Setting [Name it, duh!]

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither loss nor gain.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

- T S Eliot, from "East Coker"

In the beginning... but we never start out there. Something has always happened, some event passed that we may not even be aware of. Every cause comes from an effect, every problem from a solution. We come somewhere in the middle of the stories of our lives, building on the ones of our parents and their parents and our culture and the world: telling the story of life, from our perspective. But not all stories are the same. Some of them have different beginnings, or at least different ideas about what constituted a beginning. All of them trying to say "how we got here" in words that will be heard, trying to make enough people believe their ideas so they'll eventually be right.

Of course, we never look at it in that way. We don't take the long view, because in the long run we're all dead. Or worse. But we forget the past is another undiscovered country, forget that not all stories are told to all people, that not all truths are meant to be heard. We go about our lives in a haze of muddled beliefs and confusions, clinging to leaders for answers when they are no better than us, and perhaps worse for being made leaders. This is an age without prophets or miracles save the cold and bright and soulless ones of science.

But there is another story. Some people stumble into it, some fight it, some die of it, but no one thrives in it. It is a world where the gods of old left and want back, where the only defence against their power lies in mages and allies from myth and legend and humans all standing against a new dark age or an utopia too terrible for words. This is the same world as that of those who live without magic, just at a different level, a different story. To most humans, the big threat is the ozone layer. To a few, it's zombies in the dark and dances to gods best left undisturbed. One may spell the end of humanity, the other .... the other leads to stories that have not been told in centuries, of portents and prophets and power and hope and despair. It's all the story of life, but those with magic and those who know of magic understand that the story must be told, that man must be free to tell the story of life in the way of mankind, to have their own fate; that the world is no longer young like it was when the gods walked it and that they must never be permitted to again.

Welcome to the world of [Untitled Game], a modern earth role playing game. In this world, our world, there is a war going on whose beginnings are no longer recalled and whose ending not even the gods can foresee. Of course, that's because the gods are directly involved in the war, or at least some of them. The Loa, ancient spirits worshipped with blood and ritual in Africa, the beings who run the universe, want to become gods, or to take over this world. The result would be much the same, and so the remaining mages are standing against them, preventing the walls between worlds and doorways of perception from shattering and releasing things from dreams and nightmares and worlds beyond counting.

Against spirits with terrible power and great desires, humanity's thought pollution of the world that ended the age of miracles cannot hold. New age books, new religions, metaphysics, quantum physics, the beatification of Mother Teresa, the canonisation of Princess Di as a martyr, Hollywood stars becoming legends and myths ... science didn't offer enough, can't offer enough. People want something else, want the magic and the miracles and have no damn clue what they're really after in this age of sanitised legends and Disney films. The Loa know, and are willing to give. The mages know, and are willing to stop them at any cost.

In this world you are the few, the proud, the mages! You are the supernaturals fighting to save mages and against evils your kind remember and the humans who are trying to help with guns and courage and skill. You are the only line of defence against dark gods, fighting a war most humans don't know of and can't be allowed to learn of. And you'd really like to get paid for this, damn it!

The Gods

The promises have gone
Gone, gone, and they were here just now

- W.S. Merwin

Contrary to what many think, the Loa aren't gods but spirits that run the universe. The voodoo religion has one god, Bondye. The loa come in two varieties - Rada and Petro. Rada uses the nicer loa and is about healing and helping people. The Petro do the black magic and such that Hollywood associates with all voodoo.

The loa themselves are the beings that run the universe, incarnations of some of the major forces in it, from good to evil to health or harm and many other parts of daily life can be seen as under their control, as a cosmic level. They interact with people when summoned or when they choose to come unsummoned. In either case, they possess ("mount") someone and the person takes on their characteristics. How much of the person is taken over and how much they remember depends on their willpower and if they fight the possession or not.

The twins are embodiments of contradiction, of good and evil, joy and sorry and the like. Some say they are the children of Bondye or the most powerful loa but no one is sure. They can be invoked if your life leans towards them in beliefs but can neither be compelled nor bound or dismissed by any known agency.

The dead are something else entirely. No one is sure what happens to the dead after they die, not even the loa. Ghosts may know but few are permitted to speak of it and zombies are undead so they can't provide much information. What is known is that the dead had better be cared for or bad things can happen to you. Some say the dead can invoke the loa on the living or reach beyond the veil to alter the world of the living but most consider these to be myths.

