DShomshak

Well, the question wasn't what someone evil was like, but what someone utterly evil was like. That's... a bit more difficult, though I think LoneWolf gave an excellent description of what demonic evil would feel like from the inside.
 
It's why I don't use "Evil" as a Psych Lim. It's too vague. I try to give something more specific, such as Megalomania, Sadistic, Treacherous, Vindictive, or the like.For instance, Baphomet, as the Demon Emperor of Wrath, has "Loves Causing Destruction and Needless Pain," "Won't Refuse a Fight," and a passel of Berserks. Minion-level Wrath Demons have, "Attacks Anything In Its Way." Scratchets (Imps, basically) have "Loves Nasty Prtactical Jokes." Mephistopheles has "Truthful in Word but Treacherous in Spirit," "Can't Force Anything on Anyone," and "Avoides Combat." Okay, he's implacably dedicated to the ruin of humanity, but that's long-term; it isn't relevant at the moment you face him.
 
Dean Shomshak

A good place to start is that the demon has absolutely no concern for anyone but themselves.  If the action will not benefit them in some way they simply will not do it.  If something will result in a minor benefit to them, but causes major disaster to everything else they will do it.   They can and will pretend to do something nice, but in the end it will benefit them.  
 
Next they look at all others as competitors and they always try to screw their competitors. They use every opportunity to reduce someone else’s plans and resources in case they would be used against them.  Anything another creature has can be a threat to you, so never let anyone get ahead. You never allow anyone to gain more from something than you do if you can help it.  
 
Last is the utter lack of trust in anyone.  You are a monster and so is everyone else, no matter what they say.  Everyone is going to turn on you so doing it first is just being smart.   Good is an illusion that only the weak fall for.  There is no joy and the only comforts you can have are those you take for yourself. You are utterly alone because everyone is going to betray you.     
 

I've heard a lot of high-minded hand-wringing on NPR about the need to find the right message and trusted messengers to vax-and-mask refusers. I speculate that this approach is itself wrong. At least for the 50% of Republicans who tell posters they will never, NEVER! get vaccinated against Covid, a principal motive seems to be defiant rejection of hated authority figures. Therefore, perhaps the best tactic would be for some supremely hated bogeyman from the Left -- Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, or AOC (hm, bogeywomen?) -- to sneer and gloat that Trump's base is killing itself off. The delta variant is so contagious that every unvaccinated, maskless person is going to catch it in the next year or so, and it seems to be more lethal as well. With Congressional seats and state electoral votes coming down to a percent or less, the loss of another couple hundred thousand Republicans can only be good for Democrats. So thanks for the Congressional seats that are going to flip and the White House win in 2024, suckers!
 
At least, to attempt such a ploy would be the high-minded, compassionate thing to do. I intend simply to make popcorn.
 
Dean Shomshak

I've heard a lot of high-minded hand-wringing on NPR about the need to find the right message and trusted messengers to vax-and-mask refusers. I speculate that this approach is itself wrong. At least for the 50% of Republicans who tell posters they will never, NEVER! get vaccinated against Covid, a principal motive seems to be defiant rejection of hated authority figures. Therefore, perhaps the best tactic would be for some supremely hated bogeyman from the Left -- Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, or AOC (hm, bogeywomen?) -- to sneer and gloat that Trump's base is killing itself off. The delta variant is so contagious that every unvaccinated, maskless person is going to catch it in the next year or so, and it seems to be more lethal as well. With Congressional seats and state electoral votes coming down to a percent or less, the loss of another couple hundred thousand Republicans can only be good for Democrats. So thanks for the Congressional seats that are going to flip and the White House win in 2024, suckers!
 
At least, to attempt such a ploy would be the high-minded, compassionate thing to do. I intend simply to make popcorn.
 
Dean Shomshak

More than one poster has mentioned research, choice or incentives in developing magic, as if magic were something that people invented and could shape as they chose. That is not a necessary assumption. IRL people have often believed that magic was ordained by gods or spirits, a legacy of wise ancients to which nothing can be added (though some secrets may be lost and rediscovered), or otherwise not something in which people have any choice -- any more than people have a choice in how gravity works or how the sun crosses the sky.
 
Either option -- external "given" or culturally developed art -- has its utilities for a setting. B ut it is not a trivial design choice.
 
