Help me with this "What if"

[D10]

A friend of mine is getting ready to GM for the first time, his world is basically a parallel earth where magic "came back" in 1 AD, due to banestormish effects.

The game is set to start at 1100, and this is the world map at this moment. http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/2...ineversion.jpg

Some ideas we played with so far to get to where we got.

Islam never really happened, as powerfull sorcerers and warlocks commanded a quite real power, instead, a very powerfull sorcerer called Raidran created a sort of religious philosophy that sees magic as a divine phenomenae, a sees mages as sorts of eyes and hands of the gods, eventually he took a monotheistic tone and started conquering the hearts and minds of the people, eventually he overthrew the local power and went on to create whats basically christianity main competitor.

He and his followers would have basically overthrown most powers in the middle east and installed a new order, over the centuries they would have all sorts of divergences and split into these major states that you can see on the map.

Christianity is somewhat different, as many priests would actually be mages trained by the catholic church with the purpose of having spells that allows them to be effective priests, and the study and use of magic would be seen as something that can only be done from within the church else it will lead to evil.

England for instance, had both help of druids and christian mages against the viking invasions, and as such the vikings invested a lore more effort into going to america (specially with their own magical helps).

The Byzantine empire would be essentially controled by a cabal of mages called the illuminati, based in antioch, they would have defeated their rivals in a shadow war and overtaken control of the empire, effectivelly reliving the importance of the senate and even making a constitution, that had egalitarian concepts and was overall very progressive, amongst other things, it declared the roman republic as having no official religion as of 1088, altho christianism is by far and large the most popular one.

Dark Elf refugees found this world around 450, and have established a powerbase in the gulf of guinea (the mandinga kingdoms on the map), and an elven task force was sent to track them down and kill them, but due to the elusiveness of the dark elves, and the fact that constantly opening portals made both this world and the elfs native world more likely to be invaded by demons, they decide to make a permanent foothold until the problem was solved, and established a powerbase in the area shown as grand hibernia on the map.

Early 0AD banestorms would also have displaced populations of dwarves and other fantasy races, but the world is 99% human as far as sentient things go.

But I really wanted to hear from you guys, what do you think would be some of the implications of having magic appear at 0AD, mostly to enrich the setting with your input, as he is quite set on having a "as organic as possible" setting, nothing you read here is set in stone, and this is mostly just what we have done so far.

Sry for the map quality, had to reduce due to size.

[combatmedic]

There is no such thing as a zero year on our calendar.

[combatmedic]

I do like the work you are doing with alternate history and magic.


Replacing Islam with a mage-focused religion strikes me as pretty cool.



Since your Christians use magic but keep it within certain limits, maybe Raidran's new philosophy appealed to mages who felt that the Church was needlessly limiting their true potential?

Summoning and binding djinn, maybe?

[D10]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

There is no such thing as a zero year on our calendar.

rofl

okay, ill rephrase that to 1AD

[whswhs]

I suggest reading up on Simon Magus as the kind of figure who would be involved in founding such a movement.

The Roma Arcana campaign sketch in the last chapter of my version of GURPS Fantasy actually is based on that sort of history. It has Rome losing the favor of its gods, as mortals turn away from worship toward sorcery.

Bill Stoddard

[D10]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

I do like the work you are doing with alternate history and magic.


Replacing Islam with a mage-focused religion strikes me as pretty cool.



Since your Christians use magic but keep it within certain limits, maybe Raidran's new philosophy appealed to mages who felt that the Church was needlessly limiting their true potential?

Summoning and binding djinn, maybe?

Yes that was kind of the idea behind it, the concept is that in that region where islam was born, there were tons of pseudo magicians, but in this case they really were mages, and installed a sort of the basis for a magic centric world view before the religion itself came.

The Roman empire is at great odds with the christian world since their declared themselves a non religious organization and basically rejected the pope's power, as such, it is in a much better position to receive wizard refugees from from europe, but there are many havens for mages in this Raidranic, if you wanna call it that way, part of the world as well, which only serves on increase their power as a society.

You could say theres 3 axis of magical power in the ocident, Rome, The Church and the Caliphates, both kinds of elves would stay away from this theather, for their own reasons and would not contribute for the economy or knowledge of the world as a whole, as these 3 powers did.

