Legacy WOA30AE EN:Setting
Legacy: War Of Ages 30th Anniversary Edition
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Contents
Chapter Two: Setting
Her sword was heavy, too heavy, sticky-slick with blood. Too much of her blood, she knew. Swinging lamps overhead threw chaotic blue-grey light inside the abandoned warehouse. She was dizzy, reeling, legs cramped hard from fighting, running, fighting. Her heart pounded in her ears, refusing to stop though it had precious little left to pump. In the back of her mind she was vaguely surprised that she was alive.
Dead bodies wrapped in black with vague faces and slow leaking gouges littered the cold concrete slab. She kicked a cardboard box, desperate to shake her head clear, peering into the shadows swaying back and forth without rhythm. The hunters were hiding from her. Who were they? Before long they would spring, willing, grateful to die killing her.
The only door was blocked. Moving the fallen crates would leave her open to attack. She counted at least four when they retreated. She rotated slowly, expecting a sword flash from the shadow's edge at any moment. Soon the hunters would realize how badly she was hurt, and close for the kill. Why was this happening? She spat blood, resisting the sweet release of death, listened to the muted church bells in the distance.
The world of the twenty-first century is a study in contrasts. The technological innovations of the past two centuries make the previous two millennia seem ineffectual and stagnant. Humankind has sent its metallic children exploring all the planets of the solar system, and the time is coming when humanity shall slip the surly bonds of gravity to spread among the stars. Science has devised cures to the most terrifying illnesses of the past, including the Plague that threatened the human race's civilization with collapse in the late twentieth century. Information has become the currency of the earth, with the Winternet connecting people on opposite sides of the globe as easily as calling a next-door neighbor.
Yet with all of humanity's advances, the bestial nature of Man has not been overcome. With the slow dissolution of national and economic boundaries has come a new territorialism. Ethnic and cultural differences are seized upon and proclaimed sacrosanct by small-minded people who fear the loss of their cultural identity. Religious zealots seek to impose their twisted views of morality upon an unsuspecting and often apathetic populace. Megacorporations plot and play with the lives of millions, using advertising, subliminal messages, and mind control to create the perfect consumers, who buy anything and everything without asking themselves if they need it. Like too many rats in a crowded cage, humanity has begun to turn on itself, and news of serial rapists and ritual murderers are not only commonplace, but passé.
Look around you, and you see may see the world of Legacy, where ancient mysteries exist side-by-side with technological marvels undreamt of a century ago. Think how revolutionary the invention of the simple transistor radio was. What would our culture be like if this contraption had never been created? To an Immortal born in thirteenth century Spain, the transistor radio appeared on the scene only yesterday. What we have become accustomed to in only the past twenty years, what we have come to take for granted in our everyday lives, has been around for only a few moments from an Immortal's perspective. Yet these devices have changed the world.
Consider travel. To the average citizen of Europe in the Middle Ages, a trip to the next town was an adventure. Someone from as far as a thousand kilometers away would be considered exotic in the extreme, since the next country was often a trek of merely hundreds of kilometers. Yet riding only one hundred kilometers would take days of travel. The ordinary peasant and the typical merchant never went farther than 50 kilometers from where they were born. Today traveling a hundred kilometers is usually an errand of minutes rather than days, and few who do so pause to appreciate the remarkable devices which allow such freedom.
Now consider the impact these milestones of technology would have upon the psychology of beings to whom a simple telephone is strange and magical. The world and society of the early twenty-first century has similarities to the world Immortals have come to know and accept, but fundamental assumptions Immortals have held for centuries have been swept away in the blink of an eye. An Immortal who has lived in the megalopolis of New York for years may suddenly look up at the skyscrapers above her, eyes wide with fright, until she realizes they are only buildings, and that they have been there for decades. It is akin to the split-second panic you might feel waking up in a strange bed, until you remember that you spent the night at a friend's house.
In spite of the fantastic accomplishments made by science in the provinces of medicine, agriculture, and electronics, the realms of the human heart seem as unfathomable as they were to explorers of the psyche over a century ago. The savages of our primordial past no longer stalk through wild jungles. They now hunt in the shadows of concrete and steel megaliths that touch the sky, waiting to pounce upon the weak or unwary. Warlords and despoilers no longer wear armor and lead bands of bloodthirsty mercenaries. They now wear suits and command armies of lawyers, but they are no less bloodthirsty. Every great advance has been accompanied by a new way for mortals to prey upon each other, a new way for the mean or depraved to maim the spirits and bodies of the frail or unsuspecting.
Superstitions which once seemed close to extinction at the sterile hand of science have returned to power. Religious institutions, weakened by the systematic encroachments of Science, have regained lost ground and become wealthier and more corrupt than ever before. The ignorant, the lonely, and the gullible embrace telephone psychics and video astrologers in attempts to find meaning in lives wasted watching home shopping channels. Urban myths of Bloody Mary and the Hook Man have been joined and succeeded by entities too monstrous to be imaginary.
The modern world is a source of great sadness to Immortals, who have seen its seeds in the civilizations of centuries past. Too often, that which is good and beautiful perishes from the earth while that which is squalid and brutish survives. Only Immortals seem to have the depth of perspective both to appreciate the great wonders change has brought and to mourn the terrible depravity that seems so enduring. Mortals around them, with lives as short and fragile as that of butterflies, have made of their lives both a heaven and a hell; seemingly unappreciative of the one, and unaware of the other.
From the Dawn of Time
In this world where science is doing the impossible and humankind is doing the unthinkable, walk beings who have watched humanity's long childhood with more than casual interest. They keep themselves apart from humanity, for they know they would be hunted and destroyed if humankind knew of their existence. They are Immortals: that is their gift, and that is their curse.
Every culture has a myth about them. The Chinese called them Ba Xian (the "Eight Immortals"), and still use their symbols as good luck charms. They walked in gardens of Babylon advising Hammurabi, and fought against Rome in the Punic Wars. They explored the world with the Vikings, and they struggled against the despoilers who came to North America from beyond the sea. Every land on earth has been home to one or more of them, at one time or another, and Immortals have been born of every race and creed in all of humankind's long and sordid history. Since the dawn of recorded time, Immortals have been among us, fighting their secret wars and awaiting Ragnarok, when the remaining Immortals will fight until there is but one survivor, the Last Immortal, who shall reap the Legacy.
This Fever Called Life
Immortals are born like anyone else, of a union between man and woman. They have a childhood, sometimes happy, oft times not, as mortals do. They live, eat, grow, and love like anyone else, but something sets them apart. Whatever it is that grants life to crude matter, that allows a mass of flesh and bone to walk and talk, whatever force motivates the mortal coil, this force infuses the Immortal with the power of life itself.
Immortals are able to shrug off injuries that would kill an ordinary being, but this is only a small part of what makes them special. Immortals feel pain as acutely as mortals do, perhaps even more so, but even the weakest of them has the stamina to withstand great physical trauma that would incapacitate a normal person. Indeed, the biology of the Immortal seems to defy the very laws of physics. Immortals need to eat, breathe, and sleep as mortals do, but lack of these things will not kill them, only make them weaker. An Immortal may survive underwater or without food indefinitely, only growing more feeble and less lucid as the days turn into weeks, and the months turn into years. Severed extremities (with one exception) will grow back in a matter of days, and even nervous system damage will repair itself. At least one Immortal has survived having the back of his head blown off with a shotgun, with only a memory loss to remind him of it.
Sex
Immortals are infused with the primal forces of life and vitality, and have the same drive to procreate as do mortals. However, where mortals give birth to a new generation, pass on what wisdom they can, and then return to the earth, Immortals do not naturally die nor do they have children. Despite the great passion and sensuality that nearly all Immortals possess, they are completely incapable of producing new life. Children, who for mortals are often the embodiment of hope that the future will be brighter than the present, provide immortality to mortals in a way that is denied to Immortals.
Immortals of both scientific and philosophical inclinations have struggled with this dilemma to no avail. When tested, Immortal men and women seem to be as fertile as their mortal counterparts, and most Immortals are possessed of even stronger carnal desires, yet all attempts for them to beget children have met with failure. It can be reasoned that since Immortals do not naturally die, there is no evolutionary need for them to bear children. It has even been argued that the lack of Immortal procreative ability is a survival trait, since immortal beings who could freely reproduce would rapidly overrun the ability of the planet to support them. Sadly, rationalizations such as these do not soften the psychological impact that Immortals are truly alone.
Aging
An extensive amount of discussion has centered about the apparent cessation of the Immortal's aging processes. In nearly all cases, the aging of an Immortal seems to slow when she reaches her late twenties. By the time she appears to be in her forties, centuries later, her aging has slowed to the point where it has effectively stopped. No further deterioration takes place in the Immortal's body tissues; even teeth replace or repair themselves when damaged.
Some have theorized that the age at which an Immortal first experiences catastrophic bodily injury, which would cause the death of a mortal, may somehow catalyze the mechanism which arrests the aging process. Investigation has disproved this theory, although it remains a popular misconception among Immortals. No correlation has been found between the time of an Immortal's first brush with death and the apparent age at which an Immortal's biological decline stops.