Dean Shomshak

More than one poster has mentioned research, choice or incentives in developing magic, as if magic were something that people invented and could shape as they chose. That is not a necessary assumption. IRL people have often believed that magic was ordained by gods or spirits, a legacy of wise ancients to which nothing can be added (though some secrets may be lost and rediscovered), or otherwise not something in which people have any choice -- any more than people have a choice in how gravity works or how the sun crosses the sky.
 
Either option -- external "given" or culturally developed art -- has its utilities for a setting. B ut it is not a trivial design choice.
 
Dean Shomshak

More than one poster has mentioned research, choice or incentives in developing magic, as if magic were something that people invented and could shape as they chose. That is not a necessary assumption. IRL people have often believed that magic was ordained by gods or spirits, a legacy of wise ancients to which nothing can be added (though some secrets may be lost and rediscovered), or otherwise not something in which people have any choice -- any more than people have a choice in how gravity works or how the sun crosses the sky.
 
Either option -- external "given" or culturally developed art -- has its utilities for a setting. B ut it is not a trivial design choice.
 
Dean Shomshak

For further inspiration, I suggest Astro City #17 (January 2015), in which Kurt Busiek presented an entire cosmology of layered microverses -- the Molecuworlds, Subatomica, the Quarklands, the Unterverse below them all, and others unnamed -- in only 24 pages. Plus another dimension, the Non. All in a cracking good story, too. The man's a flaming genius.
 
Dean Shomshak

A while back I was helping a player of Champions Online brainstorm a new character derived from the Zodiac Working. She wanted an aggressive super with a warrior heritage, but didn't want to deal with a father who was a preeminent demon like Baphomet. Because of the descriptions of the spells from each planetary demon in Astralle's write-up, and the associations of the planet Mars with violence and destruction, but also with defense (many thanks to Dean for his discussion of Hermetic Theurgy in The Ultimate Mystic), we settled on the Demon of Mars, Barsabel.

A 4th ed. version of Aratron, the Demon of Saturn, appears on p. 94 of Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies. That version is 335 points, at a time when PCs supposedly began at 250; but the standard for supervillains was already well beyond that. Since each edition brought further point inflation, a 6th ed Aratron should probably be about 600 points for "an intermediate power demon lord who might be summoned as a powerful wizard's enforcer." This would still be well below the 950-point Greater Demon in the 5th ed HERO System Bestiary, and far below the Demon Princes in that book, but I have a different design theory and esthetic in these matters.
 
As a point of unmitigated pedantry, the grimoire that describes Aratron et al, the Arbatel of Magic, calls them Olympian Spirits rather than demons, and claims to be a work of White Magic. In making them demons, I was guided by three principles: Arthur Edward Waite's observation that the methods and goals of supposed White Magic and Black Magic grimoires tend to be identical; that I didn't want to try explaining Olympian Spirits or creating a Champions Universe role or explanation for them; and that I could do something cool with a set of Planetary Demons, such as creating Astralle. The Seven are, shall we say, a creative misinterpretation of the source material.
 
Since writing Creatures of the Night, though, I've learned more about Hermetic magical theory. A separate class of planetary spirits would actually work quite well. Fitting them into the  of the CU mightky, though. The best home for them, since Dante's Divine Comedy portrayed a Heaven mapped onto the planetary spheres of Ptolemaic astronomy.
 
Dean Shomshak

A 4th ed. version of Aratron, the Demon of Saturn, appears on p. 94 of Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies. That version is 335 points, at a time when PCs supposedly began at 250; but the standard for supervillains was already well beyond that. Since each edition brought further point inflation, a 6th ed Aratron should probably be about 600 points for "an intermediate power demon lord who might be summoned as a powerful wizard's enforcer." This would still be well below the 950-point Greater Demon in the 5th ed HERO System Bestiary, and far below the Demon Princes in that book, but I have a different design theory and esthetic in these matters.
 
As a point of unmitigated pedantry, the grimoire that describes Aratron et al, the Arbatel of Magic, calls them Olympian Spirits rather than demons, and claims to be a work of White Magic. In making them demons, I was guided by three principles: Arthur Edward Waite's observation that the methods and goals of supposed White Magic and Black Magic grimoires tend to be identical; that I didn't want to try explaining Olympian Spirits or creating a Champions Universe role or explanation for them; and that I could do something cool with a set of Planetary Demons, such as creating Astralle. The Seven are, shall we say, a creative misinterpretation of the source material.
 
