AlgaeNymph

Looking at some examples from fairy tales: accelerating the growth of/animating plants, e.g. walls of thorns, grasping tree branches or vines; conjuring/summoning animals, solo or in groups; changing one's form into an animal, a monster like a dragon, or to resemble another person; transforming someone else, such as making them old or hideously deformed, or turning them into an animal, possibly under the magician's command; cursing someone with perpetual sleep, or madness; enchantments through an object, e.g. poisoned fruit or sharp items whose prick brings a curse; enchantments through crafts, like spinning straw into gold, or forging weapons. Beneficial effects are also possible, such as blessings of health, strength, or beauty, especially on newborn children.

Brangomar, aka the Shadow Queen, most recently written up Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains, is essentially Disney's Maleficent (the classic animated version from Sleeping Beauty, not live action); except that instead of being a dark faerie queen who can transform into a dragon, Brangomar is a dragon using magic to appear as a human-like woman. Her personality and style are very much like Maleficent, and like the evil Queen in Disney's Snow White. Brangomar rules a land called the Shadow Realm in the dimension of Faerie, that being the sum of all the lands, races, creatures, and gods from human myth and legend. The Shadow Queen is also a powerful sorceress in the aforementioned "fairy-tale" magic style.

Because I'm really good at seeing connections based on my broad knowledge.  Bomb-thrower + activist = stereotypes of anarchists.  Admittedly, my talent can result in false positives...
 
Only if I knew they were irredeemable, and a good dark champion would do their twenty minutes of prep time first.  For the redeemable ones I'd focus on either therapy -- e.g., changing their means while validating their ends -- or harm reduction -- i.e., getting them to work for me.  Good talent is hard to come by.
 
Good thing we're not confined to the comic industry sausage factory.  ; )
 
Oo!  Now that's a different take, and makes so much sense...

Superheroes are shamans. They adopt a special role, often using a special name, maybe with an animal theme. Their purpose is to protect their communities from supernatural beings. In their mode of dress and behavior, they stand apart from ordinary people.

One of the things I like about the Champions Universe is that, while the top-tier technology remains in the hands of superheroes and supervillains, quite a bit of "supertech" has filtered out into the wider world and made a substantive difference to that world compared to our real one. In particular, Champions Universe, Champions Beyond, and Millennium City detail those differences. I summarized that info for the Champions Online community, which the curious can read here.

I think the real issue with this sort of thing is that if Stark brand ARC Reactors put OPEC out of business there would be a LOT of knock-of effects and most comic book creators don't want to deal with that.  They want Iron Man punching WhipLash and don't want to tell a story about how gas stations everywhere are out of business because everyone's StarkCar has infinite range now and what that is doing to small town America.  Same with how Spiderman's webshooters aren't standard issue nonlethal side-arms for Police (and pay for Aunt May's healthcare), allowing them to web up low level supercriminals without calling out the Avengers every time Electro holds up a Credit Union.

You do see changed societies in "what if" and alternate future type stories but never in the main continuity.  If Heroes actually changed the world the comics would get further and further from the world people live in.

Yeah, a lot of people these days aren't aware that the Superman radio show played a large role in dismantling the power structure of the Ku Klux Klan by showing the public how silly there were by revealing true insider information about all their secret handshakes and rituals.

I'm probably the only person here that hasn't watched Civil War so I don't have a horse in this race.  ^_^;
 
What an excellent idea...

The 4E Champions adventure, Atlas Unleashed, introduced a very proactive "super agency," Prometheus, a fully private international humanitarian aid agency described as a kind of "armed Peace Corps." Agents of Prometheus would travel anywhere in the world suffering war or natural disaster to deliver food and water, medical supplies, emergency shelters, clothing, whatever was needed, whether or not they were invited or welcome. If the local dictators, warlords, or rebels tried to stop them, they were armed with advanced non-lethal weapons and would fight their way to the people in need.
 
Although most members of Prometheus were sincere, dedicated humanitarians, the group was secretly the mask and source of funding for a utopian terrorist organization, Atlas, dedicated to establishing a new world order of peace and equality -- under their leadership, of course. The leaders of Prometheus/Atlas had discovered a method of creating superhumans to augment their ranks.
 
For my part, I found the concept of Prometheus much more interesting than Atlas, so for my own game I excised the latter to make the organization unequivocally benevolent. "Atlas" became the code name for the "superhero" component of Prometheus, as I changed the backgrounds and motivations of the Atlas villains to make them more heroic.
 
The revised Prometheus made a couple of appearances in my games, but I never got around to utilizing any of the more involved plots I had in mind for them, particularly the international community's response to them.

Well...I don't have any players.  😅
 
Now if I had players then doing what they'd want would be the easy, common sense solution.  However, this is pretty much a thought exercise for me.  Sorry about the misunderstanding.

If you mean pre-crime "go get the criminals before they do bad" I would call that not heroic at all.
 
