In the last post, I described how my Magus Hack campaign took a strange turn as I staged a Total Party Kill by getting the players to roleplay the villains and defeat their own PCs. That ended with sole survivor Edgar Raven, a time traveller, detonating a temporal grenade that hurled him into a different timeline where the PCs were still alive but ... different.

Yes, it's a multiverse-themed session where the players get to roleplay alternate versions of themselves in an alternate setting. My hope was that this experience would deepen everyone's roleplaying before the alternates replace (or somehow merge with) the original characters in the original timeline. Will that happen? Let's find out.

I didn't want this to be another game where the players were simply handed pre-generated characters, so there had to be meetings beforehand to discuss these variant-PCs, so that they would represent possibilities for the original characters that the players were interested in pursuing.

Alex (playing Luke) wanted his variant to be an active Magus in this timeline, but a fugitive on the run from the world's angelic overlords. This was an opportunity to play a more focused version of his original character.

Oliver (playing George Smith, now George Smythe, MP) wanted his variant to be a Magus who had renounced his magic and was now a successful politician, helping the angels rule the world after the 'Crusade' to defeat the Fae.

Karl (playing Bobby Kimber, now Rob Banques) wanted his variant not to be a Magus at all, but an ordinary human, unaware of his magical destiny, living a family life in the 'Heaven On Earth' the angels created.

Alec (playing time-traveller Edgar Raven) has the mission to track down his old friends and reunite them as Magi again. No small task, especially as the world is now ruled by benignly fascistic angels who have banned magic. His first clue about the sort of world he is in is seeing that the sexy angelic NPC Genevieve whom he knew in the original timeline is here a TV presenter of a daytime show Just Genevieve that helps mortals acclimatise to a world where their rulers - and lovers! - are angelic beings.

This new timeline needs a bit of background. Here, the Fae Insurgency during the 20th century turned into an outright invasion in the 1970s. Magi fought back against the trolls, hags and sidhe knights that emerged from Hades and Britain became the cockpit of a decades-long battle between mortals and immortals. No one knows who invoked the Host of Heaven, but at the start of the 21st century angels turned up to fight alongside the Magi in what became known as the Cleansing Crusade. The tide of battle turned. The ettins were toppled, the goblyns routed and the portals sealed. The Fae and their blood-soaked altars were banished once again.

The Host of Heaven stayed to rebuild a shattered world. Magic was blamed for the Fae's arrival and deemed to dangerous for mortal use. Many Magi, exhausted by the Crusade, signed the Book of Renunciation, giving up their magical powers in exchange for peace and security.

The great shock was the revelation that Thanariel, the angel of death, who had fought the Fae in Hades, had been a traitor all along; in fact, Thanariel was blamed for bringing the Fae into this world in the first place. The death-angel was consigned to Perdition and the Magi who fought under his Tattered Banner were hunted down.

Without the angel of death, the world is transformed. Humans no longer die. This has been greeted as Heaven On Earth. Angels remained on Earth to oversee this new order. Increasingly, the trappings of democracy are being discarded; why vote on things when Heaven knows best?

Another feature of this new way of living has been the growing number of marriages between mortals and angels. Not just marriages either: the new Ministry of Pleasure helps mortals adapt to their death-free lives and offers erotic therapy for the confused, the lonely and the anguished. The Love of Heaven is taken very literally by the angels of the Ministry.

Not everyone is comfortable with these changes. The children born to angel/human relations are the Nefilim and some of these are now reaching their teens and showing disturbing traits. Meanwhile, mortal fertility is dropping rapidly: knowing they will not die, people are less motivated to have human children.

The promise of life without death is not all it seems. Mortals still age, still get sick, still experience dementia and derangement - but they cannot die. The experience can be horrific. The Akkadians are angels who take custody of these poor souls. There are rumoured to be vast camps in the north where the Un-Dead are kept. Some escape the Akkadians are terrorise their communities as they humanity ebbs, replaced by rage and madness. The Akkadians are hard pressed to track down and capture the rogue Un-Dead.

Some of Thanariel's necromancers survive, living a hand-to-mouth existence in the backstreets, sewers and subways of London. Their magic can grant True Death to the suffering and bring final peace to the Un-Dead. While the Akkadians are too busy to attend to every Un-Dead maniac, they are always alert for displays of forbidden magic and hunt down the necromancers with zeal.