Since writing Creatures of the Night, though, I've learned more about Hermetic magical theory. A separate class of planetary spirits would actually work quite well. Fitting them into the  of the CU mightky, though. The best home for them, since Dante's Divine Comedy portrayed a Heaven mapped onto the planetary spheres of Ptolemaic astronomy.
 
Dean Shomshak

A 4th ed. version of Aratron, the Demon of Saturn, appears on p. 94 of Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies. That version is 335 points, at a time when PCs supposedly began at 250; but the standard for supervillains was already well beyond that. Since each edition brought further point inflation, a 6th ed Aratron should probably be about 600 points for "an intermediate power demon lord who might be summoned as a powerful wizard's enforcer." This would still be well below the 950-point Greater Demon in the 5th ed HERO System Bestiary, and far below the Demon Princes in that book, but I have a different design theory and esthetic in these matters.
 
As a point of unmitigated pedantry, the grimoire that describes Aratron et al, the Arbatel of Magic, calls them Olympian Spirits rather than demons, and claims to be a work of White Magic. In making them demons, I was guided by three principles: Arthur Edward Waite's observation that the methods and goals of supposed White Magic and Black Magic grimoires tend to be identical; that I didn't want to try explaining Olympian Spirits or creating a Champions Universe role or explanation for them; and that I could do something cool with a set of Planetary Demons, such as creating Astralle. The Seven are, shall we say, a creative misinterpretation of the source material.
 
Since writing Creatures of the Night, though, I've learned more about Hermetic magical theory. A separate class of planetary spirits would actually work quite well. Fitting them into the  of the CU mightky, though. The best home for them, since Dante's Divine Comedy portrayed a Heaven mapped onto the planetary spheres of Ptolemaic astronomy.
 
Dean Shomshak

Ironman, Ironman
Does what ever an Iron can
Presses shirts, coats and ties
Presses pants, any size
Hey there
Ther goes the Ironman 

Stuff goes in such cycles in American politics.
 
We had HUAC and McCarthy running roughshod over civil liberties for years before McCarthy overreached and people started realizing he was in it more for himself than to fight a communist menace.
 
I think we're in better shape now than we were on January 5th or January 7th. Or yesterday.
 
If Trump goes through all his legal and financial problems unscathed and puts out the money/effort necessary to run a political campaign for the Republican nomination, I'll be more worried.
 
We're not quite in the same boat as Argentina was with Peron and the Peronistas.

It's hyper-correct virtue signaling. Or else it's magical thinking, that social justice can be achieved simply by renaming things. Sorry, I don't think it's that easy.
 
When I started reading the story, that this obscure-to-most-people NASA administrator was being challenged for, let's face it, being a man of his time, my sarcastic thought was, "Name it after Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King, Jr. Because they're the only people it's still safe to name anything after." I wish I was more surprised when the article went on to say that, yes, Harriet Tubman was nominated as a replacement namesake.
 
Anyway: The telescope is meant to succeed Hubble at the deepest of deep space astronomy. On that subject, the first name this interested layman thinks of after Edwin Hubble is Allan Sandage, who IIRC was imporytant in classifying galaxies. I know nothing of his politics or personal life. Unfortunately, naming the telescope after him would make it the ASST or SST, which both stand for other things already.
 
Dean Shomshak

The world map for my "Magozoic" campaign is the early version of Pangea Ultima (a.k.a. Pangea Proxima) as forecast by geologist Christopher Scotese:
 
 
"Pangea Ultima" will form 250 million years in ... - scotese.com
scotese.com/future2.htm "Pangea Ultima" will form 250 million years in the Future. The next Pangea, "Pangea Ultima" will form as a result of the subduction of the ocean floor of the North and South Atlantic beneath eastern North America and South America. This supercontinent will have a small ocean basin trapped at its center. back to Earth History
The premise is Earth gpone magical in the far future, a la Zothique, Gondwane or Book of the New Sun. Conveniently, Dr Scotese has worked out various possible future configurations of continents.
 
Within that, I've made maps of the particular regions where I set campaigns. The current campaign is set around the southern end of the Inner Ocean. My own maps are of course much less pretty than those of Dr Scotese! But here's the map of the Plenary Empire. I use topo maps from an old copy of Goode's School Atlas as raw material, and have a rudimentary graphics program to add some texture.