Some of the Loa

The longer you sleep, the longer you dream
The sooner you wake, the better you feel
And with eyes wide open there's no telling what you might see

- Rita MacNeil, "Doors Of The Cemetery"

Agwe: The sovereign of the seas. Especially honored, as one might well expect, by people who live near the sea.
Aida-Wedo: Loa of fertility and new life, especially conception and childbirth. Wife of Damballa. Known as the Rainbow Snake, she takes a snake form. Her symbol is the rainbow, and her color is white. Sacrifices of white chickens and white eggs are often made to her.
Baron Samedi: Most powerful of the Guede, he is the loa of death and controls the passageway between the world of the living and the world of the dead. He often has information about the dead. He is one of the Guede family which associate with the Loa of the dead, Guede. His color is black and he prefers a top hat and dark glasses. He likes cigarettes, food, and rum in which 21 hot peppers have been steeped.
Dumballah: The father figure. He is the good snake. The source of peace and tranquillity. The egg is offered to him when he comes to mount a person. He is much loved and sought after. His wife Aida-wedo attends him.
Erzulie: The earth mother. Spirit of the goddess of love. The muse of beauty. (Strongly identified with the Virgin Mary.) Her appearance (when she mounts someone) is one of cleansing, dressing, delicate foods daintily eaten. She can read the future in dreams. A much loved loa.
Erzulie Dantor: The dark aspect of Erzuile. She is the loa of jealousy and vengance, and is often cruel. Her symbol is the heart pierced by a dagger and her colors are red and black.
Guede: The Loa of the Dead. Also refers to a Group of loa that associate with Guede and are considered members of his family. He is a very wise man for his knowledge is an accumulation of the knowledge of all the deceased. He stands on the center of all the roads that lead to Guinee, the afterworld. Guede is represented as an undertaker, dressed completely in black wearing dark glasses.
Legba: An old man who is the gatekeeper between the two worlds, world of earth and the world of the Invisibles. He is the origin of life. The sun is one of his symbols, but he is also the source of regeneration and uses the symbol of the phallus. In any vodoun ceremony, Legba is the first loa invoked, so that he may "open the gate" for communication between the worlds.The dog is his symbolic animal.
Kalfu: is the Petro counterpart to Legba. He is the spirit of the night, the origins of darkness. Loa of magicians. The Haitian lord of crossroads. Loa who stands in balance to Legba. He is the loa of misfortune, who brings bad luck and illness to the world. His symbol is the crossroads and his color is black. The moon is his symbol. He can be placated, but is a dangerous loa.
Ogoun: The warrior. Today, too, the force of politics. Violent.
Papa Ghede: Loa of death and resurrection. A total clown. Very erotic and comic. He is the lord of eroticism.

Players who notice some oddities about the names of loa and what is the symbol of one or the other can just be confused: the loa hold to no one name or shape or form and have been called many things through the ages. This is just some of the more common ones.

Religion and the Loa

Now you turn to me and I turn to you
Together it's frightening just what we can do

- Rita MacNeil, "Doors Of The Cemetery"

Nearly every Voodoo service has animal sacrifice. By killing the animal one releases life. The loa are exhausted by the taxing task of running the universe. Thus they can receive this life sacrificed to them and are re-juvenated. They are usually quite happy about this.
- Bob Corbett

While outright worship of the Loa tends to be confined to Africa, Haiti and New Orleans at a general level, in a global world such worship can be found anywhere, even if it is unknown. All who seek to breach the veil between the worlds treat with Legba, no matter if they know it or not, or so the legend goes. The loa want power, and are willing to give power to get it,. As a result, voodoo rites and rituals always work. However, the bad ones tend to work more often even though they tend to be the minority. Perhaps this means only the Petro Loa are willing to aid, or perhaps only those who summon them up have enough desperation and belief and raw emotion in them to connect with the deity. No one is sure, but many mages suspect that dancing is an easy path and that jazz was made by the loa. Some of the mages even claim that the loa once defeated a great cadre of mages and manages to form disco, but most claim this is a joke.

The War

The sleep of reason breeds monsters.

