Tabletop RPG Analysis Thread [or 'The FATAL & Friends Thread']

[A Random]

So! Tabletop RPGs. Lots of nerds like them. It's a global pastime that has gone through some hardships through and through, no thanks to the attitudes of either developers [looking at you, Changing Breeds] or players [let's just say I'm more than familiar with some fiascos]. Some games are particularly renowned, where others are less known.

The SomethingAwful forums have a thread on this subject matter, the 'FATAL & Friends', where they post extended analyses of various RPGs like, well, FATAL itself. Most of them are terrible and very much deserve the fame of trash, but the thread also served to highlight some good games that are not known for being foreign or short releases or something. And it's basically the one thing I've followed out of the whole lot.

...but, since I don't have a SomethingAwful account, I can't contribute to that. So instead I thought about posting stuff here, asked @Jaimas for it, and got permission.

Now, this thread is free for anyone who has an RPG they want to talk about. Or who wants to talk about one of the RPGs seen in the FATAL & Friends project or thread but doesn't have an account there. The main point is, if you want to discuss something in depth, go right ahead.

-=-​

I've made no secret that I'm from Brasil, and those who play RPGs in Brasil were not denied the ones with worldwide popularity, like GURPS, D&D, World of Darkness, Castle Falkenstein, Paranoia, or such. However, not everyone was satisfied simply in playing the systems others made.

In 1992, two college students were working on a new algorithm to be used for heavy machinery and tools, which was designed to calculate a percent value off a specific number in a 1=4 relationship. Once the program was finished, one of them looked at the other and said, 'hey, wouldn't it be cool if we used this on our next game of RuneQuest?'.

That anecdote is mainly mine, but it's essentially how the DAEMON System was created. Two nerds decided to use their college work to make their game more fun.

After some early drafts in 93 and 94, one of the nerds was approached by another nerd - who had his own RPG magazine - and convinced to let them publish a game scenario of his creation. And that is where we'll start with.

ARKANUN was the first major release of 'Editora DAEMON' ['DAEMON Publishing', I suppose], a game that focused on themes very similar to Mage: The Ascension. The focus of the game was to allow players to be wizards, mages and sorcerers, spellcrafters who had to deal with a dark and corrupt world that was slowly being torn apart. Although it was certainly similar, there was one aspect of ARKANUN that made it stand out from its White Wolf counterpart.

ARKANUN is a game of Gothic Horror. It is set in the start of the 14th Century, right as the Hundred Years' War begins, with all it implies. It's very much set in the past, and although the rules are certainly viable to create a more modern character, it's a fair contrast against White Wolf's 'always the present' point of view. The PCs in this game deal not just with normal mages, but also angels and demons, and some elements further.

Another aspect of ARKANUN is how, exactly, the horror is portrayed, though I will not go into exact details over here. Suffice to say, the developers tried to at least do their own thing instead of ripping off Mage and calling it a day, and while it's possible that it'll reach levels of 'White Wolf ', I'm posting it here less to make fun of it and more to see what an American audience would think of the game as it's written. We'll be looking at the Third Edition, released in 2004, which contains both the main game itself and the main cities of the time.

Next Time in ARKANUN: "Welcome to the Century of Men!"

 

[Randall Fragg]

I want to talk about deadEarth, a terrible RPG which is essentially a less rapey, post-apocalytic FATAL.
Like older RPGs (such as Traveler), you can die in character creation. Unlike Traveler, you are limited to 3 characters ever. The rules flat out state that you have to play as the third character you roll if the other two sucked.
Did I mention that death in character creation is incredibly easy, since you are required to roll multiple times on the "Radiation Manipulations" table, which has a roughly 20% chance of killing you?
The game also says that you need to barter with the GM for your starting equipment.
It also proclaims itself to be "highly realistic", just like FATAL.
In short, it's another terrible game that someone here should run for the lols.

 

[A Random]

ARKANUN Part 1: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Let's start with the blurb at the back.

"This is a gothic horror RPG, based off the real Middle Ages, in 1314.

While the Black Plague ravaged Europe, the English and French armies fought the bloody Hundred Years' War. The Inquisition hunted down and damned to the fire any manifestation of demonic acts. The Templars, oppressed by the Church, continued their heroic battle against infernal forces.

