TO KABOOM
(very solemnly)
Welcome back, Kaboom.
It takes a big heart to come back, when someone has hurt you.
I am sorry, Kaboom.
The Nations of the Chosen of Mystra are the Power you want to claim, if you are looking for things related to Mystra.
I am giving you this Power. I realize that others have claimed it, but I am giving it to you.
I can at the very least try to make up to you for what happened.
I will explain what happened after you left:
I took a great risk, and attempted to restart the IR.
And our Players, came back.
With the exception of Darkness (sad look.)
It is an honor to have all you guys, and Zelda, our only female player. There has been bonding between us ... I feel like I'm with friends, with the IR people.
That includes you, Kaboom.
IC, Turn 6 was very rough.
Melkor, Anabstercorian, and Vaeregoth engaged in a great battle in the Border Ethereal.
This battle destroyed the Red Steel Armor of Vaeregoth, and the horrible truth of Red Steel was laid bare for all to see - all the imprisoned souls in it, given strength by the battle, emerged - not to fly to freedom in the Afterlife - but held in a more dreadful curse.
Required to remain on the world as ghosts.
Ghosts that killed by touch, converting all living things they touched into Red Goo Monsters, which eventually reshaped themselves into ghosts themselves.
The ghosts attacked an army of the Shade that had defected from Melkor.
They slaughtered them, and the Shade arose as Red Ghosts.
This Red Ghost Army became known as the Red Armada.
It could have stopped there, but it didn't.
Tokiwong's Empire of Iuz invited the Red Armada to Oerth, and in so doing, empowered all the Red Goo and Red Steel in the Empire to crumble, and hundreds of thousands of new Red Ghosts to emerge, which joined the Red Armada.
This massive, undefeatable army marched south toward the Blood Waste, intent on freeing the 3 million souls entrapped there, to produce a Red Armada that would destroy the whole Crystal Sphere.
The secret of merging with Red Goo (but not being harmed by doing so - with the ability to resume normal form) had already been discovered.
Kalanyr, realizing the terrible danger, merged, along with all his people, with the Red Goo in the Blood Waste, and put all his power into releasing the imprisoned souls to true freedom.
Kalanyr could have succeeded - should have succeeded.
But Kalanyr's people weren't enough - the God Emperor, Kas, Mina, Hazen, Phibrizzo, Sanctus, and some others, and their people had to immerse themselves also, to obtain the power needed.
Mina realized the danger, and agreed to do this at a terrible price - she wanted revenge on Hazen, and demanded a terrible price out of him for her agreement to immerse herself in the Blood Waste.
Hazen agreed to that price. And there is little question but that Hazen and Sanctus would have immersed themselves in the Blood Waste.
But no reply came from the God Emperor or Kas, and time was critical.
The Red Armada continued it's southward attack.
The Angels, who had been protecting Realmspace, abandoned their posts, and came against the Red Armada in a colossal battle, dueling with them and the forces of Iuz just north of the Blood Waste.
For some time, fate hung in the balance, as the two forces fought each other, and Kalanyr tried desperately to free the souls, and the help he so badly needed - did not come.
Then Melkor fired the entire nuclear arsenal of the Shade at the Blood Waste.
These nuclear weapons had been magically altered to use negative energy.
Kalanyr lost a third of his people, before he and they could escape the Blood Waste.
Then, what Melkor most wanted to achieve, happened - the negative energy from those hits woke all the souls, giving all of them the energy to rise as Red Ghosts.
An army, 100,000 PL strong, arose from the Blood Waste.
When this happened, Toril declared a State of Emergency, and fully mobilized all it's troops. Forrester gained access to all 10,000 of his PL, and the Scro Star League, Church of Toril, and even the Eternal Empire came to his aid.
But Melkor was not done. He had long looked for ways to break the wall that walled off the Elder Ones, and he succeeded.
In fury and rage (and not knowing, OOC, if this would permanently kill his PC, by the way) Melkor slew himself to crack the wall.
The Elder Ones came against Oerth.
However, Uvenelei had invented a new weapon called the Groundpounder. Rather ingenious.
I wrote a long article describing the Groundpounder and how it works, and placed it on this board.
Realizing this game-breaking device would never be accepted by anyone, I - as a humorous aside - placed it also in Rules, and asked: will this work?
As of today, I do believe around 50 people have said NO!
However, this is the IR, and the Groundpounders did work.
Fortunately.
Otherwise, the IR would be over. The Elder Ones would have destroyed everything.
Instead, they were blown up in nova-like explosions in space around Oerth.