This, the fact that Immortals do not appear to age, is the greatest obstacle to sustaining the fiction of mortality so imperative to an Immortal's survival in mortal society. While grievous injuries can be downplayed as near-misses, and a feat that would be impossible for mortals to perform can be rationalized as the result of adrenaline or sheer luck, the lack of an Immortal to exhibit any sign of aging after several decades is more difficult to explain.
Relocation can minimize the risk of discovery of an Immortal's secret by neighbors or business associates, but the greatest threat in the twenty-first century comes not from people, but from computers. The bureaucracy which mortals have always used to keep track of themselves has developed into a sophisticated worldwide system of terrible power and efficiency. Financial transactions, driver's permits, criminal histories, and all manner of clerical records are monitored, sorted, and stored by the vast computer resources of the world's governments and financial institutions. With the advent of the Winternet at the turn of the century, what had formerly been discrete islands of data became a colossal sea of information. Fortunately for Immortals, human bureaucracies are still inefficient enough to let incongruities such as those caused by Immortal activities be classified as errors in the system.
Still, it is only a matter of time before the traditional methods of pursuing Immortal anonymity will no longer be effective. A new era of mortal bureaucracy demands new methods of circumventing it. Post-Modern Immortals have become proficient at such latter-day feats of wizardry as computer infiltration counter-countermeasures and tailored viruses which penetrate and corrupt databases holding information that may endanger Immortal secrecy. These services are sometimes sought out by other Immortals to whom such technological innovations are still an enigma.
Death
The poetry of science has begun to find words to describe the Immortal condition, though few scientists are aware of Immortals or would admit it if they were. Scholars among the Immortals, and among those mortals who monitor Immortal activities, theorize that the Immortals carry certain recessive genes which allow their bodies to somehow repair damage at the cellular level. Others maintain that Immortals are hosts for some unknown microscopic organism, which repairs the host's body whenever it is injured. They maintain that this organism must make its home in the spinal fluid, for it is only when the spine is severed that the Immortal is granted the True Death.
Those of a more mystic inclination contend that the life force of the Immortal has been somehow strengthened, so that it can maintain the physical shell and keep it from harm. As long as the energy conduit between the chakras of the head and heart is intact, they point out, the Immortal cannot die. And this may be true, for the one way, the only way, to inflict the True Death upon an Immortal is to sever her spine between her head and her heart.
Immortals are as anxious about the afterlife as mortals are. When an Immortal dies, her life force is visibly released as a storm of energy. Is this the soul? What happens to it? The question is complicated by the fact that, when an Immortal is killed by another Immortal, the survivor can absorb a part of the power and knowledge of the dead Immortal in an experience called the Rapture. If this life-energy is the deceased's soul, how can part of it be absorbed by another? What happens to the rest of it? Does the Immortal's consciousness survive death? These questions, whether asked by mortals or Immortals, have no concrete answers in this lifetime. It is up to each one to decide for herself what her place is in the great wheel of the cosmos.
The War of Ages
It seems inevitable that beings from disparate places and times, whose lives do not naturally end in the earth as those of mortals do, would eventually find each other. Knowing the history of humankind as we do, it seems just as inevitable that these beings would fight among themselves for supremacy. Imagine how baffling it would be for you, a primitive being of ancient times, to have an enemy whose existence you find intolerable, yet whom you are unable to dispose of in the manner to which you are accustomed. Imagine the frustration you would feel as you confront each other time and again across the ages.
Sometimes one of you would be victorious, sometimes the other, but the war would never end, because neither you nor your enemy could die. Imagine your shock and exhilaration when you discover the secret, the one way to inflict upon an Immortal the True Death. Imagine the ecstasy you would feel as your enemy's life force flows into you, making you stronger and wiser than you were before.
This scenario has been playing itself out repeatedly since Immortals first found each other. It would seem that beings who live so long and experience so much would learn to rise above such petty concerns as power, wealth, or dominance, but it is sadly not so. Immortals are no less influenced by these worldly motivations than their mortal brethren, and they might be even more susceptible to these base desires. It behooves even a pacifistic Immortal to gain the proficiency with weapons necessary for survival.
Additionally, the beliefs held by Immortals are no more universal or unchallenged than those cherished by mortals. Often social upheaval in the mortal sphere has been but an echo of disputes among Immortals. The Age of Faith and the Age of Revolution were periods of great strife in both mortal and Immortal society. As Immortals learn of new ideas and new ways of doing what has always been done "the old way," lines of contention are drawn and debates rage. Disagreements sometimes turn to violence, as traditional ideas and methods are challenged by new and untested theories.
Blood of Kings
In the ancient game of chess, there are three ways to prevent an opponent from claiming one's King. The easiest option, and the one to which beginners resort most often, is to move the King out of danger. This is a short term solution, because the opponent will certainly attack again, and there will ultimately be nowhere left to run. Another tempting choice is to sacrifice another piece to block the attack. The final choice is to capture the opposing piece.
The War of Ages has much in common with the game of chess. Even an Immortal who does not wish to fight will someday be confronted by one who does. One's options in such a circumstance are limited. Escape is almost always a possibility, but this only postpones the inevitable. An Immortal can send mortal retainers against an Immortal opponent to gain time or as a distraction, but using them to fight one's battles is strongly against Immortal tradition and may make enemies of Immortals who had previously been neutral or even friendly. The time will come when a challenge is unavoidable, and there will be but one way to meet it: with steel and skill.
Why should someone whom an Immortal has never met be so determined kill her? What possible reason could another Immortal have for such unfounded animosity? Immortals do not have a subconscious imperative to destroy each other any more than mortals do, yet they have a more compelling reason to murder each other than any mortal could ever have: they have the Rapture.
The Rapture
The death of an Immortal is a momentous occurrence. The energies released from the Immortal coil are wild and potent, erupting through and around the corpse. Arcs of electricity may play across metal beams or the bodies of automobiles, bursting light bulbs and motivating electrical machinery, while waves of heat and light shimmer in the air, shattering windows and knocking over nearby objects. Gravity itself may run amok, lifting the dead body into the air, while the storm of released Immortal power rages around it.
If no other Immortals are nearby, this pyrotechnic display will expend itself in a few moments, dissipating into the environment. However, if another Immortal is nearby, the forces released by the death of her kindred will flow into her, filling her briefly with all the power, knowledge, and experience, the very life force, of the Immortal whose passing the rage of energy heralds.
This eruption of power is accompanied by an ecstasy, a crystalline awareness of cosmic proportions. For a moment, all too brief, the Immortal is one with all life on earth; her consciousness taking in all things, all the joy and sorrow, the pleasure and pain, felt by everything which lives in, on, or under the surface of the earth. No other experience can compare with this, and no Immortal who has once felt it can ever forget it, for this is the Rapture.
Nor does the Rapture pass completely, for as each Immortal is killed, a small part of her power and knowledge remains behind with the Immortal who witnessed her death. Thus, with each death, the remaining Immortals grow in power until the War of Ages culminates in Ragnarok, when those who have survived the past centuries shall cross swords, until only the Last Immortal remains.
Ragnarok
It is said that when the end of this age of humankind is near, great catastrophes shall sweep the earth. Earthquakes shall swallow cities, and tsunami shall wipe away coastlines. Fires and floods shall rage out of control, and humankind shall begin tearing at itself with bestial fury. The forces of nature shall run amok, heralding the end of an era and the beginning of another. Among Immortals this legend has many names, but the term most commonly used is Ragnarok. The myth of Ragnarok is a common one, and nearly every Immortal and mortal culture has some version of it.
Some Immortals reject the idea of Ragnarok and the Conclave (the final meeting of the surviving Immortals) completely. They assert that their fate is not governed by ancient legends, but by their own decisions. The destiny of mortals and Immortals lies in their own hands and hearts, they maintain, and they are not simply sheep to accept the pronouncements of prophets long dead as the only future available to them.
Thus, Immortals are no more in accord in their interpretations of the Ragnarok or Apocalypse legend than are mortals. Post-Modern Immortals, born since the Industrial Revolution, tend to dismiss it entirely as the result of elder Immortals' superstition and fear. Even Immortals who profess a belief in the veracity of the Ragnarok legend are divided about its significance. However, most versions of the Ragnarok legend seem to center around the figure of the Last Immortal.
The Last Immortal
At the end of this Age, so most of the stories say, those Immortals who have survived the previous centuries of war and tribulation shall meet in a place of darkness, an ancient battlefield. At this time, called the Conclave, the War of Ages will be concluded decisively. When all Immortals have met on the field of battle, the lone survivor, the Last Immortal, will be heir to all the power of all Immortals who have ever trod the earth. What the Last Immortal will do with this power, often called the Legacy, is again a matter of some contention.
Some Immortals place a sinister cast about the myths of Ragnarok and the Legacy, saying it portends the end of mortal civilization. Immortals who accept this interpretation sometimes call Ragnarok the Apocalypse. The world is at an end, they say, and it will be up to the Last Immortal to judge humankind, weeding the worthy from the unworthy, the wheat from the chaff. Those deemed worthy will be allowed to live, to serve the Last Immortal for the rest of time. The Last Immortal will rule humankind as a parent rules children, enforcing rules and inflicting punishment for disobedience.