Meet a world where the seas were inhabited by terrible creatures and horrible monsters skulked the woods, keeping the peasants from leaving their villages. Where dirty feuds and hidden abbeys hid secrets that were not to be revealed."

What a nice place this sounds like!

Right upon opening the book we're greeted with this image. It's in Portuguese and everything in it will be explained afterwards, but do keep in mind it's a two-page spread in the book.

Looks like Earth's a pancake after all.

What we're looking at is the 'Orbe de Terra', or Terran Orb. This is essentially every variable world overlaid over our own world, within that big splat referred to as Spiritum. Within the Terran Orb there are the worlds of Paradisia, Terra/Earth, Arkanun and Infernun, with Luna - the Moon - and Inferno - Hell - also located there. Within Spiritum we can also see the Sonhar - Dreaming or Dreamland - and Arcadia. And distinct from it, we can see Edhen and Tenebra at the two ends of the line of planets, while Limbo and the Abismo - Abyss - are at the very ends of Spiritum, quite close to the other Orbs - those of Venus and Mars.

Most of this will be properly explained later, or in other books, but this gives an idea of the system's mythology and how bizarre it is.

After that page, we get the book title, credits, and general notes. For one, this book is "not recommended for those under the age of 18... and for people with IQ lower than 80", due to its content. There's also a proper disclaimer at the very bottom stating that all this is fiction outside a specific text on the next few pages, and how they only took things from history for their own purposes. It ends on the following note:

"This is only a game. Reality is much worse."

The next page includes a brief explanation due to this book being a Third Edition, Revised kind of book. It also brings up two points that make ARKANUN special:
-First and foremost, it's one of the few RPGs in the world based entirely on classic and medieval mythos. Most RPGs focus on either urban or medieval fantasy, but with a high inspiration in Tolkien's work, at least at the time this was written. A book that explicitly says 'no, this is based in stuff that really happened a long time ago' is more uncommon.
-It being a horror RPG means that monsters are much stronger than the protagonist, in terms of physical stats and combats, discouraging [to a degree] standard fights to the death and giving the players a chance to use their noggin. Surviving encounters is more important than winning them, if you get the drift.

Then we get the opening fiction, titled "The Century of Men". Ironically, this is not a White Wolf intro where Fangs DeNasty and Artie Wolf-In-Sheepskin are having a hissyfit over how to best portray the plot of Underworld in real life. "The Century of Men" is more of a history lesson, explaining the main details behind the Hundred Years' War and how people used to live back then [hint: it was shit]. It's nothing you won't find in a history book or Wikipedia, per se, and it's not really that interesting so I'll skip transcribing that per se.

We get the obligatory RPG lexicon afterwards, which thankfully is not nearly as stupid as a given White Wolf book. The ones that matter being reported on are as follows:

Dice: ARKANUN, and the other DAEMON System RPGs, is played with both d6 and d10 dice, which can be 'converted' into d3 and d100. A d3 result comes from rolling a d6 and dividing by 2 [rounding up], while a d100 result comes from rolling two d10, with one being the tens and the other the ones. Getting 00 equals 100.
Comparison Dice: NPC stat dice. A common human can have 3D in every stat, so the GM will roll 3d6 to set their stats. By comparison, a dragon may have 4D+10 on their Strength only, giving them a minimum value of 14 in comparison to the human's 3.
Form: Mages use these to handle elements. Divided in Understand, Create and Control.
Magic Path: Defines what the above handles. Divided in 6 Elemental Magic Paths: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Light, and Darkness. Demonologists also are aware of two other Paths, those of Arkanun and Spiritum.*
Focus Points: An unit that states how advanced a Mage is at a given Form or Path. Without having enough points in them, the Mage cannot use magic.
Ritual: More advanced spells than any spontaneous technique a Mage may be able to perform. Rituals require spellbooks and memorization to be used, but are more powerful in general.
Magic Circle: "The highest amount of Focus within the largest Path Magic Path the Mage knows." The example is much better at making sense; if a Mage has four Focus Points in the Water Path, they can perform Rituals of the fourth Circle in the Water Path.
Fetish: Spell components, verbal commands or gestures required to make spells work.
Game World: A simplified description of the Earth the game is set in. It's a time of many dangers, where someone was old at the age of 40 and the Inquisition hunted down those who refused to convert. Where feudal lords ruled over their land with iron grips, where corrupt bishops joined even more corrupt kings to declare wars against their neighbors for more power. Where Magic exists. Where renegade Demons and fallen Angels made contact with very few individuals (the Mages). Vampires, elfs, Demons and other shady creatures inhabit forests.
Arkanun: Originally Ark-a-nun (Paths of Magic). A world located within another dimension, immediately beneath our own. Once it was like ours, but it became decadent through the use of Magic from the lower realms: now it is inhabited exclusively by Demons. It is from Arkanun that the mystical energy used by the Mages of our world comes from, and using this energy contributes further to the decay or Arkanun.

