be described. Much of the Millennium Universe remains very sketchy -- just brief notes about things that might be interesting to develop later, as needed. Dean Shomshak

It took many years of nagging and a few threats of legal action to get paid for the "Mystic" trilogy. (And since I wrote far more than contracted, DOJ effectively got a free book.) To be fair, it took DOJ so long because they weren't being paid by distributors. At one point they offered me partial payment in product or office furniture. My father, who ran several small businesses in his lifetime, was not impressed. The bulk of payment came only when Cryptic bought out DOJ. For my Digital Hero articles presenting the Dark Champions hero Repairman and villain Bloodmoney, I gave up and said I'd accept payment in kind -- a CD-ROM of the complete run of Digital Hero, to that point. Dean Shomshak

Well, yes, but I thought it unseemly to bring it up. If DOJ had been able to pay me in a timely manner for the UMY Trilogy, I might have rebalanced things by writing The Ultimate Gadgeteer with a new set of High Tech Enemies. 😇 Dean Shomshak

Just sorcerer. At first I thought both sorcerer and inventor, but -- even though he has the tech skills, his Powers and minions all seem very mystical. The tech aspects seem just, well, fglavor to make him "a different kind of sorcerer." Possibly the way he's used in Champions Online shows more of his tech aspect, but I don't see it in his CV1 description. I do include the Engineer as a "minions on demand" Mastermind. I didn't think of Cadaver, treating him just as a tech-based Mentalist, but since his whole schtick is "horde on demand," he might qualify. I should also take another look at Cairngorm to see how much institutional support he gets -- but if Martika duQuesne counts as a Mastermind for leading a Circle of the Scarlet Moon cell, I don't see why Cairngorm should not for leading the Dark Druids. I didn't think of Thorn's plant monsters, either, but that qualifies. But Syzygy does not because the attack orbs are actually part of it, Duplicates, not minions. Bromion is very much on my list of Masterminds, as he has a whole dimension's worth of minion support! The Millworks could be greatly expanded in detail to emphasize this. Dean Shomshak

I don't know what superhero game supplement might have mentioned "Emerald City," but it's Seattle's self-chosen pseudonym. And of course we all know there's the one in Oz, but bringing *that* into your superhero setting might raise some eyebrows... Dean Shomshak

...Because Mastermind is a "meta-origin" that usually adds to other origins. What are the most popular *other* origin types for CV masterminds? Supernatural Being: 7 characters; 25% Mutant/Mutate: 3 characters; 11% Robot: 1 character; 4% Enchantment: 3 characters; 11% Weird Science: 1 character; 4% Cyborg: 1 character; 4% Sorcerer: 10 characters; 36% Inventor: 4 characters; 14% Training: 1 character; 4% Weapon: 3 characters; 11% Alien: 2 characters; 7% Other: 1 character; 4% Complex: -- No Other Origin Type: 1 character; 4% The CV lineup of masterminds leans pretty heavily toward the mystical. In part this is because so many of the supernatural bad guys, such as Tyrannon, Takofanes, and Tezcatlipoca, are also sorcerers. Conversely, some characters count as masterminds because they Summonj minions as needed. But it's still a pretty heavy tilt that I genuinely did not expect. Dean Shomshak

\Now let's get to the MASTERMINDS. I added a couple since beginning this project as I noticed that some villains had institutional support that wasn't listed on their character sheets, such as the Overbrain's mentally enslaved scientists and labs, or Borealis's admirers. Other people are on the list for their ability to Summon minions -- I just recently noticed that Black Paladin gained this in his CV iteration. I may still be missing a few. Brick: 5 characters; 18% Energy Projector: 12 characters; 43% Martial Artist: 2 characters; 7% Mentalist: 7 characters; 25% Other: 7 characters; 25% Complex: 9 characters; 32% Male: 23 characters; 82% Female: 4 characters; 14% Other: 1 character; 4% The relatively low proportion of bricks is misleading: IIRC at least 4 of the Complex characters have the requisite degree of super-strength. Actually, only 6 characters have only one class of Powers (including Franklin Stone, the sole "pure" Mastermind he has no "powers" except for being smart, rich and ruthless). But this is not the only worthwhile way to analyze Masterminds... Dean Shomshak