A less ominous and more recent interpretation places the Last Immortal as the mentor of humankind during the next step of human development: the exploration of the stars. As the repository of all the wisdom of all Immortals since the beginning of this epoch, the Last Immortal will use the Legacy to guide humanity and serve as an advisor. In this version of the legend, the Last Immortal would serve not as a parent but as a sibling to humankind. Another name for this interpretation of Ragnarok and the Legacy is called the Apotheosis.
A markedly different but no less common depiction of the Ragnarok myth places a twist upon the Legacy bestowed upon the Last Immortal. In this version, the Last Immortal will be granted the only thing denied Immortals: mortality. When the Last Immortal stands alone above the last of her adversaries, she will begin to age at a normal rate, to eventually grow old and die as a mortal human being. At that moment, when the combined life force of all the Immortals of history is released, the cycle shall begin anew and a new age of humankind will have begun. The War of Ages will begin again, as new Immortals are born and humanity continues to evolve.
Loneliness
Immortality has its costs, and chief among these is peace of mind. An Immortal can never allow herself to forget that she has enemies who will stop at nothing to see her dead. The most peaceful rest, the most idyllic vacation, is marred by the fact that her foes may strike at any moment. Another factor she must consider is that, while most Immortals will not deign to kill mortal bystanders to an Immortal battle, there are many who are not so fastidious. There are some Immortals who actually seek out the mortal friends and allies of another Immortal, hoping that by slaying her friends the Immortal will be weakened and easier to defeat.
Moreover, it is not easy for an Immortal to find meaningful companionship among mortals, for the gift of immortality is also a curse. Mortals can never truly understand the pain of repeatedly watching lovers and friends inexorably grow old and die. Any relationship in which an Immortal involves herself is doomed; too soon, mortal beauty fades and mortal friends return to the earth, leaving the Immortal only memories and sorrow.
A painful riddle of the Immortal's existence, and a source of endless frustration for Immortals and their loved ones, is the inability of Immortals to bear children. No Immortal of either sex has ever conceived a child. Advances in medicine have had no success in resolving this puzzle. Immortal men and women seem to be as fertile as their mortal counterparts, and they seem to have an even greater willingness and desire to procreate, yet all of their efforts have been in vain.
Friendship
One way Immortals have traditionally been able to find companionship is in the training of another, less experienced Immortal. It is a painful truth that the student may someday become strong enough to return and slay the teacher, yet one Immortal may be willing to train another to become a more lethal adversary in return for that Immortal's friendship. This illuminates a truth of the Immortal condition: the rewards of friendship are worth the risk of betrayal.
Ties of family mean little to one who has seen generations come and go, and national loyalties are meaningless when one has seen the rise and fall of nations and ideologies, but the friendship and trust of another Immortal is a sacred thing. Among Immortals, friendship is the highest bond that can exist between two people, surpassing restrictions of mortal law or cultural loyalty; no sacrifice is too great to make to avenge a friend. It is, perhaps, the great loneliness that comes with immortality that causes them to treasure friendship so.
Again and again, the Immortal will seek comfort in the company of others whose lives are measured in centuries rather than years, but even this pleasure is tainted. An Immortal can never be entirely at ease with another of her kind; each will wonder if the other can be trusted, if the other is even now planning to make the final cut. It is possible for Immortals to grow close, and eventually to trust one another, but there is no way to forget that in the end, but one will survive.
Tradition
Immortals, like all of humanity, are social animals. As such, rules of etiquette have developed which have facilitated their interaction over the centuries. Some of these customs are simply considered good manners, like the Introduction, while others are considered sacred and are passionately enforced, like Sanctuary. In general, older Immortals take tradition more seriously than do their younger counterparts, but there are exceptions on both ends of the age spectrum. Some ancient Immortals sneer at the various conventions of Immortal morality, deeming themselves above such trivial concerns, while younger Immortals who have had the benefit of an honorable upbringing respect the various protocols which have evolved over the long history of Immortal society.
Even so, the elder Immortals are the ones who are usually more concerned with propriety and the observance of established tradition. As age follows age and society changes ever faster, traditions which once were simply convenient or pragmatic become symbols of stability in an unstable, rapidly transforming world. Tradition is the archenemy of change, and is viewed by many elder Immortals, particularly those born before the European conquest of North America, as one of the few allies they have.
Immortals have violated the various dictates of etiquette many times over the ages, and will doubtless continue to do so. The chastisement they receive on these occasions is based upon who is aware of the transgression and upon how flagrant the offender is about her acts. Also, as in mortal society, individuals who are either favored or feared get away with more than those who are neither.
The Introduction
Immortals are able to sense each other's life forces over short distances. This sense of another's presence is called the Foreboding, and it has saved the lives of many Immortals over the ages. The ease with which one can detect another Immortal's proximity is directly related to the power of the Immortal to be detected and upon the strength of will of the Immortal doing the detecting. Immortals who have gained great power over centuries of life and experience cast a much greater Foreboding than do Immortals who have yet to live a single century. This has done much to protect younger Immortals from the depredations of elder Immortals who would kill them before the young Immortals are old enough to be a threat to their elders.
The tradition of the Introduction grew out of the Foreboding. When one Immortal senses another for the first time, it is considered good manners to approach the other Immortal and introduce oneself. This custom is practiced inconsistently, at best, but it is usually safe to exercise in public places. Attacking another Immortal during an Introduction is considered terribly rude, but the Immortal committing such a breach of etiquette probably will not care.
Foreboding is covered thoroughly under Psychic Abilities.
Noblesse Oblige
According to the custom of Noblesse Oblige, it is incumbent upon older and more powerful Immortals to be generous and merciful to younger, weaker Immortals. It also implies that all Immortals should be magnanimous in their dealings with mortals. The most common form Noblesse Oblige took in years past was the sparing of an opponent's life if the challenger was an Immortal with significantly less skill in combat.
The concept of Noblesse Oblige became popular during the High Middle Ages, a part of history some Immortals refer to as the Age of Faith. It was accepted throughout most of Europe that because nobles had immunity from nearly all outside authorities and were restricted only through their obligations to their sovereign, they had certain rights and responsibilities not required of commoners. These responsibilities included respect for other nobles and the dispensation of justice among the common people.
These concepts eventually grew to become the chivalric virtues associated with medieval knighthood. Although the idea of Noblesse Oblige was once a point of great pride among nearly all Immortals, its observance has long since declined. The modern world has little room for kindness to one's enemies, and those who practice the principles of Noblesse Oblige in the twenty-first century should not expect the favor to be returned in kind.
Sanctuary
The tradition of Sanctuary is one of the most debated, yet one of the most inviolate, rules of Immortal etiquette. It is also perhaps the most ancient Immortal custom, pre-dating written records. The law of Sanctuary states that no violence of any kind is permitted against another Immortal on holy ground. There are no exceptions, and anyone who violates the law of Sanctuary will find herself completely without allies, and in the possession of a great number of new enemies.
The roots of the tradition of Sanctuary are clear enough, stemming from primitive humanity's obsession with omnipotent and vengeful gods. Immortals were no less susceptible to this perception of the universe, and might even have been more inclined to accept it. After all, ancient Immortals had direct experience of the power of the gods in the form of their own bodies.
In modern tradition, holy ground is accepted as any place where the worship of any deity is practiced on regular occasions. A Catholic cathedral, an Islamic mosque, and a Native American prayer lodge would all be accepted as legitimate regions of sanctuary, while cemeteries or ancient burial mounds would not be unless someone were using these locations for their place of worship.
Immortals do not have an innate or supernatural sense of what is and is not holy ground. Typically, the location is obvious to the casual observer, such as with the case of a Jewish synagogue or a Buddhist shrine. However, if an Immortal made a claim for Sanctuary when the location was not obviously a place of worship, most Immortals would tend to give the supplicant the benefit of the doubt unless the claim was blatantly absurd. It is safer to live to fight another day than to risk violating the law of Sanctuary.
Single Combat
The tradition of Single Combat is the single most fiercely defended observance of Immortal etiquette. When an Immortal faces another Immortal in combat, no interference from mortals or Immortals is brooked by either side. The roots of this behavior are not clear, but it has a keen effect upon the War of Ages. Contempt for Immortals who violate the rule of Single Combat is almost universal. Those who are honorable and fair-minded support it as the only impartial way to resolve disputes among Immortals.
Even Immortals who have no respect for other Immortals tend to view Single Combat with arrogant protectiveness, since it ensures that the strong will always overcome the weak. In fact, those who defy the principle of Single Combat risk being hunted down by the most selfish and powerful of Immortals, since these are the individuals most threatened by those who violate this tradition.
So strong is the tradition of Single Combat that many older Immortals are loath to involve themselves with another Immortal's plight even when it is in their best interests to do so. There are many beings, both natural and supernatural, which bear enmity toward Immortals. There are even mortal groups and institutions, known collectively as Monitors, which scour news sources for clues of Immortal activities, spying on and tracking persons they suspect of being Immortal. Woe to any Immortal careless enough to fall into the grasp of these diabolical hunters.
Yet an Immortal fleeing from such forces may find it difficult to obtain refuge or assistance from other Immortals. If the Immortal being hunted has been careless enough to draw the attention of the Monitors, helping her would only draw the Monitors' attention to the would-be defender. If the Immortal is being hunted by supernatural entities or by the unearthly Dwimmerlaik, anyone who would render assistance risks the True Death, or worse. An Immortal without close friends has few weaknesses for an enemy to exploit, but few allies, as well.