Those that survived that, received a bright welcome from GnomeWorks in the form of 6,000 thermonuclear weapons.
Those that survived THAT, found that EVERYONE (even the Red Army) turned against them, and they were torn to pieces.
The Elder Ones were defeated - for Melkor, it was back to the ol drawing board.
The respite was very short lived.
Freed of the threat of the Elder Ones, the real tragedy started for Oerth.
The Red Army, using the veins of Red Goo in the ground, transported itself to every part of the great continent of Oerik, and began the all-out attack to destroy everyone.
Only Iuz was not attacked, for he was on their side.
Melkor's Shade (those who had remained loyal to him) also came to aid the Red Army with 10th level magic.
The Red Army slaughtered people from Ishtarland in the west to the Isle of the Phoenix in the east.
They attacked the land itself, creating titanic explosions, the breaking of whole mountain chains, the rupturing of the very continent.
And yet, at the last, they were being defeated.
Just barely, but they were.
Devils summoned by the Union of Oerth, and the Angels, and the combined might of the Alliance of Oerth (the Union of Oerth did not fight very much, but mostly hid underground, along with Forsaken One's formian army), were winning.
Kalanyr drove the Red Army from Ishtarland, then from Lyrn, then Aaqa, then from Garnak, then joined with William in Veluna against them.
The Angels fought in the southern Flanaess, along with Alzem's forces, against the Red Army there.
In the central Flanaess, a motley collection of devils, monsters, and other forces fought the Red Army there.
Then Anabstercorian pulled a stunt. He teleported to the fusing layer of the sun (I allowed he could do this and survive briefly.)
He gathered some of the fusing material, teleported back to Oerth, and then released it, teleporting away.
The subsequent explosion, ten thousand megatons in strength, destroyed Celadon Forest, but also destroyed the Red Army there.
Anabstercorian would do this four more times. In Zeif, Erypt, Lyrn (which at that time was still under attack by the Red Army), and in the Empire of Iuz, I believe.
Then he was stopped by a cabal of mages who saw what he was doing with scrying, and in horror used wishes to stop the explosions.
For, although the explosions destroyed the Red Army, they also brought vast destruction to Oerik.
The battle continued to rage, as noted above, against the Red Army.
Many appeals went out to Forrester for help.
And so, Forrester, helped.
This help will be controversial, I suppose, til the end of time.
Forrester, backed by magic the cabal of mages could not stop, went to the sun, and gathered fusing material, and started an all out bombardment of Oerth, with the intention of completely annihilating the Red Army.
Fully 50 hits occurred across the world.
The Red Army was destroyed.
William and Kalanyr saw their own armies incinerated.
The devils were incinerated.
Many of the Angels were incinerated.
Much of Oerth was devastated by the initial blasts.
The shock of the blasts pushed down the continental crusts, producing massive volcanism, producing worldwide disaster in the form of earthquakes, tidal waves, land rising or falling, and the atmosphere was filled with one giant cloud.
The bombardment destroyed the flora and fauna life of Oerik, and much of the flora and fauna life on the other continents, and in the oceans.
The Isle of the Phoenix was hit, but fortunately your people were in the Secret Retreat, and not harmed.
Hope Isle was inundated by tidal waves, it's people killed.
Most of the civilian and military population of the IR Powers survived, because they were in their Secret Retreats.
Had the Secret Retreats not existed, 50% of the population of Oerik would have been killed in minutes, and most of the remainder would have died within days.
Oerth was (and is still) a teutonic hell.
The Red Army was destroyed, but not the Red Goo.
The Red Goo cannot be destroyed by bombs.
The Red Goo can be destroyed by 10th and 11th level magic, if used for that specific purpose.
All the killing and destruction made the Red Goo stronger.
Melkor had long secretly been holding out on Luna, and now Red Goo infested that world.
Melkor packed his bags, and took his Shade into the Secret Retreat.
Anabstercorian then began bombarding Luna as Forrester had bombarded Oerth.
The millions of innocent people of Luna could not stop him, could not save their world - Anabstercorian, not realizing that this kind of attack would not harm the Red Goo - sterilized Luna, bombarding it until the surface was totally destroyed.
Then he, realizing the Red Goo was still there (and 100 times as strong as before) sealed the surface of the planet in a new substance of his own invention, called Sunstare.
Forrester could have stopped Anabstercorian - he was the only one who could have. He did not, however, do so.
The Second Touch had come (the Mists slowly pulling all of Oerthspace and the other Crystal Spheres in Ravenloft - this process requires six Touches) and given everyone a kind of twisted immortality.
