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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1592123" data-attributes="member: 812">Core Ethos Statement:Barsoom is a world of swashbuckling desperation, where madness may be the only route to survival. There are no easy answers and no clear paths to the truth. On Barsoom, there are no good guys and no bad guys. There are only those who survived and those who were destroyed. And those who were destroyed are REALLY pissed off about it.Who Are The Heroes:The heroes of Barsoom are those who, upon discovering the threats to their world, respond with a willingness to challenge terrible powers even when the chances of success look slim.What Do They Do:They uncover ancient secrets, try to piece together what really happened from a myriad of not-so-reliable accounts that never quite align with each other, make difficult choices about who to trust and of course fight a lot. They find themselves involved in ancient rivalries and forced to choose sides without enough information. They try to help the innocent. They don't always succeed.And sometimes they drive giant robots around and step on things.Threats, Conflicts, Villains:So many that it's literally hard to keep track of. And it's not always easy to know who's who. The DEMON GODDESS, a nightmarish being in the form of a beautiful woman who's completely frickin' insane, tortures little girls to death and possesses the ability to snuff the life out everything in the world -- sounds like a pretty clear bad guy, right? Not so fast...Or perhaps Farouk ibn Zaoud, the noble protector of Suelekar ben Azan, the beloved founder of the Naridic nation, he who saved the world from dark menaces, storied in song and fable throughout the centuries -- surely HE'S a good guy? Yeah, you'd think so.Barsoom has been fought over endlessly throughout its thousands of years of history. There's been at least three races that have held dominance, though nowadays humans are practically alone on the surface of the world. Most people don't even know there was ever anything but humans on Barsoom, but they are wrong. Once the world was ruled by the Keyad'ar, fearsome reptilian creatures that enslaved the human race and were only at last defeated by the goddess Ky'in... who then ruled the world in a fashion every bit as despotic as the beasts she'd driven into extinction. And before the Keyad'ar Barsoom was the demesne of even more horrible creatures. Creatures that still lurk somewhere in the outer reaches of existence...The current world is criss-crossed with a myriad of conspiracy groups and international organizations that try to keep a lid on the emergence of powerful individuals. Of course, many of these groups are actually RUN by the powerful individuals they're trying to keep a lid on, so it gets complicated.Nature of Magic:Sorcery is the usual route of the power-hungry, and its near-certain crushing of sane minds ensures that the most powerful people on Barsoom are always the most deranged. Sane minds aren't in fact the usual pursuers of sorcery in the first place. Because the power sorcery grants cannot be limited by social pressures or any sort of external checks and balances, what inevitably happens is that the most paranoid, the most ruthless and the most fanatical of individuals are the ones who rise to the top, usually by exterminating any and all rivals.The first and most important lesson in sorcery is KEEP A LOW FRICKIN PROFILE. If these powerful sorcerers who are so ruthless, fanatical and paranoid happen to hear about you, their most likely reaction is to simply destroy you. Why allow someone else to learn the secrets that provide them with such power? This applies even to the most powerful of sorcerers -- due to their paranoia, they also keep their profiles low. Who knows if some hitherto unknown power has been lurking in wait all these years just waiting for you to reveal yourself? Incautious sorcerers are ALWAYS destroyed by whoever was that much more paranoid than they.Sorcery sucks the life out of everything around where it manifests. It destroys, it burns, it consumes. It never heals or restores. It is as dangerous and as powerful as fire itself. And its nature has shaped the history of Barsoom more surely than any single other force.Check out my Barsoom Tales Story Hour for more.</blockquote>

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