Oh, the Brain Trust has more than one hard-to-classify character. I classified Ape-Plus as "Alien" in that he's not human, altered human, or a supernatural creature, but if you want to file him under "Other," I understand. That's what I did with the Overbrain, who might have been a cyborg if he'd been stuck in the jar with waldoes and sensors plugged in -- but the text says that sometimes he just levitates around as a disembodied brain. At a stretch, developing super-powers after loosing the encumbrance of a body might be considered especially Weird Science, but in the end I just shook my head and labeled him as "Other." And there's Lynx: Surgical modification there, but other stuff too, mostly unspecified; I settled on Weird Science, but maybe the restructuring included enough artificial stuff to make her a subtle cyborg? Induced mutation beyond making her grow fur? She could have been another "Other." Most of the "Other" characters, though, are in that category because their entries list their origins as unknown. Dean Shomshak

Kudos on wanting to spread supers around the world. Even if you choose one city as the "home turf" for the PCs ane set a lot of the action there, people move around the world a lot nowadays. This would seem especially reasonable for supervillains, who might want to stay a step ahead of the law or who seek richer spoils than are available in just one city or country. Beyond that, the most important "super demographics" question is how "open" you want the campaign to be. Like, do you want intense, ongoing conflicts between a limited number of characters and factions? Or do you want the freedom to bring in new characters without worrying how they fit into some larger scheme? If you want a wide-open setting with an indefinite number of supers running around, your campaign prep should focus on the major characters and factions. For instance, is there an international law enforcement force analogous to the CU's UNTIL or Marvel's SHIELD? (I make no judgment either way.) Conversely, is there a world-spanning criminal group comparable to VIPER? Who are the Master Villains at the apex of power? This is a particularly good place to show that supers aren't all Americans. (Like, in my own campaign Professor Proton comes from India, the chaos-goddess Tiamat comes from the Middle East, the ecoterrorist Baron Frost is European, the robotic Monad appeared first in China, the Warlock comes from South America, and so on.) Are there any factions that cut through the supers community, such as Marvel mutant supremacists vs. mutant haters, with advocates of coexistince in between? Or for something not quite so done to death, the mystical villains in the CU who seek a Dark Renaissance of magic? That's enough to start. Dean Shomshak

ALIENS is sort of a meta-origin, as I said before, but I might as well do a breakdown of them, too. Brick: 7 characters; 41% Energy Projector: 10 characters; 59% Martial Artist: 2 characters; 12% Mentalist: 4 characters; 24% Other: 1 character; 6% Complex: 3 characters; 18% Male: 10 characters; 59% Female: 6 characters; 35% Other: 1 character: 6% TOTAL: 17 characters. Bricks and energy projectors predominate about as much as I expected. The most distinctive feature I see is that this is one of the more gender-balanced categories. Dean Shomshak

Off in my campaign's background is a government hero who wears powered armor with cold-projection weapons. The government of Taiwan built the powered armor using salvaged Monad tech, and armed it with reconditioned weapons captured from the villain Baron Frost. his code name translates as "Ice Machine." Only after he was publicly announced did anyone notice that this is... not as impressive in English as it is in Chinese. Still, the guy is better off than the Eritrean super-soldier with non-ranged powers of psychic disruption, whose name can be translated as "Bad Touch." What? Dean Shomshak

