EUROPA - The Nazi Reality

Europa has as its High Lord Adolf Hitler (who else?), born
Alois
Shickelgruber. Hitler spent much of his time as a rejected
art-school student in Vienna studying history, occultism, and
Germanic mythology as a result of an obsession with the Spear of
Destiny. During this period he also took up Nietzsche's ideas on
the inversion of ethics from the latter's _The Geneology of
Morals_, but without the subtle thought that went into the
philosopher's Transubstation (sp?) of Values. Hitler simply
stood before the Spear of Destiny where it was held in the
museum, made his decision that what was Christ's good was his
evil and Christ's evil his good, and swore his soul to the
powers of darkness, transcending in the process of making this
Choice to become a stormer (look everybody! the Eo4 at work!).
And the powers of darkness (specifically, a Darkness Device)
heard him. [More conventional histories of Hitler hold that
this period was one of
bare survival, and although he picked up much of his
racist-nationalist ideology at this time, it came from primitive
pulp-like magazines like Lanz's _Ostara_ rather than serious
study and research]
Hitler began hearing the siren call of the Darkness Device
during his
incarceration for the Munich Putsch. After his release he put
his occult studies and the resources of the Nazi party to work,
and eventually unearthed the DD in the catacombs underneath an
ancient church vault. This DD is the martial and phallic Great
Truncheon of Europa. [Although I might change the shape and name
to the Great Mace]
The Nazi party began laying a small number of stelae over
Germany, and
Hitler altered the reality a bit. Primarily the initial
differences were a rise in the Mag axiom, that would make
prediction of the future slightly easier and more reliable. At
this time a primitive version of the LoCommunity was also
introduced. World history up to WW2 remains the same
superficially.
Historical divergence comes during WW2. At this point I'm not
sure what
the actual crux will be, but I've got a few ideas. Bruce
Quarries _Hitler: The Victory That Never Was_ has some nice
tactical points in it, but to be honest I'm still favouring the
idea of invading Britain during Dunkirk after having done in the
witches coven. Scenario goes like this: In the occult
literature, the main reason that the Nazis didn't take Britain
during Dunkirk is because coven(s) of witches and/or druids
raised Great Circle(s) to keep them away, as they had done to
ward away the Spanish Armada and Napoleon. Supposedly several of
the older members had to sacrifice themselves to power the
spells. In Europa, Hitler, with increased magical power and
knowledge pinpointed this disturbance and removed it [Either
sent in agents to mow the coven down with machine guns, just
kept pushing his forces against it till the covens could hold
out no more, or actually used some sort of magical attack]
Whatever the case, Britain falls, Churchill and his war cabinet
are tried and executed as war criminals, and Edward VIII is
reinstated as King.
Another important difference is that the Nazis didn't invade
 Russia in
1941. Three reasons: increased Mag for better strategic
predictions; the fact that Europa works on Hoerbigian principles
means that the weather forecasts of the SS's occult branch, the
Ahnenerbe, were more accurate; and finally, Hitler really was in
contact with the Frost Giants of Norse mythology, and they
refused to aid him by giving him a mild winter to invade with.
Oh yes, Hoerbigian principles. While I'm on the subject, I'll
explain
that the World Ice cosmology of the engineer turned astronomer
Hanns Hoerbiger is that the solar system was created when a huge
chunk of ice collided with the sun, causing an explosion. In
Hoerbigian cosmology planets, etc orbit around the sun in slowly
contracting spirals until they collide with the sun, or another,
larger planetary body. This is how the Earth captured its
multiple moons (all of them, including the current one, being
made of ice) before they eventually spiralled in and crashed,
causing catastrophes that are remembered as the Biblical Flood
and the sinking of Atlantis, etc.
One thing I'd also better bring up to gauge reactions on
(cause I might
be accused of being overly tasteless) is that one of the two
worlds Europa has invaded so far in Eretz. When Hitler found out
that in this cosm the conspiracy theories behind _The Protocols
of the Learned Elders of Zion_ were not forgeries, he couldn't
resist attacking it. Under Europa's lower social axiom the
secret world government of the Elders foundered. The Knights
Templar of that world managed to infiltrate Europa, and they
have an ongoing war with the SS [in the antisemitic conspiracy
theories of which the _Protocols_ is a part the KTemplars were
alleged to have been the creations of the Elders, created for
the purpose of maintaining a degree of control over
Christendom]. Other refugees from Eretz were responsible for the
introduction of the Create Golem miracle (which is Spi 14 and so
is a contradiction to use in Europa, but if one can get a
p-rated priest to invoke it, the golem will keep going for half
a year or so).
On top of that there are various other resistance groups, but
because
of the Law of Community they are unable to link up to present a
united front to the Nazis. They include clandestine groups in
the civil service, the non-Nazi parts of the military, student
groups (the Red Rose, spiritual inheritors of the White Rose),
various nationalist groups along the lines of the Free French,
et al.
Attribute limits are 13, except for PER of 11 (which reflects
the Nazi
opinion that it is Will rather than Reason that is important).