If you mean "go out and attack the causes of crime, fix things, defeat problems, and lead people to be better" then I am all for it and have run scenarios like that in my campaigns.  One of the most successful role playing events I've ever had was a big tough brick type guy talking a suicide jumper down.

Way back when, I wrote up a super-team called the Amnesty Alliance. Not officially associated with Amnesty International. They specialized in rescuing political prisoners, people kidnapped by bandits, terrorists and other assorted unpleasant people, and the like. Controversial because on the one hand, everyone knew the people they fought was genuinely bad and lawless. OTOH no governments wanted private citizens taking quite such a direct role in such delicate diplomatic issues. Especially when dictators with oil or strategic minerals got punched in the face in the course of a rescue. Not that they ever set out to overthrow governments, but... they were very careful vigilantes, but still vigilantes in that they went outside the law to get results.
 
Unfortunately, I never found the opportunity to use them in an adventure. Maybe someday.
 
Dean Shomshak

Okay. building a setting is good. Since Superman is the most proactive hero in most of the media he is in, he should probably be your role model: Disaster relief, urban renewal, humanitarian efforts, scientific accomplishments, bring corruption to light.
CES 

Dragon Magazine #207 (July 1994) had an article entitled "Great Responsibilities", about superheroes taking an active role in their communities instead of waiting for things to happen.
Part of the article dealt with Pandora's Box, a nonprofit national hero team franchise that trains novice heroes on the condition that they volunteer in places like homeless shelters and hospitals during their training.  Pandora's Box teams are funded by businesses in the communities where the teams operate and any profits generated by the teams go into a fund to benefit the communities.  Only one large business can fund a team, but any number of smaller community businesses.
A lot of the article involves superheroes volunteering for real world groups and how it could be worked into a campaign.  Public appearances for the American Cancer Society.  Volunteering at a halfway house or teaching classes in prison.  Power-based construction and renovation with Habitat for Humanity.  Powered collection and transportation of supplies for the Red Cross or UNICEF.

Reading through many adventure seeds I've noticed that almost all are not just reactive but almost identical: "The villain must be stopped!"  Besides accursed genre conventions, superheroes are essentially law enforcement relief workers, which is by its nature mostly reactive.  Still, a campaign where the heroes have goals would be very welcome.  I don't mean "defeat VIPER" so much as do something world-changing.  But how to do that?  Also, how to rework plot seeds into a proactive story?

Okay, Steve, let's see if we can find you some more dark light reading. 😈
 
The Mystic World pp. 90-91 sidebar names and briefly describes several artifacts from myth and legend, of such power that good-aligned mystics will use them only in extreme need. Power-hungry evil mages are more likely to seek them. Two of them can be counted as "books" (or at least written upon).
 
The Book of Thoth: Egyptian tales tell of a grimoire written by Thoth, god of magic. The spells in this scroll make its owner the master of all the powers of nature, gods, and the dead; he incidentally understands the speech of birds and beasts. A terrible curse protects the Book from mortal hands, though. The last person to seize the Book, the priest Na-nefer-ka-ptah, lost his entire family to the curse, and ended up as the grimoire’s ghostly guardian.
 
The Tablet of Destiny: The primal chaos-dragon Tiamat was the first owner of this tablet that ordains the laws of the universe and the social order. When the Mesopotamian gods defeated Tiamat’s army of monsters, they took the Tablet as well. When the storm-bird Anzu stole the Tablet, the gods lost their power. Perhaps the Tablet controls the relations between gods and the mortal world, in which case it could overthrow the Ban at a stroke. The tablet’s power comes from the Dragon, however, making it perilous in the extreme for mortals to wield.
 
A great deal of the text for The Mystic World was transcribed from an earlier Champions source book for 4E Hero, called The Ultimate Super Mage (on sale in the website store). That book actually gives Power stats for the Tablet of Destiny. Because of the strong continuity between TUSM and TWM, I believe it would be reasonable to mention an original creation from the former, also game-statted:
 
The Clavicle Infernalis: Translating as "the Key to Hell" or "Nether Key," this book is described as "the premier text of black magic." The spells it confers mostly involve the summoning and control of demons, and transporting beings to or from Hell, even transporting some of Hell's environment to Earth. But its spells take considerable time to cast, and if interrupted the caster suffers a disaster "of Biblical proportions" (specifics left to GM).
 
Finally, casting back into the pre-super history of the Hero Universe, we find:
 
The Bloodstained Scroll of Thronek: This item was the premier source on the lore of necromancy, inscribed by its namesake wizard, the first "master villain" of the Turakian Age -- see the book of that title for more info. After the defeat of Thronek, over centuries his Scroll would sometimes magically appear in the fastness of some great wizard, disappearing again after part of it was read. Thanks to that trick it's possible the Scroll could have survived to the present day. Kal-Turak/Takofanes long sought the Bloostained Scroll, so it might be in his possession. If it's elsewhere the likeliest place to look would be the closed stacks of the Library of Babylon, which has some Turakian-era volumes.
 
