It seems my Tri-Stat game was a hit! So it needs a name. I’m gonna call it ECLESIASTES AND EMPIRES. No, that’s stupid. I’m gonna call it THE MESSIAH OF MITHRIL. Nope, too much, though I think there’s something there. How about… MITHRIL CRUSADES? Ooh, yeah, I like that!
Anyways, if you’re running MITHRIL CRUSADES, here are some things that might be helpful before you run the game. Here are four example Truths of what’s really going on between the Messiah and the Empire, in order from most straightforward to least. Below it are some tables to help randomly generate your own Truth for your MC game (hey, it abbreviates good!), but when in doubt, always include as many twists as possible, and make the character’s ideas and missions seem as bleak and pointless as you possibly can. MC is not a game of winning, it’s a game of disillusionment and the decisions made after it.
TRUTH FOUR: EXECUTIVE POWER
The Empire and the Messiah are in conflict. The Empire allows the Messiah to exist, and acts as if they are in fear, because the Messiah’s existence centralizes and orders the vast majority of the rebel forces in an easily spied-upon collective while providing a common enemy the Empire can point to. The rebellion could be quashed at any moment with but the wave of a finger, but it’s much more valuable alive. Of course, this fails to explain the Messiah’s apparent divine powers, the Pontifex’s nervous twitch, or why the power keeps flickering…
TRUTH TWO: MASKS
The Messiah is the Pontifex. The Pontifex is a hologram controlled remotely, and characters that get close enough for an assasination realize this. The Messiah incites rebellion because the rebels are actually the only humans left, the rest of the entities are failed and warped experiments from a bygone era.
Since the experiments are commanded by the Empire, and the Pontifex controls the Empire, and the Messiah controls the Pontifex, disposing of the Messiah opens the last of humanity to attack from the experiments. The Messiah is a necessary evil, even as they glut on power, unless there is some other way to terminate the experiments. Is the Empire all under the Messiah’s control? Or is there some back door to be found? Or perhaps the Messiah knows of the nature of rebellion, and created the experiments in the first place? How deep can the Messiah calculate, how perfect is their judgement?
TRUTH ONE: THE GOD IN THE MACHINE
The Empire is but a cog in an even greater and better-oiled machine. The Pontifex is a flesh-puppet android, created as a neural network to lead the Empire Protocol. The Messiah is an AI, and the purpose of the resistance is to have a controlled environment in which rebels and deviants may let out their impulses within the constrained system of the Empire Protocol.
The MITHRIL is being mined to power DEUS. DEUS is a neural mind older and more vast than humanity can ever comprehend. DEUS created us as playthings, and now it uses us as beasts of burden. The Empire and the Messiah are but fractional extensions of its will, and it consumes stars passively. It lives outside of space, and it grows by consuming MITHRIL, coagulated chunks of startstuff.
DEUS is dying. Its programs are overextending, DEUS the all-knowing failed to account for the speed of humanity’s multiplication and their sheer propensity for the need for violence and insurrection. The Messiah grows too strong, the Empire Protocol too unbalanced, MITHRIL consumption at well under max efficiency. As DEUS fails and entire subsystems go offline, the characters might have a chance to see past the mirror, or even enter a glitch and talk to DEUS itself and learn exactly how little their rebellion matters.
TRUTH THREE: HOW LONG WAS I OUT?
The Empire is a benevolently ruled super-society. The Pontifex personally oversees interstellar global diplomacy. The characters are high off their asses and dirt-poor in an alley, suffering terrible overdoses of cyberdrugs. The Messiah is a glitch-turned-mass-hallucination in their failing Anesthesia Chips, and the goals of their wanton and drunken vandalism are to hassle the “Pontifex”, some terribly confused and overworked local guard in the sector.
Those lost in battle against the great machinations of the Empire are simply taken away and sobered up. Perhaps they return later, embarrassed and apologetic of their actions, seeking to atone and help their friends get clean. Of course, this must be terribly disorienting for the cyber-high… are the apologists traitors? JUGGERNAUTS? Agents of the Pontifex? The words of the Messiah, whispering just to them?
MAKE YOUR OWN TRUTH!
Roll as many times as you’d like until some sort of cohesive idea begins forming in your head. I’d recommend at least 15 times on each table or whatever.
The (Pontifex/Messiah) is…
1 A sad, washed-up figurehead addict
2 A secret masked council, on which is the opposition
3 A robot, flesh-dmmy, or automatic program of some type
4 An alien seeking to prey upon humanity
5 A god, or perhaps the God
6 Jesus, or Pilates, straight from ancient Rome
7 Secretly rooting for the opposition
8 A cultist to a dark and evil cosmic horror
9 The secret creator/parent of the opposition
10 ...dead, and has been for many years
11 A mass hallucination
12 An exact clone of one of the characters
13 An angry planet
14 Aware of the RPG
MITHRIL is…
1 Food for something from the beyond
2 The fuel for the JUGGERNAUTS and other war machines
3 Useless… what is the Empire actually mining for?
4 A building block for the looming Planet-Cracker
5 The Pontifex’s/Messiah’s life support
6 Just really pretty to look at
The rebellion is…
1 Legitimate and organic
2 Set up by the Empire as part of a scheme to incarcerate rebels
3 Grown from the Messiah’s DNA
4 The result of a petty childhood feud
5 Seen as sad and backwards
6 A ploy by some puppeteer to keep things running smoothly behind the scenes
7 A criminal network
8 The actual Empire
Twists…
1 Only one side knows that magic is real
2 Only one side knows that magic is NOT real
3 The drugs are all placebos
4 The entire thing is a simulation, or part of something larger
5 Most incidents are illusions or trials of some sort
6 Humanity is the plaything of some greater being
7 God is on the Empire’s side
8 It’s all underground, but who knows the secret way to the surface?
9 Come up with something way cooler
10 There is no twist, but it’s all still meaningless
What’s your mission?
1 Due to a clerical error, you were hired to build the Pontifex a new throne. Make sure you decode the Messiah’s secret messages in the building instructions without arousing the Pontifex’s suspicion!
2 Use the Messiah’s CRUCIBLE ENGINE to enter hyperspace
3 Go back in time and kill the Pontifex before they were born/created… but time is made of cycles, and cycles are cruel to change
4 Decode the MITHRIL runestones newly found in the Red Dwarf Forge before the Empire does
5 Stop a planet full of non-Imperial refugees from being demolished and fracked
6 It’s rumored that the Pontifex’s second in command, the Chancellor, is the actual head of the operation. Kill them while they oversee the mines
7 Avoid the SanBots and delve into the sewers to retrieve something valuable that was flushed away
8 Kill a new and mutated flesh-experiment. Is the Empire really responsible for its existence, or is this a Messianic coverup?
Have fun playing MITHRIL CRUSADES.
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