DShomshak

Master of the Game
 
This 'gentleman' (and let's leave it at that, shall we ?) is a master manipulator. Trained in martial arts as self defence as he is a rich man and thus a kidnap target which is why he learned it. That is the official reason. He plays the long game gaining money through blackmail, robbery and intimidation carried out by any number of disposable pawns. He has an iron will and cannot be mind controlled, be 'convinced' by mental illusions or read by telepathy. He can destroy someone by one major revelation or by a series of minor revelations building up pressure on them so that they are undone. People have committed suicide or committed murder due to the actions of 'The Master of the Game'.
The crime fighting detective Rex Dangerfield has managed to sabotage several of the 'Master's' schemes and so must pay as the hero is trying to uncover the real identity of the villain. The reason that the Master has failed to pinpoint Rex in real life is that the hero is a woman who shapeshifts into the hero identity.

The Society Gal
 
Miriam Petrovica's name comes from long ago, the halcyon days of the 1920s, when she had a habit of taking the society pages by storm every few years. She'd hang out with the rich and the beautiful, do some scandalously outlandish things, have an affair or two, and find "the right man" and get married. The right man was invariably rich, young and handsome...and dead inside two years. At which point Miriam would pop up again in Paris or New York or Berlin and do it all again.
 
It was the Golden Age hero The Black Fedora who exposed her. Miriam was a monster. Rather literally - she was created by a group of medical students using the forbidden notes of Doctor Victor Frankenstein. Their copies of his notes were incomplete, and they improvised, so Miriam seems quite different from her fellow created beings - she is beautiful, scarless, and was able to fit into society fairly easily. But she also has an unending thirst for human spinal fluids, which she has learned to tap gradually and painlessly through skin contact, slowly killing her lovers or husbands. As long as she has a steady supply, she doesn't age. In addition, she naturally secretes powerful pheromones, making her near-irresistible to men or women. If she actually cares about someone, she will end the relationship before they are seriously harmed - but that is rare indeed. And she does like money...
 
The Black Fedora tried to kill Miriam (he was that sort of mask), but her inhuman strength and toughness almost ended him. So he did the next best thing: He went to the papers. In days Miriam's face and story were all over the world, making her an outcast in the very circles she used to dominate. 
 
For decades, Miriam has been forced to hide in dreary suburbia, drifting from victim to victim. Several times she has tried to find out who The Black Fedora really was, to no avail. She finally gave up in the late 1950s when the surprisingly long lived vigilante disappeared from the public eye entirely. But her hate festered.
 
But today, there's a new man who's taken up the old mantle. The new Black Fedora isn't a killer like his predecessor (and, though no one but he knows it, grandfather), but he's got the same "mystic affinity with the night" (chameleon-weave cloak), "ability to befuddle the senses" (narcotic gas pellets) and "powers of evasion" (good training in Aikido).
 
Miriam really wants to kill him, slowly and painfully. But her first attempt was a botch - he was seemingly immune to her charms, and exposed her again! (The new Black Fedora is both gay and, due to a little accident with those gas pellets, anosmic - he has no sense of smell, making her pheromones useless against him.)
 
The papers have hung that old "Society Gal" moniker on Miriam, but this time she's playing up to it - and playing for keeps.

There are a few other godlike entities from the Qliphoth besides the Kings of Edom who have had an official impact on Champions Earth. Early Hero Universe books claimed that the Elder Worm worshiped the Kings, but that was retconned with Champions Beyond.  Per that book the Worm worship a pantheon of dozens of Qliphothic entities, with sacrifices of sapient beings. During the Malvan war the Elder Worm sacrificed the entire population of a planet, over 7 billion sapients, to conjure one of their gods bodily into the galaxy. These beings are described as "akin to, but not identical with, the shadowy Kings of Edom." (CB p. 208)
 
Another class of godlike Qliphothic being are called "the Presences Beyond."  They transformed the Atlantean rebel wizard, Dalsith the Orphan, into the terrible Sharna-Gorak the Destroyer, who brought about the Cataclysm that ended the Altantean Age. They are also responsible for empowering the alternate-Earth version of James Harmon as Shadow Destroyer, the faux-Doctor Destroyer introduced into continuity by Cryptic Studios after they bought the Champs IP.
 