Yeah, there are a few. But it's still a stretch. And Arrowhead would have been perfect for the Training-based energy projector/weapon master... but his entry does make clear it's a mutant power. So he's on my character spreadsheet as "Mutant," not "Training." Moving on, WEAPON Brick: 10characters; 23% Energy Projector: 34 characters; 77% Martial Artist: 11 characters; 25% Mentalist: 3 characters; 7% Other: 5 characters: 11% Complex: 2 characters; 5%% Male: 37 characters; 81% Female: 7 characters; 16% Other: -- TOTAL: 44 characters This is probably the most debatable and least revealing category. It's just too easy to add some kind of Focus-based Power to a character, and is it really important to the character? Even when a weapon or other Focus is clearly important, many villains also have other Powers that also place them in other categories. For instance, the 11 bricks: 4 of them (Warlord, Morticus, Ankylosaur, Armadillo) have super-strength from powered armor they did not invent themselves. Dark Seraph, Force and Temblor, of the Crowns of Krim, gained super-strength from their "Weapons," but apparently as permanent Enchanments that no longer depend on their wearing the crowns. Herculan's super-strength has nothing to do with his space armor: that Focus just gives him some supplemental attacks, movement, and defense (including Life Support). Valak the World-Ravager's Cosmic Halberd is sufficiently formidable a weapon to put him on this list, but he's still a brick and a mentalist without it. Whether Galaxia's super-strength is a permanent gift of her Cosmic Gem is also unspecified (though plausible). So Quite a few characters also appear on both my Training and Weapon lists, because I couldn't decide which mattered more: the weapon or the skill of the person using it. The only clear result is that the CU has a lot of characters who use weapons (of various sorts) to attack at range. This is not exactly surprising. Dean Shomshak

The latest adventure I ran in my "Avant Guard" campaign ended with the PCs blowing up the campaign. I'm not upset: They triggered a land mine I planted in the campaign practically from the beginning. Time travel is a big thing in the campaign. All the PCs were recruited from various doomed futures in order to prevent those futures from happening. Two PCs had been in a previous iteration of the team, in a timeline that was erased. They have seen hints that recent history has been changed other times, too. So, in the course of the adventure the PCs captured a villain called Ravager, who wears a plasma-tech battlesuit: plasma blasters, plasma jets for flight, plasma force field for protection. He's been around practically from the start of the Superheroic Age (in this campaign, 2000) and most plasma super-tech is based on Ravager's -- though everybody knows that he was just a grad student who stole the tech from his faculty advisor, a leading plasma researcher, then killed him and destroyed any records of the tech. Other people heard them arguing. One of the PCs works at a scientific research company. Another scientist there, Dr. Marilyn Jones, specialized in plasma research, trying to reconstruct it all so it can be mass produced instead of held by a few rogue gadgeteers. She's also interested in time travel: A previous adventure had her kidnapped because of her research in sending information back in time through a standing plasma wave. The fight happened at the research facility, and Dr. Jones helped out by shooting Ravager in the back with an experimental plasma blaster she kludged together... but that was very good at penetrating Ravager's force field. It comes out that she's studied him. No surprise there. She also *hates* him. But that doesn't stop the PCs from handing her Ravager's damaged blasty-suit until the Feds and the lawyers say otherwise. She is, after all, the person best qualified to study it. At the end of the adventure, the PCs are tying up loose ends, trying to find why people did what they did. The PC who works at the research lab walks in on Dr. Jones, who is wearing the blasty-suit. She's stripped down the costume part and attached other bits that he recognizes from her temporal physics experiments. He persuades her to explain what she's doing. Doctor Jones is Ravager's daughter, though she hasn't seen him since she was young and he went on the lam as a super-criminal. Her mother changed their names. She believes she can use the modified suit to go back in time to stop her father from killing the great scientist, stealing the tech and becoming Ravager. Everyone will be better off. The PCs are dubious. Time travel is dangerous, you never know how else history will change, etc. They persuade her not to trigger the time-jump just yet. And history changes. Doctor Jones vanishes. There is no Doctor Jones. There never was. Ravager is gone from his jail cell. That villain never existed, either. I call for EGO rolls for each PC, as the life history they remember is overlain by a second set of memories of another timeline. Not everyone succeeds. This is not good for them. Here's what the PCs can now never learn, because they didn't ask the right questions when they had the chance. Ravager didn't invent the tech. Neither did the scientist he supposedly stole it from and killed. One night a massive power surge blacked out half the city of Toronto, where he then lived and worked, as a badly burned woman wearing a fried high-tech suit appeared near him and collapsed. If he'd worked harder to call paramedics, she might have lived. As it was, she died of her burns. He hid the body and took the suit to study. His faculty advisor found him studying the advanced tech, and they quarreled... I created Ravager very early in designing the Avant Guard setting. I introduced the character of Dr. Jones as soon as the PC began working at the lab. Slowly planted the seeds of the climactic scene, then let the PCs influence Dr. Jones' choice. I made no attempt to influence *their* choice. So the setting's history has changed. The causality loop of Ravager's life has been broken. As a long-time villain, he interacted with many other villains and heroes, whose lives all changed now that he never existed. I now have quite a lot of work to do to reboot the campaign. I am an idiot. Has anyone else blown up their campaign, or had the players do it? Dean Shomshak