 

Let us not forget the most accursed tome of them all--Seduction Of The Innocent.  The work of the conformist scholar and covert magician Frederic Wertham, contained betwixt its lines of text and "scholarly" arguings, are subliminal incantations and charms designed to bewitch the unwary and the weak minded into following along with his miserable, deplorable campaign to suppress creativity and freedom of thought, to stifle beyond reviving the notion that great power could--and should--be used to protect the weak and defenseless, and advance the greater good.  All in the name of instilling and promoting "Appropriate Behavior."
 
A thousand thousand curses upon Wertham and all his Dark Disciples!  May they be condemned forever to reside in the pseudo-intellectual prisons of compliance and repression they have constructed for themselves!

In that case, the Krypticon (Mystic World, p. 57, 88-9) is the CU's equivalent of the Book of the Vishanti. Held for millennia by Earth's Archmage, presumed destroyed with the last Archmage, but you never know. Would I have statted it if it was meant to be lost forever?
 
Here are some unofficial books of magic and lore I posited for my playtest campaigns, so some references are campaign-specific and not CU-compliant. I don't think any of them turned up in play, though. I can spin out this stuff by the yard.
 
SEPHER GILGALIM
    The "Book of Whirling Motion" teaches thaumaturgy from a foundation of Hebrew Kabbalism. Mages have kept it secret for centuries. Understanding the Sepher Gilgalim requires an expert knowledge of kabbalism. The book is specially meant to carry on from the Sepher Yetzirah or "Book of Formation," which tells how cosmic forces link the realm of archetypes to the worlds of physical manifestation, but a student also ought to read other kabbalistic texts such as the Sepher Raziel, Sepher Sephiroth and of course the great Zohar. Sepher Gilgalim tells how to put this theory into practice.
 
LIBER ASCLETARIONIS
    The "Book of Ascletarion" is the grimoire of a Roman mage. It has become one of the most popular handbooks for thaumaturgy in the western world, thanks to the copious annotations added by later mages. Ascletarion was an early Neo-Platonist and describes his magic in those terms. The later commentators added comparisons to Hermetic and kabbalist magic theory.

    Ascletarion's grimoire is a good source of information about magical doings in 1st century Rome, because the magus also tossed in anecdotes about supernatural people and events around him. Ascletarion was also a prophet: He correctly predicted that the emperor Domitian would be eaten by dogs after his death. Liber Ascletarionis incidentally includes twenty prophecies about the future, all of which have been fulfilled. The last one to be fulfilled concerned the establishment of a lineage of Guardians of Light to oppose a lineage of Sons of Darkness.
 
PATTERNS OF GEOMETRICAL SYMBOLISM
    This eight-volume monograph by folklorist I. O. Morlinger (Oxford University Press, 1922) is one of the last examples of a particular academic genre: the exhaustive, cross-cultural study that attempts to Explain It All. Modern anthropologists and ethnologists reject this universalist approach, and charge that the 19th and early 20th century savants who used it relied on their imaginations more than on hard data. Nevertheless, Morlinger's book is the most definitive study of its kind.

    Morlinger studied the meanings that different cultures ascribe to shapes and patterns such as circles, triangles, stars, crossed lines, and so on. He drew his examples from dozens of archaic and modern cultures, including their occult traditions. Morlinger claimed to find universal patterns of such symbolism. Some he decided were the result of common experiences: For instance, the horizon is circular, so every culture uses the circle as a symbol of totality and completion. He thought that other patterns of symbolism, however, indicated a "primitive and intuitive awareness of forces and motions in the æther," with some rather strained comparisons to physics.

    A thaumaturge realize that Morlinger almost figured out some of the basic principles of thaumaturgy. His book is useful for magicians who investigate the fundamentals of their craft.
 
DU PLESSIS CANON
    The premier thaumaturgical textbook of Tetragrammaton was written in 1638 under the patronage of Cardinal Armand du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu. The famous Cardinal Richelieu was not himself a sorcerer but his librarian Jacques Gafferel was. Even master thaumaturges find political connections and royal funding useful: Tetragrammaton and Richelieu allied to curb the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs and the Hermetic ritual magicians they supported. When Gafferel and other Tetragrammaton members wrote a new textbook of thaumaturgy and mystical cosmology, they dedicated it to their patron.

    The Du Plessis Canon consists of six thick volumes, organized according to Zoa cosmology and the six days of creation. The first volume, associated with the 1st day's creation of light, deals with magic that does not call upon extradimensional beings. The succeeding four volumes introduce the Four Zoas and magic that calls upon dimension lords aligned to each Zoa. Volume Two associates Urthona (Art) with the 2nd day (separation of waters). Volume Three associates Tharmas (Nature) with the creation of dry land and plants. Volume Four (creation of sun, moon and stars) is linked to Urizen (Order). Volume Five (birds and fish) is linked to Luvah (Chaos). Volume Six (beasts and man) discusses various unaligned dimension lords and magic that calls upon them. Much of the symbolism in the Canon is Christian Kabbalist; for instance, the Four Zoas are described as the four Holy Living Creatures from Ezekiel's vision, while dimension lords are called Sons of God.