*The addendum here: there are actually three more Paths, those of Plants, Animals and Humans, but for some reason they were not added at the time.

Next Time in ARKANUN: "Information is power."

 

[A Random]

ARKANUN Part 2: Demiurge is the One True God, every other god is only an angel.

So part of why I haven't progressed here was that there's too much content to deal with and as you guys may've guessed from the fact that it's a medieval horror story, we're entering religious content. So at the very least, I just want to say that I'm pretty sure nobody who worked on this book was intending on specifically offending anyone when they wrote this. Brasil's culture is very much one of syncretism [such as Candomblé, which combines African beliefs with Catholicism].

We all clear here? I hope so. I tried to write most words here as written, but some of them are translated to English directly.

The History of Arkanun

We start the backstory of the setting with Lucifer's rebellion. The Fallen Light himself was the ruler of all Angels at the start of Creation and when he saw what Earth was becoming he decided that he wanted the whole thing, so after convincing about one third of all Angels to join his cause [including such nicely named folks as Moloch and Astoreth], he went to war against the Demiurge - that is to say, God, YHVH, the Almighty Creator, etc.

After defeating everyone in their path, Lucifer and his men finally made it to the Solarium, where Christos - the Son - was waiting for them. With a sword as shiny as a thousand suns. And he proceeded to fight them off for a whole eternity.

Lucifer's forces lost and were dumped into a pit in the darkest Umbra so that they would be able to spend eternity reflecting on their sin. The Angels who didn't pick a side were kicked out of Heaven because either you're with the Allfather or you're not, basically. Lucifer's castle was destroyed and the ruins were left to rot somewhere between Mars and Jupiter because that's how large Heaven is.

Some time after that, Yggdrasil was discovered by the inhabitants of Aasgard, the Norse gods. Hermes and a bunch of Angels were sent from Olympus and the Silver City [essentially Christian Heaven] to learn more about it, and ten of them became the Sephiroh [the guardians of the Quaballa, or Kabbalah]. There was an eleventh Sephirah but he ended up finding out about its forbidden branch and became corrupt, destroyed, and sent to Hell, where he started teaching Demons to do magic just like the Archangels, named Qlippoth. There are theories that he was actually aware of the truth behind the Wheel of Worlds and that's why he became hunted down, with the Qlippoth created to warn the Mages of the truth as well.

Atlantis was actually real, and not just a story Plato came up with. It was a creation of Poseidon that was eventually brought down, but not by his own personal wrath; actually, it was the Biblical Flood that was responsible for it. It took dozens of gods to even set that up, led by the oldest Angel in all of Paradisia. It was intended to destroy everything, but the souls of the half-human/half-Atlantean hybrids were able to reincarnate later. [Get used to this.]

The Flood happened because Jehovah had ordered that his Angels should not lay with the daughters of men, unlike the Norse, Greek and Egyptian Gods. Unfortunately, Samyaza, an Angel who had worked with Hermes to develop Magic to begin with, took his 200 men strong phalanx to Earth so they could lay with the mortal women, taking along some gods as well. And thanks to that, three new races were born: the Giants, like Goliath, really strong and destructive; the Nephalins, almost human, yet able to retain their past life memories no matter how many incarnations passed; and the Aryans, who were just normal white dudes I guess [compared to the Middle-African everybody else at the time]. Seriously, they're just a footnote.

The Flood cleansed the Earth, the rebellious Angels were imprisoned and captured for seventy generations before being trapped in the Desert of Dudael until the End of Days, the Giants were killed off thanks to the Flood and the efforts of Michael and Gabriel primarily, and the Nephalins just came back full of awareness of how their lives sucked at the very end.