Mag 10 Soc 19 Spi 12 Tech 21

Magic 10 Magic is illegal in Europa without a licence, since
the Nazis take it seriously and don't want rivals. Much of Nazi
magic is tied up with the use of the left-handed swastika as a
material component. The swastika is an ancient symbol from
across the world, usually indicative of the power of the sun,
life, and good luck. Hitler deliberately reversed the use of the
swastika for Nazi use, clearly indicating (to those with the
right knowledge) their dedication to evil. The use of the
left-handed swastika in magic rituals pumps out a miasma of low
grade evil (kind of like in Pratchett and Gaiman's _Good Omens_,
where Crowley arranged for the London ringroad to be constructed
in the form of an evil glyph that acts like a prayer wheel as
cars travel around it). I am also toying with the idea that the
Nazis may have stolen the magic theorem of Community (see Delphi
Council WB) from somewhere so that they can use it as
Conjuration Substitution to cast permanent spells as rituals,
primarily for the transmogrification of the Dog Soldiers.

Soc 19 Think of the manic self-righteous bureaucracy in the

movie _Brazil_. That's what the Nazi bureaucracy is like. Partly
this is to give the feel of a system that works not because it
is efficient but because it is working in fear of the powers
that be above them; partly it is to give the PCs some chance of
hiding from the otherwise all-knowing Nazi machine (sort of like
the Cyberpapacy). However, it is also because it reflects
historical actuality. Hitler, having usurped power, refused to
be bound by any laws or conventions, even ones necessary for the
running of his state. Power devolved to his immediate circle of
cronies, who jostled for power. They set up their own
departments, which were jealous for power. Duplications and
wastage result. Often the civil service or the military
bureaucracy had to smooth over unworkable or contradictory
orders from above.
Police and security only need suspicion of guilt for arrests,
and as the
SS legal experts like to point out, as long as they are doing
the will of the Party they are acting legally. Franz Kafka's
_The Castle_ is probably a good source.
On the social front attitudes are still stuck in the 1930s,
including the
obsession for dressing up in uniforms or uniform-like clothes.
Oh yes, and it's currently 1984 on Europa :-)

Spirit 12 I _really_ like the idea that John Field extrapolated

from my posting of the Forced Conversion miracle: that at Spi 12
the soul can be not just enriched, but corrupted as well. I want
to keep that.
The Nazis have been clamping down hard on religious matters,
just as
they did historically; this is because, like magic, they take
spiritual power seriously and don't want any rivals. As if have
described before, the abominable faith that Himmler has cooked
up for the SS is basically an admixture of Christianity
distorted by a Gnostic idea of dualism and Norse mythos: Christ
was an Aryan, fathered by a German soldier working for the
Romans, and moreover was a heroic Siegfried figure, who did not
advise Peter to put away his sword, and who sacrificed himself
not because of the power of redemption but rather because of the
power a blood sacrifice would bring.