A Barbarous Age
Immortals are not stagnant beings. They live, learn, and grow just as mortals do, but like mortals they are creatures of the period into which they were born. Centuries of experience and assumptions about the essence of life and the natural order of the universe are difficult to supplant with new ideas. So it is that Immortals may be classified by the period in history into which they were born, during which their concepts of morality and social values were formed.
This is not to say that an Immortal from the Age of Myth (could one be found) would be a crude being, in awe of airplanes and worshipping the television as a god. Change is intrinsic to all things, and Immortals are not exceptions. However, it is safe to say that an Immortal born since the Age of Invention (sometimes called the Age of Madness by older Immortals) would probably have an easier time accepting the social equality of the sexes than would an Immortal born during the Age of Faith. Ideas and perceptions are deeper than simple acceptance of technology. The existence of the airplane or the television is much easier to accept than the changes these devices have wrought upon society.
Thus, Immortals from previous ages, such as the Age of Rome, take traditions like Sanctuary far more seriously than do their more youthful counterparts. This in part explains why these traditions are still adhered to so strongly; it would be foolish to recklessly invite the wrath of an Immortal who has survived since the Crusades. The ethical codes handed down from older Immortals are reinforced by the potent reminder that those who would ignore tradition must face those who created those traditions. Also, Immortals who have known each other for centuries, even as adversaries, would each eagerly seek to avenge the death of the other by a third party if the appropriate codes of behavior had not been observed. It is a matter of honor.
Most of the history portrayed here is from a Western perspective, because that is the segment of human history most familiar to those of us here in the United States. Future supplements for Legacy: War of Ages will delve into the impact Immortals have had on history in other areas of the earth, such as Africa, Asia, and the large portions of the world that follow the tenets of Islam.
The Age of Myth
The first Immortals did not have the benefit of instruction from their elders. In fact, these Immortals of antiquity often lived for centuries thinking that they were each unique, or an offspring of a divine union. So it is no surprise that the earliest accounts of human civilization center upon these earliest of Immortals and their exploits. All that remains of the bulk of these legends exist today as fragments or as myths from later civilizations, if at all.
The tradition of Sanctuary probably began in the Age of Myth, when most Immortals (and mortals who were aware of them) thought that they were divine beings. Often, an Immortal would have a sacred grove, cave, or other area, wherein her worshippers would burn incense, pray, or otherwise honor her. On this sacred land, the Immortal could not be challenged. Eventually, the practice was extended to all holy ground and any Immortal who took refuge there. The tradition of Sanctuary is the most sacrosanct of the Immortal traditions, even to this day, when gods and goddesses have been replaced by sports heroes and movie stars in the hearts of the populace.
Immortals from this, the dawn of history, are usually referred to as the Antediluvians (stemming from the Mesopotamian myth of the Deluge, which gave rise to the Biblical story of Noah; it was an old legend, even then). Antediluvians are rare, and could possibly be classified as mythological themselves. Certainly, any tales of them today rely more on imagination than manifestation. If any Antediluvians have survived until this century, they would be canny and powerful in the extreme, and not to be trifled with. However, most younger Immortals maintain that all the Antediluvians died long ago, and that stories of them being alive today are not to be given credence.
A Heritage of Words
Without question, the first Immortal mentioned in the surviving records of our distant ancestors is Gilgamesh, sometimes called the First Immortal. Very little is known of this earliest Immortal, and like all Immortals from that period, his eventual fate is a matter for speculation. The facts of his life can only be guessed at from the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first extant epic poem.
Gilgamesh was the King of Uruk, a city on the Euphrates in Sumer (modern Iraq). The Epic of Gilgamesh relates Gilgamesh's wanderings and adventures, and it is important not only as literature but as an example of early humanity's struggle to understand life and death, mortality and immortality. The Epic describes Gilgamesh's great sorrow at the death of his friend Enkidu in their disastrous meeting with Istar (who may also have been an Immortal). After Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh wanders the world looking for the secret of eternal life, hoping to find some way of resurrecting his companion. Gilgamesh's grief for his friend has been felt countless times by Immortals over the centuries, and his story is as poignant today as it was when it was written.
Throughout the world, the Antediluvians loved, ruled, traveled, and lived. Above all, they lived: if not as rulers, then as advisers to those rulers. Legend has it that the law code of King Hammurabi was due in no small part to the guidance Hammurabi received from an Immortal advisor named Kuli-Enlil. Certainly, Hammurabi claimed that his interpretation of the nature of law and justice was divine in origin, but this was nothing new in Mesopotamia, and there are those alive today who make the same claim.
Hammurabi's Code was not the first of its kind, but through his Immortal advisor Hammurabi was able to combine the best parts of earlier legal codes with a spirit of justice and sense of responsibility. Although the application of the Code was not uniform among the various classes, there was a strong sentiment of fairness in Hammurabi's highly precise body of law. The Code attempted to guarantee that the punishment was always appropriate to the crime, a legal concept which still survives, although it is inconsistently applied in the twenty-first century.
The God-King
Egypt enjoyed peace and tranquility unknown in Mesopotamia. The Nile, which fed and nourished Egypt, was mild and predictable, unlike the Tigris and Euphrates, which would sometimes flood and wipe out entire cities. United by an Immortal named Menes around 3100 B.C., early Egypt experienced a remarkable period of wealth, artistic flowering, and philosophy, protected geographically from invasions and extensive immigration.
Even after Menes left the rule of Egypt to his successors, the concept of the immortal god-king became central to the Egyptian system of government, and it was mirrored in their pantheon. For example, Osiris was king of the dead, and would die and be resuscitated each year. Without the influence of Menes' long reign, the form of Egyptian civilization would have been markedly different, and the civilizations of the Near East, Africa, and southern Europe would surely have been poorer for it.
The Age of Rome
Sometimes dubbed "The Golden Age" by Immortals born into that era, there can be little doubt that the Roman Empire accomplished what had never been done before: a period of relative peace and prosperity spreading from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, and extending to all of western Europe. The existence of the Empire allowed the propagation of ideas and philosophies that continue to influence Western thought until this day. The ascendancy of Christianity from a bizarre Oriental mystery religion to the binding force of Western civilization would have been impossible without the fertile philosophical ground provided by the Empire.
Most inhabitants of the Empire, both mortal and Immortal, took for granted that they lived in the highest form of civilization the world had ever seen. Their attitude could be compared to that of citizens in the mid-twentieth century United States of America: there was little doubt that all other cultures were inferior, and that they lived in the best and most enlightened of all possible worlds.
Immortals born during this time (sometimes called the Imperials) were cosmopolitan enough to realize the danger posed by mortal regimes with mortal armies. They prudently kept their true nature hidden from mortal eyes, and the tradition of the Introduction dates from this time. For the most part, Immortals refrained from indulging themselves at playing gods, as the Antediluvians did. Yet nearly all of them still fostered the belief that they were, indeed, divine in origin, and many chose to rule small baronies and princedoms in remote areas.
The Messiah
The most enigmatic occurrence during this period took place in the small Roman province of Judea. A man named Jesus claiming to be the Jewish Messiah taught peace and love and was executed for it. It is a great and bitter irony that such a gentle man was executed in such a cruel manner, scourged and hanged from a cross in the presence of his family, friends, enemies, and the simply curious. Yet, was he dead?
A strange rumour began circulating a few days after the man's interment. His followers said that he had risen from the dead, while others accused them of stealing the body. The man's death and rebirth became an element of faith among the early Christians and generations that followed them. It was more than a myth or an unexplained phenomenon to them; Jesus had conquered death, and would return to grant immortality to all Christians.
The Age of Faith
The debate over the person of Jesus has been furious and passionate among both mortals and Immortals. Great numbers of Immortals born during the Middle Ages, commonly called the Age of Faith by Immortals born during that time (and derisively referred to as the "Dark Ages" by the Modern Immortals), are devout Christians, and these Medieval Immortals take extreme offense at any suggestion that Jesus was anything other than the Son of God. Yet, as younger Immortals are quick to point out, rising from the dead is nothing that they themselves are not able to do. "Now, had the Messiah been beheaded. . . ." As pointless as they are, such arguments have not stopped in millennia, even though the subject of Jesus' other miracles has yet to be satisfactorily addressed. However, if the divine nature of Jesus of Nazareth was an elaborate fiction by an Immortal, it is significant that no Immortal has ever successfully claimed to be the one who perpetrated such a hoax.
The Church
Nonetheless, the religious organization now referred to simply as "the Church" was a force to be reckoned with. Its spiritual and political power was the terror of monarchs across Europe. In many ways, Rome was the capital of Europe, mandating policies and enforcing its dictums through spiritual and financial extortion. The Church was a stabilizing force, as well, which made possible the economic, bureaucratic, and educational advances which in turn helped France and England challenge papal authority at the end of the thirteenth century.
The disparaging remarks made by Modern Immortals about the Age of Faith are for the most part unjustified. The High Middle Ages was one of the most creative and vital periods in Western society, setting the stage for the development of democracies and constitutional states. Medieval cities provided centers for trade and cultural exchange which led to greater wealth and a higher standard of living for many.