TRAINING Brick: -- Energy Projector: 13 characters; 42% Martial Artist: 26 characters; 84% Mentalist: 2 characters; 6% Other: 2 characters; 6% Complex: -- Male: 27 characters; 87% Female: 4 characters; 13% Other: -- TOTAL: 31 characters No surprises here. A limitation of "Training" as a category is that it mostly means "martial arts training." There aren't many ways for people to gain super-strength, energy blasts, or mental powers through pure skill. Most of the energy projectors here are also weapon users, such as characters who are really good with guns as well as HTH fighting. Still, I can think of a few options besides dual origin types. Where's the character like Marvell's Bullseye, who can turn any throwable object into a deadly weapon? And while training that leads to mental powers would IMO often qualify as sorcery, super-hypnotists are a thing in comics. So it doesn't have to be as concentrated on martial artists as in the CV books. I see opportunities for creating distinctive characters. Dean Shomshak

Huh. Another Putin critic died after falling out of a window (msn.com) Dean Shomshak

[BEGIN BOXED TEXT] Tephra, That Was Anadem The nearest shadowland to Riwa lies almost 100 miles south of the plateau, along a now-unused spur of the Diamond Road. Once there was a valley between two knots of mountains, its rich soil watered by several small streams. Here was built Anadem, City of Flowers. A high volcanic mountain overlooked the flower-scented city. The folk of Anadem prayed to Heaven in gratitude and joy. Then the volcano erupted so violently as to destroy its eastern flank. A deluge of burning ash swept over the vale of Anadem in minutes, killing everything and everyone. The people had time only for brief prayers. None were delivered, for the gods are weak and inattentive; but many of the people became ghosts. Their death-prayers carried Anadem into the Underworld. The city’s name died with its inhabitants. By day, the valley remains a desolation of barren gray ash where nothing moves except the wind. At night the city of Tephra appears, gray and white gables and towers rising in the starlight. Many among the living and the dead believe that someone in Anadem must have sinned a great sin to offend the volcano’s god. Others suggest the god envied Anadem and destroyed the city out of spite. No one can ask the god, for no one has seen him since the cataclysm. The remains of the mountain, half a mile shorter than before, snarl toward Tephra like the jaw of a skull half-buried in the ground. Its former name is cursed and unspoken. Instead, men call it Anadem’s Pyre. The ghosts of Tephra do not cultivate their ghostly ash-fields or otherwise pretend that they still live. They know they are dead. They could scarcely pretend otherwise, given the seared and seeping ectoplasmic flesh exposed by the blackened, flaking remnants of spiritual skin. The ghosts hate the living out of envy. They still pray, but now they have only one prayer that they offer to Oblivion: May all gods burn. [END BOXED TEXT] ---------- Further explanations of references you can't figure out are available on request. Dean Shomshak

