To start with, people died. It’s the fact that most people do not want to acknowledge that the media and the memorials hope to gloss over. They do not want avoid the truth because anyone can forget the price paid by humanity, but because the sheer scale of the tragedy is almost too much to grasp, even twenty years after.
In the 20th century, the most devastating wars were ones in which millions died. World War II, the most bloody of that century’s wars, saw six million innocents killed by the Nazi Final Solution, as well as the hundreds of thousands who fought in the war. In Russia, Stalin slaughtered tens of millions in his pogroms.
Gehenna, often called the False Armageddon, was bloodier by an order of magnitude. The tally of all those who died during the last years of this war was more than one billion casualties. This event was so staggering, the death toll so high, that the Traditions and Conventions had to work together to try to scar over these memories. But not all the magic in the world was able to erase what happened, and the next decade saw societies trying to come to grips with the loss. Birth rates soared to unprecedented levels, and the average person wanted to look at a bright future unburdened by reality.
The War for Earth was far worse. In 2017, the world population had again reached six billion. In 2020, the best estimates put world population at just over three billion.
Every person living today lost a family member. Not cousins, uncles, aunts or grandparents, but fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers or children. There isn’t a single person who hasn’t felt loss, who doesn’t know that he or she was the lucky one, who doesn’t understand the price paid by humanity.
Half of the world died. The other half decided to live, emphatically so. Despite shattered cities, staggering governments and a daily struggle to live, suicide rates were at an all-time low. Petty crime rose but violent crimes fell. For several years, most people had no stomach for fighting or killing. Even professional soldiers or partisans hunting remaining Terv’anar troops did so reluctantly.
In the harshest of times, the world thought of renewal. The surviving cultures exploded with art. People dream more vividly and try harder to bring those dreams to life than they have for hundreds of years. Whether it’s the media explosion out of Australia to the music of Sudamerica or Africa, everyone aware of world culture is steeped in art and imagination.
Another factor in social change is magic. Throughout history, humanity has believed in angels, fairies, spirits, magicians, and secret powers hidden in words. For millennia there have also been those who tried to dismiss the magical world as superstition and fallacy. Despite concerted efforts for several centuries, even the amassed power of the Technocratic Union wasn't able to stamp out belief in the supernatural.
Now the world has undeniable proof that paranormal beings and powers exist. These beings and their abilities are largely responsible for saving humanity. Paranormals were the front line against the Terv'anar, as they have been in secret against untold threats over the ages.
Before the Hammer arrived, the world was primed to believe. Unicorns had been discovered in remote mountains throughout Europe, and psychics were being studied by reputable scientists for the first time. The first few battles against the aliens were broadcast for all to see, and even when world networks were destroyed, people everywhere had the evidence of their own eyes. In every major battle, there were at least a handful of willworkers, shapeshifters, vampires, psychics, cyborgs, artificial beings, or even stranger things to help the fight.
This confirmation of the mystical world has led to a wave of religious and spiritual hope. Rapprochement between different beliefs can be found even between age-old enemies.
Most people share an urge to look forward, not back. The old world was torn down, and now this is the time to rebuild it into something better. Only the ruins and wastelands appear immune to this atmosphere of rebirth, which is one reason why the Moebius Circle focuses so intently on these areas.
Not everything is roses and rising from the ashes, though. Humanity suffered a massive trauma, which may take centuries to heal. Survivors of the war were often afflicted with guilt, anger, and depression. The generation born after the war has never known a world that wasn’t steeped in memories of devastation. Even the places that escaped the worst of the Terv’anar’s attentions have their own local battlefields or signs of the war, if only in memorials or haunted looks in those who lived through it. Some places such as the ruins or the wastelands, are constant reminders of what has happened to the Earth.
In the ruins, life has returned to its most basic concerns. Food, shelter, protection from other predators, usually other humans, these are all that matter in the ruins. These people are caught in a jungle of buildings and roads, with few areas suited to agriculture. Gangs have evolved into the rulers of these places, usually little more than the strong protecting the weak in exchange for the pick of their resources. In some cities, one gang may still have control over an electrical plant; another over clean water, a third might have gardens and livestock of dogs and cats. There is trade, but as often there are raids into each other’s territories. Life is cheap here. And in some of the worst places, such as Manhattan or Tokyo, leaving the city promises to be more difficult that staying and surviving. Hope has not come to these places for a long time.