A kind of immortality you don't want.
As a result, the people of Luna did not die - the vapors regenerated into people, who were trapped, suffocating, starving, dying of thirst, tortured, under the Sunstare.
So, much later, when Melkor came to them and offered alliance, they agreed enthusiastically, desiring revenge on EVERYONE for the sterilization of their world and their own torture.
Melkor, who had kept large amounts of Red Goo, used their anger and his knowledge to create a new Red Army.
Meanwhile, Anabstercorian began building what everyone is calling the Penumbral Hub.
It will take 11th level magic to do it, but he is trying to build a city that will encircle the sun (much like Larry Niven's Ringworld, but not so large.)
Anabstercorian discovered a way to permanently metamorphose normal humans, demihumans, and humanoids into illithid.
In one of the more exotic things that happened in the IR, Anabstercorian offered to all the people of Oerth the chance to become illithid, and to join him and his forces in peace on the great city.
For you see, an Army of Darkness had come into Greyspace, angered at the theft of the Rod of Ancient Penumbra.
Anabstercorian had talked these illithid and drow into serving him, and now they work on building the great city.
Meanwhile, the people of Oerth lamented the destruction, and many pointed fingers at each other.
The DM saw this was threatening to break from IC into OOC finger pointing.
The DM decided to remind everyone who the TRUE bad guy is, and did so with the Second Touch.
Nobody pointed fingers anymore after that - except where they should be pointed, at the big bad DM.
Someone has to be the truly bad guy in this IR. Yours Truly is it. (Unfortunately, some will always see me as the bad guy OOC, because of the disaster 2 weeks ago. And that will not change, I'm afraid. But I have done what I could, to be a good DM since the start of Turn 6, and to bring fun and enjoyment to everyone in the IR.)
Then the Angels, who were unhappy with everyone for their behavior, threw a Great Wish, and there was an alteration in the reality of the local Crystal Spheres.
Now, one could use magic freely from sphere to sphere - if you could use 11th level magic here, you could use it in the other Crystal Spheres.
It is not clear why the Angels did this - only one-fifth of the Angels remained, but they did it anyway.
They thus opened Realmspace to attack (along with Krynnspace, the Dark Sun setting, Mystara, and all the others.)
The Angels then abandoned their posts, they who had been protecting Realmspace, and joined with William and Venus (the Emerald Order.)
Lord Melkor then invaded Athas.
Initially, he and the Dragon-Kings fought furiously with each other, and the Dragon-Kings vowed retribution against all of Greyspace for this affront.
But then they got clever, and offered to ally with Melkor, who agreed.
Forsaken One, William, Venus, and others gathered an alliance of Athan dwarves, elves, halflings, psionicists, and rebels, to fight back against this new coalition.
The Veiled Society of Athas, initially was wooed by Iuz, and they allied with him.
They may STILL decide to remain allied with him.
Then, all the uproar freed Rajaat, who proceeded to free all his other Champions.
Rajaat asked Melkor to cease and desist his invasion of Athas, in return for alliance.
Melkor agreed, and Rajaat joined as an ally with Melkor.
The Dragon-Kings, terrified of both Melkor and Rajaat, remained allied with both.
At this point, about 10 of the Powers in the IR gained 11th level magic.
Mr. Draco and Serpenteye gained a special advantage in 11th level magic (they can double up their Attack / Defense routines) - I felt this reward was due them for 6 Turns of clever plotting, sacrifice, and effort.
However, the other 11 Powers in the IR (including you) did not have 11th level magic.
I could not give Powers 11th level magic arbitrarily - that is not my right.
However, Forrester had just left the IR - a MAJOR disaster - so I tried to make what I could out of a bad situation.
I took the United Commonwealth of Toril, other Torilian Powers, and some Powers I was running - all with 11th level magic - and opened them up for grabs by all those players in the IR without 11th level magic.
Although this is not really fair to those who earned 11th level magic, it allows for the 11 to have a chance at further fun.
I mean - it is obvious to all that those with 11th level magic won, in effect, the IR - with 11th level magic they could have crushed everyone else.
I just wanted everyone to have a chance to get in on the great battle that Turn 7 will be.
Where is the fun in being forced to stand behind the fence, while everyone else plays baseball?
The Powers that I threw open were:
The United Commonwealth of Toril (good) (taken by Reprisal, who has just returned to the IR, and who created the UC of Toril in IR #2.)
The Eternal Empire of Toril (neutral and evil) (taken by Tokiwong.)