The Inquisition
A blot on the history of the Church, and a constant reminder of the danger posed by mortals to Immortals, took place in southern Europe in the early thirteenth century. In response to growing resistance to Church authority, including the infamous Albigensian heresy (so called for the town of Albi in southern France), the papacy initiated a new ecclesiastical court, called the Inquisition. The Inquisition has a despicable reputation, because most of the legal rights that are taken for granted in the twenty-first century were ignored. Even in the Middle Ages, there was substantial criticism of the Inquisition and its methods.
For example, the accused did not know the evidence against them, nor were they allowed to know the identity of their accusers. Interrogation and torture were used to extract confessions from people who had the poor fortune to attract the Inquisitors' attention. So successful were the Inquisition's tactics that heresy had been effectively wiped out within a century.
There is no doubt that if the Church had not previously been aware of the Immortals among humanity, they learned of them during this period. The dualist philosophy of the Albigensians (also called Cathars, from the Greek word meaning "pure") appealed to many Immortals who had grown disenchanted with the wealth and apparent corruption of the Roman clergy. Also, the Albigensians treated women as men's equals, an idea which was in accord with the teachings of Jesus, but which had been ignored and actually contradicted by the patriarchal Church hierarchy.
Finally, the Albigensians believed that to free oneself from the influence of evil, one had to live a life of abstinence, avoiding all material things. Immortals who were doubting their faith found this extremely attractive, since they were able to truly abstain from all worldly influences, even food. Unfortunately, while an Immortal will not die of starvation, she will become extremely weak from hunger and no match for the armed Inquisitors. So it was that a large mortal institution first learned of Immortals. It took the Inquisitors many weeks of experimentation with various types of torture before they learned the method of inflicting the True Death upon their Immortal captives. Until they made that discovery, Immortals who had sincerely tried to reconcile their faith with their existence were stabbed, bled, stretched, broken, drowned, and subjected to all manner of mutilation. It was a cruel lesson that no survivor of that period will ever forget: Immortals must forever keep their existence a secret from mortals, lest a new Inquisition arise.
The Age of Revolution
The shape of society was changing. Scientists and philosophers such as Galileo, John Locke, and Isaac Newton were altering the world view that had been taken for granted for so long. A growing feeling that government was an agreement between the rulers and the ruled began to take root. In the span of two centuries, nearly every nation in Europe had a revolution, and some had several. It was a time of rapid change and tremendous violence. Ideas that would alter humanity's perception of its place in the universe would grow and thrive, while Europe would experience a succession of wars lasting almost without interruption for three centuries. Science, religion, warfare, and government would be never be the same.
The Enlightenment
The scientific revolution not only introduced new information, but also a new way of approaching and obtaining that information: the scientific method. Experimentation and direct observation replaced dependence upon established principles and the authority of the Church's cosmology. This is not to say that scientists have always readily accepted new or contradictory theories about the nature of the universe and the laws that govern it, but it is in the nature of the scientific method that new theories will constantly replace the old as humankind comes closer to comprehending observable reality.
However, the rational, critical, scientific way of solving problems was a distinct departure from the established religious and theological world-view. The concept that the nature of the world could be and should be directly determined, and that the cosmic processes which govern the behavior of the universe could be found and understood, altered the perception of humanity's place in the cosmos forever.
Immortals who embraced these notions began applying the methods of science to the riddle of their own existence. They began experimenting on themselves, trying to find the physical cause to what had always been assumed to be a supernatural manifestation. These Immortals, who began to call themselves the Modern Immortals, are the ones who first divided Immortals into Antediluvians, Imperials, Medievals, and Moderns (and later, Post-Moderns).
Their experiments and studies of the Immortal condition have not lead to any satisfying solutions. If anything, the probing of the Modern Immortals has created more questions than answers, as the biology of the Immortal seems to defy any accepted law of physics or thermodynamics. The human body is, in essence, a machine. It consumes food as fuel, using it for energy; some of this energy is radiated as heat. How, then, can an Immortal's body continue to move, repair itself, and generate heat without food? Such questions have never been adequately answered.
The Reign of Gustavus
No Immortal has made such an impact upon the history of the modern world as did Gustavus Adolphus, who ruled the kingdom of Sweden from 1520 until his presumed death in 1632. Even so, his name and accomplishments have been largely forgotten by all but a few military historians. In a time when looting and pillaging was typical military behavior, Gustavus prohibited such behavior as theft. In a time when rape was not considered a serious crime, Gustavus fiercely punished those who committed violence against women. Gustavus' rule marked the high point of Immortal influence on mortal affairs.
Gustavus led a revolt of Sweden against Christian III, the King of Denmark, in 1520, liberating Sweden and forming an independent state. As the new monarch of Sweden, Gustav was a truly Homeric figure. He was burly, bearded, and had long blond hair, with a personality both charismatic and forceful. In the early years of his rule, he became dissatisfied with the low standard of learning among the nobility and began hiring foreign adventurers as ambassadors. Immortals from all of Europe flocked to his domain, and he made treaties with surrounding countries and built up Baltic commerce.
Gustavus' reign rapidly brought Sweden from a rustic country of near-barbarians, who waylaid travelers daring to venture within their borders, to an advanced primarily middle-class country with a high level of parliamentary government. He championed against the divine right of kings, yet no monarch in Europe could match the worship accorded him by his liberty-loving people. He had supreme confidence in his decisions, yet he openly granted his council the freedom to oppose him. In his military, the first truly modern fighting machine in Europe, merit was the basis of promotion more than seniority or birth.
Gustav changed the nature of warfare, primarily during his campaigns in the Thirty Years' War. The king shunned conventional armor due to its weight and the growing efficiency of firearms, and his musketeers followed his example. This allowed the Swedes a tremendous superiority in mobility over their opponents. Gustav introduced the first trained dragoons: forces wearing little armor, carrying a carbine and saber, and which fought on horseback on the offensive and as foot soldiers on the defensive. He encouraged his armorers to invent lighter, more accurate weapons, replacing the old heavy muskets with lighter matchlocks, yet with little loss of firepower. He also invented the first mobile artillery piece in history, altering field warfare drastically.
Within thirty months of Sweden's entry into the Thirty Years' War, Gustav's army smashed the Hapsburg's power in Europe, and earned him the title "the father of modern warfare." Unfortunately, this also marked the end of Gustav's rule. After the bloody the Battle of Lützen, in the dense November fog, Gustav's surviving Swedes found his pierced and bullet-ridden body beneath a heap of the enemies' dead. He was the greatest, and the last, Immortal ruler of a European nation; no one since then has had the audacity or skill to risk following his example.
The Reign of Terror
Not all Modern Immortals were content to experiment in the realms of physics or chemistry. Some chose to experiment with systems of human government. The most notorious of these experiments resulted in the brief but bloody rule of the Committee of Public Safety in eighteenth-century France.
An Immortal by the name of Georges Jaques Danton and a mortal named Maximillien Robespierre had watched the French Revolution and the acceptance of the French constitution by Louis XVI with keen interest. When the monarchy fell and the National Convention was elected, both Danton and Robespierre were elected members. Danton had always been disturbed by the inequity in France's socio-economic structure; furthermore, he was obsessed by the fear that other Immortals were manipulating human society for the benefit of what he imagined as the secret Immortal masters of humankind. His fears were baseless, but this did not alter his preoccupation with the destruction of the parasitic (Immortal) aristocrats. Not surprisingly, Danton was one of the fiercest proponents of the guillotine.
Danton found a suitable political ally in the form of mortal Robespierre. Robespierre shared Danton's zeal for equality and the lofty goal of an ideal democratic republic at any cost. When the National Convention formed the Committee of Public Safety and gave it dictatorial powers to deal with the revolts and food shortages plaguing France, both Robespierre and Danton managed to join it.
Robespierre and his political allies, including Danton, quickly seized control of the Committee by arresting their enemies for treason. With total control of the central government of France, Robespierre and Danton began planning the recovery of their country and its new government, which was in danger on all sides from both foreign interests and discord in leading provincial cities. With a revolutionary vigor, the Committee harnessed the power of France's fiercely patriotic laboring poor, the "sans-culottes," and introduced economic controls to maximize the efficiency of France's war effort. By 1794, French armies were triumphant on all fronts, and the Committee began to relax its economic controls.
This did not satisfy Robespierre. He extended the Reign of Terror, using unrestrained tyranny and the guillotine to wipe out any trace of resistance to the new order. Robespierre's paranoia and viciousness surpassed even Danton's, and in the spring of 1794 Danton and many of Robespierre's other long-time allies were marched up the steps to the guillotine. Danton became a victim of the political machine he helped to create. Robespierre was overthrown soon after, ending Danton's experiment and the Reign of Terror.
The Age of Madness
What older Immortals call the Age of Madness began in 1898, when a physicist named Marie Curie and her husband discovered the element radium. It cannot be reasonably argued that radium was the root cause of the woes of the twentieth century, but its discovery serves as a useful demarcation between the rural, agrarian society in the West of the early 1800's, and the urban, industrial society it had become by 1900.
The combination of the increasingly practical advances in science and technology, the dynamic expansion of Western influence among non-Western lands, and the surge in nationalism had far-reaching consequences. For the first time, the world was truly a global community. The technology of both war and peace made it possible to wreak havoc on a scale never seen before, and the foolishness of nationalism made it acceptable. Post-Modern Immortals, as those Immortals born during this turbulent period have come to be called, are quite unlike their seniors, having been raised in an environment of technological miracles and societal nightmares.
