Fantasy supergroup

kjames91

Hey there! Going off of Turakian Age lore, how would it be possible to have a band of adventurers be a supergroup? Could it fit CO lore? Thanks!

bulgarex

To be clear, are you talking about adventurers from the Turakian era coming to the present day? If so, I can't see why not. TA was an epoch of high-powered magic, from sage and potent wizards up to and including direct meddling by the gods in mortal affairs. Magic that would cast people into millennia-long suspended animation, or even hurl them forward through time, is within the realm of credibility.

Ambient magic is at a somewhat lower ebb in the modern era than during the Turakian Age, but how it affects physics today is rather different, which is why we get more superhumans than wizards nowadays. So it's quite possible that magic-using characters from the past would find their abilities modified, maybe even more powerful in some ways. That seems to be what happened to the Crowns of Krim villain team, and the Australian supervillain Lightning Man, who gained their super powers from enchanted artifacts of Turakian vintage.

If you mean something else, please specify.

kjames91

Yeah on TA coming to present day. My thought process is that, how can they find enemies in organizations of VIPER, ARGENT, etc. Also, how can they be a help to UNTIL?

bulgarex

Well, the UNTIL part is relatively easy. As refugees from a long-dead age they would have no home country, no legal status. They'd need some kind of sponsor. Once UNTIL became aware of your adventurers, and if they convinced the organization of their sincere desire to act as heroes, UNTIL could offer them refuge in exchange for participation in their "Superhero Liaison Program," essentially making them volunteer or reserve UNITY members. UNTIL requires SLP member teams to have one of their Superteam Liaisons posted with them. In this case he/she would be an invaluable guide to the modern world. UNTIL has even been known to help affiliated super teams construct a base if they want one. (UNTIL's policies for working with superheroes are detailed in UNTIL: Defenders Of Freedom pp. 133-34.)

If the adventurers are active as superheroes, just in the course of events it won't be long before they start making enemies of present-day villains. However, if you want to give them problems from Day 1, DEMON would probably be very interested in people wielding distinctive magic from a bygone era, especially artifacts. It's also not impossible that in their past they ran afoul of Kal-Turak/Takofanes, who might notice their return and be concerned they know more about him than anyone else alive today. He might send someone or something to eliminate them.

kjames91

Very true. I appreciate the help!

bulgarex

For anyone reading this wondering what the heck we're talking about , the Turakian Age world, called "Ambrethel," was Hero Games' attempt to create a setting for fantasy role-playing games evocative of the ever-popular Dungeons and Dragons, but using their game-mechanic engine, the Hero System. Most of the familiar D&D-isms are found there: pseudo-medieval European/Middle Eastern societies, knights, wizards, dragons, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, and so on. But there are a number of features distinctive to TA, and some cultural elements, such as religion, are fleshed out much more than in most game worlds.

"The Turakian Age" refers to an era of past civilization on Champions Earth, between roughly 73,000 - 65,000 BCE. It takes its name from the being who became the dominant figure of the age, Kal-Turak the Ravager of Men... the name of Takofanes as a living being. Kal-Turak succeeded in conquering the known world of the time and ruling it for centuries, before being overthrown and killed. He eventually returned from death as Takofanes, conquered the world again, and was again defeated, this time in a magical war so devastating it practically destroyed civilization and reshaped the surface of the planet. Takofanes was entombed far underground, bound by magical wards, until an oil drilling project in Oklahoma in 1987 broke into his prison and awakened him.

In character, modern science on Champions Earth knows nothing about the Turakian Age, not even the name. It predates Atlantis and Lemuria by tens of thousands of years, and even they knew of it only in vague legends. So far as has been revealed, besides Takofanes only a handful of artifacts and sites related to TA have survived to the present day, due to their potent magic (and hence are associated with various magical superhumans).

According to the Champions source book, The Mystic World, some occult adepts know a bit more, mostly due to researching Takofanes. Even the gods alive today have no direct memory of the era, since they originate long after it. However, the Library of Babylon has more information, having acquired written works dating from TA (although their collection is far from complete). A few contemporary immortals were alive at that time, such as the Witness and some Empyreans, and they probably remember considerably more.

Out of character, there is a ton of data about the Turakian Age in books published by Hero Games for the "fantasy" part of their shared universe. That includes a detailed historical timeline of the first five millennia of the age (and a brief synopsis of the final three millennia); and an extensive survey of the known world of Ambrethel at TA year 5000 -- world geography, descriptions of scores of nations, the various races and cultures, notable individuals and artifacts, styles of magic, major religions, and more.

The setting is mostly detailed in its own source book, The Turakian Age (available from Hero Games in hard copy or PDF at very reasonable prices), but several other books describe particular facets of it in more detail.

bulgarex

In a world of magic, with powerful wizards, demons, and gods meddling directly in mortal affairs, it would certainly be easy to justify bringing a Turakian Age character forward to the modern world. I collaborated with one of the regular Champions online players, and forum posters, "jonsils," to develop such a PC for him. As jonsils described it: "At his height, during the Turakian Age, Kilbern Skyfather was the chief of the gods, but bound most of his power into his sword Auralia in order to seal the tomb of Takofanes the Undying. He'd retired to a quiet corner of Elysium, slowly losing power as his worshipers died out... Then, in 1987, the Tomb was opened. Kilbern could feel the disturbance as Auralia was removed and the Lich-King's tomb opened. He spent most of his remaining power crossing the Elysian fields against the wishes of the other gods there, leaving him weak enough to evade the Ban. He manifested directly on Earth, but with only the power of a beginning superhero. Now he strives to become famous enough (the modern equivalent of worship) to gain the power to defeat Takofanes permanently."