Holy War Tawia of the noble Darhune family dons the regalia of war: a breastplate, a skirt of leather strips, bracers, greaves and helm. Last she dons the silver-gilt mask of a desert jackal. The sisters in her martial order dress likewise, with masks of vulture, lizard and leopard. Tradition says that women must not fight in war, so they wear the visage of beasts instead. In their own chapterhouses, the male nobles don similar panoplies in the colors of their orders: Storm Knights in blue and white, Flame Knights in red and orange, Stone Knights in gray and brown, Maize Knights in green and yellow, and River Knights in green and blue. They paint their faces in their order’s colors instead of wearing masks. The warriors march from their chapterhouses to the plaza and shout, “Riwa and Qoba! Ruhollah and the Risen King!” Similar ceremonies take place in Dolawi. The kings spent a month scheduling the war. Deaths among the aristocracy left both cities short of slaves, for nobles must not go alone to the Black Earth. A war enables the nobles to re-stock. Meeting in battle, knight shouts challenge to knight. They wager handfuls of conscripted peasants on their duels. Tawia wins ten soldiers as slaves for the Darhune. Only the bravest dare to wager their own lives: The victor shall sacrifice the loser to his ancestors. The second day brings the melee. Knights charge at the common soldiers of each city, striving with bola, net and mace to capture additional prisoners. The conscripts bear only padded clubs. On the third day, the two kings duel. Ruhollah loses and so must give 100 of his subjects to the king of Dolawi. “My ancestors demand more,” says King Fodjour. “Double or nothing? I know it’s irregular, but what can I do?” King Ruhollah allows that his ancestors say the same, but suggests they simply duel for another 100 soldiers. Perhaps they shall break even. Secret Conquest Indeed, lately the ancestors demand more every year: more incense, prayers and blood, richer funerals even for the common folk, more beasts and slaves sacrificed at the death of nobles. More wars. Everyone complies. No king would dare seem stingy: He would offend his ancestors and weaken his claim to inherit the Risen King’s reign. Instead of making war once every few years, Qoba has fought two wars already this year. Nobody points out that the Risen King’s law does not include Riwa’s ritualistic slave-taking wars. When the Risen King departed, the lords of the seven cities elected a new high king from among their number. Sore losers turned to civil war. Kings and nobles sacrificed prisoners to strengthen their ancestors, which the ancestors endorsed for their own benefit. The Riwans eventually gave up on high kings, but the wars continued. Limited contact between the living and the dead also means that no Riwan has yet figured out that the new demands don’t come from their ancestors. In fact, the First and Forsaken Lion conquered Riwa-of-the-Underworld four years ago. Most of the Riwan ghosts now labor in the Deathlord’s prayer mills. He destroyed any noble ghosts whom he could not break to his will. Many of the ghosts who manifest in the mortuary ziggurats are imposters. In each city, bogus ancestors tell kings that ceremonial wars are not enough. They should train their knights and soldiers for real wars, marching north and south along the Diamond Road. Dutifully, the kings obey. Already, some launch raids against nearby tribes and villages, capturing entire populations for slaves and sacrifices. They want to be ready when the Final King appears to forge Riwa once more into a great nation… from mortal faults set free. ------------- Dean Shomshak