The Rise of Fascism
Revolutionary France may have been one of the first attempts to completely control a society by a dictatorship, but it was not to be the last or the most infamous. That dubious distinction goes to the regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. This time, the culprits were not Immortal, but mortal. With unprecedented harshness, Stalin and Hitler mobilized their countries toward monumental objectives. Eventually, Hitler's Nazi war machine was defeated by a coalition of nearly every country in the West; it took much longer for Stalin's regime of dictatorial communism to end, when political and economic forces combined to pressure the nations comprising the Soviet Union to split off and become independent states.
It is not within the scope of a work of this size to detail the terrible violence and psychological damage that the Great Wars caused among both mortals and Immortals. Suffice it to say that proof had been given of the destruction mortals were willing to visit upon each other. Humanity seemed to many Immortals to have become a rabid pack of vicious animals, quite willing to turn upon themselves with bloody determination and rip each other to pieces. The optimism in humanity and its destiny which had accompanied the Ages of Faith and Revolution was destroyed, replaced by a pessimism as deep as it was dark.
Welcome to the Machine
The strict controls over production and the populace which made the defeat of Nazi Germany possible did not simply go away after the end of the war. Science was no longer "pure" and impractical. The alliance between theoretical science and applied technology which we take for granted today was forged in the blood spilled during the Great War, spurring such inventions as radar, jet engines, microwave communications, and the atomic bomb.
The invention which has arguably had the most impact upon Immortals is the computer. In a matter of decades, computers developed from building-sized monoliths capable of only simple arithmetic to compact, powerful machines capable of managing and analyzing staggering amounts of information. Governments the world over leaped at the opportunity that presented itself: to keep track of their populations as no government had ever been able to before. Before long, a citizen was required to exist within the vast government databases in order to receive even the most basic benefits or services. Existing outside of this system became increasingly difficult, posing to Immortals an ever-greater threat of mortal discovery.
This Is the Future
The year is 2015. Most Immortals think that the Post-Modern Age, or the Age of Madness, is near an end, less than two centuries after it began. This shortening of the ages of the world is pointed to by traditionalist Immortals as an indication of the impending approach of Ragnarok. Some Immortals are actively hunting their own kind in preparation for the Conclave, while others go into seclusion or seek refuge in Sanctuary. Young Immortals, born in the Age of Madness, have little in common with older Immortals. They take for granted the vast power humanity exerts over the environment, and many of them exhibit a pessimistic view of life fostered in them by a harsh and predatory society.
Yet in many ways Post-Modern Immortals are poised to do the most good for humanity and Immortals alike. They are generally unburdened by the superstitious or philosophical conceits of their ancestors. They are willing to take matters into their own hands rather than wait for a solution to present itself. Immortals of this era distinguish themselves in their ability to learn from the past without repeating it. Whether they will use this ability for the betterment of themselves and their mortal kindred, or whether they will be consumed by their nihilistic view of existence and destroy themselves in their quest for instant gratification of corporal desires remains to be seen.
Winternet
The nervous system of the twenty-first century world is the Winternet. It links banks with schools, and corporate data structures with weather prediction systems. The pulse of the world is the rhythm of information passing through optic fibers finer than human hairs, and its breath is the silent song of satellites whispering to each other in the datasphere.
To its users, the realm of the Winternet is a virtual reality nearly as complex as the physical world. The datagrid of the Winternet is dazzling, with enormous corporate data structures connected by the brilliant threads of the communication network. Information streams from uplink towers connect the local grid to the satellites above, which spread the data net across the globe like a fiery spider's web encompassing the digital earth.
Once "inside" Winternet, the user can explore vast simulated landscapes and environments. The user can meet other Winternet users from around the world, conversing at the bottom of the sea, on the moon, or in a Pleistocene jungle. Winternet opens whole new vistas to the human experience.
The Infobahn
What eventually evolved into the Winternet started as isolated computer networks in the middle twentieth century. Corporate data structures were discrete and unwieldy. Pitifully feeble computer systems occupied enormous rooms, and required arcane rituals and bizarre rites to coax them into performing their mathematical feats. The average citizen had no more familiarity with data networks than she did with moon landings.
Gradually, the power of the computers increased, and humanity's proficiency in using them improved. Scientific and educational institutions connected their computer systems, creating the Internet, and smaller consumer-oriented computer services followed suit. But still, the interface between human and machine was too arcane, and required people to act in distinctly unnatural ways to use these powerful technological servants.
Eventually, new advances in user interfaces combined with technological innovations to create a more powerful, yet easier to use, computer information structure. With the combination of natural user interfaces with artificial intelligence, the system could accurately anticipate the needs of its users, making comfortable access to powerful information handling computers a reality.
It was only a short time before multiple independent systems were absorbed into the Winternet. By integrating into the datasphere, small corporations gained the advantages of having the same enormous computer resources as had been available only to the megacorporations. Individuals could tailor their Winternet newslinks to find and relay only news of interest to them. Financial transactions were facilitated as well, automating the day-to-day accounting tasks which human beings almost never enjoy doing. Information has become the currency of the world, slowly melting the barriers to trade and the cultural differences caused by geography.
Cyber-Punks
The digital world encompassed by Winternet, a veritable wonderland of educational and entertainment opportunities, has led to new innovations in the realm of criminal activities, as well. The virtual reality of Winternet's financial transactions, library dataplexes and corporate matrices form the foundation of a new culture of "cyber-punks," to whom the global data network is the largest playground in history. These renegade technophiles and hackers cruise the Winternet looking for thrills, playing hide-and-seek with automated Electronic Intrusion Countermeasure security routines (dubbed "blue ice") or honing their skills by circumventing the more advanced corporate EIC (called "grey ice"). For the most part, these joy-riders on the information superhighway are only nuisances, causing little direct damage. The worst threat to the Winternet's security and user's privacy is not from thrillseeking cyber-punks, but from professional information retrieval specialists, called "wiretappers."
Wiretappers
The vast majority of the recreational network pirates eventually tire of the game and go on to other challenges, or graduate from college and become respected members of society. A few take one too many risks, are caught by the authorities and pay the price. However, the best of those hackers who do get caught never see the inside of a prison.
Professional data espionage agents are in high demand. Megacorporations and government intelligence-gathering groups actively hunt down those hackers who violate Winternet security, ostensibly to protect society from the cyber-punks' depredations. In fact, the best of these renegades are offered a choice: if they work for the corporation or government that caught them, their crimes will be ignored. Such a practice is, of course, denied by any organization suspected of such activity, but it is the only way for institutions to keep abreast with the constantly advancing technology binding the Winternet together. The arms race of the twenty-first century is not between governments, but between megacorporations, and the weapons involved are the skills of the best and brightest wiretappers.
Wiretappers' activities are almost completely illegal, including industrial espionage, counter-espionage, and data sabotage. They usually have a brief career. Those who perform successfully for their company are well paid, and retire after only a few years. Those who fail, or are caught during a raid on another organization's data grid, pose a security risk to their employer, and are usually quietly disposed of. There are no old wiretappers.
Neural Interface
There are as many ways of accessing the Winternet as there are people who use it. From the simple computer-teller at automated banking machines, to the advanced holographic three-dimensional virtual reality constructs used by corporate information brokers, there is an interface for every application and every level of sophistication. Pioneers in the technological frontier use direct neural interfaces, which feed the computer-simulated world of Winternet directly to the nervous system of the user. Unfortunately, Immortals are not able to have cybernetic devices implanted in them, since their bodies will invariably reject the foreign material. This is one area where mortals have an advantage over Immortals: Immortals are not able to use these "neural interfaces."
Using neural interfaces, a new breed of cybernetic pirates is cruising the datasphere, flaunting their ability to evade Electronic Intrusion Countermeasures (usually abbreviated EIC, and pronounced "ice") and daring the authorities to catch them. However, megacorporations do not take their security lightly, and rumours abound of lethal EIC programs, capable of causing massive feedback into the neural interface and brain of anyone foolish enough to invade the corporation's data structures. Such "black ice" is, of course, illegal.
Wiretappers and cyber-punks eschew conventional holographic interfaces to the Winternet; interactive holographics do not have the level of responsiveness necessary for the wiretappers to reliably evade even the trivial "blue ice." A direct neural interface, plugged into an adapter on the wrist or temple, connects the wiretapper's sensory perception centers to an analog unit (the "deck") which displays the virtual reality of the Winternet directly to the mind of the user. This allows the wiretapper to respond nearly instantaneously to the counterintrusion software, the wiretapper's primary nemesis. Wiretappers also must occasionally engage their legitimate counterparts — the "grid cops" — and those wiretappers working for other agencies. Striving against skilled human opponents is more difficult than overcoming even advanced automated EIC.
The Geneva Conference
Before the Winternet became a reality, and while the Human Genome Project was still months away from completion, an incident was unfolding in the North Sea that was to hold the attention of the world for months. An oil platform belonging to a British mining corporation was destroyed with what was obviously a nuclear device. Every nation on earth demanded to know what happened and why.