(BTW the Qliphoth and the Kings of Edom became a major component of the Champions Online MMORPG; but how Cryptic presented them is nearly unrecognizable from our tabletop RPG version. OTOH that game names two of the "Bleak Ones," the gods who created the Lemurian race, as Esleggua and Orogtha, the names of two Kings of Edom.)
 
Neither the Elder Worm, Dalsith, nor Shadow Destroyer ever achieved true communion with the entities they propitiated. They believe those beings are pleased by their sacrifices, and grant them knowledge and power in exchange, but they're just too alien to beings from our "positive" universes to really be sure of their motives and responses. Like the Kings of Edom themselves.
 
 

The way I wrote it, the Kings are bound in "hidden, empty prison dimensions and barren worlds" (Arcane Adversaries, p. 41). These can be Qliphothic, but don't have to be. Keeping in mind that these labels are human attempts to classify things that humans do not entirely understand. Is the prison dimension of D?eizzhorath the Dissolver qliphothic? It extends through all space and time, and other dimensions as well, outside any system of classification.
 
That's an important aspect of how I wrote the Kings as a class. One of their chief defining characteristics is that they don't fit in standard categories. They aren't aliens, although some aliens (such as the Elder Worm) serve them. They aren't mystic entities or dimension lords, though some mystics call upon their power. Even calling them "qliphothic" is to try forcing them into a box in which not all of them fit. Even a label such as "Kings of Edom" is an attempt to put them in a box.
 
Dean Shomshak

I Googled average dinosaur size and there's an answer! (Didn't see that coming.) It seems a dinosaur is actually mass. 
 
 
I think that settles it. 1 metric dinosaur = 1 American bison. 
 
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. 

The way I wrote it, the Kings are bound in "hidden, empty prison dimensions and barren worlds" (Arcane Adversaries, p. 41). These can be Qliphothic, but don't have to be. Keeping in mind that these labels are human attempts to classify things that humans do not entirely understand. Is the prison dimension of D?eizzhorath the Dissolver qliphothic? It extends through all space and time, and other dimensions as well, outside any system of classification.
 
That's an important aspect of how I wrote the Kings as a class. One of their chief defining characteristics is that they don't fit in standard categories. They aren't aliens, although some aliens (such as the Elder Worm) serve them. They aren't mystic entities or dimension lords, though some mystics call upon their power. Even calling them "qliphothic" is to try forcing them into a box in which not all of them fit. Even a label such as "Kings of Edom" is an attempt to put them in a box.
 
Dean Shomshak

The way I wrote it, the Kings are bound in "hidden, empty prison dimensions and barren worlds" (Arcane Adversaries, p. 41). These can be Qliphothic, but don't have to be. Keeping in mind that these labels are human attempts to classify things that humans do not entirely understand. Is the prison dimension of D?eizzhorath the Dissolver qliphothic? It extends through all space and time, and other dimensions as well, outside any system of classification.
 
That's an important aspect of how I wrote the Kings as a class. One of their chief defining characteristics is that they don't fit in standard categories. They aren't aliens, although some aliens (such as the Elder Worm) serve them. They aren't mystic entities or dimension lords, though some mystics call upon their power. Even calling them "qliphothic" is to try forcing them into a box in which not all of them fit. Even a label such as "Kings of Edom" is an attempt to put them in a box.
 
Dean Shomshak

The way I wrote it, the Kings are bound in "hidden, empty prison dimensions and barren worlds" (Arcane Adversaries, p. 41). These can be Qliphothic, but don't have to be. Keeping in mind that these labels are human attempts to classify things that humans do not entirely understand. Is the prison dimension of D?eizzhorath the Dissolver qliphothic? It extends through all space and time, and other dimensions as well, outside any system of classification.
 
That's an important aspect of how I wrote the Kings as a class. One of their chief defining characteristics is that they don't fit in standard categories. They aren't aliens, although some aliens (such as the Elder Worm) serve them. They aren't mystic entities or dimension lords, though some mystics call upon their power. Even calling them "qliphothic" is to try forcing them into a box in which not all of them fit. Even a label such as "Kings of Edom" is an attempt to put them in a box.
 
Dean Shomshak

Speaking of contagious plagues... I ran one in my second Keystone Konjurors campaign (playtest for the Ultimate Mystic trilogy). Only in mine, the plague was Barbie.
 