After that, eventually the Secret Societies [large factions of human and non-human Mages and supernatural entities, starting with Lucifer's Rebellion] grew too powerful on Earth, and the Silver City became concerned about that. The Demiurge contacted Moses, a member of the Order of Yamesh who was tasked with taking the Hebrews out of Egypt to their Promised Land. Moses tells Pharaoh Ramses, the Pharaoh tells him to go away but doesn't punish the Hebrews over it, Jehovah punishes him with the Ten Plagues, and this goes on until the Golden City of Ra [the Egyptian Gods' home] finally gave in to those demands and the Hebrews leave to their Promised Land at last.

It's around this time that Greece is establishing itself as a powerful civilization in its own right. All myths are true, Hercules and Perseus and the Argonauts are all real, and basically the setting of God of War is the standard [minus the actual events]. There are only two big deals worth mentioning, though - Arcadia and Magnus Petraak.

Arcadia is an adaptation of the Lycaon story. Lycaon was a king from a distant land in Greece who once served as host for Zeus and Hera. His fifty sons were arrogant dicks and couldn't believe the two they were seeing were truly gods, so they looked for some random kid in the streets to kill and force Zeus to eat him. Except that, in this case, the kid was Arcade, his son with a nymph, and that pissed off Zeus something fierce, as he cursed the fifty sons to turn into wolves and banished the entire region from existence.

The myth changes here. Turns out seventeen of Lycaon's children were immortal from his endeavors with nymphs or demigoddesses, so they didn't become simply wild dogs, but vampires - of the Vrikolaka race. The others were mortal and just became dumb werewolves. Arcade's spirit was too powerful and he ended up mixing it to the spiritual remnants of Lycaon's kingdom, creating a spiritual otherworld called Arcadia where supernatural beasts can survive in 'peace'.

Magnus Petraak was one of the first Mages from Arkanun to make it to Earth during this time. He started a panic because his bizarre, inhuman appearance made the peasants think he was a dragon, but he managed to figure out how to communicate with humans just in time for the local hero to show up, and used that to explain what he actually wanted before the guy stabbed his lungs out. Turns out he was an escapee, not just a monster, and was mostly looking for some place to survive thanks to how fucked his world is. Of course, not very long after that he started his own Secret Society - the Order of Mysteries of Chronos, or just the House of Chronos, who taught folks like Pitagoras on the secrets of Magic and the likes. After the Trojan War, more Mages from Arkanun started to cross over.

Next Time in ARKANUN: Jesus is a footnote.

 

[Jaimas]

A gentle reminder that @A Random here is discussing the fluff of the setting itself and not actual religion; I shouldn't have to make this distinction but I'm doing it now so as to cut any idiocy off considering what I'm about to post.

There are far worse RPG settings out there than FATAL.

As bad as FATAL is, there is one setting that makes it seem almost competent in comparison, because at least FATAL can be legitimately humorous, even if it's for all the wrong reasons. Racial Holy War, or RaHoWa, remains the only RPG setting I'm currently aware of that has defied every attempt by /tg/ to make it funny. To quote /tg/'s article on the subject:

Racial Holy War is so bad that it can't even be used an example of how not to do something.

The ruleset is basically nonfunctional in terms of crunch, and clearly was never playtested. The entire game bills itself as the White Supremacist d20 Modern, but it fails at this since, again, no crunch of note. Whereas FATAL was a hive of memes for /tg/, including the dreaded Anal Circumference meme, RaHoWa couldn't even manage that much.

 

[Randall Fragg]

ARKANUN Part 2:

So part of why I haven't progressed here was that there's too much content to deal with and as you guys may've guessed from the fact that it's a medieval horror story, we're entering religious content. So at the very least, I just want to say that I'm pretty sure nobody who worked on this book was intending on specifically offending anyone when they wrote this. Brasil's culture is very much one of syncretism [such as Candomblé, which combines African beliefs with Catholicism].

We all clear here? I hope so. I tried to write most words here as written, but some of them are translated to English directly.