For weeks, Great Britain claimed no knowledge of the incident, denying the rumours that an experimental weapon system had malfunctioned and had destroyed itself. Finally, the truth was revealed: the Iago Project, a secret prototype national defense system put in operation by Britain, had malfunctioned and nearly initiated a nuclear Armageddon. The Iago Project was an advanced fifth-iteration neural network artificial intelligence system (or "AI") connected to Britain's strategic defense and retaliatory nuclear missile systems. In theory, Iago was to be able to predict and respond to threats to Britain's airspace efficiently and nearly instantaneously.
In practice, Iago was on-line for thirty-two hours and seventeen minutes before it armed Britain's entire arsenal of nuclear weapons and attempted to fire them in a spread pattern calculated to render the earth uninhabitable. Failsafes built into the ersatz oil platform detected the activity and destroyed the platform, Iago, and any hope of discovering why Iago malfunctioned.
Outrage swept the globe. Nuclear Holocaust had been averted by a matter of milliseconds, and the governments of the world wanted to make sure that it would not happen again. A few individuals proposed universal nuclear disarmament, but the most vocal reactionaries cast artificial intelligence as the scapegoat of the Iago Incident.
The Geneva Conference was convened in April of 2005, with the express purpose of forming ethical guidelines for the construction of artificial intelligences. A body of 314 politicians and scientists, few of whom had any experience with the design or practical application of neural networks or artificial intelligences, debated for twenty-two days over the moral and ethical issues of creating "thinking machines." At the conclusion of the conference, their decision was revealed: a worldwide moratorium on self-modifying programs and electronic devices (fourth-iteration or greater AI's), to be in effect for one century, until the year 2105. Artificial intelligence algorithms of third-iteration or lower were exempted from the moratorium, as these classifications had already been in use for several years with no indication of the type of malfunction that befell Iago.
In 2105, a second Geneva Conference will be convened to review the issue; until then, severe political and financial penalties will be imposed on any person, corporation, or government caught designing or building such banned devices. Some Immortals have wryly observed that the members of the Geneva conference simply avoided the artificial intelligence issue, rather than dealing with it, since it is unlikely that any of the original mortal representatives will still be alive one hundred years hence.
The Number of His Name
After the completion of the Human Genome Project, the decades-long project to map the entire human genetic code, it became obvious that the best way to keep track of the increasing multitudes transacting business was to use each person's genetic code, or "GenCode." This coincided nicely with Winternet, the global virtual data exchange system that was under development at the time, so it was incorporated into the operating system. Each user has a GenCard imprinted with their unique GenCode, except corporate cards, which have the user's GenCode with a corporate prefix code attached designating the issuing corporation.
GenCode cards are universal in developed countries, and for the most part are mandatory, much like the Social Security cards they replaced in the United States. These GenCards are nearly indestructible polycarbonate computer sandwiches in the size and shape of a credit card, and the standard card is exactly 1.5 mm thick. Some people have enhanced cards that are 2.5 mm thick, but these are reserved for high-level law-enforcement personnel, certain government officials, and the extremely wealthy.
The card incorporates a minimal Winternet terminal, with holophone and interactive programming capabilities. The holographic quality is poor at best, so pay-phones are still popular. It also keeps a record of the user's various accounts on Winternet, as well as her medical history and any other pertinent personal information, and can perform much as the personal computer did in the 1990's, using firmware built into Winternet. Additionally, the location of the user can be found at any time by the authorities by using Winternet, although most countries require a court order for the police to use the GenCard in this way.
The card is black, and has two insignias on the front: the Winternet logo (an open window with the Earth behind it), and the logo of the issuing institution. The back of the card has a hologram of the owner of the card (except for corporate cards, which have the corporation's trademark) on the right, and a red square on the left. The red square is the identification grid; this reads the fingerprint and infrared image of the capillaries of the owner during transactions.
Transactions are made by transferring funds from one account to another. It is possible to transfer funds directly between cards; the transaction is uploaded to Winternet via a coded transmission to the nearest Winternet relay tower, which broadcasts the transaction to a Winternet satellite. The satellite then beams the transaction, along with millions of others, to the appropriate corporation's mainframe computer. The transaction is stored both on the card and on Winternet.
The Characters
The stars of the story are the Player Characters. If the game were a movie, the camera would be on the Player Characters almost all the time. Their motivations are what galvanizes a simple plot description into a gripping drama, and their tribulations and passions are what makes the story interesting. Without the players, the world, obstacles, and adversaries crafted by the Game Moderator are static and lifeless. Without the Player Characters there is no story.
Guidelines
Before you make up your character, there are a few things to keep in mind. The GM may have some additional thoughts on the subject, either adding to or deleting from these guidelines. It is important to get the Game Moderator's feedback during character creation, because she has to make sure your character fits into the story she has in mind. Also, the GM might have an idea or two that will make your character more interesting, useful, or unique when put into the context of the story and the other Player Characters.
Past
Your character will probably be an Immortal, although you can make up a mortal character, if you prefer. A mortal character would be much weaker than an Immortal character; the only real advantage to being mortal is that the character would not stand out to Immortals the way other Immortals do, and might not be considered a threat. Since this game is about Immortals, most of the rules assume the character is one as well.
Your character can be an Immortal from any place or time in the grand pageant of history. Every culture and nationality is open to you, limited only by your imagination and good judgment. Unless the GM allows otherwise, your character will begin the game without any accrued Karma (a measure of a character's experiences and prestige), so if she is from the Middle Ages she has been keeping out of sight and out of trouble for a very long time. A new character who is nonetheless an elder Immortal might have been living as a recluse in the Appalatian Mountains for centuries, or she might have been buried in a landslide in the Alps for a thousand years or so, and only recently discovered by a surprised mountaineer.
Present
Focus first on who your character is, rather than what she can do. It is all well and good to have a character who is a master at aikido, proficient with all manner of firearms and other implements of destruction, but if you don't know who she is you have not made up a character, you have merely written her resume. We have included some advice to help you define and build your character's identity. Go through it, sketching out your ideas, running a few of them past the GM as you go, and revising as you get closer to who (and what) you want your character to be.
After you have a description of your character, then go through and fill in the specifics. Exactly how good is she at aikido? Is she an expert combat pilot, or does she just go up on weekend joy-rides? We have presented two different ways of determining these specific numbers and attributes, the "Quick-Start" method and the "Customized" method: pick the one that more suits your tastes and follow the instructions.
Future
It is up to you to make up a character who can get along with the other Player Characters and add to the quality of the game. Realism in Legacy, as in most games, takes a back seat to playability. Your character can be the most fascinating, detailed character ever written, with nuances Tolstoy would envy, but if she detracts from the overall quality of the game you have failed to make up a good character.
Fortunately, making up a character is a fairly simple process, and if at first you don't succeed you can try again. It is possible to make up a unique and interesting character who gets along with the other PCs, and in the long run it is much more fun than making up a character that, despite being a brilliant creation, disrupts the game.
Character Abstract
The player begins creating a character by designing the character's Abstract. The Abstract is a short description of the character, her background, and her abilities without resorting to numbers. A creative Abstract increases the depth of the character and enhances the ability of the GM to create adventures around the character's concept. The Abstract should be phrased carefully, because it will affect not only how the Game Moderator perceives the character, but also how the player perceives the character. Having a well thought-out Abstract may give the character certain small advantages, too, such as an ex-CIA agent still having a contact within the CIA.
Part of the joy of creating an Abstract is describing the personality of the character. Is she an introvert, shy and serious, or is she an extrovert, outgoing and humorous? Perhaps she would like to be more outgoing, but has difficulty trusting others because of a traumatic experience in her past. What are her interests and hobbies? Is she an intellectual, who enjoys scrutinizing the world around her, or is she passionate and impulsive, doing what she feels is right without analyzing her motivations? How about the character's family? Does she come from a large, close-knit clan or is she an orphan? What is her education, her moral philosophy? Each clue to your character's personality will help you portray her realistically, which will add to your enjoyment and the enjoyment of everyone who plays the game with you.
Nearly as important as the personality is the physical appearance of the character. Is the character a man or a woman? Although most players tend to prefer characters the same sex as themselves, it can be an interesting change to role-play the opposite sex and see things from a different perspective. How old is she? Is she tall and broad, or short and wiry? Human beings come in a staggering variety of shapes, sizes, and degrees of health, so it's certainly possible for a mercenary with a Strength Rank of 1 (a fragile mercenary, indeed) to be an enormous hulking brute. In this case, she is simply not a muscular hulking brute. A player should round out the minor details of her character as she goes along, filling in things such as eye and hair color, left- or right-handedness, and other minutiae.
As time goes by, the player may decide to alter or revise her character's Abstract. People change over time, and so do their characters. If a player has become bored with a character, or no longer feels she identifies with it, she might want to revise the character's outlook on life, perhaps by using a "traumatic event" in the game to explain the character's change in personality. This is fine, as long as it adds to the enjoyment of the game. After all, the whole point of role-playing is to socialize and have fun.
Conception
The heart of the character is her conception. Sum up in a sentence or two what makes your character special and what sets her apart from other people, even from other Immortals. The conception of the character is what is most important about her. It can be her profession, like a surgeon or a CIA operative. Her conception can emphasize how other people see her, and whether she is admired or reviled. The character's self-image can be the driving conception behind her Abstract, like a humble idealist or a supremely egotistical philanthropist.