The wastelands were rural areas that are scarred by battles both on the ground and in the air. Little can grow here, but some creatures and plants have adapted enough to eke out an existence. These places call to the Wyrm, whose servants appear here frequently. Some of these wastelands stretch across once-fertile farmlands, others can be found in badlands. Unlike the ruins, most wastelands only have a scattering of survivors in them. Only the hardiest or the foolish stay behind, but there is enough of both to create small communities here or there. In time, these stubborn folks see all manner of strange things, and are themselves changed by it.
Ancient prejudices are declining, to be replaced with new ones. There is a vocal minority of xenophobes, who fear all that is new, strange, or alien, who clash with a society that owes its existence in part to paranormals. Many who live in the countryside resent the city-dwellers who flooded their lands during the war, and many from the cities resent those who left and returned only after it was safe. People who have scrabbled for a life in the ruins and wastelands are often hostile to those who do are not trapped in these places. Some paranormals consider normal humans lesser and weak. Some who live in space resent the groundlings on planets.
Politically, there are even more divides between those who wish to unify the world under one banner and those who fight for independence. The UN’s might is feared by the powerful and the weak countries alike, who believe their unique identities will be swallowed by the world.
Not all countries are members of the UN, and many are little more than fiefdoms. Even the wastelands have their people with influence and power, who usually lord over those weaker than they. Most ruined cities have developed intricate societies based on old gang cultures remade into neo-tribal or feudal groups, competing for resources and territory. When the UN steps into these areas, they threaten these new civilizations with better technology, culture, and resources. The rulers of these areas often fight against interlopers.
The universe is not carved in stone. The rules which govern reality are not immutable. Existence can be shaped, molded into a new form. This is the essential truth revealed by paranormal abilities, and it is the dividing line between those who can use magic and those who can’t.
Once it was thought that simple belief not only shaped the universe, but created it. The more people who believed something, the more strength their mutual creation had. It was possible to oppose this belief, but such opposition met harsh consequences.
Now most who study the nature of magic think that the universe exists with or without belief; or perhaps it is better to say that something beyond human understanding believes in the universe. This basic form of reality is there to be discovered by anyone who studies it carefully. This is the universe as it is studied by most normal humans, and which is revealed by scientific experiments.
However, even this basic universe is more vast and complex than anyone can comprehend, and regularly allows miracles and magic in a million ways.
What makes a willworker or other paranormal unusual is that he can take advantage of these loopholes in reality and bend them to his needs. In some cases, these manipulations are all part of the universe’s normal workings. In others, laws of reality are changed to suit. Sometimes these changes are temporary; in others they may last forever. The mechanism used to alter the world varies; sometimes it seems to be concentrated belief, or willpower, or vast discharges of energy in specific ways, or the exploitation of the power found inside stones.
The important thing is that the universe exists without any discernable sentient awareness. But it can also be changed the moment sentience is involved. A mind which can grasp the world can then sculpt that world. The dividing line between a paranormal and an ordinary human is blurred indeed; bring together enough normal people who want to do something, and eventually they will manage it even if it should be impossible. Conversely, a paranormal can sometimes struggle with all his might to make a change to reality yet never manage it.
Willworking is defined as the alteration of reality itself through application of sentient thought. While there are literally as many theories of willworking as there are willworkers, the simple fact is that there are those who can believe want or need with enough strength to make the universe change to suit. This is never a simple process, and often requires great effort and sometimes carries dire consequences. The universe can be remade, but one law that does not change is that every action has repercussions. These repercussions, the price paid for alterations that are too fast, too extreme, or badly executed, are called Paradox.
Other paranormals generally work within the bounds of basic reality, as vast as those are. When they do alter the world, they do so subtly and often with little lasting effect. It is possible for a non-willworking paranormal to batter at the doors or reality long enough or hard enough to finally make a permanent change, but this doesn’t happen often. There is a wide range of non-willworkers who still do things that brush the edges of reality, from vampires to shapeshifters to so-called linear mages.
While linear magic does not change reality to the same degree as willworking, and thus does not garner the same degree of repercussions, it can backlash in terrible ways at times. Every paranormal who works in a linear fashion often has to pay their price upfront, from the various curses of vampires to the energy drain of psychics.