The History of Arkanun

We start the backstory of the setting with Lucifer's rebellion. The Fallen Light himself was the ruler of all Angels at the start of Creation and when he saw what Earth was becoming he decided that he wanted the whole thing, so after convincing about one third of all Angels to join his cause [including such nicely named folks as Moloch and Astoreth], he went to war against the Demiurge - that is to say, God, YHVH, the Almighty Creator, etc.

After defeating everyone in their path, Lucifer and his men finally made it to the Solarium, where Christos - the Son - was waiting for them. With a sword as shiny as a thousand suns. And he proceeded to fight them off for a whole eternity.

Lucifer's forces lost and were dumped into a pit in the darkest Umbra so that they would be able to spend eternity reflecting on their sin. The Angels who didn't pick a side were kicked out of Heaven because either you're with the Allfather or you're not, basically. Lucifer's castle was destroyed and the ruins were left to rot somewhere between Mars and Jupiter because that's how large Heaven is.

Some time after that, Yggdrasil was discovered by the inhabitants of Aasgard, the Norse gods. Hermes and a bunch of Angels were sent from Olympus and the Silver City [essentially Christian Heaven] to learn more about it, and ten of them became the Sephiroh [the guardians of the Quaballa, or Kabbalah]. There was an eleventh Sephirah but he ended up finding out about its forbidden branch and became corrupt, destroyed, and sent to Hell, where he started teaching Demons to do magic just like the Archangels, named Qlippoth. There are theories that he was actually aware of the truth behind the Wheel of Worlds and that's why he became hunted down, with the Qlippoth created to warn the Mages of the truth as well.

Atlantis was actually real, and not just a story Plato came up with. It was a creation of Poseidon that was eventually brought down, but not by his own personal wrath; actually, it was the Biblical Flood that was responsible for it. It took dozens of gods to even set that up, led by the oldest Angel in all of Paradisia. It was intended to destroy everything, but the souls of the half-human/half-Atlantean hybrids were able to reincarnate later. [Get used to this.]

The Flood happened because Jehovah had ordered that his Angels should not lay with the daughters of men, unlike the Norse, Greek and Egyptian Gods. Unfortunately, Samyaza, an Angel who had worked with Hermes to develop Magic to begin with, took his 200 men strong phalanx to Earth so they could lay with the mortal women, taking along some gods as well. And thanks to that, three new races were born: the Giants, like Goliath, really strong and destructive; the Nephalins, almost human, yet able to retain their past life memories no matter how many incarnations passed; and the Aryans, who were just normal white dudes I guess [compared to the Middle-African everybody else at the time]. Seriously, they're just a footnote.

The Flood cleansed the Earth, the rebellious Angels were imprisoned and captured for seventy generations before being trapped in the Desert of Dudael until the End of Days, the Giants were killed off thanks to the Flood and the efforts of Michael and Gabriel primarily, and the Nephalins just came back full of awareness of how their lives sucked at the very end.

After that, eventually the Secret Societies [large factions of human and non-human Mages and supernatural entities, starting with Lucifer's Rebellion] grew too powerful on Earth, and the Silver City became concerned about that. The Demiurge contacted Moses, a member of the Order of Yamesh who was tasked with taking the Hebrews out of Egypt to their Promised Land. Moses tells Pharaoh Ramses, the Pharaoh tells him to go away but doesn't punish the Hebrews over it, Jehovah punishes him with the Ten Plagues, and this goes on until the Golden City of Ra [the Egyptian Gods' home] finally gave in to those demands and the Hebrews leave to their Promised Land at last.

It's around this time that Greece is establishing itself as a powerful civilization in its own right. All myths are true, Hercules and Perseus and the Argonauts are all real, and basically the setting of God of War is the standard [minus the actual events]. There are only two big deals worth mentioning, though - Arcadia and Magnus Petraak.

Arcadia is an adaptation of the Lycaon story. Lycaon was a king from a distant land in Greece who once served as host for Zeus and Hera. His fifty sons were arrogant dicks and couldn't believe the two they were seeing were truly gods, so they looked for some random kid in the streets to kill and force Zeus to eat him. Except that, in this case, the kid was Arcade, his son with a nymph, and that pissed off Zeus something fierce, as he cursed the fifty sons to turn into wolves and banished the entire region from existence.

