Ultima Thule (Domain) – Google Docs
Ultima Thule (Domain)
I would like to note for the record that I am well aware that there is a lot of pseudo-history enshrined below. To paraphrase Ken Hite, bad scholarship means good gaming.
Features: Common Tongue, Dream Magnet, Fierce Figments, Infinite, Malleable (+3), Hostile (Constant warfare), Oasis, Sticky (only worse: ethereals, once in, can’t leave).
You’ve heard the old saying “Old Nazis never die; they just move to South America?” Well, it’s not true. They die. And then, if they know the trick, they move to Ultima Thule.
It is unknown precisely how an Ahnenerbe-trained lucid dreamer managed to stumble upon Ultima Thule in the fall of 1943. Needless to say, the SS jumped to completely the wrong conclusion and assumed that they had found an “astral portal” to “the sacred motherland of the Aryan race,” etc, etc. In fairness, this was the sort of thing that various madmen in Nazi uniform had been looking for, particularly as the Eastern Front began moving west at increasing speed, but the initial lack of expected Aryan artifacts and tribes gave some researchers a bit of ideological trouble — until better reports conveniently started to come in.
How the Nazi high command kept Ultima Thule a secret is known: they simply shot everybody below a certain rank who knew of it. Those who were loyal Nazis were given the opportunity to learn how to activate the “astral portal” first, so as to prepare the land for those would follow. It is surprising how many of them did exactly that. The tendency for Nazi leaders to commit suicide at the end of World War II anyway obscures how many of them did so while frantically trying to visualize the gate to their new home, but it can be confirmed that Ultima Thule is currently ruled by Heinrich I (styled both Hitler and Fuehrer) from his ponderously inane capital of New Germania. He has managed to gather quite the collection of both old and new National Socialists, most of whom have very good reasons not to abandon the sanctuary that the Domain offers them.
Ultima Thule was a very new Domain, and thus not very well-formed when discovered (and almost immediately altered) by the feverish subconscious yearnings of several thousand demented, twisted romantics. Its present configuration as the ice-choked interior of an endless hollow Earth is solely due to the beliefs of its inhabitants, and could change in a moment. Even the ruins that dot the landscape are newly created, which does nothing to help determine the history of the place. There is nothing that can be verified as being relics of the old tenants of Ultima Thule, assuming that there were any old tenants to begin with.
The new indigenous tenants are likewise made up out of whole cloth. There are two types: Ubermensch (to be ruled) and Untermensch (to be killed). While Ubermensch are supposedly Ultimate Aryans, they are actually both fairly stupid, and easily controlled. Untermensch originally consisted of ‘subhumans’ (native ethereals), but have since been bolstered by “foreigners” (outside ethereals that were sucked into this Domain). There are currently four celestials in the entire Domain, and all of them are engaged in short-term spying.
Ultima Thule is, of course, an exceptionally unpleasant place to visit; and for ethereals, going there is a one-way trip. Thanks to the Nazis interference (Domains aren’t really designed to handle this level of active mortal scrutiny) once you’re in, you’re stuck there — and there are always six or so wars going on, cities being firebombed, atrocities taking place everywhere, and unless you happen to be naturally human-looking, blond, and blue-eyed you are going to be a favorite target. Meanwhile, the Nazis themselves are frantically attempting to work out how to reliably project people (by which they mean themselves) back to Earth without immediately getting sucked into Hell. They hope that once they work out the trick they can then use it to send through armies as well. It’s the usual Fourth Reich fever-nightmare, in other words; and from their point of view Ultima Thule has truly enormous armies with which to work with.
Needless to say, the scheme is doomed to failure. Ultima Thule is still an annoyance, and potentially a horrible neighbor to have. While its endless armies will instantly dissipate on the corporeal plane, they won’t on the ethereal — and if the Nazis can figure out how to just get ethereals out of the Domain safely, they could very well make a start at conquering the Far Marches. That is a scenario that a good number of ethereals have no desire to see come to pass.
Which is why Odin visited Vishnu, and why Vishnu contacted Legba, and Legba stopped by to chat with Yves, and why Yves invited David over for tea, and why somewhere in the Negev desert there’s now a facility where about a hundred or so Mossad agents are busily training in the esoteric arts of lucid dreaming, symbolic logic bombing, and explosive literary deconstruction techniques. Why? Because you want to have people with motivation for this sort of special operations work, of course.
This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games. In Nomine is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.
Ok, now you have me thinking about buying In Nomine.