The player of one of the PCs, Artifex, said the Master of Cosmic Craft had made a 0-point Follower for his stylish loft apartment in Babylon: a human-size, living Barbie doll. Live-in housekeeper. I think: Okay. And, well, bed partner. I think: Ew. Then think: MUAH HA HA HA! Because Barbie is a powerful archetype, one of the best known toys in the world, and a focus of bizarre obsessions. Plus there's that manically/creepily cheerful song by Aqua. "I'm a Barbie girl, In a Barbie World. Life in plastic -- it's fantastic!"
 
It started as apparently a different adventure, I think there was a fire demon. Anyway, some bystanders get hit in the fighting, and one of them partly melts instead of getting burned. He's a living plastic mannikin. He also has no soul. The PCs find other soulless plastic people... and they're turning humans into more plastic people. The PCs eventually traced it back to Artifex's Barbie simulacrum, who is absorbing all the reality from the transformed people and growing into a nascent cosmic entity; also turning Artifex's apartment into a colorful molded plastic Barbie World. Called on this, Barbie tells Artifex to defend her, which he finds he must do: He was Barbie's first victim and working for her all along. Artifex tries to convince the others that this is a good thing. There is no old age, sickness or death in Barbie World. The Dragon would be destroyed. The others did manage to get through to him and convince him to turn against Barbie and destroy her. So, um, yay?
 
Good times.
 
Dean Shomshak

Go right ahead! The books are written as starting points, not final words.
 
And it's quite interesting so far.
 
Dean Shomshak

If any version of Luther Black succeeds in his ascension, perhaps he absorbs all the other versions of Luther Black. That may indeed be part of the promise and plan he derived from the Liber Terribilis. Becoming a singular entity could indeed be part of his motivation. After all, thinking too much about alternate worlds can drive one mad... (review Niven's "All the Myriad Ways.")
 
The Kings of Edom themselves are definitely singular. There are no alternate Vulshoths or Dizzhoraths. They are too, well, "Outside the System" to exist in multiples.
 
Dean Shomshak

Trump and his family also observed the entire search via surveillance camera.
 
 
Yes, Trump loudly announced that he would not fight the unsealing of the warrant, but pointedly did not release his copy.
 
Politico has early details on the nature of the classified documents and the investigations into Trump:

 
 
Russian media is openly calling for Trump to "visit" Moscow where the FSB can protect him from all this.
 
edit: Just looked it up, it appears the maximum penalties for espionage are life imprisonment or the death penalty.

I'm a little conflicted. On the one hand, it would be horrible if he sold that kind of information to anyone. On the other, if convicted, he could potentially go visit the Rosenbergs. 

declare it a Personal Focus (as opposed to Universal) just define 'Personal' a bit wider

Given the number of worlds and peoples Istvatha V;han rules, it is virtually certain that some of those worlds generated Umaginal Reals. I haven't read Book of the Empress, so I can't say if anything like this is described there. Regardless, this field seems wide open for GMs to invent their own. My little e-book, Spells of the Devachan: Thaumaturgy from the Sorcerer's Galaxy (available from the HERO Store) includes brief descriptions of some alien Imaginal Worlds you could easily drop into the CU.
 
IIRC, though, Istvatha V'han has conquered several alternate Earths. This brings up a question I never considered in The Mystic World:  Do those alternate Earths also have alternate Parterres? (I didn't consider it because it's just a whole big can of worms, for a book that was already running long.) My first thought, though, is that the alternate Earths each have their own alternate Parterres... including some Earths where one Parterre or another became so dominant it merged with that Earth. But the Multiverse imposes very strong barriers between alternate Imaginal Realms -- even stronger than between material worlds -- so there's not much possibility of, say, multiple Netherworlds teaming up for a cross-dimensional attempt at conquest.
 
I'd be interested to know if Book of the Empress says anything about how Istvatha V'han deals with the Parterres of the Earths she's conquered. If she leaves them alone, the various godly entities might not object to her conquest. After all, she doesn't generally try to impose or suppress native religions. They also might be reluctant to intervene because it's a setting rule that Earth's spirits are very weak against creatures from the Outer Planes. (A rule created so humanity must rely on its own heroes to stop dimensional conquerors, rather than relying on gods.) So it seems quite possible that on some alternate Earths, V'hanian forces conquered the Parterres as well. Heh, imagine a world where the Mythic Resistance Front is led by Tezcatlipoca, Marduk, Mephistopheles and the Archangel Michael. Yeah, these guys are not going to have an easy time working together.
 