The myth changes here. Turns out seventeen of Lycaon's children were immortal from his endeavors with nymphs or demigoddesses, so they didn't become simply wild dogs, but vampires - of the Vrikolaka race. The others were mortal and just became dumb werewolves. Arcade's spirit was too powerful and he ended up mixing it to the spiritual remnants of Lycaon's kingdom, creating a spiritual otherworld called Arcadia where supernatural beasts can survive in 'peace'.

Magnus Petraak was one of the first Mages from Arkanun to make it to Earth during this time. He started a panic because his bizarre, inhuman appearance made the peasants think he was a dragon, but he managed to figure out how to communicate with humans just in time for the local hero to show up, and used that to explain what he actually wanted before the guy stabbed his lungs out. Turns out he was an escapee, not just a monster, and was mostly looking for some place to survive thanks to how fucked his world is. Of course, not very long after that he started his own Secret Society - the Order of Mysteries of Chronos, or just the House of Chronos, who taught folks like Pitagoras on the secrets of Magic and the likes. After the Trojan War, more Mages from Arkanun started to cross over.

...Dude wow. That actually sounds pretty cool. I would totally play a game of this.

A gentle reminder that @A Random here is discussing the fluff of the setting itself and not actual religion; I shouldn't have to make this distinction but I'm doing it now so as to cut any idiocy off considering what I'm about to post.

There are far worse RPG settings out there than FATAL.

As bad as FATAL is, there is one setting that makes it seem almost competent in comparison, because at least FATAL can be legitimately humorous, even if it's for all the wrong reasons. Racial Holy War, or RaHoWa, remains the only RPG setting I'm currently aware of that has defied every attempt by /tg/ to make it funny. To quote /tg/'s article on the subject:



The ruleset is basically nonfunctional in terms of crunch, and clearly was never playtested. The entire game bills itself as the White Supremacist d20 Modern, but it fails at this since, again, no crunch of note. Whereas FATAL was a hive of memes for /tg/, including the dreaded Anal Circumference meme, RaHoWa couldn't even manage that much.

The only way to make Racial Holy War bearable is run the thing in d20 and mock the setting. The "elite haxxing skills" consist of using TOR and spamming /pol/ memes and the non-functioning rules are ported (so you can be scared off by a mob of elderly jewish grandmothers or bribed into losing a turn). Playing as a gang of edgelord racial holy wurriors bumbling through misadventures could be pretty amusing, for a while.

 

[ActualKiwi]

...Dude wow. That actually sounds pretty cool. I would totally play a game of this.


The only way to make Racial Holy War bearable is run the thing in d20 and mock the setting. The "elite haxxing skills" consist of using TOR and spamming /pol/ memes and the non-functioning rules are ported (so you can be scared off by a mob of elderly jewish grandmothers or bribed into losing a turn). Playing as a gang of edgelord racial holy wurriors bumbling through misadventures could be pretty amusing, for a while.

Even then it would be hard to run, as the source book is missing pretty much all the numbers, calculations and actually useful information for combat, levelling, equipment..just about anything you'd actually need.

 

[A Random]

ARKANUN Part 3: Much Allah Over Nothing

Meanwhile in Israel, Solomon was a Mage under the service of Demiurge who wrote several books and treaties on Magic, which served as groundwork for future Secret Societies. He also erected the Great Temple of Jerusalem, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept and all, with the aid of many half-breeds, nephalins and knights. This was the start of the Order of Solomon, the first true monster slaying organization of any sort, whose creed and beliefs would practically influence every other group of demon/vampire hunters or Belmonts in the future. They're also responsible for the Seal of Solomon, AKA the six-pointed Jewish star, which is used by mystics and Mages to indicate the six Elemental Paths of Magic [Air, Darkness, Earth, Fire, Light, and Water], and the institution of the Deacons. Deacons are the six Mages [or supernatural beings] who rule over the Mages of a given city, keeping the magical society under control, in a form similar to the White Wolf Masquerade, but we'll get to that later.

The Temple was later destroyed during a rebellion, long after Solomon's death, under the command of Arkanun Demons.

The Roman Empire starts around this point. Every mystical order eventually sent ambassadors to Rome, once they realized how much power it was accumulating, but that came with a cost: Greek and Egyptian Mages lost a good deal of their power, especially once the Romans took over most of the Known World at the time.