Tech 21 Superweapons research has pushed the envelope to 1950s

Tech levels for the military. For civilian use things remain
pretty much at 1930s level. People go to the movies to see
newsreel since television is still a military toy. Power (for
those lucky enough to be connected to the electricity grid)
comes from dirty nuclear reactors. Mengles-like medical science
is fascinated by the question of whether humanity in other cosms
is genetically compatible, or even identical, to that of Europa.
Law of Suspicion. Same as Cyberpapcy.

Law of Community Hinders the unification of more than one

cause/group/ faith/race/nation/whatever into a workable alliance
by imposing a +1 to the DN of any interaction during an attempt
to work with 'the others'. This is why the Nazi Party absorbed
so many social groups etc under their wing; as long as all
social and recreational groups are under the wing of the Party
they are not affected by this WL because their is a 'bridge'
above them. By comparison the resistence groups can't even
cooperate properly, let alone unite.

Law of the Aryan. This one I'm a bit worried about because of
the cumbersomeness of the mechanics, and would appreciate
feedback on whether its workable or not. Basically, when the
Nazis were ignoring the work of German Jewish intellectuals in
the 20s and 30s, they were using a justification that there was
a difference between Aryan science and non-Aryan science (the
soviets did much the same thing early in the century). A similar
practice occurred with astrology: the Nazis insisted that the
existence of the 'racial soul' meant that it was not enough for
someone's time of birth to be known, since by that method many
people will get the same prediction. Rather, astrologers have to
factor in a person's race as well.
In practical terms this WL makes those changes real, and this
is the
messy part. Even though Europa's Tech axiom is 21, the Law of
the Aryan has twisted the workings of physics from somewhere
around Tech 19 or 20. This divergence in scientific principles
means that non-Europan Tech above this level will work only as a
contradiction. A similar effect applies to Magic above 7.
There may be other effects. Its possible that originally
Europa's
cosmology was the same as Core Earth's, and it is by this WL
that it was retconned into a Hoerbigian shape. (Or more likely,
the retconning of Europa's cosmology was made easier by this
WL).
One Nazi fantasy that Hitler has quite deliberately chosen not
to
manifest through the LotAryan is the racial superiority of the
Aryans. Ultimately he doesn't need to, of course, since as long
as people believe it and act on that belief that is all that is
needed, but that can also be said for a lot of the other changes
he's implemented as well. Ultimately, it boils down to the fact
that Hitler wants not just physical destruction, but spiritual
and moral destruction as well. He doesn't want to have the
Aryans evolving into a race of superbeings with heightened
spiritual consciousnesses (as Madame H.P Blavatsky's doctrines
of the seven races of man predict). He wants them to stay just
as they are, believing they are doing good why actually
committing atrocities. (There are other tactical benefits of
course, such as allowing some of the 'undesirable' races to hide
because they are not always so obvious alien, which in turn
gives the Nazis the excuse to continue to snoop and meddle in
everyday life.)