​You fought in the Cleansing Crusade: alongside Thanariel,  you hunted down the cannibal Redcap gangs and set the wicker giants ablaze. You travelled to the Underworld and helped Thanariel close the Portals to Faerie. Then, Thanarial was condemned. Most of your comrades Renounced their magic or were sent to Perdition, but you went underground, literally, and now live below the streets and in Hades, in the company of the few remaining dead souls.

You are a black market euthanist, bringing the gift of Death to those who no longer want to live in Heaven On Earth – or to the un-dead monsters such souls turn into now that the gift of True Death is denied.  Watch out for the angels of Akkadiel, the lord of Perdition, who hunts down the rogue dead and sends them to his camps.

You fought in the Cleansing Crusade alongside Longinus and Albanus. You were there when Gawain set the Thames ablaze; you liberated the sacrificial pits of Pinner; you watched the last Portal close, sealing the Fae away forever.  After that, it was confusing. You placed your name in the Book of Renunciation and were compensated for your lost magic with wealth, privilege and political power.

After the Crusade, you became a MP for the (rebranded) Grail Party, promoting Heaven’s rule on Earth with traditional British values. Sometimes it’s hard to get the angels to appreciate democracy and habeus corpus. Your angelic intern Lucian is invaluable for this. You are trying to quit bad habits: smoking and drinking. Your pleasure therapist is an angel named Mimsiel (‘Mimsy’) who helps you unwind, especial after the recent death threats.

You're not a Magus but you remember London under the Fae: a terrifying place of burning wicker-men, cannibal Redcap gangs and elven warlords. How much better things are after the Cleansing Crusade, with Heaven in charge. You live in an elegant apartment block, Paradise Spire, in East Croydon, just two minutes from the train station.

You married an angel, Lindariel (or ‘Linda’). You can’t imagine how you got so lucky, because Linda is beautiful, successful and an Under Secretary in the Ministry of Pleasure. She works long hours and you are a house husband. You have three 'nefilim' children together: Molly (5) and the twins Jacob and Isaac (3). Linda is very attentive to the twins development but you can’t help feeling she neglects Molly. You’ve recently hired an au pair named Jane to help hot house the twins.

The session was necessarily constructed from three different plotlines (one for each of the characters above), with time-travellers Edgar Raven as the link. Raven used scrying magic to locate George Smythe then teamed up to help Luke lay to rest an un-dead predator terrorising the residents of a Deptford apartment block. Having convinced Luke to help him, the two went to confront Rob, arriving just as Rob was activating his own magical powers. Meanwhile George Smythe had recovered his magic too, but drawn the attention of an angelic Akkadian who beat him to death (if that were possible in this world) and abducted him. 

That's a blunt re-telling, but the point of this session was in the exquisite roleplaying touches that brought these characters to vivid life and delved deep into the source and nature of their magic.

The Anathema is a site dedicated to the treachery of Thanariel, an Orwellian focal point for public hate, but Luke remembers the death-angel differently and is filled with futile rage at this rewriting of history.

Determined to find relief through action, Luke heads to Deptford where a rogue Un-Dead is troubling the residents. He interviews the grieving wife who watched her husband deteriorate with brain cancer but could not bring herself to commit him to the Akkadians and their sinister asylums. Luke stalks the un-dead sufferer through the basements and this is where he meets Raven, who had been following him with scrying magic. The two of them overpower the un-dead husband and use magic to bring him the relief of true death.

In roleplaying Luke, Alex brought out a sense of purpose and a theme for his magic that had been missing up till now. The first meeting of Luke and Raven was roleplayed rather beautifully, with Luke becoming fascinated by the prospect of another timeline where the tragedies he has lived through have not yet occurred.

If Luke's story was urban horror, George's tale unfolds as personal tragedy. George Smythe, MP cannot focus on his job. He has just delivered a car crash interview, stumbling through a half-hearted defence of the forthcoming legislation to ban alcohol and cigarettes and restrict licensed recreation to that offered by the Ministry of Pleasure. His angelic secretary Lucian is always at his side, but George only wants to escape to somewhere where he can smoke, drink and remember. Down in the street below, a strange beggar is staring up at George's window.

