wanderingmagus

I miswrote the first part, it was Aten, not Amun, that had such a strong following from Pharaoh Akhenaten that all the other temples to all the other gods of Egypt were defaced, the priests executed or forced into exile, the people forced to switch religions. After his death, the same was done to Aten by the rest of the gods. El-Shaddai, the mighty one of the mountains, is better known as Elohim, the worshipped one, or Adonai, Lord, or the name he gave Moshe on the mountain of Sinai, YHVH, later degraded to Jehovah. His worshippers, the descendants of Yisrael, sacked and plundered countless Phoenician villages and cities which worshipped Ashera, Molech and Ba'al, fertility deities. In what Elohim claimed was lack of faith, the Hebrews were allowed to be destroyed multiple times by the very people they genocide earlier, taken into captivity and their Temple burned to the ground and looted. In one instance the Ark of the Covenant, the throne of Elohim, was brought to the temple of Dagon, lord of the sea. In spite and petty jealousy, Elohim knocked over the statue of Dagon. Mahabali was a mighty king, advised by a demon guru, who conquered the entire universe and humiliated the Devas, and though all the gods tried to stop him, no one succeeded. But he was a fair king, and after making sure his rule was permanent, he offered the mortals any gift they asked. In desperation, some gods and mortals petitioned Vishnu to intercede and help, so Lord Vishnu came down and incarnated as Vamana the dwarf Brahmin. Vamana came before Mahabali, and the demon guru immediately recognized Vishnu, and demanded the king refuse the dwarf's request, but Mahabali was fair and just, and did not listen to his advisor. Vamana asked merely to possess three paces' worth of land, and Mahabali made to seal the compact by pouring water from his pot into his hand, from his hand into the dwarf's, and from the dwarf's into Vamana's gourd pot. But the demon guru blocked the spout of the king's pot, so Vamana used a twig and cleared the spout by blinding the demon. When the water was poured and the agreement sealed, Vamana grew and grew until a single step took him from one end of the world to the other. He grew larger still as Mahabali fell down in worship, and his second step crossed the very heavens. "Mahabali, you have given me three steps, but I have nowhere left to go." "Lord Vishnu, I offer unto you my head for your third step." So Vamana stepped upon Mahabali's head, pushing him into the underworld, where the king was content to live and rule the rest of his days. But Vishnu is kind, and rewarded the goodness of Mahabali by allowing him to visit the universe he once ruled every year. Like El-Shaddai, Aten and Mahabali before him, I think Voltaire will find that the other gods and goddesses will have issues if he tries taking over the universe for himself.

Pretty sure the other gods would have a problem with an Amun trying to pull a fast one over Ra and Horus, especially since they already tried that back in the day. El-Shaddai also tried that on Ba'al and Ashara, they had issues with that and took the upstart tribes captive after Dagon sacked his temple and stole his nice chair. Even Mahabali had to bow before Vishnu when his avatar Vamana tricked him into giving him dominion over all he could cross in three steps, and the dwarf took the entire universe in two.

Because it sure sounds like the gods are coming back this time.

The secret inner chambers of chief's and witch doctor's huts, with ancient charms and cursed masks of the ancestors passed from generation to generation, the deepest sealed portions of the imperial omyouji, the darkest black archives of the Vatican, the three hills of the mound of Merlin, the lost tomb of Arthur the once and future, every single temple in Mesoamerica, the delayed aftereffects of the Ghost Dance, the ten thousand undying terracotta warriors guarding the pyramid of Qin Shi Huang with its rivers of flowing quicksilver...

That's right, Mr. Verrez: the gig's up! Not just an international incident too big to cover up without a worldwide memory wipe that's probably liable to be interpreted as an act of war, but if enough vampires were as rich and powerful as Sirleck, I'm betting a very large number of major world leaders, multi-billionaires and crime bosses just got wiped from existence, leaving enormous power vacuums everywhere. Also, Africa, and every single disenfranchised victim of colonization, has Ancient Magic now. So does Iran, or should I say, Babylon and Persia. So does the IRA, or should I say, Eire, home of the Tuath De. Where were you when Ah Puch and the Great Buffalo Spirit declared war on the Sons of Odhinn, or Yamaraja arose from the depths of Naraka to make war upon mighty Al-Uzza and Ba'al?