Jesus shows up and dies for the third Covenant. Saint Peter becomes the First Pope and, post-mortem, becomes the leader of the armies of Luna in the Silver City. Mithras, the patron of the Roman military, started losing power despite the increasing power of the Empire as Christianism starts its influence, until he's defeated and banished to Hell with a legion of Roman soldiers slain in battle. This was not really a good move, seeing as how this influenced Hell's structure from just random violent demons into proper Legions of evil. As a victory trophy, the Catholic Church takes Mithras' birth date and establishes it as Jesus'.

The rest of the world was not left too far behind, however. Al-Dyniha, one of Magnus Petraak's old students/servants, arrived on Earth circa 209 BC in Athens. He survived for nearly five hundred years more, teaching about the Path of Earth to anyone who'd listen, forming the new Order of Marble on this world. Rather than stay and let the Romans screw him over, though, he left for Turkey and the Middle East, the Order itself reaching as far as the East of Africa at this point. He and the fellow Arkanun inhabitants who had crossed over to this region, known as Djinns, helped the Arabs and their Mages fight against Angels that were trying to take over their lands for Demiurge, forming a long-term alliance between these factions. They also gained the aid of Angels who actually converted to Islam, of all things. Arab society was ruled by the Djinns and Ifrits, manipulated by Jewish and Arabian Mages, but the great cities and caliphates were prosper and life was good, and their markets were the ideal place to find magical and mystical merchandise.

Scandinavia was also fairly relevant at this time. Their Nephalins, referred to as Nefheim, were born to the Norse Angels' human women [before the Flood] and took great pains to form many Mage orders, including the most famous one - the Order of Luft, the most powerful among the European Mages until the XV Century. Through the use of unique and complex communication rituals, and instant transport spells, they were able to retain an unified form no matter how far they were from each other, despite the high presence of Aryans and Nephalins. One of their most infamous Mages, however, was Mathias Szakmary; Odin, Thor and Baldur were actually members of the Mages of Luft, as well.

The Nephalins used the expansion of the Order of Luft to spread all over the world again, reaching as far as India [but no farther]. Most Nephalins chose to join the Knights Templar or the Secret Orders of Mages, depending on their preferences, and used their Dalai Lama-style incarnation system to accumulate power and become their Grand Masters as often as possible. While not every leader in a Secret Society is a Nephalin, they have their peaks of activity [based on the space between their life cycles].

Merlin is another major player. The son of an Incubus Demon and a human mother, he was originally a druid with a great deal of contacts, including the goddess Gaea herself. Merlin served as the counselor to four British rulers, including King Arthur Pendragon, and helped him form the Order of the Knights of the Grail, originally tasked with the protection of Britain, a task that later came to include the Holy Grail from Jesus' Last Supper.

Arthur's death in 542 AD was followed by his body being taken by Morgan le Fay, who takes him to Avalon [in New Arcadia] to be buried with his wife, Guinevere. His soul rests in Caer Wydr, the Crystal Castle, in an island surrounded by crystal clear waters and protected by nine fairies. Merlin himself stayed as a protector of Britain, helping the Order of the Grail now and then, but legend claims that he's been a great help to British Mages to this day, like John Dee or Aleister Crowley.

In the VII Century, Mohammed started unifying the tribes living in the Arabian deserts, bringing them salvation to the one true god, Allah. This belief helped the creation of a force to oppose the Christian Angels of the Silver City, and the conquest of Mecca by the armies of Mohammed were the start of a Holy War against the Silver City and the infidels. With the help of the converted angels, Allah created a Paradise in Paradisia akin to the Valhalla of Norse myth, where the faithful Muslims would be able to rest forever after taking part in the Jihad, but many prefer to return to Earth in the shape of Ishmails - undead warriors akin to the Catholic Hellspawns.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I am, myself, aware that in real life, Islam's belief is that Allah is the same God Abraham believed in, but that rather than take Isaac as his successor it was Ishmael. I don't pretend to understand how different the beliefs are, or how important it is that one specific god is correct over another, I am simply translating this.

Having said that, I am not going to ignore the discussion. The book doesn't bother trying to explain much about this. It won't delve any deeply and I am aware this creates some level of incongruence. It might even have to do with the post-9/11 world influencing the writing to some degree [which is only clear in another book though]. So, I'll give my opinion as to what this means.