POCKET DIMENSION - Thule

 Thule is a pocket dimension of myths. In Torg such PDs may be
ambiguous
as to whether the myths came first or the reality (eg CE's
Avalon). Or the cause and effect chain may be known: CE's
Atlantis had historical actuality, but was blasted into another
dimension as a result of reality shifting Tech. Thule is the
opposite of CE's Atlantis: it is literally made up of myths made
real and had no existence before the mid 19th century.
Thule is the result of the Romantic movement and an upsurge of
interest
in both German nationalism and mythology. It is a mixture of the
occult belief that the Aryan race came from Atlantis (which in
this mode of thinking was an island in the north Atlantic),
Norse mythology, Wagnerian opera, medieval knightly chivalry,
and the Sturm und Drang (Strom and Stress) literary movement. To
give an idea of its mythological nature: the neo-primitive
interest in a 'return to nature' to get away from the civilised
but decadent cities means that this world resembles a utopian
and fantasised version of pre-Industrial country life. Life of
the yeoman farmer in Thule is not as crushingly hard as it was
in historical reality:
"Whereas for primitive peoples, nature often represented
primordial
chaos, and therefore the enemy, these neo-primitives
idealised nature and anathematised the city as profane"
(Dusty Sklar).
There are other mythological aspects. There is a legend that
Emperor
Frederick I (better known as Emp. Barbarossa) lies sleeping
under a mountain, and will awaken in Germany's hour of greatest
need. That myth is transposed to Thule, but the Barbarous of
Thule is not the historical version who died in a river in the
Crusades. This Barbarossa is almost identical, but is a pagan
Nordic rather than a Christian.
And then there are the Norse gods. Thule has been extant less
than 2
centuries, but already a root of the world ash Yggdrasil has
begun to grow there within the last 80 years (and being so
young, it _only_ has a TOU of 60). Most of the Norse gods do not
pay particular attention to Thule. The exceptions are the Norns
(who are really cranky about the idea of a Darkness Device being
able to manipulate reality to baulk their weavings of fate), and
Odin.
Odin is a brave god, but he is also a wise and treacherous
god. He has
collecting warriors at Valhalla in preparation for Ragnarok, but
knows that these forces will not be enough. Therefor, he has
been searching for another way out of the Aesir's predicament:
"I am a brave god. You know that to be true. There is only
one thing
that frightens me."
"Ragnarok."
"Indeed. Ragnarok. These days too much of my time is spent
hatching
schemes to circumvent the darkness ahead of me and mine. I
pick at it, irrationally, as a man picks at a sore."
Of all the Aesir Odin alone is fully cognisant of what is
happening
within Thule and its parent cosm. This should come as no
surprise. His throne Hlidskiaff overlooks all the worlds
(well... all the worlds were the Norse mythos have power), and
his ravens Hugin and Munin report back what they see. Odin
consults with the pickled head of Mimir, and can cast the runes
as auguries. Finally, he can consult with the dead, or even
resurrect the dead should he feel the need for a longer
discussion. It is this last method by which a number of deceased
SS officers been inducted into the ranks of Odin's beserks,
after the gallows god had inscribed runes upon their corpses in
blood.
Odin wonders if Thule might suit his purposes. Can its reality
be
arranged to keep out Ragnarok? Perhaps the Darkness Device can
be tricked into precluding the end of the worlds and the gods?
But Odin must be careful, lest the Norns, who are already cranky
over the issue of Thule, turn on him. Not that Odin would
actually turn up in Thule (don't want to run the risk of an AD&D
style god bashing campaign). At best he may sent an avatar to
lead the wild hunt, possibly in Thule or maybe even in Europa
itself if he thinks up an appropriate scheme. Far more likely is
that he will begin machinations through mortals.
Like in Europa, the Attribute limits are all 13 except for PER
of 11,
and for exactly the same reason.

Magic 16 Soc 10 Spi 17 Tech 9

Magic 16 Magic is quite potent, but rare. The primary

practitioners are females, since magics use is considered
unmanly. Heroes may consult with mages for advice, and be given
magical weapons, but they will very rarely _be_ mages
themselves. The axiom is high enough to support the existence of
magical creature, like dragons, but they are rare and will not
be found around wandering monster tables :-)

Social 10 Essentially feudal. The romantic reaction against

urban life means that what few cities exist are decadent in
culture, and the kings and tribal chieftains shun them. Thule
society works on pseudo-democratic principle used in Viking
times that you can have as much freedom and liberty as you want,
as long a you have the strength to defend it. The power of local
rulers varies considerably, leading to a range of principalities
of widely ranging size and nature, from local Viking-style bands
to large kingdom-like areas with knights on horseback and
armour. Laws may be codified through royal decrees, or through
communal meetings called Things.