Dean Shomshak

Speaking of contagious plagues... I ran one in my second Keystone Konjurors campaign (playtest for the Ultimate Mystic trilogy). Only in mine, the plague was Barbie.
 
The player of one of the PCs, Artifex, said the Master of Cosmic Craft had made a 0-point Follower for his stylish loft apartment in Babylon: a human-size, living Barbie doll. Live-in housekeeper. I think: Okay. And, well, bed partner. I think: Ew. Then think: MUAH HA HA HA! Because Barbie is a powerful archetype, one of the best known toys in the world, and a focus of bizarre obsessions. Plus there's that manically/creepily cheerful song by Aqua. "I'm a Barbie girl, In a Barbie World. Life in plastic -- it's fantastic!"
 
It started as apparently a different adventure, I think there was a fire demon. Anyway, some bystanders get hit in the fighting, and one of them partly melts instead of getting burned. He's a living plastic mannikin. He also has no soul. The PCs find other soulless plastic people... and they're turning humans into more plastic people. The PCs eventually traced it back to Artifex's Barbie simulacrum, who is absorbing all the reality from the transformed people and growing into a nascent cosmic entity; also turning Artifex's apartment into a colorful molded plastic Barbie World. Called on this, Barbie tells Artifex to defend her, which he finds he must do: He was Barbie's first victim and working for her all along. Artifex tries to convince the others that this is a good thing. There is no old age, sickness or death in Barbie World. The Dragon would be destroyed. The others did manage to get through to him and convince him to turn against Barbie and destroy her. So, um, yay?
 
Good times.
 
Dean Shomshak

Immanentize the Eschaton.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, he sort of knew something was coming. When he emailed me telling what Artifex was doing, I emailed back something along the lines of, "Please tell me this is indeed what Artifex is doing." He took the plunge, and played along when the reveal came.
 
I've been lucky in my players. They were quite good at making their own troubles, which is why the campaign became called "Keystone Konjurors."
 
Dean Shomshak

Speaking of contagious plagues... I ran one in my second Keystone Konjurors campaign (playtest for the Ultimate Mystic trilogy). Only in mine, the plague was Barbie.
 
The player of one of the PCs, Artifex, said the Master of Cosmic Craft had made a 0-point Follower for his stylish loft apartment in Babylon: a human-size, living Barbie doll. Live-in housekeeper. I think: Okay. And, well, bed partner. I think: Ew. Then think: MUAH HA HA HA! Because Barbie is a powerful archetype, one of the best known toys in the world, and a focus of bizarre obsessions. Plus there's that manically/creepily cheerful song by Aqua. "I'm a Barbie girl, In a Barbie World. Life in plastic -- it's fantastic!"
 
It started as apparently a different adventure, I think there was a fire demon. Anyway, some bystanders get hit in the fighting, and one of them partly melts instead of getting burned. He's a living plastic mannikin. He also has no soul. The PCs find other soulless plastic people... and they're turning humans into more plastic people. The PCs eventually traced it back to Artifex's Barbie simulacrum, who is absorbing all the reality from the transformed people and growing into a nascent cosmic entity; also turning Artifex's apartment into a colorful molded plastic Barbie World. Called on this, Barbie tells Artifex to defend her, which he finds he must do: He was Barbie's first victim and working for her all along. Artifex tries to convince the others that this is a good thing. There is no old age, sickness or death in Barbie World. The Dragon would be destroyed. The others did manage to get through to him and convince him to turn against Barbie and destroy her. So, um, yay?
 
Good times.
 
Dean Shomshak

Speaking of contagious plagues... I ran one in my second Keystone Konjurors campaign (playtest for the Ultimate Mystic trilogy). Only in mine, the plague was Barbie.
 