    Authentic copies of the Du Plessis Canon are written in Latin. They bear the Richelieu arms on the cover, and are enchanted so that they reveal their true contents only to someone who touches the heraldic device and says the four Guiding Words of the Magus: Scire (To Know), Velle (To Will), Audere (To Dare), Tacere (To Keep Silent). Otherwise, each volume appears to be a copy of Richelieu's autobiography.
 
SELEUCID SCROLLS
    During the Hellenistic period, the School of Antioch was the largest alliance of thaumaturges in the Western world (just as the School of Alexandria was the largest alliance of proto-Hermetic ritual magicians). The School of Antioch preserved thaumaturgical texts dating back all the way to Shamballah and Agharti, including texts from empires erased from history. The thaumaturges also wrote extensive commentaries on the elder texts, and accounts of all sorts of supernatural events in the eastern Mediterranean. Some of these books are noteworthy enough to receive titles of their own.

    Later magicians call the books collected and written by the School of Antioch the Seleucid Scrolls because the School flourished most during the 4th-3rd centuries B.C. when Antioch was the largest city of the Seleucid Empire. Tetragrammaton estimates that it owns about 1/3 of the Seleucid texts. The others are lost and most probably destroyed. Tetragrammaton goes to considerable lengths to recover lost Seleucid Scrolls, if any should turn up.
 
BLOOD ANNALS
    This ancient book is a first-hand account of vampiric activity in the eastern Mediterranean region. The author, a vampire called Enceladus, dwelled in Antioch during the 3rd century B.C. In his diary, Enceladus records the activities of himself and other vampires. Since Antioch was one of the largest and most important cities of the Hellenistic world, nearly every Western vampire passed through the city at least one in that century. They gave Enceladus reports of their activities from Persia to Spain. Even better for later scholars, Enceladus compared accounts and pointed out where they contradicted each other or information he gained from mortal travelers.

    In passing, Enceladus gave much information about the origin and history of vampires, their relationship to the Dragon, and all manner of other supernatural events in the Hellenistic world -- including the School of Antioch, which was a continual threat to the city's vampires. According to the Blood Annals, the 3rd century B.C. saw a struggle between vampires who remained loyal to the Dragon and undead who sought power for themselves alone; Enceladus himself was an independent vampire of little ambition, who preferred to keep a low profile.

    According to the introduction to the Blood Annals, the School of Antioch eventually destroyed Enceladus and added his diaries to the Seleucid Scrolls. The Blood Annals remain the single best source of information about vampires in the Classical world.
 
TESTAMENT OF IALDABAOTH
    Occult scholars believe that the mage Menander, a pupil of Simon Magus, wrote this anonymous Gnostic gospel and grimoire. The Testament calls the Four Zoas and other cosmic conceptual entities the Pleroma -- the sum of the truly transcendent powers -- and refers to the gods of Greater Earth as the Aeons. The Testament describes the Aeons as "reflections" of the Pleroma within the "mirror" of human thought and the Astral Plane. Yahweh is another name for Ialdabaoth, the most powerful of the Aeons. Although Ialdabaoth and the Aeons try to limit humanity and bind souls to themselves, powers from the Pleroma sometimes possess Aeons to reveal higher truths to saints and prophets. The Testament presents itself as one such revelation, granted by the Christ through the medium of Ialdabaoth.

    Both thaumaturges and ritual magicians find the Testament useful -- if they can make sense of its opaque writing, which combines allusions to Jewish, Christian, Greco-Roman and Egyptian myths and gospels with the obscure jargon of Gnosticism itself. The Testament tells how magical power flows from the Upper Planes through the Outer planes to the Inner Planes and ultimately to Earth. It also describes the state of the spirit world in the Classical era. Many grimoires tell how to call upon spirits, but the Testament is almost unique among Classical texts in explaining precisely how ritual shapes the Astral Plane and compels spirits to serve.
 
AVERNUS CHRONICLES
    This book tells about demonic and Satanic activity in 17th century Italy. The author was a Florentine apothecary whose brother channeled Zontar Bok in a partnership that lasted almost 30 years. The Avernus Chronicles tell about the rise of the Sylvestri clan. They also give an account of Caibarien of Agharti, who possessed a Florentine woman and deceived Zontar Bok into becoming her lover for a short time.
 
PROPHECIES OF HYDATIUS
    In the late 10th and early 11th centuries, the Byzantine monk Hydatius wrote this book of prophecies about events a millennium in the future. Hydatius describes airplanes, automobiles, genocides, skyscrapers and superbeings, though he focuses on supernatural events such as the greater plots of the Devil's Advocates. He included a prophecy about the end of the Guardians of Light lineage and the concomittant Second Coming of Christ -- or the birth of the Antichrist, he's not sure which. Hydatius did not understand much of what he saw, and so his poetic imagery is hard to interpret.