- Goya

The war between mages and gods began when the first child of a god raised up weapons against the creation o a god and slew the first dragon. Thus, since Gilgamesh, mages and gods have been at war.
war began with the breaking of the last universes, the beings who survived creating magic for this one to stop it from ending as well.
The war began when the god of magic decided to give her powers to humans.
The war began when people began to seek truths outside the gods and the gods became jealous.
There is no war - there are just some mages who secretly want to be gods.
The mages are just afraid the gods will create the utopia John Dee could only dream of and are angry the gods can do it while they can't.
The war began when the first man killed a bird and tried to use it's wings to fly.
The war is against false gods made of belief and by mages - the real gods are eternal and were never made and can never die.
The war began when the nuking of Japan killed the Celestial Emperor.
The war began when man first said "Excuse me, but when you say you can do anything, can you make a rock to heavy to lift, huh? Can you flood a planet?"
The war began when the first man said to the first god: "Prove it."
The war began when the first gods made man and refused to admit they had made their equals and demanded that men worship them, saying "Say My Name, Punk. Say It!"
The war began when the first son said to the first man: "Who's Your Daddy?"
The war began when man first stole from the gods.
The war began when the gods first stole from man.

I wanted a perfect ending... Now, I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment, and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

- Gilda Radner

The war between gods and mages is, as noted by the various replies above, really old. No one knows who began it, no one knows how it will end. All that is known is that mages are determined that the gods will not rule this world again. While the reasons vary from the selfless ("men should be free to make their own destinies") to the selfish ("the gods would be better than us") and everything in between ("the gods, like, suck") ("well, I need something to do with this power, now don't 1?"), the result is the war against the return of deities to the rule of men.

No one is sure how to truly kill a god, so the war seems to have no end in sight save humanity finally and fully deciding it doesn't need gods. Most mages suspect that such an event would mean magic would vanish as well so other supernaturals tend to wonder exactly how dedicated most mages are to their cause. They rarely ask this to their face, mind you. Not if they want to survive the experience at any rate.

There are some mages who join the gods in the war, but they find that supernaturals and other mages both tend to want them dead. And if they're blatant about magic they also end up with human authorities on their tail and sometimes even gods opposing other gods. To put it simply, quoting Brian Stableford, "Whichever names I call upon me to aid me in this quest for insight and power, that call will commit me to the avoidance of others; to worship one god is always to deny another. And the generosity of one god may not outweigh the spite of another." be warned and be wary - you are either for or against them, and the gods have no reason to assume a mage would be for them. To them, the only good mage is invariably a dead one.

The Reason

"I did not want this. Not this life -- not this pain. There is a limit to what humanity can endure."
"You'd think there must be."

- David C Smith, "Master of Evil"

When you think humanity, think Hollywood.

Hollywood, maker of myths and stories and legends, purveyor of false truths and half truths and deceits - but never lies. Hollywood, that turns fact into fancy and the real into the fake (or vice versa) is a symbol of what it is that humanity is and what they do. It changes the world, remakes things in it's own image, our image, the image of man as we imagine the world to be. And the universe, the wonderful, terrible universe, obliges us - the world becomes what we want, or at least the quarter of it ruled by man. Beneath the seas still live creatures unseen and others that defy our laws of science and don't evolve or are practically immortal. Is is this power to bend the universe, to convince it that our stories and lies are truth, to try and bind it into accordance with our myths of cosmic eggs, gods having sex, creation by gods from mother, gods having more sex, the body parts of gods, gods masturbating (seeing a trend here?), songs, words, light, order from primal chaos, big bang, steady state .... our myths that make the universe seem to be what we want it to be.

This gift to make the world into what we think it is is that caused the gods to leave, if some are correct. Even if it did not, it is what keeps the walls between the worlds up, holds the fair folk back in the Summerland and keeps those things we know not of beyond the hills we think we know. It is humanity that keeps the gods from returning, that hold the loa back from the world. And it is mages who help hold up the walls of human disbelief by hiding magics, protecting supernaturals, keeping ancient and hungry gods at bay with the power of possibility.

Why Do We Protect Them, Huh?

O Humanity, reducing strong elements to dust, your name is blown on a tempest, you frighten the stars, you are ever young, but old, and ignorant as some force of nature.

- David C Smith, "Master of Evil"

Many mages find it ironic that the manifesting of a loa will change how people view the world so strongly that it not only increases their own magic, but could let the loa back into the world. Some might think it's stupid, but mages remember what the gods are, what the gods did, that however much humans have hated and hunted them for manipulating the possible the gods can manipulate the impossible. An increase in possibilities is trivial compared to a new age of wild magics and dark miracles and an age where nothing is certain and women can get raped by swans who are gods.

Magic exists because there is room for it in a world without gods. In a world of gods, magic is a small and nothing thing of parlour tricks and words that aspire to wisdom. The barrier holds because humanity is holding it. The mages just keep back direct assaults on it - fighting a constant battle to keep the unreal unreal and the unseen unseen. As one mage once put it, "We're here to kill Santa Claus if we ever see him."

 
     

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