We find ourselves in media finem mundi today as we crack open C.J. Carella’s 1996 game Armageddon. It’s a spiritual (har) successor to the earlier WitchCraft, whose backstory/metaplot included hints of a looming future catastrophe à la Gehenna in the World of Darkness. Well, in Armageddon the catastrophe has stopped looming & shown up good & proper.

It’s the far-off year 2016 & a horrible thing from beyond Time & Space called Leviathan is stirring. It has activated its evil Chosen One, a cult leader with super powerful magical abilities called the Last Apostle. In the space of a few years the Apostle, with the aid of an evil High Priest, has created a militarized Church of Revelations whose high-tech armies have steamrolled large stretches of Europe, Asia, & South America. Even in lands that are resisting the Apostle chaos reigns as supernatural forces that had once been hidden reveal themselves. Among them are our heroes, a motley crew of ordinary humans, creatures of legend, wizards, angels, demons, part-Atlanteans, & demi-god scions. Turns out all mythologies are partly true & partly false, the result of humans trying to make sense of the beings created as the agents of the Creator. Force of belief has given them objective existence, thanks to which Thor was able to smite a Church of Revelations flotilla headed to sack Scandinavia. Which gives me an idea for a character that’s either hilarious or idiotic. Maybe a little of each.

Ashton Rickman has always had strength & endurance that belies his small frame – he’s barely 5’5, maybe 145 pounds if he gorged himself at lunch – but it wasn’t until recently that he understood why & began to realize his full potential. He always knew one branch of his family tree led back to France; what he didn’t realize was that he could trace his roots all the way back to ancient Gaul. The much bigger shock, of course, was that one of his distant ancestors wasn’t just a renowned warrior. No, Ashton was descended from the Gaulish thunder god Toutatis himself. Not that he believed it at first. It was such an obviously ridiculous idea that he laughed at it – but he just kept getting stronger, & by the time he could throw a washing machine across the basement one-handed, there was no denying reality any longer. He was something other than entirely human & it placed on him the burden of coming to the aid of those at the mercy of the more powerful.

With a concept in mind, your PC needs a Type. These fall into two broad groups. The Heroic are composed of the Gifted (psychics & wizards), the Lesser Gifted (with only a trick or two up their sleeve), the Mundane, & the Lesser Supernatural (low-level angels & Inheritors like Ashton). The Legendary are composed of Supernaturals (mighty angels) & the Greater Gifted (the mightiest wizards & immortals). Your type determines how many of each type of character creation point you get. Ashton is a Lesser Supernatural, so he gets 15 attribute points, 15 quality points, can take up to 10 points of drawbacks, has 25 skill points, & 25 metaphysics points.

Next, you pick the PC’s Genus. Humans are us. True Immortals are ageless humans in the Connor McCloud vein. Nephelim are the literal children of an angel & a human. Inheritors are descended from gods. Avatars are earthly embodiments of a god. Kerubim & Qliphonim are lower ranked angels & demons, respectively (even the demons are fighting against Leviathan, because whatever it is it’s out to annihilate literally everything, demons included). The Seraphim are turbo-powered angels & demons. To play a human costs nothing, but all the other genii have a cost that must be paid from quality points or metaphysics points. Seventeen of Ashton’s metaphysics points go straight to paying for being an Inheritor.

Job one is to set your primary attributes, from which in turn some secondary values are calculated. Because he’s an Inheritor Ashton starts with a +3 in Strength, a +3 in Constitution & a +1 to his Willpower. So his initial scores are:

Strength 6, Dexterity 2, Intelligence 3, Perception 2, Constitution 6, Willpower 3

Life Points (STR + CON) x 4 + 25 = 73
Endurance (CON + STR + WIL) x 3 + 5 = 50
Essence (spent to fuel his divine Aspects) (sum of all primary abilities + 20) = 42
Speed (CON + DEX) x 2 = 16 (mph at a flat out run, or 8 yards per second)

A normal human’s stats top out at 5, so Ashton is already capable of outlifting an power lifting champ or running a champion marathoner to exhaustion.

Next we select qualities & drawbacks. These are your standard physical/mental/social advantages & disadvantages, except that some Types have to select one to get access to their abilities. Along with his mandatory one, we assign Ashton some other nice-to-haves, plus a couple of drawbacks to balance the point score.

Qualities:
Aspect: Might (minor), Fast Reaction Time, Charisma 2, Hard to Kill 4 (adds 3 life points/level)

Drawbacks:
Honorable 1, Resources (below average) 1

Ashton isn’t just strong & sturdy, he’s quick & charming. He has a slightly restricting code of honor & he’s always a bit skint from wandering from town to town, working odd jobs.

Next up, skills. A level of 1 is a rank amateur, 2 & 3 are skilled beginners, & 4 is practiced competence. The game doesn’t feature a massive skill list but it covers the basics.

Brawling 4, Dodge 4, Drive 3, First Aid 1, Hand Weapon (knife) 3, Notice 3, Smooth Talk 3, Stealth 2, Survival (forest) 2

Finally, metaphysics. The text gets a bit confusing at this point, at least for Inheritors. Ashton paid 17 points to be an Inheritor, fine. He paid nine quality points for an aspect. What can he spend the remaining eight metaphysics points on? More aspects, yeah, but there aren’t any that cost exactly eight points & fit Toutatis. There’s a list of deities & aspects at the back, but some of the aspects listed there don’t actually appear in the text. Well, let’s just say that he spends those last eight on Aspect: Weather (minor). That’s one of the listed but undescribed aspects. If this were an actual game we could work out what that means with the GM, but I guess it’ll have to remain an exercise for the reader.

What we do know for sure is that his Might (minor) gives him Herculean Strength (another +2 to STR) & Muscles Of Iron (he doesn’t look it, but his muscles are so hard he gets CONd4 Armor Value). Ashton also gets the powers common to all Inheritors as well: rapid healing (regain CON + WILL = 9 points of health per minute) & he stopped aging somewhere in his mid-20s.

The rules play fast & loose with equipment so we’ll assume that Ashton is out there roaming the countryside with a dufflebag of clothes (well, a half dozen black T shirts, some clean underwear & a couple extra pairs of jeans), busting up the forces of the Empire wherever they need a good paf! tchac! to put them in their place.

Name: Ashton Rickman
Concept: Reluctant hero
Type: Lesser Supernatural
Genus: Inheritor
Description: short & slim but incredibly wiry; thick blonde hair, unkempt moustache, bright blue eyes, charming smile

Strength 8, Dexterity 2, Intelligence 3, Perception 2, Constitution 6, Willpower 3

Life Points 93, Endurance 56, Essence 44, Speed 16

Qualities:
Aspect: Might (minor), Fast Reaction Time, Charisma 2, Hard to Kill 4 (adds 3 life points/level)

Drawbacks:
Honorable 1, Resources (below average) 1

Skills:
Brawling 4, Dodge 4, Drive 3, First Aid 1, Hand Weapon (knife) 3, Notice 3, Smooth Talk 3, Stealth 2, Survival (forest) 2

Metaphysics:
Aspect: Might (minor), Aspect: Weather (minor)