[D10]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I suggest reading up on Simon Magus as the kind of figure who would be involved in founding such a movement.

The Roma Arcana campaign sketch in the last chapter of my version of GURPS Fantasy actually is based on that sort of history. It has Rome losing the favor of its gods, as mortals turn away from worship toward sorcery.

Bill Stoddard

Very very interesting... thanks a ton

[Irish Wolf]

Which raises the question - in this universe, would Simon Magus have fought a duel with Peter? And if so, would Peter still have won? (One would imagine so, since you have the priesthood of the Church as an order of mages...)

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by D10

Yes that was kind of the idea behind it, the concept is that in that region where islam was born, there were tons of pseudo magicians, but in this case they really were mages, and installed a sort of the basis for a magic centric world view before the religion itself came.

The Roman empire is at great odds with the christian world since their declared themselves a non religious organization and basically rejected the pope's power, as such, it is in a much better position to receive wizard refugees from from europe, but there are many havens for mages in this Raidranic, if you wanna call it that way, part of the world as well, which only serves on increase their power as a society.

You could say theres 3 axis of magical power in the ocident, Rome, The Church and the Caliphates, both kinds of elves would stay away from this theather, for their own reasons and would not contribute for the economy or knowledge of the world as a whole, as these 3 powers did.

So there is no 'state cult' at all in the Roman Empire? That seems like quite a break for the Romans. It seems to be a recent development in your timeline. How did that work out? Why did the mages not simply install their own state cult, be it Sol Invictus, a Gnostic heresy, some kind of Neo-Platonism, etc.?
It looks as if the Roman Republic was in some sense revived. There is no Emperor now? Removing the office of the Emperor would remove what had become a central feature and focal point of the state religious apparatus in Roman civilization, the Imperial Cult.







What I need to know, and this is vital: was Constantine ever Emperor? Did he issue the Edict of Milan and go on to sponsor the Council of Nicaea?
Or was Christianity never the official religion of the Empire in this timeline?

[D10]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

So there is no 'state cult' at all in the Roman Empire? That seems like quite a break for the Romans. It seems to be a recent development in your timeline. How did that work out? Why did the mages not simply install their own state cult, be it Sol Invictus, a Gnostic heresy, some kind of Neo-Platonism, etc.?
It looks as if the Roman Republic was in some sense revived. There is no Emperor now? Removing the office of the Emperor would remove what had become a central feature and focal point of the state religious apparatus in Roman civilization, the Imperial Cult.



What I need to know, and this is vital: was Constantine ever Emperor? Did he issue the Edict of Milan and go on to sponsor the Council of Nicaea?
Or was Christianity never the official religion of the Empire in this timeline?

Yes he did, and it only stopped in 1088 when the republic was revived and the mages orchestrated a separation of church and state.

It probably had many different reasons, but one of the main ones is that there are many mages who are christian but dont belong in the church, aside from the mages that believe in other stuff, so it was done in order to regularize mages more than anything else.

Conflict between the late roman empire and the catholic church was constant as of late, culminating on a complete break from the higher ups with the catholic church, but not from christianity, therefore the lack of endorsement for any specific religion.

The mages controling rome have been doing very effective propaganda recently with a rational approach to the need of regulated magic that appeals from almost all walks of society and how more usefull and effective it is to have mages that are dedicated mages, instead of a mage/priest using magic to push his agenda.

As to how it worked out, it was sort of a shot in the foot, as it increased internal tension and made rome more attractive to being ganged up by foreign enemies as a faithless land, but in the short term, the mages have become organized, giving them a great edge against all sorts of threats, they are also pushing a sort of revival of roman values and virtues, and ever since the illuminati won the shadow war they basically have been pulling the strings on roman society, they are not anything like NWO, more like a vast and complex network of mages that all follow the same hierarchy and rules, they have many lesser mage guilds working under them, and control a number of mages many times their own.

For all their success, they still have limited resources, and activelly recruit people to serve their many needs, they can claim full authority in any matter involving the use of magic, and have a separate legal system for arcane shenanigans, and everyone involved in an arcane indicent can be subjected to a court of the illuminati, thats mostly where their power emanates from, that and charging taxes for spells and magic items