I think the haircut is more a matter of practicality in combat. Unless it's up in a bun and under some sort of helmet, it becomes a handhold for someone looking to slow him down. Ironically his skintight superhero form is actually more practical, if he can tone down the breast size down to stop inertia from impeding combat - there's a reason why female fighters sometimes bind their chests, and it's not just to look like men.

I mean, not necessarily. Thoth could be considered an "accountant", along with any being or individual whose job it is to keep an account of all that transpires throughout the cosmos. Heka could be called a librarian. And Hermes could be called a "travel agent", along with any being or individual whose job it is to facilitate travel around and across both sides of the world, up and down Ygdrassil.

I wonder why Ashley's first racoon was to toss a potential weapon of magic physically, instead of trying to use it. Has she seen Harry Potter?

So... is the Vatican informed yet? The Imperial Omyouji? The PRC and ROC? The Masons, the Golden Dawn, the Salem Coven, the Templar Order, every Rosicrucian and Pythagorian? Because for all we know, every Shabti in Egypt is about to come to life, along with the Teracotta Army, and that's not counting the "pagan artifacts" in the Vatican Archives and the Holy Relics, the obsidian daggers of Teotihuacan, the bloodied altars of Peru, the temples of Greece and Rome, every totem on every reservation in America... we'll be lucky if there isn't a delayed reaction to the Ghost Dance or a thousand and one curses flying out of the Tomb of Tutankhamun.

Avada Kedavra. Exterminatus. Empathetic voodoo doll. Nuclear detonation with memory wipe. Tesla death ray. Supersonic sniper round. Elephant tranquilizer. Citywide sleep spell and a bullet to the head. Dimensional cage. Holding a few orphans hostage in a teleportation-proof sealed bunker with a remote trigger release of chlorine gas. There are many ways to take down someone without x-ray vision, susceptible to sleep spells and emotional manipulation. You're not thinking ruthlessly enough. This is the DGB. A government organization that deals with shapeshifting supernatural heavy-hitters on a daily basis, with contingency plans to kill minor gods. If the CIA can murder or kidnap and torture thousands of people in over 500 black budget black sites around the world, in some of the most densely populated areas in some cases, if they can manufacture an entire drug trade and keep an entire race of people oppressed, if they can overthrow countless governments and assassinate high profile political leaders, the DGB should have no problem neutralizing Grace. Permanently.

Arthur Arthur is nothing if not pragmatic. For all that he seemed like a bad guy now and then, his ultimate goal has always been the preservation of the human race as it stands, through whatever means he found necessary. Plus, giving Tedd a laboratory run and funded by the DGB means that HE can personally supervise the research, giving him authority over her and putting him in a position to threaten or seize her research if he felt it necessary.

More like "mostly cloudy with a chance of screaming many-limbed chaos spawns and impossible violations of physics and biology. Bring a few holy or blessed relics to mercy-kill the suffering and purge heresy." Gonna need a bigger blessed chainsword...

"Become random... massive storms of chaos magic... people would stop using magic" *looks over at Warhammer rulebooks* I think the WoM massively underestimates the natural, possibly insane curiosity of mortals. Actually, Dies the Fire isn't really about magic replacing technology. It's about the gods making most tech involving steam, explosions and electricity stop working, which allows things like the Difference Engine, primitive steam engines in Iowa and clockwork horse drawn locomotives, along with hydrogen blimps in Idaho. Actual magic barely figures at all, other than premonitions and very vague stuff that could mostly be explained by hypnotic suggestion or very strong drugs, and the major stuff is less magic and more miracle, heavily involving invocations of deities such as Morrigu or Odhinn or Mary Pierced With Many Sorrows. A world where magic completely replaces technology would probably be Eberron. A world where most technology doesn't work but traditional fantasy magic works for very specific people would be the Council Wars series by John Ringo, although he cheats a bit by having said "magic" be sufficiently advanced technology.

So maybe a better question is, are we headed for My Little Pony, Dragonball, or Nanoha.

So are we headed for Dresden Files, Shadowrun, or Harry Potter with this?