The player of one of the PCs, Artifex, said the Master of Cosmic Craft had made a 0-point Follower for his stylish loft apartment in Babylon: a human-size, living Barbie doll. Live-in housekeeper. I think: Okay. And, well, bed partner. I think: Ew. Then think: MUAH HA HA HA! Because Barbie is a powerful archetype, one of the best known toys in the world, and a focus of bizarre obsessions. Plus there's that manically/creepily cheerful song by Aqua. "I'm a Barbie girl, In a Barbie World. Life in plastic -- it's fantastic!"
 
It started as apparently a different adventure, I think there was a fire demon. Anyway, some bystanders get hit in the fighting, and one of them partly melts instead of getting burned. He's a living plastic mannikin. He also has no soul. The PCs find other soulless plastic people... and they're turning humans into more plastic people. The PCs eventually traced it back to Artifex's Barbie simulacrum, who is absorbing all the reality from the transformed people and growing into a nascent cosmic entity; also turning Artifex's apartment into a colorful molded plastic Barbie World. Called on this, Barbie tells Artifex to defend her, which he finds he must do: He was Barbie's first victim and working for her all along. Artifex tries to convince the others that this is a good thing. There is no old age, sickness or death in Barbie World. The Dragon would be destroyed. The others did manage to get through to him and convince him to turn against Barbie and destroy her. So, um, yay?
 
Good times.
 
Dean Shomshak

Speaking of contagious plagues... I ran one in my second Keystone Konjurors campaign (playtest for the Ultimate Mystic trilogy). Only in mine, the plague was Barbie.
 
The player of one of the PCs, Artifex, said the Master of Cosmic Craft had made a 0-point Follower for his stylish loft apartment in Babylon: a human-size, living Barbie doll. Live-in housekeeper. I think: Okay. And, well, bed partner. I think: Ew. Then think: MUAH HA HA HA! Because Barbie is a powerful archetype, one of the best known toys in the world, and a focus of bizarre obsessions. Plus there's that manically/creepily cheerful song by Aqua. "I'm a Barbie girl, In a Barbie World. Life in plastic -- it's fantastic!"
 
It started as apparently a different adventure, I think there was a fire demon. Anyway, some bystanders get hit in the fighting, and one of them partly melts instead of getting burned. He's a living plastic mannikin. He also has no soul. The PCs find other soulless plastic people... and they're turning humans into more plastic people. The PCs eventually traced it back to Artifex's Barbie simulacrum, who is absorbing all the reality from the transformed people and growing into a nascent cosmic entity; also turning Artifex's apartment into a colorful molded plastic Barbie World. Called on this, Barbie tells Artifex to defend her, which he finds he must do: He was Barbie's first victim and working for her all along. Artifex tries to convince the others that this is a good thing. There is no old age, sickness or death in Barbie World. The Dragon would be destroyed. The others did manage to get through to him and convince him to turn against Barbie and destroy her. So, um, yay?
 
Good times.
 
Dean Shomshak

Speaking of contagious plagues... I ran one in my second Keystone Konjurors campaign (playtest for the Ultimate Mystic trilogy). Only in mine, the plague was Barbie.
 
The player of one of the PCs, Artifex, said the Master of Cosmic Craft had made a 0-point Follower for his stylish loft apartment in Babylon: a human-size, living Barbie doll. Live-in housekeeper. I think: Okay. And, well, bed partner. I think: Ew. Then think: MUAH HA HA HA! Because Barbie is a powerful archetype, one of the best known toys in the world, and a focus of bizarre obsessions. Plus there's that manically/creepily cheerful song by Aqua. "I'm a Barbie girl, In a Barbie World. Life in plastic -- it's fantastic!"
 
It started as apparently a different adventure, I think there was a fire demon. Anyway, some bystanders get hit in the fighting, and one of them partly melts instead of getting burned. He's a living plastic mannikin. He also has no soul. The PCs find other soulless plastic people... and they're turning humans into more plastic people. The PCs eventually traced it back to Artifex's Barbie simulacrum, who is absorbing all the reality from the transformed people and growing into a nascent cosmic entity; also turning Artifex's apartment into a colorful molded plastic Barbie World. Called on this, Barbie tells Artifex to defend her, which he finds he must do: He was Barbie's first victim and working for her all along. Artifex tries to convince the others that this is a good thing. There is no old age, sickness or death in Barbie World. The Dragon would be destroyed. The others did manage to get through to him and convince him to turn against Barbie and destroy her. So, um, yay?
 
Good times.
 
Dean Shomshak