Riwa About midway between the Lap and Gem, the Diamond Road crosses the plateau of Riwa. Let the caravan move on; linger instead in the plaza of Qoba, one of Riwa’s seven cities. Listen to the bard, descendant of ancient princes, as he sings the Riwayana, epic repository of the country’s history, heroes and lore Four times hath Riwa risen, ruled by mighty kings, And four times hath it fallen through the faults of men. An Age of Gold by glory gained, and lost through treacher’s guile. An Age of Silver subsequent, built and lost for love. A Dragon Age of toil and greed, by plague its vices purged. A new law from the Risen King, by zealous pride undone. A Fifth and Final King shall come: Hear now the prophecy! When Riwa rises ne’er to fall, from mortal fault set free. The Riwayana has five books, each taking a full day to sing, but the fifth book is not yet written. Today, the bard sings only a brief passage from the fourth book as a way to introduce Qoba’s king. Blood and Soil King Ruhollah stands on the high dais before his palace, his body painted black and a maguey thorn in his hand. He thrusts the spine through his earlobe, smears his hand with blood, and raises it high. A priest hands Ruhollah an ear of maize. The king then drives the thorn through his tongue and spits blood onto the dark soil that covers the platform. Finally, he lances his own manhood. He collects the blood in a small bowl and dribbles it over the skull of his grandfather. Thus does Ruhollah enact the covenant of the Risen King and proclaim himself the rightful heir: He hears the words of his ancestors, repays the earth for its life-giving bounty, and acknowledges that life comes from death. The charcoal on his body shows that his flesh comes from the Black Earth and to that darkness must return. Colors of Earth Riwans treat black as the color of both life and death. Strips and dots of Black Earth run along the seasonal streams and ancient qanats that bring water from the mountains. Here the Riwans plant squash, beans and maize. When Riwans die, they return their bodies to the Black Earth to nourish the soil with their flesh and the vital force of their lower souls. Yellow Earth surrounds the farmland. This land is too dry for crops but supports sheep and goats. The half-nomadic herdsmen are not quite respectable in Riwa, for they do not live on land sanctified by their ancestors. Still, they can return to their native villages each year to perform the sacred rites. Yellow is the color of wild things, the world without humanity. Shrines to elementals are painted yellow. The Fire Mountains to the west are the Blue Earth, the sky-land that brings water. Blue is the color of Heaven and a suitable hue for shrines to gods; an auspicious color, but not as good as black. To the East, the plateau ends in a maze of canyons, knife-edged ridges and badlands. Beyond this Ragged Edge stretches the great Southern Desert. Riwans call the desert the Red Earth, the evil land of sandstorms and raiders where death brings no life. Ancient fortresses guard the passes through the Ragged Edge. All seven kings should send troops to the fortresses, for so commanded the Dragon Lords of old. The watch sometimes fails because the modern kings of the city-states cannot agree about which fortress belongs to which king. Some Riwans, especially those living near the Ragged Edge, volunteer. Such wardens cannot be conscripted for other battles. The seven cities of Riwa are Borsuna, Dolawi, Orzad, Qoba, Resht, Uda and Wegál. Of the ruined cities, the most important is Aman-Ri, first and eternal capital of Riwa. Nothing remains of the Golden King’s palace except the great stepped, circular mound that supported it. Nevertheless, every king of Riwa since his reign — both high kings of old and the rulers of the schismed cities of today — crowns himself on the mound of the Golden King. They could not rule otherwise, or at least not rule in Riwa. The Pact of Life and Death Riwans build shrines to placate various useful or important spirits, but they reserve true reverence for their ancestors. They bury their dead in the Black Earth with clothing, food and ornaments for the afterlife. After ten years, Riwans exhume the bones and pack them in clay jars. Wealthier Riwans use urns molded with death masks of the occupants. The jars of poor Riwans merely have a face sketched on the side. In return for prayers and offerings, Riwan ghosts bless and protect their living descendants. Few Riwans encounter ghosts, though. The Risen King taught this covenant of the living and the dead, but also said that each should stay in their own world. Riwa has no shadowlands, so few ghosts have easy access to the living in any case. Matters are different for nobles. Each city has several noble families. The nobles rise and fall in rank based on the number and power of their ancestral ghosts: The aristocracy of the living echoes the aristocracy of the dead. The royal family just has the strongest cohort of ghosts. New deaths can swell that cohort; Lethe shrinks it. Dynasties shift over the decades. The ziggurat of the noble dead dominates a Riwan city’s plaza, overtopping the palaces of the living. Each tier of the ziggurat has crypts cut into its sides where black-glazed urns rest on altars of diorite, receiving sacrifices of incense, grain and blood. The royal family claims the higher tiers and crowning spire. The sacred ziggurat enables the dead to visit their tombs when mortals sacrifice to them, and so advise their heirs. --------------- Dean Shomshak