George cancels his appointments and insists on visiting the Foundations, but takes no comfort from the carefully-cultivated memorials and skewed historical perspectives on offer. There is footage of himself as a younger man, a warrior and a hero.

Instead, George goes to Claridge's in Mayfair; the hotel is now owned by the Ministry of Pleasure. George is supposed to attend erotic therapy with Mimsiel, but uses the opportunity of being free of Lucian (whom he now views as his gaoler) to escape to the roof. Alone at last, he drinks and smokes and contemplates the drop. Down below, the beggar is looking up at him. The figure beckons.

​George steps from the roof and falls.

In roleplaying George, Oliver brought a sense of immense personal pain to the previously stoic character. The fall was a moment that captivated us all, especially as it echoed George's previous death in the original timeline. 

The 'beggar' is George's magical essence, an expression of his psyche's need to be whole again. The fall, like that of the Fool in the Tarot deck, is a step into new possibilities: in this case, resurrection. George Smythe is a Magus again and, more importantly perhaps, experiences a dramatic montage of his own past as the guardian spirit of the British Isles, confronting invaders and oppressors as far back as the Ice Age.

Exulting in his power, George sends a banner of fire across London, serving time on the Hosts of Heaven. The nemesis is quick to respond: his Akkadian handler arrives, a powerful angel in a double-breasted suit. George is defiant and pulls the sword of Calad Bolg - Excalibur! - from his own heart. The angel smashes George to the ground and drags him away, but the sword is left gleaming in the shadows, thrust into the paving stones and immovable.

Urban horror, violent tragedy and now domestic psychodrama. 

Rob is a house husband, experiencing sexual difficulties with his beautiful angel wife Linda. While taking the children to the park, Rob is belittled by another parent and stresses over the shortcomings of his daughter, Molly, who is overlooked by everyone in favour of the startlingly precocious twins, Jacob and Isaac.

Things become more stressful when the new nanny arrives, a woman named Jane for whom Rob conceives a powerful (and powerfully reciprocated) attraction. Determined to straighten his head, Rob goes looking for his missing cat, Kimber. His neighbours on the floor above have disturbing news: they have discovered the dead cat's body and the animal died in torment, having been ritually slain.

When Rob gets home, his wife has returned and reacts to Jane with barely-concealed hostility. As she leaves, Jane tells Rob something he can make no sense of: that the twins belong to Linda but Jane is his alone.

Rob drinks too much wine while preparing supper. He is waiting for an episode of Just Genevieve with a focus on men who are intimidated by their angelic spouses and cannot perform in bed.

When Raven and Luke arrive at the door, Rob won't listen to their crazy stories. While Linda is hot-housing the twins with high-level mathematics, Rob picks up Molly, steals Linda's key and unlocks her study - the only part of their home he has never entered.

The study is a prison cell. The prisoner, crouched in the darkness, is masked and chained.

Rob understands at once. This is his Magus-potential, that his angel wife is keeping from him. Molly is the key. Before they stole his memories, he was the Beast who fought Heaven and Fae with equal ferocity. Yes, he killed his own cat: his subconscious trying to tell him what he is.

Rob kisses Molly tenderly, tells her he will see her again and unleashes his magic.

In roleplaying Rob, Karl brought mounting panic and anxiety to these domestic turmoils. Many of the scenes were fluently improvised and his final confrontation with Linda over the children (and her favouritism of the twins) produced a powerful sense of a dam about to break. The final reveal - that Linda is his gaoler rather than his wife but his powers can only be reclaimed by sacrificing the existence of the daughter he loves - came as a bombshell. 

George is a brain-damaged prisoner of the Akkadians, who are whisking him away to the North Sea Asylum in Lincolnshire. Excalibur is waiting to be recovered from a Mayfair mews. Lindariel has fled with the Twins - doubtless to create trouble for Rob. No one got to watch Genevieve's episode on sexual dysfunction, but will the Magi confront her anyway? They suspect she is the same Genevieve they knew in the original timeline. What's going on in Hades? Where is Thanariel? What's happening at the North Sea Asylum? The story continues in a fortnight.

Ah, the Total Party Kill. In classic Old School gaming this happens when a wandering monster roll generates something the party just aren't equipped for - or after a succession of hilariously dismal rolls. In roleplaying Meme-lore it happens when a frustrated GM unleashes Cthulhu in Power Armour on recalcitrant players.