The Church of Toril (good) (claimed by Alyx and Uvenelei - I am waiting for them to resolve the claim.)
The Church of Mercy (good) (claimed by Creamsteak)
The Church of Shade (evil) (defaulted to Melkor, giving him 11th level magic)
(the change in reality also gave Zouron 11th level magic, since his forces come from the Eternal Empire of Toril.)
The Scro Star League (neutral) (taken by Festy Dog)
The Nations of the Chosen of Mystra (neutral and good) (claimed by yourself and GnomeWorks - I am awarding the Nations of the Chosen to you. GnomeWorks will understand ... I hope.)
The Unseelie of Valkys (evil) (Valkys left the IR. Trying to make something out of a bad situation, I put his power up for grabs. Both Sollir and 'o Skoteinos are contesting for it.)
Mina and the Knights of Neraka (evil) I do not know who, if anyone, has claimed this Power.
The Immortals of Mystara (neutral) Nohody has claimed these guys yet.
Rajaat and his Champions (evil) I am forced, by circumstance, to play these myself. I don't want to, but they are allied with Melkor - and EVERYONE is allied against Melkor. So, I have to play Rajaat ...
Now, Kaboom, the claims are NOT finalized.
Anyone can make a new claim, or relinquish an old one.
I have tried to encourage everyone to talk this matter out - there are now enough 11th level Powers for everyone in the IR who did not have 11th level magic, to have it and have a part in the party on Turn 7.
However, as of this moment, several claims remain disputed.
I have refused (except in your case, where I am awarding you the Nations of the Chosen of Mystra) to arbitrarily force my decisions on anyone.
After what happened 2 weeks ago, the effort has been on the fun, and the effort to make the IR work, and not on anything else.
Welcome back to the IR, Kaboom.
Again, my apologies to you, for what happened.
I hope you will rejoin us.
I had the impossible job of trying to figure out how to arbitrate an interstellar war involving 11th level magic.
And it is impossible - I do not think anyone has ever successfully done it. TSR created the concept of 11th level magic, with their Arcane Age Setting, then dropped it like a hot potato.
Still, I had to try. I could not just say to those who had earned 11th level magic - sorry, but you're out of luck.
Or give some cop-out like: Mystra decides it's too dangerous, and takes it away from you.
No.
Cheesy or not (as someone has recently said (grimace)) I have to handle it.
So, I created the Attack / Defend system.
Basically, it operates on the simple principal that all your mages and clerics with 11th level magic get together, combine their strength, and throw one great attack (or series of attacks) to destroy the other side's mages and clerics who have 11th level magic.
If you succeed, your opponent is reduced to 10th level magic only.
Which basically means - he either surrenders, or you squash him with your next great attack which he has no hope of stopping.
The Attack / Defense system is post number 2, the beginning of post number 3, and post number 4 on this thread.
There is also a long list of things I arbitrated you could do with 11th level magic (the rest of post 3.)
That is still under construction.
If it looks ridiculous, that is because it IS ridiculous, but go figure ... I had no choice but to give 11th level magic it's proper due.
If people obtain the power to play God, fairly and by the rules, then I'm afraid I have to give it to them!
Anyways, there you go.
The Isle of the Phoenix, and the Sky-Sea League, was devastated by the bombardment, and the actions of the Red Army.
Your Secret Retreat is unharmed, but ALL the Secret Retreats are about to be revealed - none will remain secret anymore! - and then it's open season on all Powers.
I urge you to go ahead and take the Nations of the Chosen, which will give you 11th level magic, and a chance to fight back against your IC foes.
You will retain the Sky-Sea League - consider the Nations of the Chosen of Mystra to have allied with the Sky-Sea League.
And that, Kaboom, is the current state of the IR.
Darkness never returned, Forrester came back and then left again, and I have not heard from Maudlin since the incident.
Everyone else, came back, and has stayed in.
Zelda, has started posting very actively.
Reprisal, one of the players from the 1st and 2nd IRs, has returned, joining this one. He is a good player, and I, at least, love his posts.
Turn 7 will start in about a week and one half.
Until then, the IR is continuing - in Interlude phase. Roleplaying. And at least some people are having a lot of fun just doing that.
But I need to know which of the open Powers everyone is claiming, before I can fully update the Lists, and I must do that before we can start Turn 7.
And I must answer a large number of questions that still are outstanding and are unanswered (I have answered hundreds of questions since the end of Turn 6, but there are always more.)
And, I have some special Posts to make, and some special roleplaying to do.
Edena_of_Neith