Someone call the Vatican, the Imperial Omyouji, the Van Helsing family, all the shamans, the Freemasons, the priests of all major religons, and reconvene the Round Table. And prepare to reopen the crypt of Merlin. We MIGHT have an emergency here.

Why does a megalomaniaclike Voltaire settle for being a demigod when he could be a god, with enough changes? Or is he just being realistic with his goals at the moment?

So if Magic decides to change anyways, is there a point at which Magic starts saying "maybe this wasn't such a good idea"? Maybe after Voltaire and a newly-created Lord Tedd outright force Magic's secrecy to be completely and utterly impossible short of an extinction event not seen since the end of the dinosaurs? Or will it take humanity or a human ascending beyond the levels of gods, with the power to bend worlds to his will, putting his gauntleted hand around Magic's neck and demanding submission?

Magic as dynastic makes Lord Tedd's lordship make that much more sense. He's part of a Noble and Most Ancient House, a rarity among rarities, and one of the Thousand, the only ones who can understand the innermost secrets of Magic.

You still have the other side of the world, though, which is full of magic. Would Magic consider the extinction of this side of the world any great loss, so long as the other side remains?

Does Magic actually care about anything besides itself? As in, if humanity as a whole goes extinct, would it consider that a great loss, or simply another event in the weave? It said itself, it's completely alien to mortals, and mortals are essentially incomprehensible to it. The three were chosen based on questionable criteria, and it didn't seem to consider things like cause/effect. Sure, it has a "flair for the dramatic", but an asteroid making the world go up in flames is also "dramatic", and apparently it really doesn't give two cents about entire civilizations going down in blood and fire. It also considers 8 billion people "a bit crowded" and not of concern. It gets an adult, an emotional teen and a biased kid to decide merely IF a major change should occur, without regard to HOW magic should change, or basically anything involving stuff like "consequence" or "morality".

If keeping magic secret is futile, then as I said, what of simply giving out the "harmless" stuff like self gender transformation or balls of light or minor telekinesis like candy, and then making anything actually powerful like fireball cost a ridiculous amount of money, time, effort, power and teamwork/organization along with a great deal of rationality?

Whoops, misread "a cycle which has persisted since the dawn of man" as referring to a single time period between major changes, rather than the entire sinusoidal rise-fall pattern of major change. Disregard that, then. But maybe this is a sign that it's time to break the wheel and end the cycle. Human history is filled with mistakes of the past. What is to say that the endless cycle of the rise and fall of civilization is not another mistake to be rectified? As we gradually unite all of humanity in what is as far as we know the first global community of interconnected thought through the internet, as we settle more and more misunderstandings through diplomacy rather than violence, as the plagues of the past are finally eradicated and we reach for the very stars we once worshiped, as our technology gradually surpasses even the mightiest of magics in power and lethality, perhaps it is time to recognize that the ancient and time-honored ways of dealing with magic are outdated, and it's time to move on.

Magic doesn't even detail exactly WHAT said change is. Honestly, that should be setting off all sorts of warning alarms for Arthur Arthur. The Will of Magic is UNPREDICTABLE. The current situation as is can be handled, and HAS been handled, by the DGB. They have enough heavy hitters and agents around the world to keep the situation under control, and if not, then they can bring out nuclear options and start inquisition-style witch-hunts and book burnings to keep the peace. Allow Magic to fundamentally alter ITSELF, and you get the Dinosaur extinction event. Remember, the last major change hasn't occurred in the ENTIRE HISTORY OF MANKIND. The last great species, at least according to fossil record, was dinosaurs. If it WASN'T dinosaurs, that means that the last major change ERASED THEM FROM EXISTENCE ALTOGETHER. That's an XK-class extinction level event.

So, no votes for making weak magics universal and greater magics expensive and selective? Also, Magic is a tool which can be used for good or evil. The nature of current magic is specific and unique to the individual, but that doesn't have to be the case. Major change can be done to fundamentally alter the nature of magic if the seers convince the Will of Magic to do so. For example, a more "scientific" magic with hard rules may make individual spells weaker but amp up the effects of cumulative spells, much as a single battery only makes a middling flashlight while a complex array of batteries and circuits can create a railgun or computer. More specific rules can be set up to limit great magics to those deemed "sane" and "moral" by the seers, preventing criminals and maniacs from causing too much damage.