    Hydatius was burned as a heretic. His manuscript has remained little-known since then, chiefly because sorcerers who knew of it also knew that it would not become relevant for centuries to come.
 
RECORD OF THE BIAFRAN WORKINGS
    From 1969-70, Archimago dwelled in Nigeria, where the Biafran Civil War caused massive death from war and starvation. Archimagi used the concentrated misery to power many potent rituals, including rituals of prophecy. He wrote accounts of 12 times in the next 100 years when the world could end. Naturally, he wrote his prophecies in deliberately obscure fashion, using a code of symbolism keyed to Satanic, Edomite and Qliphothic cults and magic. Archimago meant the Biafran Workings to be an instruction book, not a warning. In the ensuing decades, however, copies of the Biafran Workings fell into the hands of sorcerers who did not want an apocalypse. As usual with these things, the prophecies only make sense once it is almost too late.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, yes. Gyre was inspired in part by the Kabbalist tradition that students should have a study partner (and married, and over 40 -- let's pass by the "male" admonition...) to help keep them grounded, because learning too much, too fast, is dangerous. IIRC, Isaac Bashevis Singer's play The Dybbuk has a young student who dies from excessive comprehension... and leaves a ghost.
 
Anyway: Bonewits wrote a game supplement, too? If I ever knew that, I forgot it.
 
This will be brief and probably not do justice to Real Magic, since it's been a couple decades since I read it.
 
At the time Bonewits wrote (1979 revised edition), parapsychology was still a thing, so h takes telepathy and psychokinesis as within the bounds of scientific reality. He also thinks telepathy might be electromagnetic, because our brains are electrochemical. But that's not actually central to his argument.
 
So, telepathy. If people are telepathic -- even if unconsciously, and erratically -- you have the possibility of a group-mind "switchboard" (this is before the internet, remember) with, potentially, the psychic energy, processing power, and knowledge base of all humanity, as a resource for magicians to draw upon.
 
Psychokinesis might operate on more than the macroscopic level of, say, bending spoons and controlling the throw of cide. Psychokinesis operating at the cellular level might explain feats ranging from faith healing to voodoo curses. Atomic-scale PK could move heat around (for pyrokinesis, among other feats), manipulate light, or even transmute matter.
 
The paraphernalia of magic -- the consecrated tools, the ritual setting, invocations, incense, and whatnot -- are tools to focus the magician's mind, consciously and unconsciously, so as to activate, shape and direct telepathic and psychokinetic ability. (Bonewits has a whole chapter on "The Fundamental Patterns of Ritual.")
 
Even summoning spirits can be justified within this system. Say you want to conjure a demon to attack an enemy. The magic circle and other implements and procedures focus your mind and will. Atomic psychokinesis shapes an apparition of a body, giving you the illusion of interacting with a separate being. Then cellular psychokinesis causes your victim to get sick, have a heart attack, or whatever. Or if you summon a spirit of knowledge, you are actually accessing the Switchboard for information you perceive as coming from the spirit.
 
Likewise, all those divination methods, the 'ologies and 'mancies? ways of accessing the Switchboard. What the collective unconscious/group mind doesn't know, it might be able to infer, with more than Holmesian ability.
 
Bonewits admits that magic has, hitherto, been deeply unreliable, which somewhat excuses scientists from not taking it seriously. But he thinks a scientifc approach could cut out the outright superstition and develop more reliable techniques.
 
As I said, I don't think Bonewits' schema could work for the CU. Too much is established as genuinely external to humanity: Tyrannon is not a rogue neurosis of the human collective unconscious, given an illusion of form by atomic psychokinesis. But it can work in other settings. Bonewits also offers some cogent observations about common patterns in how people practice magic, that you can use to make magic in your game feel more, well, magical. His discussion of claimed and potential psionic abilities also gives some cool ideas for psionic characters. All in all, I think it's a useful source for gamers.
 
Dean Shomshak

Or rather, a gathering of information in order to form one.
 
In my readings I've found four ultimate sources for superpowers (besides training), being the four aforementioned in the title.
Ch'i is always, based on my findings, associated with martial arts.  I think it's some sort of personal energy, and particularly shows up in "internal" or highly mythologized styles. Magic is the most important one as it's more than just wizard stuff; it's also canonically the means by which most other powers are possible.  I'm aware of how controversial this decision was. Psionics is pretty much magic but purely mental and scientistic.  It's big in science fiction because Joseph Campbell liked it.  It doesn't entirely go away when the magic did in 2020, but I don't know how it works beyond that. Cosmic Energy is "a mysterious type of energy that permeates the Galaxy (and perhaps all Reality). Scientists as yet do not fully understand cosmic energy," and neither do I.  But it's the force behind Cosmic Gems, which let anybody do just about anything, so it's particularly interesting to me. All three are so far pretty separate, but do they have to be?  That's not a rhetorical question, and I'm not a metaphysician, so I'm asking the collective consciousness here for any ideas you all have.