A gift for Fantasy HERO campaign designers who, like me, are tired of "Well, that's the way D&D does it." There is, after all, other Fantasy. There are even other Fantasy games. I spent several years writing and developing for Exalted, White Wolf Game Studio's game of epic Fantasy -- one of whose enunciated design goals was, "This is not D&D." Inspirations ranging from ancient epics such as the Iliad to modern anime and wuxia. Anyway, toward the end of my involvement with Exalted I wrote a few country descriptions for a project that never came together, leaving them as fanwork. Here's one of them. It is not only a glimpse into the game's setting, Creation, it's an experiment in a different style of setting description: more impressionistic, less like an encyclopedia article. I won't try to explain very much about the setting. For the country of Riwa, the most important background information is that spirits of the dead sometimes continue their existence in an Underworld. Places saturated in death sometimes become Shadowlands where Creation and the Underworld merge at night. Also worth knowing: the High First Age -- the earliest period even most savants know about -- was ruled by the Solar Exalted. Their immense power and long reign still influences many aspects of Creation. They were overthrown by their servants, the Dragon-Blooded or Terrestrial Exalted, wielders of elemental power, in the Low First Age. That Age, too, has passed. The other two kinds of Exalted -- the shapeshifting Lunar Exalted and the fate-weaving Sidereal Exalted -- are much less known to Creation's folk. For ease of reading, I'll break up the text into smaller chunks for multiple posts. DEan Shomshak

In my own campaign, psionic engineering is... well, not as established as battlesuit engineering, but it's a thing. Invented by Dr. Simeon St-Cyr, formerly of the Capella Project, later the supervillain Doctor Synapse, based on alien mind/machine interface technology and the experimental "neural pacemaker" implant that turned an epileptic into the world's first psionic supervillain, Seizure. "Psychotronic" empowerment happens most often the way Doctor Synapse did it, with electronic brain implants, so many mentalists are actually cyborgs. Doctor Synapse invented an amplifier helmet before his death, a technology now used by his clients Apostle and Commander of the Faithful, but it's only a matter of time (and me getting around to write up the character) for someone to develop an entirely external device for inducing psionic powers. Dean Shomshak

inventors Brick: 7 characters; 28% Energy Projectors: 18 characters; 72% Martial Artist: 2 charqacters; 8% Mentalist: 3 characters; 12% Other: 4 characters; 16% Complex: 1 character; 4% Male: 21 characters; 84% Female: 4 characters: 16% Other: -- TOTAL: 25 characters Male chauvinism seems to be alive and well in the world of CU super-science, just like in RL science and academia. The prevalence of energy projectors is perhaps inevitabple: If you can invent weapons, it made sense to invent at least one to attack at range. Still, I think it's a little strange to have Utility and Teleios as the only non-brick, hand-to-hand combatants. The bricks, of course, all have powered armor. Not every powered armor character is an inventor, though: Several of them just acquired their battlesuits. The three mentalists are an odd scattering. Brainchild doesn't reallyt count, since hjis mental powers come from being a mutant. Mirage uses drugs and holography to mess with other peoples' minds. Cadaver is a one-trick pony with his zombification gun. Where are characters like DC's Thinker or Menta, who use high-tech helmets to give themselves psionic powers? (Calling Master Control from 4e...) Wayland Talos is the only "Complex" character because he's the only one who has nothing but his VPP. Oh, and I'm calling these characters "inventors" rather than "gadgeteers" for the sake of Teleios and other potential characters who might devise powers based on biology or other sciences. Dean Shomshak