My favourite solution is to let my players roleplay the bad guys for a session and engineer their own destruction. This achieves a number of things. You get an extended cut-away where the events behind-the-scenes are revealed: we get to see the villains, their relationships, their powers and their motives, all represented sympathetically. Yes, the players will learn some campaign lore that their characters don't know, but I've always found my players quite capable of managing that distinction.

The players also get a thrilling holiday from their own characters. They get to play powerful NPCs with dramatic abilities and - and I think this is crucial - they get to use those abilities in an unrestrained way. Playing your own character is a fraught business and you always worry: should I exhaust that die? should I make that Hubris roll? is now the time? am I doing the right thing? In a villain cut-away episode, you don't suffer these anxieties. You have a pretty tight focus (destroy the heroes) and you cheerfully throw everything you've got into that task.

There's something pleasing about seeing your own characters as NPCs - seeing them the way they look to the people who are normally NPCs.

Perhaps most importantly, it allows something very bad to happen to treasured PCs without a feeling of powerlessness and victimisation. The players (if not their Player Characters) are still 'winning' even as they destroy their own PCs.

And of course, they might not succeed.

The PCs are a group of street-level Magi who have taken over the sanctum of their old mentor: Babylon Tabernacle is an invisible airship tethered to the roof of a South London tower block where Pastor Zep once invited the homeless to make their home. The Babylon has the TARDIS-like property of having more space on the inside, such as a dungeon that once held the chained and masked Nazarene. It was home to Pastor Zep's angelic lover Genevieve, before she abandoned this dimension as a doomed timeline. There's a working forge, occult library and a window viewing other worlds and timelines.

The Player Characters are:

• Dt Bobby Kimber, a street magus and hexslinger with a sister Alice who is a paramedic at Guy’s Hospital. His Vauxhall Astra was damaged in a recent battle with Redcaps.
• 'George Smith', amnesiac warrior from the Dark Ages who fought against the Fae and their Pendragon as part of King Mordred’s Iron Legion. He is an old foe of the half-Fae champion (and mass murderer) Gawain.
• Edgar Raven, a street magus and time traveller, caring for his daughter Delilah who is at Guy’s in a coma. He has a potent artifact: a temporal grenade salvaged from the British Museum (it looks like an egg).
• Luke, a traumatised victim of the Fae concentration camps who suspects he is an incarnation of death. He wears the Crown of Thorns but has not yet unlocked its powers.

The team's problems stem from a raid on the British Museum to retrieve a basilisk egg to appease the gorgon Erisbe. This drew the wrath of London's Fae overlords as well as the rival Magi serving Morguse Orkades, some of whom died when the Museum was demolished and all of whom seek the Crown of Thorns. On top of that, they drew the wrath of Erisbe by not handing over her egg.

• Wintersong (Elois): the mind-render; Morguse’s lover and the leader of the team, she has become increasingly erratic. She died at the British Museum but Morguse resurrected her but she came back … different, more Fae than human.
• Runesmith (Einar): the Swedish giant; this burly muscle-man has a gentle disposition and holds the team together. He specialises in anti-magica and summons ‘trolls’ to do small tasks, such as creating useful items or jinxing enemy equipment.
• Shadowbride (Milena): the assassin; a former Russian spy, Shadowbride is a cold-hearted professional killer who specialises in teleportation and shadow manipulation. She was close to Rufus (who died at the British Museum) but no one else really trusts her.
• Grimvarg (Guyon): the werewolf; a one-time Welsh gangster and bare-knuckle boxer, Grimvarg spends more time as a wolf than a man. Everyone knows he is losing his mind and his animalistic behaviour is increasingly weird. He survived the British Museum when Lowell and Rufus both died but won’t reveal how.

Two other agents, Rufus and Lowell, died at the Museum.

​Elois is a one-time folk singer and one of the first to be recruited by Morguse, first as a lover, later as an agent. She still adores her mistress. Elois was almost killed in the destruction of the British Museum but restored by Morguse. However, she still bears disfiguring scars and is the most Fae of the agents, with crystalline scars across her body and eyes of smoking helium. Her specialism is in Charm and Divination, which she uses to raid, remove and alter memories.
Roleplaying traits: You are suffering physically and spiritually and this expresses itself in impatience, aggression and acts of pointless cruelty; seek to impress Morguse by being just like her: imperious and cold.
Roleplaying magic: You used to sing your magic, but now your Hallows manifests as a shrill screech that tends to crack glass and trigger nosebleeds. Your crystal scars glow and spread and similar crystal veins appear briefly on your targets. Anyone targeted by your magic experiences intense cold and lasting numbness.

