Earth: The Opening
It is useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country. . . This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.
- Terry Pratchett, "Jingo."
Idea One: We’re the Heroes
“I don’t feel like a hero.”
“Real heroes never do.”
- William Barton, “Acts of Conscience”
The PCs are recruited for a special UN task force, Foreign Legion style. All ties with their past are severed irrevocably and their only loyalty is to their companions, the UN and the world. You’re out to somehow try and keep the world sane, fighting conspiracies by nations to weaken or break the UN, Aninmist magic users who want to virtually destroy technology and return to the life style of, say, Feudal Europe or the world before agriculture. There are mages who plot to take down rulers, psychics playing the ultimate mind games, religious zealots seeing magic as “proof” of miracles, apocalypse cults -- and these are just the normal dangers of your life. It’s not a nine to five job, its a lifetime’s work. Your only consolation is that you’re doing what needs to be done, and you’ll save as many of the enemy out with you when you go as possible.
Making Your PC
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Almost anything can be a viable PC for this game, and secrets in the past is almost a given. A genetic experiment, a next-door neighbour type accused of the wrong crime, a UN operative who was shifted to this job because she found out something classified, a mage out to defeat evil, King Arthur reborn and seeking Merlin ... the possibilities are as twisted as you can devise. (Except the pc with a personal team of death squad ninjas Baliadoc :))
Idea Two: No, We’re The Heroes
Life, misfortune, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than illustrious heroes.
- Victor Hugo
In this campaign, the PCs either are Animists (slang for mages who are animal-rights lovers) or mages and mages friends, dedicated to bringing peace between the humans and the animals. You could be among the mages in the rain forests (or any large wood, really) or mages sympathetic to their cause. This campaign would heavily focus on human/animal relations and the implications of magic to the world, both the good and bad sides to it. As a minority in the world -- and a feared one at that -- you’ll be targets for any nation that can nail you, or bribe you to work for them. The UN could be an ally one week, an enemy the next and likely have a warrant for your arrest in either situation.
Making Your PC
The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.
- Marcus Aurelius
For this game, mage PCs would be the norm. For fun, a player could play a human and the other his animal familiar. Besides mages, almost any PC is possible, being pro-mage,. or anti-UN or being a double (or triple) agent -- whatever you think works. Generally, illegal PCs -- like genies -- don’t involve themselves with mages because it brings them into the open often enough. In a campaign of this nature, trust between PCs is essential to survival since most of the human world considers them evil (and some of the animal as well, as a side note). This campaign would essentially involve making survivors willing to die for what they believe in.