Usually, the character's conception is the first thing you think of when someone asks you to describe the character. It may even be only a word or two, which you then expand into a fully developed identity. Whatever your character's conception, try to incorporate something interesting into it: something that you can build on as you get more specific, filling in the character's personality and appearance.
Personality
To make creating a character's unique personality easier, you can try asking yourself some basic questions about the way she views life and interacts with others. In psychology this is called "personality typing," and you have probably seen techniques like this before. For human beings, personality typing is much too simplistic to be very useful, but for a Player Character it suits our purposes admirably.
Focus
Most people, and thus most Player Characters, are either focused on the world around them or on their own internal landscape. Carl Jung called these kinds of people "extroverts" and "introverts."
Extroverts focus on the world around them. They enjoy social interaction, and prefer to understand their world by interacting with it. Extroverts tend to seek out companionship, new friends, and new experiences, and they tend to share their thoughts or private feelings easily with others. A meaningful experience for an extrovert is one that involves activity and social intercourse.
Introverts are focused on the world inside them. The prefer to interact on a one-to-one basis, or in small groups. Introverts tend to get to know people gradually, and dislike being the center of attention. An introvert prefers to think before she acts, and tends to give a question thorough analysis before answering.
Most mortals are extroverts, but Immortals are evenly divided between extroverts and introverts. How does your character respond to social activities? Is she outgoing and gregarious, the center of attention whenever possible? Or is she contemplative and private, sharing her thoughts with few others, keeping her friends few? Does she think before she acts, or does she act first, and then think about what she has done?
Vision
By "vision," we are not referring to how well your character sees, but to what your character pays attention to. How does your character solve problems: by looking at the facts and drawing conclusions based upon hard evidence, or by examining trends, people's reactions, and her own instincts?
A character who relies upon concrete facts and figures, basing her actions on the here-and-now instead of on intuition and imagination, can be called a "linear thinker." Linear thinkers prefer to concentrate on things as they are rather than on possibilities, using logic to solve problems. If something does not have an immediate, practical application, the linear thinker probably will not see much use for it.
The "divergent thinker," on the other hand, relies as much on imagination and creativity as she does on hard evidence. She tends to think in intuitive leaps, making connections based on her hunches, waiting to fill in the facts later. Divergent thinkers use metaphors and analogies to explain concepts instead of using concrete descriptions the way a linear thinker would.
Linear thinkers are often described as being practical and efficient, perhaps even cold-hearted. They try to base their decisions on objective evidence, rather than indulging their own feelings about a matter. Divergent thinkers tend to be described as emotional or frivolous, maybe even "dizzy." Objective evidence is not as important to them as how they feel about a decision, and they have more trouble making decisions that will hurt someone than linear thinkers do.
Honor
Honor is a measure of the character's sincerity and obedience to society's strictures. While it may imply generosity or goodness, that is not always the case. What we mean by "honor" is how often the character keeps her word, or refrains from taking things that do not belong to her. It is quite possible for a character to be extremely honorable (by this definition), yet be rude and cruel. It's also possible, although rare, for a character to be a liar and a thief, yet be kind and generous. Robin Hood is a perfect example of a good, yet dishonorable, person.
An honorable person is often described as straight or honest, and sometimes they may be considered dull and unimaginative. To an honorable person, the structure of society is more important than a temporary advantage that may be gained by violating that structure. Truthfulness is intrinsically valuable to an honorable character.
A dishonorable person may be described as undisciplined and mischievous, perhaps even deceitful. A dishonorable character sees nothing wrong in doing what gets the best results. The end justifies the means, in the dishonorable character's view. Consistency and adherence to arbitrary rules are trivial to the dishonorable person, who will do whatever she thinks is best at the moment to get the job done.
Appearance
What a character looks like is not as important as the depth of her personality, but it does have an impact upon both how she interacts with others and upon how the player sees the character. As such, the player should describe the character carefully, taking note of little things like the character's height and general build. Hair color and general style of dress help emphasize the character's personality.
In general, the character can appear to be whatever age the player likes. There is no direct correlation between an Immortal's chronological and apparent age, other than the fact that Immortals rarely look older than they are. The Player Character can be any chronological age, as well, as long as the player realizes that the character is extremely inexperienced no matter how long she has been alive.
Appearance takes into account such things as mannerisms, accented speech, and level of cultural sophistication. Is the character wealthy? Does she act like a rich snob, or is she "slumming?" What do people notice about the character when they first meet her? Is she attractive (as most Immortals are)? All of these things concern the character's appearance.
Devon's Abstract
Idea: Phill wants to make up a Post-Modern Immortal who is tired of the nonsensical traditions of the elder Immortals. He picks the name Devon for his character.
Conception: Devon is independent, and doesn't like being told what to do. He goes his own way, and prefers to let others, both Immortal and mortal, do the same. Phill decides that other Immortals may not always like Devon, because he doesn't get involved in disputes that he doesn't think concern him. But if Devon decides that someone is abusing their power, he'll step in to put a stop to it.
Personality: Phill decides that Devon is balanced between being focused on the world around him and his own inner landscape. He doesn't mind having fun with a crowd of people, he just doesn't find that many people whom he has fun with. Devon relies more on facts and figures than feelings, making some people think he's heartless or unfeeling. In fact, he feels very deeply about what he considers right and wrong, but he thinks it is important not to impose his feelings or code of ethics on others. Devon also has a very strong sense of honor, although he will break the rules if he sees no other way to accomplish his goals. When this happens, he feels as if he has lost, somehow, and spends too much time blaming himself for breaking his own code of ethics.
Appearance: Devon is a muscular man with dark brown skin. He's a bit shorter and heavier than average, and he usually wears his hair in tiny parallel braids. While he's among friends, Devon's deep brown eyes have a playful glint, but that glint can turn deadly in a heartbeat. Phill also decides that Devon uses his hands a lot when he talks, and that Devon's preferred weapon is a katana his biological father (now dead) brought back from Japan after World War Two. This would make Devon around sixty years old, chronologically, but Phill decides that Devon looks like he's in his late twenties.
Jacqueline's Abstract
Idea: Susan wants to make up a more outgoing character than Phill did. She decides that her character, Jacqueline, is a gregarious adventurer.
Conception: Jacqueline is a younger Immortal than Devon; she looks her real age, which is 27. Susan decides that Jacqueline only knows she's Immortal because another Immortal found her and has been tutoring her. Jacqueline doesn't see why Immortals need to go around killing each other, and she doesn't think she'll ever kill another Immortal unless she's forced to. However, she trusts her mentor (who hasn't been made up yet), and is training in how to use a sword so that she can protect herself when the time comes.
Personality: Jacqueline is outgoing and loves to have fun. Any activity where she can do something new and exciting will draw her attention. This is especially true now that she knows she's an Immortal and doesn't have to fear getting hurt. Susan decides that this is a source of irritation to her mentor, who Susan pictures as a knight from the Age of Faith. Jacqueline tends to trust her instincts more than her reason, and this gets her involved in situations which she would be much safer staying away from. Susan decides that Jacqueline doesn't respect rules unless they have good justification, so she doesn't have any respect yet for the rules of Immortal etiquette, although her mentor has tried to get her to understand their importance.
Appearance: Susan decides that Jacqueline will look like a romance-novel heroine. She is tall, lean, and fit, and she has long, dark hair that always seems to be blowing in the wind. Her eyes are large and green, and they flash when she's angry or excited. Susan decides that Jacqueline's family is living somewhere far away, and that she doesn't keep in touch with them very often. The Game Moderator, Beth, okays this, but she makes a note to herself to use Jacqueline's family in a plot later.
Ian's Abstract
Idea: Lloyd is interested in the idea of being Susan's mentor, and asks the GM if that would be okay. Beth, the GM, decides that it would fun to have Lloyd's character be Jacqueline's mentor, at least at the beginning of the game, but she doesn't want the character to be as powerful as a Medieval Immortal would be. Instead, the GM lets Lloyd make up a Modern Immortal. Lloyd decides to name his character Ian McAllister.
Conception: Ian was originally one of the Cavaliers who supported the British king Charles I against Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads in England during the Roundhead Rebellion. Ian didn't think Charles was doing a great job as king, but he felt that it was important to respect the king's authority. When Charles was beheaded, Ian left the country and lived in France for a century or so until the French Revolution, when he helped members of the French nobility escape from the guillotine. It wasn't until years later that he learned of the Immortal Danton's involvement in the bloody Reign of Terror. If he had known at the time about Danton, it is likely that McAllister would have killed him.
Personality: Ian is a hopeless idealist pretending to be a cynic. He professes to have no faith in humankind, but he is always disappointed when someone takes the easy way out of a problem or takes advantage of someone else. Lloyd decides that Ian is an introvert, who spends a lot of time ruminating, having long philosophical conversations with himself. Ian thinks feelings are much more important than facts and figures, because human beings are more important than numbers. He steadfastly defends the traditions of Immortal etiquette, even when it is against his better judgment to do so, because "sometimes the rules are all we have."
Appearance: Ian always seems to have a thoughtful expression on his face. His hair is not quite shoulder-length, and he sports the same mustache and goatee he wore in Charles' day. He tends to bow slightly when he introduces himself, and he always opens doors for women. He has a slight Scottish accent which is really only noticeable when he's angry.