Hmm... this is really interesting to contemplate. Perhaps "splunge" (to use the term we're currently operating with) is the power wielded by the conceptual entities, transcending other distinctions: and those entities, or other agencies, "refine" it into magic, cosmic power, ch'i or psionics. But the quantity and balance of splunge is what affects the properties of each universe.
 
I'm reminded of Dean's discussion of Atziluth, the highest of the planes in the Hero Multiverse, on p. 9 of The Mystic World. Let me quote what I think is the passage most relevant to this discussion:

Atziluth contains three sephiroth, each considered a single plane by mystics. They call BINAH (or Understanding) the Dark Sea of Being. It is an infinite reservoir of power for creation or destruction. CHOKMAH (or Wisdom) is called the Bright Sea of Forms. It contains every possible archetype of objects, actions, ideas, structures, or any other category you could name. Mystic tomes say the light of Chokmah shines on the dark waves of Binah — form combines with substance — and the sparkling reflections off the waves forms the Multiverse.
 
Perhaps this is the power -- which I will now call Reflections of Atziluth -- which conceptual entities convert into magic, cosmic energy, matter, life, everything. But major actions by mortals like the Walpurgisnacht Working or the Kolvel Event can accidentally break through to Atziluth and tap the Reflections, changing the balance of properties in a world, galaxy, even universe.

I don't much care for "magic causes super-powers," either, because it seems to privilege one mode of power over others. If it were up to me, but I was bound to preserve past published statements, I'd present something like this:
------------
The Mandaarian shook her head and smiled. "No, I express myself badly. Your languages do not have the words. So often you use 'magic' to mean anything you do not understand. But Witchfire, you understand the spells you cast, yes? Or think you do, just as Defender thinks he understands how and why his armor works. You are not wrong, but your understanding is insufficient." She paused. "I came to study your history, how you made the transition from complete ignorance to partial understanding. Defender, let me use an example from the history of your science. The first scientists to study heat thought it was a fluid, which they called 'caloric.' This fluid could flow, diffuse, condense. This theory was wrong. There is no caloric: heat is motion of molecules. But the large-scale result acts like a fluid. The caloric theory was enough to create practical technology. For a steam engine or internal combustion engine, the theory is right enough. But eventually it will give wrong answers.
 
"That is why your armor, and your spells, became less reliable in that other time. They both rely upon another factor that you do not know about. Your present science cannot encompass it, because it involves consciousness. But it is not magic, either. Neither of you" -- the Mandaarian nodded to the two heroes -- "could create an instrumentality to detect it.  So call it... splunge."
 
"Splunge?" Kinetik interjected from the side. "You know about Monty Python on Mandaar?"
 
"We recorded it on our second visit," the Mandaarian said. "Monty Python's Flying Circus is, you would put it, huge on Mandaar. A product of one of your most advanced plexic entities. I have developed a silly walk -- but you do not want the distraction." She shook her head.
 
"Yes, call the underlying factor 'splunge.' It is why your armor works, why you can cast spells by thought instead of long rituals, why accidents that should kill instead give powers, and much else besides. But before you ask: I cannot tell you how to detect it, let alone manipulate it. It requires concepts as fundamental as mathematics, which you do not yet possess. It would be like explaining calculus to those tribes who count one-two-three-many."
 
"But you understand it?" Defender asked, a slight edge in his voice.
 
"Mandaarians understand it," she said calmly. "I do not. I am a historian, not a... splunge-worker. But our instrumentality makes full use of splunge, yes. It is not subject to changes in the level of ambient splunge. This is why we take such care not to leave any of our instrumentality behind. Not because yu would learn things for which you are not ready. Only because you could hurt yourself, as a child who does not understand electricity should be prevented from sticking things in wall outlets."
 
There was a long silence. Witchcraft finally asked, "So why does splunge change? Why is the... splung level now high, and low at other times?"
 
The Mandaarian shrugged. "It is complicated and -- as I said -- I am not a specialist. In this case, humans caused it. The group of humans who called themselves 'RSvKg' performed actions in your year 1938 that caused intensification of splunge. They thought they were doing magic; they did not, in any way, understand what they truly did, or what effect it would have. This I may say with certainty. Time travel was authorized to investigate the event, and I was part of that inquiry."
 
The Mandaarian tapped her fingers together. "That is the limit of what I may tell you. I would not have told you this much, except you saved me life and I do not believe you will misuse this information by -- say -- letting your attempts to detect splunge go beyond the bounds of prudence. Thank you again. I hope I have shown reciprocity." She clicked her tongue, and vanished.
 
No one spoke for several seconds. Then Witchcraft said to the group at large, "Do you believe her?"
 