​Einar is the most human of the Circle, an amiable Swedish giant of a man. It’s no secret that he loves Elois but his feelings are unrequited: she only cares for Morguse. Einar is a formidable hand-to-hand combatant but doesn’t like to advertise it and often gets into conflict with Milena who is willing to use violence to solve most problems. He uses his Abjuration and Summoning magic to ward and bind creatures, especially Fae spirits (which he calls ‘trolls’) who build useful devices or jinx enemy equipment.
Roleplaying traits: You are slow to anger and good natured in the most extreme situations. Threats to Elois might rouse you to fury and Milena is uniquely able to get under your skin. You feel immense pity for Elois and Guyon, who you see psychologically disintegrating, and you do what you can to keep them human. Although you dislike violence, you believe that once a fight is started, it must be won at all costs. Lowell and Rufus both died at the Museum and you are processing your grief slowly; it might manifest itself in a titanic rage.
Roleplaying magic: You trace runic symbols (your Hallows) on things using chalk or an etching knife or place rune-inscribed stones on or around targets. These runes then imbue the target with powers or summon trolls into objects.

Amiable: Roll with Advantage on Reaction Tests, treat Fae as one lower for interacting with humans.
Anti-Magica: When you Dispel or undo another magical effect, each charge you expend to increase Power creates +2 Power. Moreover, you always Test at Advantage to undo other magic.
Field Medic: While resting, heal another character for 1d6 HP
Hardy: Roll with Advantage to resist drugs or poison.
Mentor: Morguse Orkades is a powerful Magus who guides your advancement. When you gain a level, you can choose an extra Virtue instead of rolling to improve your Stats (factored into your current build).
Mystic Armour: You have magical protection: roll your largest Casting Die and gain AP equal to the result (the Casting Die does not exhaust when doing this). You can re-roll the Die and replace your AP whenever you rest (just like normal armour).
Shaman: Gain +1 automatic charge on casting rolls to summon or bind spirits or enter the spirit world.
Warded Bones: Powerful Wards are painted as tattoos; you are automatically considered to be Warded against magical detection or scrying at all times with a Power 8 (so 3rd level PCs must put 5 extra charges into such magic).

Milena Sokolova is a former Russian assassin and the most dangerous member of the Circle, being skilled in knife-fighting and firearms as well as surveillance and intrusion. She uses Evocation, Alteration and Divination to teleport through shadows or manipulate shadows as illusions or assailants.
Roleplaying traits: You are the consummate professional killer, unphased by violence and anticipating betrayal all the time. The emotional toll of your work expresses itself in your drinking (vodka) and smoking (Sobranie Black Russians). You despise Guyon for his filthy hygiene and lack of professionalism. You anticipate being called upon to kill Elois when she becomes too Fae. Before you do this you will tell her that you are Morguse’s new lover. You respected Rufus who was killed by the mummy’s warriors at the Museum; as a professional courtesy you will avenge him and the Magi of the Babylon Tabernacle are mostly to blame, especially George and Bobby who sealed them off.
Roleplaying magic: Your Hallows always involves shadows: stepping into them, casting them, summoning things made out of them. Your own shadow frequently misbehaves, taking on forms that represent your true feelings or monstrous intentions.

Athleticism: Roll with Advantage when jumping, climbing or swinging.
Fluid Caster: You can combine Alteration/Divination (e.g. teleporting) in magical effects without any penalty.
Illusionist: When you create illusions (using Alteration or Charm), you make the Casting Test at Advantage and the Power is your Level +2 for purposes of resisting magic that sees through them.
Iron Will: Roll with Advantage to resist mind or emotion control.
Magical Focus: Gain +2 free charges toward Damage.
Mentor: Morguse Orkades is a powerful Magus who guides your advancement. When you gain a level, you can choose an extra Virtue instead of rolling to improve your Stats (factored into your current build).
Surprise Attack: Your first attack in combat inflicts twice as much damage if it hits.
Warded Bones: Powerful Wards are painted as tattoos; you are automatically considered to be Warded against magical detection or scrying at all times with a Power 8 (so 3rd level PCs must put 5 extra charges into such magic).