In this setting - The World in Darkness, as I call it - Demiurge is not considered truly omnipotent and peerless. Demiurge is an entity of a higher plane of existence who, to some degree, could be considered to have usurped the role of God [though it'll take many books for me to explain all this]. Allah is a creation of belief who is real due to how strong the belief in his existence is, and similar to Demiurge-as-God, both require the faith of their believers to sustain themselves and their power.

Allah is not lesser than the other gods mentioned - the other pantheons. And given the lack of shared belief, may just be as strong as Demiurge in terms of being a God. But as it stands, Demiurge is God and Allah is not God. End of story.

Next Time in ARKANUN: Welcome to the XIV Century.

 

[A Random]

Jeez, two months sure pass you by, huh?

ARKANUN Part 4: The Fall of Man

To stop the Muslims from taking over Europe and protect the faithful in their path to Jerusalem, the Arkanun Arcanorum used the Teutonic Knights as pawns, creating a massive monastic army that would stop the heathens in their tracks. They're responsible for the Crusades, which had the secondary [secret] objective of killing as many supernatural creatures as they could, and trained the Knights Hospitaller to protect pilgrims. The original Templar Grandmasters were Hugh de Payens and Robert de Craon, two of the Arcanorum's greatest commanders, who took the job to try and gain support from the Catholic Angels [which they later destroyed]. Not all Templars were part of the Arcanorum, however, so a lot of them went after Mages as well. In the end, the Templar Order started to split into inner factions, between the Church supporters [Mage hunters] and the Arcanorum supporters [Demon/Angel hunters].

Of course, that's when the Inquisition emerged. The Angels manipulated Pope Innocent II to do something that would truly punish the heretics, and Pope Gregor IX gave the Inquisition more power and started to repress the Dominican Order. Given how aggressively religious they were, the Inquisition was responsible for the greatest Mage and Demon hunts of the time, slaying roughly half the Demons who had escaped to Earth. The Templars would sometimes help them, or sometimes be their very enemies, though never openly enough to be incriminated. Sorcery only became heresy when Pope Nicholas V enabled that in 1451, an action further supported by Pope Innocent VIII - actually an Angel - and his followers.

Because of how the Church was making a strong use of Thought-Form - the idea that if people believe in something very very much, it'll become real in some way - the belief in Hell as a place for sinners to go after death grew stronger and stronger, to the point where the Demons could actually use that belief in two ways. For one, they were able to finally give Hell itself a perfect shape, which was recorded by Dante Alighieri, a medium, after his journey to Hell itself.

The other way belief was used was simple. Everyone believed they would go to Hell if they weren't pure enough - and most people aren't pure enough. Not only would they have access to an army of slaves that would emerge as soon as they died, but the most corrupt or evil souls - assassins and thieves - would be recruited into their ranks and serve them.

1304 was the start of some big changes. Pope Innocent V and King Philip IV, the Fair found out about a Templar ploy to destroy the Church of Avignon. They used this to capture many of their leaders, including the infamous Jacques de Molay, and later open conflict started as the Gladius Dei took up arms against the remaining Templars. Unfortunately for the Templars, they pretty much lost and had to go underground, retreating to Scotland, Portugal and Spain, among other places. Those Templars who ran to Scotland served as allies to Robert de Bruce William Wallace, ensuring the survival of the Scottish Highlanders. They, of course, were also aided by the Hundred-Year War, which had already been going on for a while and served as a great drain in the English resources and manpower.

Not that everything was great for the Church either. Fallen Angels influenced the French Church into declaring independence from Rome and both Popes excommunicated each other, which triggered a war of influence amongst the clergy and caused the Church to lose power and influence as its corruption and abuse were revealed, being seen as just another demon. The Arkanun Arcanorum and its rivals took this chance to try and start over, given their losses in the last century.

And of course, then there was the Black Plague. Spreading like fire in a savannah, it purged over two thirds of the European population, thanks to the mice and diseased that existed in every city. No one was safe, and alchemists and wise men alike sought some kind of cure, despite finding no real solution to this issue until 1304.

Welcome to the XIV Century. Be ready to die.

Next Time in ARKANUN: Character Creation.