There was another pause before Sapphire spoke. "I... don't know science or magic or anything like that. But I know performance. And I think she was pretending to be more human that she is." Her voice firmed. "That was staged."
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Dean Shomshak

The strangest manifestation of time in the CU is on Multifarian Earth. What makes Multifaria unique is that time is completely fluid there. Past, present and future can all co-exist at the same moment. Hence the name, derived from "multifarious," meaning "many and varied." For example, walking through London one can pass in a moment from the early-21st Century city, to Victorian London, to Roman Londinium, to the megalopolis of the far future; and bump into Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, Jack the Ripper, or a reptilian tourist from the planet Mon'da. This can obviously be very disorienting for visitors, but the natives aren't discomfited by it at all. (There are more details about this world in Book Of The Empress.)

However, the logical question is, how did Multifarian Earth come to be this way? The fact that the various discrete eras from more linear Earths can be distinguished amid the jumble, suggests that those eras must have existed in a normal progression at some point. My own theory, which has no official confirmation, is that this world's timeline was scrambled as a result of the cross-temporal Secret Crisis caused by Korrex the Conqueror, which I outlined on an earlier post.
 
There's another detail about Istvatha V'han's temporal activities which could make for an interesting PC or NPC. When she prevented the planet Koratho from coming into being (as I described on an earlier post), she was unwilling to completely waste such a resource. So she captured one Korathon, a distinguished military officer, and placed him in a "time shield field" in another dimension so he wouldn't be erased with his planet. V'han subjected the Korathon to extensive brainwashing, turning him into a loyal minion. Karrl Korathon is now widely known as "the strongest man in the Empire."

I used that precedent to create an NPC for one of my games, a female Korathon scientist who was experimenting with some dimensional transport equipment her people captured during Istvatha's invasion, when she accidentally cast herself out of Koratho's dimension, and eventually landed on Champions Earth. At first her people's natural aggressiveness and "machismo" led her to become a supervillain, as she sought the means to return to her home. But when she learned what had happened to them she became obsessed with vengeance against V'han, ultimately joining a rebellion movement against her rule. (I'd like the opportunity to revisit that character one day.)

A plot device like that could be used to introduce one or more Korathons to anyone's Champions campaign. Korathons are humanoids who stand up to eight feet tall, with superhuman musculature, light blue skin and dark blue hair. Karrl Korathon is very nearly as tough and strong as Grond, but he's also a trained soldier. Smaller males or females, and/or those whose primary activity isn't fighting, may be less so (although all Korathons love to fight).
 
Let me close by mentioning that BOTE also describes and writes up a fearsome monster called the Time-Beast which deliberately hunts and devours time- and dimension-travelers, and often causes disruptive changes to the time stream. Some theorize that it's an avatar or "pet" of some sort of cosmic entity, but its actions appear random.

Over on the Champions Online discussion forums, I outlined what I was able to glean about the principles of time travel within the CU based on statements and examples in various books. Perhaps this is an appropriate place and time to transcribe that info.
 
I'd just like to stress that some of the assumptions I make below are only extrapolated from the available examples, and can't be considered definitive statements from the creators of those examples. Also, as I always say, this is a comic-book world. The needs of a given story, or what would be "fun" to play out, often supersede adherence to precedent.
 
Let me open with a brief outline of the nature of Time from Book Of The Empress pp. 23-24, dealing with Istvatha V'han, perhaps the most accomplished time-traveler in the Multiverse: "According to her perceptions, as influenced by the research conducted by her scientists, there’s a single overall Stream Of Time that applies throughout the Multiverse... but each dimension’s “branch” of the overall Stream “runs” at its own speed. In some dimensions (such as two or more alternate Earths), time flows along at nearly the same rate, with the same events happening at more or less the same time. But in other planes time moves faster, or slower, or “curves” in unusual ways...

However, again according to her perceptions, every branch of the Stream Of Time has chronal nodes — dates/events/incidents of such importance that their outcome can affect the future flow of time by splitting off a new “branch” of the Stream (and thus creating a new dimension in the process). The typical events in the life of a typical person don’t create or involve chronal nodes; they can be changed by time travelers without affecting the overall flow of time in any meaningful way. But events of great significance, or the actions of extremely important persons, are/create chronal nodes. Interfering with a chronal node thus can “change history” going forward from that point.

Some chronal nodes are very specific and discrete — such as whether a certain person does or does not cross a certain street at a certain time. But others are very “broad,” such as whether a particular war is fought and who wins it. (Some scientists consider the latter merely a large collection of specific chronal nodes, rather than a single large node; research is ongoing.)"

What I believe is implied by those statements is that it's possible for someone whose life and the events in it don't form a "chronal node" to go back in time and change those events for him/herself without causing a new branch of the Time Stream to form. Hence for everyone in that branch those changes would become the "new reality" which has always been that way. However, if a node is meddled with, rather than changing that branch, a new one is formed creating another "alternate" universe.

One example of the former case may be Istvatha V'han herself. In meddling with the past of her own home dimension, V'ha-1, for her benefit, V'han discovered she had inadvertently erased her own family from having ever existed, even though she continued to exist and V'ha-1 was mostly unchanged otherwise.