Spirit 17 For no reason other than I know it'll upset people.

:-)

Tech 8 Large building (castles, etc) are possible, but the

axiom is not high enough to support the infrastructure needed
for large cities. Use of hard metal for weapons.

Law of Action Same as Nile, Terra, and Land Below.

Law of Blood. If the Law of the Aryan avoided inflicting racist

fantasies onto people as literally truth, then this WL does no
shirk from it. This is because unlike the LotAryan, which was
concocted by a HL and a DD with a deliberate, specific, and
subtle goal in mind, the LoBlood is part of a reality that is
fantasy made real. As such, this WL has all the force and subtly
of a piledriver.
Aryans born in or physically transformed to Thule reality will
gain
bonus 1 attribute point (a once off grant that is like personal
development, and so is not a contradiction in other realities)
which may be applied to any Attribute except PER. All other
races who transform _loose_ the same amount. Moreover, their
transformations will correspond to the most degrading racial
stereotypes.
Additionally, physical transformation occurs on a roll of 1-5
rather
than just 1 in 20. Ensure that your PCs are _very_ careful when
running up against this WL.

POCKET DIMENSION - Agartha

[The name may need to be changed, since there was a lot of
material
about subterranean races and cities in the occult works in the
19th and early 20th C. This name comes from one of the earliest
ones, Joseph Saint- Yves d'Alveydre's Agartha, but there were
lots of others. Another, perhaps better known one is Shamballa,
although that was supposed to be an above ground city in an
oasis somewhere in the Gobi desert.]
This subterranean pocket dimension is the home of the secret
masters
[who may also need a name change], a group of wise and ancient
mystics who keep watch over the world and occasionally intervene
for their own inscrutable reasons. If this sounds a lot like
pultaking, that's because essentially it is. The secret masters
are in some way connected with the Mohavi and the Akashans,
although I have yet to figure out how. Dave Oakes and Ks. Jim
graciously pointed out the similarities less than a week ago,
and my ideas on the subject haven't properly jelled yet,
although I suspect they SMs are stranded aliens. Whatever the
case, the secret masters have a style of Martial Arts, psionics
(which means I'll have to dig out the MA and Psi rewrites), the
secrets of vril (cf Tharkold SB) and probably a remnant of
interdimensional (if not necessarily intercosm) travel. One
possible story hook is for the PCs to try to keep the Ahnenerbe
from bringing these secrets (particularly vril) back to the
Nazis.
Another idea that occurs to me is that by either psionic or
miraculous
means they can release their astral bodies off into the fourth
dimension to read the Akashic Record (hmm, now where have we
heard that name before? :-)
And if I can, I'll find a way to work Madam Blavatsky into it,
even if
the cosmic astral jellyfish have to drag her there :-) Possibly
she's staying in this PD, studying texts in those ubiquitous
occult libraries and benefiting from methods of extended
lifespan techniques. Or possibly she's off exploring other PDs.
Attribute levels are all 13.

Magic 5ish Although the secret masters are mystics, they rely
primarily on spiritual awareness and the high Spi axiom. Should
they have actually come directly from the Star Sphere, then this
will be a drop from the already low Mag axiom there (Mag 7)

Social 22 The manipulations of these people requires a high Soc

axiom. Again, if applicable this will also represent a drop from
the Star Sphere's Soc 27. It is for this reason that the
manipulations of the secret masters are not always obviously for
the best, or even for the best at all. They follow their own
inscrutable motives.

Spi 19ish Quite high.

Tech 26+ High enough to retain rudimentary dimensional travel

Tech, and the means of gaining vril energy (which will, however
be a lot different - and far less unpleasant - than the Tharkold
method of gaining it)

World Laws: Still working on them. Any suggestions on how an

underground city of mystic meddlers should work? ----- Saxon
Brenton University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
saxon.brenton@uts.edu.au saxonb@mpx.com.au