​Guyon Prosser is a Welsh gangster and bare-knuckle boxer whose constant crude joking belies a deranged personality. He uses Alteration to change his own form into animal shapes, especially wolves. Increasingly, he spends his time in wolf form and his personal hygiene and dietary preferences reflect this deterioration in his psyche. Guyon nearly died at the British Museum. When the roof fell in, he survived by eating the corpse of Lowell and absorbing his power of invisibility. Guyon hasn’t told anyone about this but is wondering if he should eat other Magi too.
Roleplaying traits: You are a foul-mouthed and offensive character who delights in disgusting other people, especially the uptight Milena and the gentle Einar. Elois frightens you, so you behave better around her. Become a wolf at any opportunity or behave in a wolf-like way even in human form. You no longer use cutlery or toilets. You’re thinking of abandoning clothes soon. You like to urinate on things you find attractive or interesting. Weirdly, this includes Einar.
Roleplaying magic: Your Hallows takes the form of lycanthropy and mostly involves shifting your own body into animal forms or behaving in an animal-like way (growling, howling, biting, urinating on things) or manifesting animal abilities.

​Animal Whisperer: Roll with Advantage when dealing with animals.
Brawny: Roll with Advantage when you have to lift or break heavy objects or engage in wrestling or fisticuffs.
Burglar: Roll with Advantage to pick locks or disarm traps.
Criminal Contacts: You have ties to the criminal underworld, represented by a d6 Usage Die. You can roll this UD to obtain illegal goods, pick up information about crimes or criminals or to talk your way out of a confrontation with criminal types.
Mentor: Morguse Orkades is a powerful Magus who guides your advancement. When you gain a level, you can choose an extra Virtue instead of rolling to improve your Stats (factored into your current build).
Self-preservation: Roll with Advantage to avoid traps, ambushes or assassination attempts.
Shapeshifter: You can change form and function to a wolf. You retain your Traits, HD and Hit Points and use your Magical Combat Die. In this form you make Tests involving running, tracking and biting with Advantage. You cannot cast magic in this form.
Warded Bones: Powerful Wards are painted as tattoos; you are automatically considered to be Warded against magical detection or scrying at all times with a Power 8 (so 3rd level PCs must put 5 extra charges into such magic).

The players received this planning sheet to help orientate themselves and brainstorm a nefarious plan.

Really well.

The players acted with ruthless efficiency. Grimvarg got his criminal contacts to put a bomb under Kimber's car. Poor Kimber was blown to pieces, but experienced it as psychedelic transference into the Underworld where his former lover, the chandler Molly, was waiting for him.

Erisbe proved an enthusiastic accomplice, but once they had learned from her where the PC Magi were located, Wintersong wiped her memories of the Crown.

The team teleported into Pastor Zep's apartment and murdered the homeless people sheltering there, much to Runesmith's distress. They discovered the airship tethered to the roof. Inside, Shadowbride performed her signature teleport to assassinate Luke with an enchanted knife. She sawed off his head to get the Crown of Thorns. Grimvarg devoured Luke's lover, the leanan-sidhe Maeve.

Runesmith dealt with George Smith by turning himself into a portal, so that George appeared in mid air, five storeys up, and fell to his death. This was the only setback so far: they were supposed to capture George alive.

Wintersong waited in the apartment to confront Edgar Raven on his return from the hospital. However, Raven received cryptic warnings from Bobby Kimber's ghost. He decided to use his time travel power to return to the start of the day and warn Kimber not to collect his booby-trapped car. Of course, this triggered a string of paradoxes, the result of which was that the temporal grenade in Raven's satchel detonated, blasting him into another timeline.

A timeline in which his friends are all alive, but not aware of being Magi.

A timeline in which the Fae invasion was defeated by the forces of Heaven - and London is ruled by tyrannical angels.

Now the players need to create alternative versions of their characters, in the hope they can replace, resurrect or merge with their dead characters in the original timeline.

​Assuming Raven can convince them that they are Magi.

Things just got outta hand ....