As to the second case, interfering with chronal nodes seems to be the M.O. of another time-traveling conqueror, Korrex, a Human and ruler of Earth of the 51st Century (who is fully described in Golden Age Champions). Korrex travels to a past era of Terrestrial history, conquering it and creating a new alternate Earth dimension. Korrex sets one of his followers to govern that new Earth, then moves on to another era.

OTOH not all dimensions have alternates like Earth or V'ha. Istvatha's scientists call those which do "keystone dimensions," but the majority of dimensions are unique. So changes to time in those may actually alter those singular dimensions without creating alternates. The fate of the dimension containing the planet Koratho may be illustrative of that. The Korathons were all immensely physically superhuman. When V'han's armies attempted to conquer their dimension, the Korathons crushed them. Istvatha was concerned that now they knew about other dimensions, the Korathons would eventually invade her own empire; so she traveled back to before Koratho coalesced into a planet, and prevented it from doing so. There's no indication that any alternate version of Koratho exists.
 
Istvatha V'han has taken steps to secure her empire from interference by other time travelers. Her Temporal Security Patrol (officers of whom are called "Temporal Sentinels") use imperial technology to monitor the timeline in search of unauthorized time travelers, possible undesired changes to imperial history, and the like. They’re also in charge of overseeing all imperial time travel technology (and related devices) and authorizing trips to the future or past by imperial personnel.

Otherwise, there is no official body of "time police" maintaining the integrity of Time across the Multiverse. However, Time is not simply a condition that can be infinitely molded at will, as noted on p. 40 of Champions Beyond, which describes the "space/cosmic" side of the CU: "The cosmic entity Chrono controls/is responsible for the orderly flow of Time and existence of Space. He ensures that one second keeps ticking after another, that galaxies and universes continue their cosmic pirouettes, and that the dimensions of the Multiverse remain in their proper place. In short, he’s the one who makes sure that all moments in time do not occur simultaneously (or in incorrect order) and that all places and objects do not occupy the same space at once.

Chrono has complete control over time — he can travel through it, reverse it, speed it up, and otherwise alter it as necessary to fulfill his duties. It’s thought that he keeps a close eye on time travelers and covertly steps in to stop them if their activities become too dangerous...

Chrono rarely interacts with other beings (cosmic or otherwise). When his work would require that, he usually sends a proxy: his servant (child? ally? alternate form? projection?) Entropus, sometimes referred to as “the Time Elemental.”

As long as Chrono/Entropus is allowed to do his job properly, not even superheroes are likely to become aware of his existence. But if something goes wrong — for example, if another cosmic entity or a crazed supervillain... attacks him, or he gets “sick” — all of Reality is in danger." [CB then describes a couple of examples in which this occurred.]

It's tough to say at what point Chrono/Entropus might intervene with meddling in time, but precedents for these cosmic beings suggest it may have to be something that effects entire universes or multiple dimensions. Even then, though, setting it right may require intervention by superheroes. One outstanding example is the so-called "Secret Crisis," described as "a war across space and time involving almost all the heroes who had ever existed or will exist," precipitated by the aforementioned Korrex stealing the power of Entropus and becoming a time "god." The heroes managed to overload Korrex's power, causing him to discorporate. (Korrex survived and subsequently recovered, returning to his previous activities.)

It would seem that Istvatha V'han's meddling in time isn't extensive enough to draw Chrono's ire... unless some of her failures, or even her successes, could be attributed to his influence. (That's not official, mind you.) 😉

That's from The Valdorian Age p. 143, expanding on the history of the Colossus of Elweir. The Colossus was actually raised by the Turakian Age wizard Lanarien, who led a group of refugees from Aarn in three ships to try to escape the cataclysm wracking the world in the wake of Takofanes' fall. "The magics Lanarien wrought to protect these refugees were powerful almost beyond measure — so powerful they bent time and space around the three ships. Lanarien transported them across numberless millennia until the world calmed itself." But the world they found themselves in was changed and ruined, and civilization had collapsed. The text mentions that Lanarien's magic was "vastly weakened" in this era, but it's unclear whether he could have gone back in time if it wasn't, or even if he wanted to. Lanarien left the refugees on the coast of Abyzinia, then wandered the world in despair. He used much of his remaining magic to raise the Colossus as a monument to his grief and a warning to Men of the future, but his final fate is unrevealed.
 
So according to this history, at some time during TA magic was discovered that could carry people at least forward in time. The effect sounds similar to the Einsteinian time-dilation effect of accelerating a mass toward the speed of light. That's also similar to how the Lemurians survived the later Atlantean cataclysm, by using a mighty Clockwork Engine to freeze Lemuria in a moment in time untouchable by the global upheaval, until it had passed and the Earth had settled down. (See Hidden Lands for details.) They're both examples of one-way trips; but they leave a potential escape open for characters from the future who end up in VA or other eras without the ability to return on their own.