I watched a short Ken Ham video where he talked of the need for a reformation rather than a revival. Its one of his points that you can't have a revival without the groundwork being laid, and right now, the groundworkis almost gone. Few churches and isolated in England preach the Truth, and many of them let corruption in.
Thus, an idea for a world.
Small, and isolated communities of a former Golden Age (that is now reviled by most as as the Age of Empire and Oppression).
The history of the world is taught that for millions of years, Demons and Foul Beasts ruled the world, but that one day, Humans arrived on the scene. No one is quite sure how, but most who think on it, think some sort of magical accident.
Humans lived as slaves of Demons for a long time, and then the Age of Man began (some say because Humans organized, and others because that was so, but that a Demonwar had broken the demons's powers beforehand).
There were then the Cycles of Empire as one group of rulers succeeded another, and as nations rose and fell, always fighting with the Foul Beasts and with Corruption and each other.
And then the Last Empire fell, the Federal Empire, and Man was once again opressed. So much so that Man again took unto himself the worshipping of Demons and the transformation of his body to the ways of th eDemons....so that some Men now look more like Foul Men than True Men.
They live in the ruins of the Empire, and trade and loot upon each other, and all as was and has been for a million years.
Except that most of that is a lie.
The world is 2000 years old. The first, Ancient Empire, was established by the Lords of Light.
Gotta go...gotta get my teeth cleaned by a dentist's hygienist. Sigh.
The history of the world is taught that for millions of years, Demons and Foul Beasts ruled the world, but that one day, Humans arrived on the scene. No one is quite sure how, but most who think on it, think some sort of magical accident.
Humans lived as slaves of Demons for a long time, and then the Age of Man began (some say because Humans organized, and others because that was so, but that a Demonwar had broken the demons's powers beforehand).
This reminds me of a story I heard about the origins of Halloween. Before the earth was ruled by man, it was ruled by Satan and his demons. When God wanted to reclaim the earth and populate it with people, Satan struck a deal with God. Satan and his armies had to be given one night a year where they could march and show their power to the people of earth. The children trick or treating is a representation of Satan's army walking on earth for one night.
Yeah. Well, Buffy the Vampire Slayer's past history is that Demons used to rule the Earth before Man.
There is some proof of a Demonwar, and of people serving Demons in ancient times. What the current bardic historians don't know is that ...1)The Demonwar was for the outskirts of the Earth after they tried to steal the best parts of the Earth from the Lord of Light, and he and his armies beat them silly. 2)Some people...stubborn, or outlaws, or fleeing debt, or just not organized enough for life in the Big Empire did flee beyond the frontiers of the Ancient Empire. Some of these less successful sorts took to living in caves, and some of them took to Demon worship aka The Old Ones Under the Earth (some Demons had hid from the Lord of Light's pursuing armies deep in caves.)
The Light had arranged it then so that if the Humans kept their act together, were righteous, and tough, and organized...they could the Demons at bay with holy magic and bright steel swords.
Whenever one empire crumbled from corruption or cowardice, another Human empire soon took its place.
But this last time, courage itself was attacked, and no empire rose.
Now, there are places where some corruption is taught, but steel protects them for a while. That and the fact that the Demons and the Foul Men are fairly chaotic, and unless forced to the whip usually avoid hard targets. There are a few places where the Truth is still held, and these places are protected by guardian spirits of the Light and by holy magic of a lesser than Empire quality, and by steel (although not of the quality of the Legions of the Empire).
Otherwise the Island of the Blest is now the Cursed Land where the best sort of person you might meet is a thuggish and greedy innkeeper eager to protect you as long as you've got good gold, and look like you're too dangerous to steal from himself. For that, he will barr the doors against the wolfmen adn the other Things in the night, and bid you help him keep the fire high during the night.
Durig the day, the incident of evil scummery is 1/10th of what it was, and many of those who were out hunting last night, might be milling their corn the following day.
This Great Lie gives support to the notion that the Demons are here to stay, and saps courage from the defenders of the Light. Also, it makes it so that many of the great magic items, and spells are not used because they make assumptions that the current user does not.
"Point ye the Sword of Destroyers at that which is Eternal." Says one recipe spell for activating a magic sword....pointing it at the North Demonhome, instead of the Sun, the Palace of the Lord of Light,is not going to turn the Sword of Destroyers on.
That's an interesting wrinkle on magic item use--what if the user does not perform the ritual for which the item was intended, but performs a ritual which his expectation supports?
I might have to think on that.
After all, it's generally a rule in Multiverser that a spell that operates a magic item will work for any magic item of the same type. That's so that if you have a spell that for example opens this magic door, that becomes a spell that opens magic doors generally, simply because otherwise a character would gradually accumulate hundreds of different spells all of which are specific to a particular door. That same notion applies to magic item use of all types.
Because of that, spells work based on expectations, and if the spell user expects the spell to produce a particular and the roll is successful, it does.
The reason indigs are limited to spells working in a particular way is that they have been taught that "magic works like this", and so they don't expect anything to work that doesn't match "this", whatever "this" is. But if the user expects that pointing the sword in a specific direction will activate it, and believes he knows the direction, it ought to work.
So I'm thinking about how it might not.
--M. J. Young
Well, we've got an Alliance holy magic item, and the user is trying to entreat an Anarch deity with it; if in this world, Anarch and Alliance holy artifacts exist, but no Anarch power will answer prayers made with Alliance artifacts, that could prove a solution.
That makes sense. We have to assume that "pointing it to that which is eternal" is the act of entreating the Alliance power, and we can accept that John D. Verser could use a different ritual which entreats an alliance power, but an indig in pointing the sword in the wrong direction is entreating the wrong power.
--M. J. Young