 
And here's the basic mao for the city of Thalassene, showing the botoughs but not much else:

 
This map shows the neighborhoods in the boroughs of Quarters, Tarsia, Lost Harbor, Exordium, and the Waterfront:

 
And finally, the PCs are currently the neighborood watch of Pillars, a section of the Oddmonger neighborhood. That made it worthwhile to map out Pillars:

 
Of course, most of the city will never be mapped in such detail. I'm such a slacker.
 
Dean Shomshak

Part of ancient supercontinent found under New Zealand

Could be R'lyeh as well ....

Actually that's a perfect example of DShomshak's point.
 
Originally it was just a country in central Africa with tight borders. Now, in the MCU, it needs high tech armies on all the borders with weapons designed to look primitive, another elite force of spies working worldwide, sci-fantasy cloaking fields covering all the cities from satellites and somewhat draconian laws to keep citizens from spilling the secret and restricting outside contact. 

A teacher asks:
<quote>"How could a teacher possibly discuss slavery, the Holocaust, or the mass shootings at the Walmart in El Paso or at the Sutherland Springs church in my district without giving deference to any one perspective?” she asked.</quote>
 
Sounds easy to me: After describing the event in all its horror, conclude with, "The Republicans of the state legislature forbid me, by law, from saying that these actions were immoral." Which is absolutely factual, and thus cannot be accused of "giving deference to any one perspective." But I suspect that high schoolers, at least, will get the message. Especially if delivered with an eyeroll and an ostentatiously pious tone of voice.
 
Dean Shomshak

Another way the modern world has progressively eroded a classic trope: the Hidden Lands have a harder time staying hidden.
 
Up through the 1960s, it was not too implausible there could be an uncharted island, a hidden valley in Tibet, or a lost city in the jungles of Africa. But as satellites with cameras proliferated, comic-book writers had to come up with reasons to keep them hidden, like the perpetual cloud cover over the Savage Land. Sorry, even that won't work anymore with cameras that use other frequencies to see through clouds. By now, the Hidden Land needs a holographic shield, or it's extradimensional, or whatever. I'm not even sure Atlantis et al. can stay hidden undersea, given US and Soviet/Russian programs to map the ocean floor in support of submarine warfare.
 
My latest campaign's Hidden Land, the Hot Zone where the mad super-biologiest villain Helix conducts his most radical experiments, is a complex of kilometer-wide caves beneath an African shield volcano. The world now knows it exists, but not all of what Helix does there. My previous campaign had Manoa, the City of Gold and last outpost of Mu, hidden from aerial surveillance by its Chronal Barrier. But that situation was made to be unstable: the Chronal Barrier is a fraud, easily penetrated once people know it's there... only one of the frauds underlying Manoa.
 
Dean Shomshak

In a hundred years, I think that people will remember the conservatives who deny the existence of the virus and oppose taking the reasonable steps against it, in the same way as the high commands of the armies in World War 1 are remembered now: Robert Nivelle, Douglas Haig, Erich Falkenhayn, Grand Duke Nicholas, etc., as heavy-handed, incompetent, status-conscious obstinate butchers incapable of adapting to a new environment, and seeing only their own status as important, and spending the lives of millions of their countrymen as valueless tickets, and indeed putting the survival of their countries beneath their own pride of command.

Well, the HERO books generally classify power sets into Attack, Defense, Movement, Information, and Miscellaneous. That's not a bad place to start for designing spell sets for spellcasters who, presumably, are meant to include PC adventurers.
 
You can also consider the fundamental applications of magic in RL beliefs:
* Luck and prosperity;
* Healing and exorcism;
* Curses (any magic to inflict harm on others);
* Dominating the wills of others (could be considered a subclass of curses);
* Divination and detection;
* Transcendental experiences;
* Commanding the powers of nature.
 
For further explanation, see The Ultimate Mystic.
 
Though not every style of magic includes all these functions. For instance, the Evil Eye (probably the most widespread RL magical belief) only does curses, while divinations\ systems of course only do divination. At the other extreme, European Grimoire Magic can summon a demon for nearly any purpose -- but it's limited by the need for long and complex rituals.
 
So before you write spells, maybe work out what role you want magic to play in the setting, which in turn will influence the mechanisms of spellcasting and what characters can do.
 
Dean Shomshak