The greatest example of this today can be found in the ley lines. These channels of power cover the Earth, allowing quintessence, the basic energy of the universe, to flow into the world at key points called Nodes. All paranormals make use of these primal energies, but none more than the willworkers. The Hammer caused great damage to the Earth, sometimes destroying existing Nodes, sometimes shifting the course of a ley line. At the same time, willworkers and other paranormals drank more deeply of the quintessence than ever before so that they had the strength to fight back. The strain was too much for the primal flows, many of which collapsed entirely or retreated deep underground. Several Nodes broke apart, becoming more diverse and weaker. They still let quintessence seep into the world, but rarely were these places great pools from which anyone could drink. The remaining Nodes of any strength are well-guarded.
Science and Mysticism
There are many engaged in the debate of science versus mysticism. The Moebius
Circle is evidence that these two approaches to dealing with reality can coexist
and in many ways are compatible. But there are several people who are not comfortable
with this precept. Some, even in the Circle itself, feel that there should be
only one true way of seeing the world. Science has provided faster and more easily
accessible advancements for humanity in the past few centuries, but mystic cultures
have given hope peace and imagination to the world.
Science emphasizes logical analysis of facts as they become apparent, and trying to discover frameworks for how reality works. Mysticism focuses on an intuitive grasp of the universe, seeing things that are hard to prove with science, and often working counter to mathematical logic to achieve results. The two come together when science probes deeply enough into layers of reality and find a universe that is mutable, a mass of probabilities and energy potentials and chaotic factors resolving every instant into what we consider reality, which leads to even more quantum chaos.
Mysticism joins science when it looks at the large scale of the universe and discovers rules for how everything works. Predictable, if not identical, results occur when the same rituals are followed over and over, which points to a basic set of causes and effects. Examined closely, these causes and effects can mirror scientific theories of probabilities and altering the behavior of quantum interactions.
The problem lies in the fact that neither science nor mysticism appears to offer all the answers. This offends many adherents to either approach, who fervently believe that nothing in the universe should be beyond scientific analysis or mystical understanding. These philosophical clashes, usually conducted through reasoned or angry debates, used to be the basis for a millennia of war between willworkers, and that spilled over into the history of the world.
The Lattice of Destiny was a group of paranormals brought together by a shared vision of possible futures. Several of the Lattice had already begun working together to deal with other threats, and found themselves naturally drawn to solving the greatest problems of the world’s future. The Lattice included members of all known paranormal groups, including ancient enemies such as vampires and shifters, Traditions and Technocracy.
Due to their heroism and example, many other paranormals around the world risked working together, across boundaries of hatreds and prejudices. Those who took this chance soon realized they were able to achieve more together than they’d dreamed possible on their own.
In 2017, a mere three and a half years after the initial members of the Lattice of Destiny met, the Ascension War was nearly over. Change had come almost too quickly, and many who did not share the ideals of the Lattice were starting to consider ways to take advantage of the new peace.
Then the Hammer of Stars came, tearing down old institutions and forcing the entire world to focus on working together rather than apart. Only by finding ways to unite science and mysticism did the paranormals have any hope of turning the tide of the war. Only by accepting the paranormal and using it to best advantage did the rest of humanity have a chance to survive.
This forced unity has had several repercussions. In some places, especially in the Moebius Circle, it has led to amazing progress. It has also had undesirable results, such as the Omega Force battle drones now loose in Asia or the Spider Queen in the Digital Web.
There is unexpected backlash in society as well. The Church of Jesus Christ, Willworker is just one of many new religions which include the Animistic Technologists and the Zen Gnostics. In some parts of the world, science is still distrusted and mystics reign, in others, the uncertainty of mysticism is too uncomfortable to be tolerated.
The advances of both philosophies cause their own problems. As just one example, growing field of biological engineering is met with deep concerns and sometimes unreasoning fears in the civilized world. In those areas that have returned to pre-industrial levels, mystics are able to heal or destroy more easily than all others, and are treated almost as priest-kings. There are tales of human sacrifices and mythical beings returned to prey on the world.
While Moebius will never stop promoting both science and mysticism, there is growing caution in their approach, and careful examination of possible consequences.