Let me throw a few more lore precedents out, which might suggest ways you could bring your characters into the modern era. The evil knight known today as the Black Paladin was an enemy of King Arthur and his noble knights of the Round Table. Mortally wounded in battle with Sir Launcelot, he was placed in magical suspended animation in a hidden tomb by his lover, the witch Chantal, as his wounds slowly healed. The Black Paladin was awakened in the late 20th Century when an archaeologist found and entered his tomb. Torturing the man for information about the changes to the world, the Paladin killed him and assumed his identity, to spread evil anew. (BP's full write-up is in Champions Villains Vol. 3: Solo Villains.)

The preceding is a precedent, but let me add a setting-specific vehicle. Since time immemorial, the race of serpentine humanoid mystics call the Nagas have taught and guided mankind. Some believe they helped raise up the first human civilizations. The Nagas are implacable enemies of the Dragon, source of the most profoundly evil impulses in the human psyche. They do not reveal their origin or true motivation to humans, and never confront the Dragon's minions directly with force, preferring to work through human proxies, giving them advice and other indirect assistance.

The Nagas spend most of their time in a hidden valley somewhere in Central Asia called "Avalon" (inspiration for the legendary island). Scattered across Avalon's landscape are monuments to fallen heroes, stretching back to the Turakian Age, containing records of their lives and deeds. "Do some of these structures hold more than memories? Do the souls, or even the bodies, of long-forgotten heroes sleep amid the ancient apple-trees, until the nagas shall rouse them for a final battle? Perhaps. Only the nagas know." (The Mystic World p. 70. That book goes into much more detail about both the Nagas and the Dragon.) For your purpose, there's no reason the answer to that question can't be, "Yes." 😇 The Nagas could have preserved your PCs and chosen to return them to the world today. It would be entirely within their character not to tell them specifically why them and why now, so you needn't define the reason right away.

Here's another possible route with a different set of implications. In the dimension of Faerie, aka "the Land of Legends" (home to all the creatures, races, and gods of human myth and folklore), time can be fluid and randomly highly variable relative to time on Earth. It's possible for someone to sojourn for months in the Land of Legends, yet return to Earth only minutes after they left; or to spend a night in Faerie but discover decades had passed on Earth. That happened to the Mexican hero called Macahuitl, once an Aztec warrior who accidentally passed through a cave leading to his people's land of the dead. The Aztec death god guided him back to his homeland, and granted him magic powers and weapons to be a champion of his people; but Macahuitl emerged in modern Mexico.

If heroes from the Turakian era spent years in Faerie -- adventuring, as someone's prisoner, because one fell in love with and married a Faerie native, etc. -- and then for some reason returned to Earth, it would not be improbable for it to be present-day Earth. (Faerie is thoroughly described in The Mystic World, while Macahuitl's full write-up is in Champions Worldwide.)

Another possibility with lore precedent is an enchanted artifact which contains or can summon the spirit of a deceased Turakian, possessing the body of a person finding the artifact, able to use the spirit's knowledge and skills, maybe even transforming his host's body into the image of his own. For example, in 1961 a young scholar named Ted Spaulding discovered and translated an ancient scroll, which turned out to be a spell summoning the soul of the legendary warrior Beowulf. The two of them came to share a body, and could switch between their physical forms, with the mind of the appropriate body in control while the other mind could communicate with the controller telepathically. Beowulf served with the famous superhero team, the Sentinels, during the 1960s and 70s. (Beowulf's write-up appears in issue #14 of Digital Hero, Hero Games's electronic magazine.) Several enchanted artifacts of Turakian vintage are known to have survived to the present day.

Feel free to post followups about any of the above, or if they don't work for you and you'd like to explore other options. 😎

bulgarex

Another possible source for a "fantasy super-team" would be the Atlantean Age, the era when Atlantis was the dominant power of the world (ending roughly 32,000 years ago). Nearly everything I described about magic and the gods during the Turakian Age applies to this later era, even more so. But the style of the civilizations of AA was faux-Greco-Roman rather than faux-Medieval European, which opens a different set of aesthetics for characters. While mighty wizards were not too uncommon, even common Atlantean warriors used enchanted weapons and armor, and underwent personal enchantment to raise their physical attributes to near-superhuman levels. Heroes with divine blood were probably more widespread during this era than any other, granting them even more extraordinary abilities. So Atlantean characters would fit right into a modern "super" subculture. The age also included non-humans suitable as PCs from the same legendary tradition, notably Satyrs, Centaurs, and Alarii (winged people).

This was also the era during which Lemuria reached its height of power, which opens up another route to getting characters to the modern age. When he saw that the Cataclysm which would sink Atlantis and devastate the planet was imminent, the Priest-King of Lemuria set his sorcerers to create a mighty "Clockwork Engine" which would practically stop time for the entire city of Lemuria, placing it beyond the reach of the coming destruction until after the world had recovered from it. It would not be unreasonable for those sorcerers to have crafted smaller prototypes of the Clockwork Engine to test, which Atlantean heroes might have stumbled into...

The "five Ws" of the Atlantean Age are fully laid out in a source book of the same name.